Tennant (TNC) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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DATE

Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026 at 10 a.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• President and Chief Executive Officer — David W. Huml
• Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer — Fay West
• Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations — Lorenzo Bassi

TAKEAWAYS

• ERP implementation impact -- Tennant (NYSE:TNC)'s North America ERP go-live in November resulted in a $30,000,000 reduction in net sales, along with a $22,000,000 reduction in adjusted EBITDA, severely constraining order entry, production, and shipping for three weeks.
• Sales mix impact -- Of the $30,000,000 sales shortfall, one-third affected service, parts, and consumables, while two-thirds impacted equipment sales; about $15,000,000 is considered unrecoverable, with the remainder added to backlog.
• Net sales -- Consolidated net sales for the quarter were $291,600,000, declining 11.3%, with organic sales down 13.9% on a constant currency basis, mainly due to a 22.3% organic decline in The Americas.
• Regional performance -- EMEA achieved a 3% organic sales increase, while APAC grew 11% organically, with strength in France, the UK, Spain, Australia, China, South Korea, and India.
• Gross margin pressure -- $13,500,000 in gross margin impact stemmed from lower volume, with an additional $8,500,000 hit from operational inefficiencies, higher labor, and freight costs.
• GAAP net loss -- GAAP net loss reached $4,400,000 for the quarter, in contrast to net income of $6,600,000 in the prior year period.
• Full-year adjusted EPS -- Full-year 2025 adjusted EPS was $4.57, down from $6.57, while GAAP net income fell to $43,800,000 from $83,700,000.
• Operating expense movement -- Adjusted SG&A expense decreased $10,400,000 in the quarter, reflecting lower compensation costs; full-year adjusted SG&A as a share of net sales rose 30 basis points to 27.7% due to deleverage.
• Free cash flow -- Tennant generated $43,300,000 in free cash flow during 2025, inclusive of $59,100,000 for ERP investment; ERP-adjusted free cash flow conversion of net income stood at 157%.
• Capital return -- $110,400,000 was returned to shareholders in 2025 -- $21,900,000 via dividends and $88,500,000 through share repurchases -- reducing outstanding shares by 6%.
• Net leverage -- The company ended 2025 with a net leverage ratio of 1x adjusted EBITDA, $100,400,000 in cash and cash equivalents, and $374,300,000 in unused credit facility capacity.
• Legal contingency -- A post-trial ruling in September 2025 increased the O.W. intellectual property damages by 30% to $20,200,000, leading to a $6,000,000 incremental accrual.
• Restructuring charges -- Tennant recorded $6,400,000 in restructuring charges for a global workforce reorganization, expecting $10,000,000 of annual savings starting 2026.
• TNC Robotics Group -- The quarter marked the launch of a dedicated TNC Robotics group, with 2025 AMR sales of $85,000,000 and a stated goal of $250,000,000 by 2028.
• 2026 guidance -- Projected net sales range from $1,240,000,000 to $1,280,000,000 (3%-6.5% organic growth), adjusted EBITDA of $175,000,000 to $190,000,000 (margin: 14.1%-14.8%), and adjusted EPS of $4.70 to $5.30, with gross margin expansion anticipated throughout the year.
• Board and governance -- Two new directors joined the Board -- Jim Glarum and Patrick Allen (the latter nominated by VisionOne) -- and plans were announced to propose moving away from a staggered Board by 2027.

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RISKS

• North America ERP disruption caused an unrecoverable revenue loss estimated at $15,000,000 and eroded customer trust, with management explicitly apologizing for the "strain this has caused."
• First quarter 2026 will be negatively affected by the two-week physical inventory shutdown, leading to "significantly" lower sales and compressed margins due to suboptimal plant efficiency.
• Gross margin pressure is expected to continue in early 2026, compounded by "known tariffs" and ongoing inefficiency until systems stabilize midyear.
• Guidance for 2026 is subject to possible revision pending the impact of the "Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs," which management indicated had not been fully incorporated.

SUMMARY

Management confirmed that the North American ERP system cutover in November triggered a multi-week operational disruption, leading to substantial missed sales, margin compression, and unrecoverable business. Leadership emphasized that stabilization efforts are yielding gradual process improvements, particularly in the “big five processes,” yet system efficiency remains below target as 2026 begins. The formation of TNC Robotics and long-term AMR revenue targets signaled a renewed growth strategy centered on autonomous solutions, while the Board’s composition evolved through collaboration with VisionOne and the addition of two new directors. Cash flow generation allowed for substantial share repurchases, and management reiterated disciplined capital return in the absence of strategic M&A. Guidance calls for gross margin and earnings improvement in the back half of 2026, though early-year results will reflect residual operational headwinds and unresolved tariff uncertainties.

• Management affirmed, “We are stable in terms of our big five processes,” but noted ongoing work to reach previous efficiency levels within plant operations.
• Share buybacks will continue to be used opportunistically in 2026 if no “significant and imminent M&A opportunities” arise and the stock trades at attractive levels.
• TNC Robotics is tasked with accelerating the adoption and commercialization of AMR technology while addressing increased pricing pressure from upstart competitors.
• Approximately $59,100,000 was invested in the ERP platform during 2025, with 2026 ERP-related spending now expected to exceed $20,000,000, well above earlier plans.
• EMEA and APAC performance partially offset weakness in The Americas, with EMEA net sales benefiting from price realization and currency, and APAC recovering after earlier softness.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning): Integrated business management system utilized for real-time operations, including order processing, production scheduling, and fulfillment.
• AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robot): Intelligent, self-navigating cleaning machine capable of operating independently, often generating recurring autonomy fees from customers.
• Hypercare: Intensive post-implementation support period following major systems go-live, involving rapid issue identification and remediation.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Lorenzo Bassi: Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. I am Lorenzo Bassi, Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations. Joining me on the call today are David W. Huml, President and CEO, and Fay West, Senior Vice President and CFO. Today, we will review our fourth quarter and full year performance for 2025. David will discuss our results and enterprise strategy, and Fay will cover our financials. 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 performance 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 reference non-GAAP measures that include or exclude certain items.

Our 2025 fourth quarter and full year earnings release and presentation include the comparable GAAP measures and a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to our GAAP results. I will now turn the call over to David. Thank you, Lorenzo, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our Q4 and full year 2025 earnings call. As we reported today, our Q4 and full year 2025 results

David W. Huml: were materially impacted by the North America go-live of our new ERP system during November 2025. I will be devoting a significant portion of my overall remarks to the North America ERP go-live. I want to address upfront the impacts including operationally, financially, and for our customers, where we stand today, and the path forward. Let us talk about what happened. Despite a successful go-live in the APAC region in September, and extensive preparation in North America, the cutover of the ERP system in November introduced severe system functionality issues that limited our ability to enter orders, ship products, and service our customers. Core functionality required for processing orders did not perform as intended, particularly for our highly configurable machines.

As these issues emerged, our teams, together with our implementation partners, mobilized extensive stopgap procedures to offset system limitations that prevented normal order entry, production sequencing, and shipping. These actions allowed us to process limited activity, but they were highly labor intensive, inefficient, and not an adequate substitute for fully functioning workflows. Despite these sustained efforts to diagnose, remediate, and recover, the underlying problems proved far more complex and persistent than we anticipated based on our stress tests. We expected a short-lived productivity dip similar to APAC, where operations normalized within a week. Instead, in North America, we lost three full weeks of machine order entry and parts shipping capability.

In essence, the system could not be stabilized as quickly as anticipated, prolonging the disruption and amplifying the operational impact irrespective of the significant investment we made in recovery actions. So what did we have planned and why did it not operate as expected? We moved into the go-live based on the results of our testing, and the confidence we had in the readiness of the environment, including sign off from both the business readiness team and our implementation partners. We also had clear mitigation plans that included safety stock and manual contingencies. These were designed to offset anticipated potential inefficiencies, not an unexpected fundamental inability to transact for a prolonged period.

We also relied heavily on our APAC implementation experience as a proxy for North America. While we believed that experience would guide our North America transition, the complexity and scale of the North American business created unique challenges. Let us talk about the operational and customer impacts. Our operations were significantly disrupted, particularly from the cutover date through November, across all three U.S. production and distribution facilities. To keep the plant running, we incurred additional overtime, freight, and other direct operating costs from the cutover date and into December as we worked to maintain production and distribution. The customer impact was equally severe.

During November, starting on the cutover date, we were unable to fulfill many orders and could not provide reliable visibility into shipment timing. Our parts and consumables and service businesses were affected as we were unable to ship parts for most of the month. Our inability to operate at scale drove an extended backlog and limited our ability to provide reliable shipment dates. We take great pride in our customer relationships and recognize how much trust our partners place in us. Our teams communicated frequently throughout the disruption and many of our customers showed patience in the early days. We are appreciative of that, and we sincerely apologize for the strain this has caused.

Let us shift to the financial impact. The operational constraints had clear implications for both fourth quarter and full year performance. Orders were reduced by approximately $15,000,000 as the challenges we experienced in parts and consumables and in equipment directly affected demand. These dynamics, combined with our limited ability to operate plants at normal capacity, resulted in an estimated $30,000,000 impact on net sales. Roughly half of this shortfall reflects the lower order intake; the other half represents activity that moved into backlog. Gross margin was also pressured. Roughly $13,500,000 of the impact came from the sales shortfall and another $8,500,000 was tied to operational inefficiencies and higher labor and freight costs along with deleverage.

As a result of this gross margin impact, adjusted EBITDA was negatively affected. The ERP implementation challenges reduced fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA by an estimated $22,000,000. In addition to the operational effect, I would like to update you on how our ERP project costs are tracking relative to expectations. To date since 2023, we have invested approximately $98,000,000 in the program. For 2025, our spending remained broadly in line with plan. However, the fourth quarter challenges required incremental stabilization and support resources that were not originally contemplated.

As a result, we now expect ERP-related spending in 2026 to exceed the roughly $5,000,000 initially planned and likely reach more than $20,000,000 as we complete remediation, maintain hypercare support, and advance the next stages of our ERP modernization program. We believe these investments are appropriate to achieve the long-term benefits of our ERP modernization. So where are we now? The short answer is that we have solved the critical issues we faced starting on the cutover date in November. We remain in hypercare in North America, and while teams are identifying and fixing issues daily, the system is becoming more reliable, improving each week. In fact, core workflows including order management, production scheduling, and fulfillment have improved.

We are working toward achieving system stability by the end of Q1 2026, with efficiency improvements continuing into Q2. How are we planning for the last regional go-live in EMEA? The experience in North America is reshaping our approach to the remaining ERP phases in EMEA, which initially was supposed to begin and complete in Q1 2026. We have paused the EMEA timeline, not to set a new date, but to focus the entire organization on North America recovery as our 100% priority. Despite the disruption, our strategic direction remains intact.

At the end of the day, everything we are working through now reinforces the long-term value of our ERP transformation, including better data, greater scalability, and ultimately, a more efficient and capable enterprise, all with the goal of serving our customers much more efficiently and effectively. Despite these challenges in the second half of the fourth quarter, the fundamentals of the business remain strong. Our international teams delivered solid execution throughout the year and the momentum we saw outside North America in the fourth quarter highlights the breadth and durability of our global footprint. EMEA grew 5.1% year over year, supported by price realization, foreign exchange, and steady commercial execution across multiple markets.

APAC returned to improved performance late in the year as growth in Australia and India offset softer demand in parts of East Asia. These results reinforce the strength of our global portfolio and our team’s ability to perform in dynamic market conditions. From an innovation and growth standpoint, 2025 marked important progress on several of our strategic fronts. We launched four major new products during the year and continue to see increased customer adoption of our robotics portfolio, which delivered roughly $85,000,000 in AMR sales inclusive of recurring autonomy fees. We also maintained disciplined capital allocation throughout the year. In 2025, we repurchased approximately 1,100,000 shares, or $88,000,000, reducing outstanding shares by about 6%.

This was an intentional and meaningful deployment of capital consistent with our long-standing strategy. We were able to do this while continuing our commitment to returning capital through dividends, including the company’s 54th consecutive annual dividend increase. Our balance sheet remains strong and with low leverage and solid liquidity, we have the capacity to invest in innovation, operations, and strategic priorities while still returning capital to shareholders. The actions we took in 2025 reflect our stated capital allocation priorities, and that is how we will continue to approach capital allocation in 2026. We remain committed to growing our business, investing organically, and pursuing strategic acquisition opportunities.

We will also continue to use our share repurchase authorization when it represents the best use of capital. That discipline combined with the strength of our balance sheet positions us well as we move into next year. Let me shift and talk about the launch of our dedicated TNC Robotics group. A major milestone in the quarter was the launch of a dedicated organization focused on accelerating the adoption and scaling of our autonomous robotic cleaning solutions. This new structure brings together expertise spanning product design and engineering, production, commercial strategy, marketing, business development, and customer support.

The intent is to create a unified and focused team responsible for advancing our autonomous product roadmap, expanding production capacity, and supporting customers throughout the deployment and operational life cycle of solutions. The formation of this group directly aligns with our enterprise growth pillars. The team will accelerate our product roadmap, strengthen our commercial focus, and enhance customer engagement throughout the adoption journey. By unifying these capabilities, we are better positioned to drive awareness, increase demand, build the right channels, and deliver a consistent customer experience as autonomous solutions scale globally. The AMR market continues to expand, driven by persistent labor shortages, rapidly advancing technologies, and declining costs.

At the same time, the landscape is becoming more competitive as new entrants move into the space. Establishing a dedicated AMR organization positions us to move faster, innovate more efficiently, and provide the support needed for consistent in-field performance. This is a meaningful step forward in advancing our enterprise strategy and capturing the significant opportunity emerging in autonomous cleaning. With this renewed focus and increased investment, we are elevating our long-term ambition. We expect our AMR revenue to reach approximately $250,000,000 by 2028, reflecting our confidence in the technology, the strength of our portfolio, and our ability to lead the ongoing transformation of this industry.

Looking ahead to 2026, our primary focus is on restoring full operating capability in North America and driving steady improvement in efficiency as our system performance strengthens. We expect the challenges associated with the ERP transition to ease through the first half of the year as we expect reliability improvements, phase-out of manual workarounds, and teams to transition from stabilization to a focus on productivity. At the same time, we are encouraged by the momentum in our autonomous and robotic solutions. The dedicated cross-functional organization we established is positioned to accelerate both development and commercialization, and we expect to build on the strong demand we generated in 2025.

We will continue to scale our autonomous portfolio through new product introductions to serve a broader array of vertical markets and customer applications. Our efforts also include strategies designed to help customers adopt autonomous solutions more quickly and with greater confidence, which we believe will support higher-value mix and improved margin contribution as adoption grows. We expect resilient demand across our markets to support performance. Our backlog remains healthy, and commercial activity across global regions continues to show stability. With this foundation, we believe we are well positioned to capture demand and drive growth through new product innovations, strategic pricing, and go-to-market sales and service action.

Based on these drivers, we expect to deliver our 2026 full year guidance with results weighted toward the back half of the year as we expect efficiency and throughput to steadily recover. Fay will provide detailed guidance and the full financial outlook in her remarks. I will now turn the call over to Fay.

Fay West: Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. I will begin by addressing the North American ERP transition. We estimate that the ERP disruption reduced fourth quarter net sales by approximately $30,000,000. This impact was distributed with roughly one third affecting service, and parts and consumables, and two thirds impacting equipment sales. We project that half of these sales are unrecoverable, while the remaining portion represents unfulfilled orders that have been added to our backlog. Furthermore, the disruption decreased adjusted EBITDA by approximately $22,000,000. Incremental costs due to the recovery actions David mentioned earlier combined with reduced operating leverage disproportionately affected our cost of goods sold and adjusted EBITDA, resulting in the $22,000,000 impact on adjusted EBITDA.

The corresponding impact on EPS was approximately $0.91. With that context, I will now turn to our fourth quarter and full year financial performance. In the fourth quarter of 2025, Tennant reported a GAAP net loss of $4,400,000, compared to $6,600,000 of net income in the prior year period. Full year 2025 GAAP net income was $43,800,000, down from $83,700,000 in 2024. For the full year, net income was primarily impacted by a 6.5% decrease in net sales and a contraction in gross margin.

These results reflect a combination of factors including a decrease in volume partly attributable to the comparison against the prior year’s significant backlog reduction benefit, as well as margin pressures stemming from product mix, higher material costs, and unanticipated challenges associated with our ERP transition that outpaced our pricing and cost reduction initiatives and lower operating expenses. Operating expenses decreased year over year due to lower compensation-related costs, and reductions in certain legal, integration, and restructuring expenses. This was partially offset by higher ERP spending and an increase in bad debt expense. On a full year basis, interest expense and our average interest rate net of hedging were comparable year over year.

Interest expense was higher in the fourth quarter due to higher average debt balances. Our effective tax rate for the full year was 24.3%, up from 20.1% in 2024. This increase was primarily due to the non-recurrence of certain noncash discrete items from 2024. Looking at adjusted EPS, excluding non-GAAP costs, adjusted EPS for the fourth quarter was $0.48 per diluted share, down from $1.52 per diluted share in 2024. For the full year 2025, adjusted EPS was $4.57 per diluted share, down from $6.57 in 2024. I will provide more detail on these non-GAAP costs. Our ERP modernization program in 2025 involved both planned investment and unforeseen operational impact.

We invested a total of $59,100,000, comprising $30,600,000 capitalized and $28,500,000 expensed, as we advanced our new ERP platform. As we shared, the North American go-live in the first week of November led to unexpected stabilization costs. These costs are from our ongoing ERP modernization investment and contributed to the fourth quarter margin pressure. Separately, we recorded $6,400,000 of restructuring charges associated with our global workforce reorganization and expect approximately $10,000,000 of annual savings benefits beginning in 2026. Our 2025 results also reflect an updated legal contingency for the O.W. intellectual property dispute. In September 2025, a post-trial ruling increased damages by 30%, raising the total judgment to approximately $20,200,000.

Consequently, we recorded an incremental accrued expense of $6,000,000 in 2025. We have appealed aspects of this ruling, and this development does not impact our ability to sell any of our products and is not expected to affect our long-term financial performance. Let us now look at our quarterly results in more detail. For the fourth quarter of 2025, consolidated net sales totaled $291,600,000, an 11.3% decrease compared to $328,900,000 in the fourth quarter of 2024. On a constant currency basis, organic sales declined 13.9%.

This decrease was primarily driven by a 22.3% organic sales decline in The Americas, mainly due to the North America ERP implementation impact of $30,000,000 on net sales as well as volume declines in Latin America across equipment, parts, and consumables. These North American challenges were compounded by softer, underlying demand in the industrial and aftermarket businesses. Despite these pressures in The Americas, the decline was partially offset by a 3% increase in organic sales in EMEA, driven by equipment volume growth in France, the UK, and Spain, and an 11% increase in organic sales in APAC fueled by volume growth in Australia, China, South Korea, and India across both industrial and commercial equipment.

Continued price realization in The Americas also provided a partial offset. Although December showed improvement as recovery efforts took hold, we were unable to fully recover the impact of the November disruption. Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $25,600,000, a decrease of $21,800,000 from the prior year period and includes the approximately $22,000,000 negative impact from the ERP implementation. Gross margin in the fourth quarter came under pressure from several key areas. The most significant factor was the ERP transition, which resulted in an estimated $13,500,000 volume impact and approximately $8,500,000 in incremental costs and deleverage.

We also faced additional headwinds from higher material costs due to unmitigated tariff costs and other inflationary pressures, particularly affecting our LIFO reserve. This was further compounded by roughly $4,500,000 in other charges for the quarter, including inventory write-downs. These pressures were partially mitigated by positive contributions from price realization and favorable foreign exchange. Adjusted SG&A expense was $10,400,000 lower in the quarter, primarily due to lower compensation-related costs. As a percentage of net sales, adjusted SG&A improved slightly to 27.3% from 27.4% in the prior year period. Moving on to full year results. For the full year 2025, consolidated net sales were $1,235,000,000, a 6.5% decrease compared to the $1,286,700,000 in 2024.

On a constant currency basis, organic sales declined 7.3%. This decline was primarily driven by lower North American volume, influenced by the lapping of the prior year’s significant backlog reduction and softer industrial demand in the second half, alongside the late-year impact of the ERP transition. Net sales in The Americas consequently decreased 10.9%, or 10.5% on an organic basis. In contrast, net sales in EMEA increased 5.1%, benefiting from a favorable foreign currency exchange impact and modest organic growth of 0.5% driven by price realization.

The Asia Pacific region experienced a 3.5% decrease in net sales, or 2.2% on an organic basis, predominantly due to pricing actions and softer underlying demand in China, Japan, and South Korea, though partially offset by volume growth in Australia and India. Across all revenue components, service grew 4.7%, parts and consumables were modestly higher, while equipment sales declined 11.6% year over year. These factors were partially offset by continued price realization, particularly in The Americas and EMEA. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year 2025 was $167,400,000, a decrease of $41,400,000 from the prior year, primarily due to decreased operating performance in the fourth quarter.

Adjusted EBITDA margin was 13.9% in 2025, a 230 basis point decrease from the prior year period. Full year 2025 gross margin decreased to 40.2%, a 250 basis point decline compared to 2024. The decline was primarily driven by lower volume and unfavorable mix. It also reflects the cumulative impact of the fourth quarter factors that I just discussed. Collectively, these significant headwinds more than offset the benefits derived from our pricing actions and our cost-out initiatives.

Adjusted SG&A expense of $330,000,000 decreased $22,100,000 from 2024, primarily due to lower compensation-related costs and by the impact of the cost reduction initiatives implemented at the beginning of the year, partially offset by the effect of foreign currency and increased bad debt expense. Adjusted SG&A expense as a percentage of net sales increased 30 basis points to 27.7% in 2025, which was primarily due to net sales deleverage. Turning now to capital deployment. In 2025, Tennant generated $65,000,000 in cash flow from operations compared to $89,700,000 in 2024. The decrease was primarily driven by lower operating performance, increased ERP expenditures, and higher working capital consumption.

Despite these factors, we delivered $43,300,000 in free cash flow, including the $59,100,000 investment in the ERP project. Excluding these ERP-related cash flows, our performance translated into a 157% conversion of net income to free cash flow in 2025. Our liquidity remains strong with $100,400,000 in cash and cash equivalents at the end of 2025, complemented by $374,300,000 of unused borrowing capacity under our revolving credit facility. We remain committed to our disciplined capital allocation strategy, which balances strategic investments in our business with a strong focus on returning capital to shareholders. In 2025, we invested $21,700,000 in capital expenditures to support our operational needs. Most notably, we returned a substantial $110,400,000 to our shareholders.

This includes $21,900,000 in dividends, and a significant $88,500,000 in share repurchases, representing approximately 6% of our outstanding stock. This aggressive share repurchase program underscores our commitment to enhancing shareholder value. Our net leverage ratio stands at 1x adjusted EBITDA, which is within our targeted range of one to two times. We continue to evaluate and pursue M&A opportunities to enhance shareholder value. However, if there are no significant and imminent M&A opportunities, our priority is to return capital to shareholders through ongoing share repurchases and dividends. Moving to guidance. As we look ahead to 2026, we expect the overall macroeconomic backdrop and demand environment to remain broadly consistent with the conditions experienced in 2025.

That being said, our guidance was formulated prior to last week’s news regarding the Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs. As a result, we will need time to digest how the news may impact our contemplated guidance.

David W. Huml: We are confident in our ability to manage near-term uncertainties

Fay West: while also capitalizing on the opportunities ahead. As we have additional updates to share, we will do so in due course. In North America, ERP-related operational challenges that arose in 2025 are expected to continue early in the year. As part of our recovery efforts, we conducted a comprehensive physical inventory that required a two-week shutdown of our manufacturing and distribution facilities in early January, which will significantly affect first quarter sales and costs. Furthermore, we expect to operate below optimal efficiency as the new system stabilizes, leading to elevated cost and compressed margins, most notably in the first quarter.

We project a return to a more normalized and efficient operating rhythm by midyear, underpinned by ongoing process refinement and productivity initiatives. At the same time, we expect continued gross margin pressure from the tariffs implemented during 2025. We have implemented targeted cost-out initiatives across both our supply chain and commercial pricing processes to help mitigate these impacts. Against this backdrop, we expect margin performance to improve gradually through the year, beginning with a first quarter that is generally aligned with the run-rate levels we saw in the fourth quarter of 2025, followed by progressive expansion as operational momentum builds. For 2026, Tennant provides the following guidance.

We project net sales to be in the range of $1,240,000,000 to $1,280,000,000, reflecting organic sales growth of 3% to 6.5%. At the midpoint of this range, we anticipate sales growth will be driven by 25% pricing action and approximately 75% by volume increases. Notably, our volume forecast accounts for the first quarter impact from lost sales due to the physical inventory shutdown, which we expect to be partially offset by a drawdown of our existing backlog. We anticipate an increase in sales performance from the first half to the second half of the year, and we expect to see mid-single-digit growth in each of our geographies.

We also expect our robotics and autonomous solutions to remain a source of momentum. For 2026, we project adjusted EBITDA in the range of $175,000,000 to $190,000,000, with an adjusted EBITDA margin between 14.1% and 14.8%. This outlook is based on a year-over-year increase in net sales and an anticipated improvement in gross margin. The gross margin expansion is expected to result from a more normalized return to our favorable product mix, balancing industrial and commercial products with parts and consumables, as well as an optimized customer mix. These factors, coupled with ongoing cost-savings initiatives and strategic pricing actions, are expected to drive profitability. Our guidance also reflects the full-year impact of known tariffs at this time.

Our guidance does include an increase in absolute spending for SG&A and R&D, and includes slowing incremental resources towards accelerating our robotics growth and advancing other critical strategic initiatives. We anticipate that SG&A and R&D as a percentage of sales will be comparable to 2025 percentages. Additionally, we are guiding to an adjusted EPS of $4.70 to $5.30 per diluted share, excluding ERP project costs and amortization expense. This projected year-over-year increase reflects improved operating performance, which we anticipate will be partially offset by higher interest costs and an increase in our effective tax rate. We expect our adjusted effective tax rate to be between 24% and 29%, also excluding ERP project costs and amortization expense.

With that, I will turn the call back to David.

David W. Huml: Thank you, Fay. Before we move into Q&A, I want to close with a simple message. This quarter clearly reflected the impact of the North America ERP transition. But our teams responded with urgency and a clear commitment to our customers. Because of this, we have stabilized the most critical issues and we believe we have a defined path back to normal operating rhythm as we move through 2026. At the same time, the underlying fundamentals of our business remain strong. Our global teams delivered solid execution throughout 2025. Our balance sheet is healthy, and the momentum in our autonomous and robotics portfolio continues to build.

These strengths, combined with disciplined capital deployment and focused operational recovery, give us confidence in delivering our 2026 outlook. We are fully committed to strengthening our operational foundation and advancing the strategic initiatives that support growth and shareholder value creation. I am proud of the resilience of our team, grateful for the continued partnership of our customers, and confident in the opportunities ahead. With that, we will open the call to questions. Operator, please go ahead.

Operator: Thank you. And we will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. Again, it is star one to join the queue. And our first question comes from the line of Thomas Hayes with ROTH Capital. Your line is open.

Thomas Hayes: Hey, good morning, everyone. Hey, good morning, Thomas. Hey. I just want to, I guess, first, appreciate all the color on the ERP system implementation. Maybe just wanted to circle back on two questions. One, did not want to put words in your mouth, but would you call the system stable these days as you were kind of moving into the February, March time period?

David W. Huml: Hey. I appreciate the question. And we did strive for transparency in our comments to make sure that everyone was well informed about what we have been through in Q4 and probably put a bit more color on Q1 than we normally would given the impact of the ERP transition. We are stable in terms of our big five processes. You know, as a manufacturing business, we have got to be able to book orders, build, ship, invoice, and collect. And we are capable of transacting across that range of capabilities.

What we are working through now is, I would call, the remnants of stability and efficiency, being able to operate at efficiency and our people getting used to using the new system. So if in comparison to what we experienced in the first three weeks of November, we were unable to enter orders in the system, yes, Thomas, I would say we are far more stable.

Thomas Hayes: Okay. And then, Fay, I think you mentioned of the $30,000,000 impact to sales in the November time frame or fourth quarter time frame, roughly half of that you guys view as unrecoverable.

Fay West: Yes. And these are estimates in what we consider. So we have got about $15,000,000 of that in backlog.

Thomas Hayes: Okay.

Fay West: And the other $15,000,000, we, you know, it was roughly a third of that $30,000,000 was parts, consumables, and service. And so we think that is difficult business to regain and to recover. So we think that is the primary driver of lost revenue in Q4.

Thomas Hayes: Okay. Maybe shifting gears a little bit. I think it is really pretty exciting, David. So I hope to get a little bit more color on the robotics group, and maybe what are some of the FY 2026 objectives for that group? Because I think, like you said at your closing remarks, there is a lot of momentum in that area right now.

David W. Huml: Yes. Thanks, Thomas. We are really excited about it. Obviously, it is a difficult time for us from an ERP perspective, but we have continued attention and focus on growing the business and specifically in robotics. Not everyone in the company is tied up. Although everyone is impacted in some way, not everyone is tied up trying to solve for the ERP challenges. Really excited about the TNC Robotics venture that we have stood up. We think there is a moment in time now. I should preface my remarks. We are really proud, and I am proud of the business that the team has built in robotics to date.

So this is not a replacement for anything we have been doing. This is an acceleration of our efforts. You know, since we started in this business 2019, 2020, we have sold to hundreds of customers globally, 10,000 units deployed. We have spent a lot of airtime on these earnings calls talking about our new products, our Gen 3 software technology, our relationship with Brain and exclusivity agreement, so I will not rehash those here, but I think we have got a really great foundation to build upon. And so when we looked at the outlook for robotics, you know, we finished the year in 2025 at $85,000,000 in profitable robotics business as a company.

And we looked at the market, which is growing. The underpinnings of that growth, the persistent labor challenges, cost of labor and availability of labor, we thought that continues to provide a tailwind for us on a global basis. We are getting really strong demand signals for robotics from an interest and a demand generation perspective. And as we assess the market, we see that there is a number of new entrants that are robotics-only players from Asia and elsewhere. And these players are very fast. They are very agile. They are only selling robotics. They are gaining some positions in some distribution, and we are starting to see them be in the consideration set of our customers.

And so we saw this as both an opportunity and maybe a potential threat from these upstart competitors. So we talked about it, you know, early part of last year. Midpoint in the year, we decided in concert with our Board to make a bold move to make a step-change investment and face off differentially to accelerate our growth in robotics. So the TNC Robotics group has stood up to accelerate the efforts of our core business.

And when I think having a group of dedicated people across product management, R&D engineering, marketing, demand generation, sales, and deployment specialists, coupled with the core, legacy Tennant strength in sales, decades-long customer relationships, the industry’s largest factory service organization, I think it makes a really formidable combination. And so what the group will be focused on over 2026 and in pursuit of our aspiration of $250,000,000 in sales in 2028 will be focused on accelerating our NPD roadmap. We had a four or five year roadmap of what we wanted for products in the robotic space. This team, through additional resourcing as well as investment, is going to bring those products in and get those products to market faster.

That will allow us to reach more customers in more distinct vertical markets with our robotic solutions in a broader range of applications. They are also going to work on improving our adoption efficiency so that we can spend less time deploying robots and have our customers self-deploy to the extent possible and still have a fantastic experience. The quicker we can get the robots adopted at scale, the quicker the customers can start to realize their ROI, and the quicker we can redeploy our sales and deployment resources onto the next customer. So working on demonstration efficiency, onboarding, and adoption efficiency, both through software and also through our processes.

And we will also work on making sure we can demonstrate an ROI to our end-use customer through the data we can pull off the machines and demonstrate that we are hitting on the KPIs that are most important to our end-use customer. And last but not least, capturing and generating demand. Just getting in front of more customers with our solution. We have done a good job penetrating sort of large-scale customers that we sell on a strategic account and direct basis. We have got more opportunity through distribution channels and smaller customers in each of the vertical markets we serve, as well as some adjacent vertical markets.

So demand generation is one of the near-term goals for the TNC Robotics venture as well. Really excited about it. We think it can be a significant growth contributor for us. And I look at it as an opportunity to disrupt our own business. And so the fact that we already have a fantastic embedded business in non-robotics equipment, we are the rightful company to come out and disrupt this industry.

Thomas Hayes: Okay. I appreciate the color. Maybe if I could sneak one follow-up question in. Fay, on your commentary on the guidance, I appreciate all the color. I am still kind of going through my notes, but I am just wondering, your comment on the gross margins for Q1, you said it is going to be roughly equal to the Q4 gross margin. I was just wondering how you are kind of thinking about that progressing through the year? And do you expect, I have not gone through the numbers, but do you expect overall gross margin growth year over year in 2026?

Fay West: We do. So we think that there is going to be kind of gross margin performance in Q1 in 2026 comparable to what we saw in 2025. And that is mostly due to the physical inventory and the shutdown and the plant and the distribution centers were offline. And so the ramp-up time and the cost required to get to full production is really going to put pressure on the first quarter gross margin. We do anticipate seeing gross margin growth sequentially. And overall, we think we are going to see kind of year-over-year gross margin expansion which will drive the EBITDA margin expansion year over year as well.

Thomas Hayes: I appreciate the color. I will circle back later. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Aaron Reed with Northcoast Research. Your line is open.

Aaron Reed: Thanks. So I just kind of wanted to follow up a little bit more about the AMR because, again, that is the part that, you know, the exciting part of things. So you mentioned that AMR costs are starting to fall. Previously, the margin on AMR units was the same as for traditional units. So how much have AMR margins improved versus the traditional units?

David W. Huml: Thanks for the question, Aaron. So when we talk about cost in robotics, it is really more of a broad statement about the technologies that enable robotics. So when you think about LIDAR and high-def cameras, because those technologies are being more broadly adopted across other applications outside of cleaning, over time, we are able to take advantage of lower cost of components, us and our competitors, which allows us to offer robots at a more competitive price. And let us be clear. In this robotic space, our charter, our objective is to go gain unit share. And so, you know, we need to watch margins.

We need to be cognizant of margins because we are, especially if we are cannibalizing ourselves, but given the rapid growth in this marketplace, we need to be outgrowing unit share right now and making sure that we are competitively priced in the marketplace. So my comments on cost really have to do more with the unique componentry that goes into enabling robotics, and we see those continue to come down the cost curve. It is not by leaps and bounds, and candidly, at our volumes, you know, we are not a major player yet where we can leverage our volumes, but there are some volume breaks that as we grow our business, we can take advantage of.

The benefit to us will be being able to offer robots to more customers at more competitive prices, which gives them the ability to get an even better ROI on the investment.

Aaron Reed: Are you seeing any pricing pressure then from some of those newer competitors coming in at all then?

David W. Huml: Yes. Great question. We are seeing pricing pressure from our competitors, all of our competitors, but I would say especially the upstart, entrants, robotics-only competitors. These are brand-new upstart companies that do not have an embedded business they are trying to protect. They are trying to go out and grow unit volumes so they can, you know, presumably get to profitability. So they are in a very different starting position than us.

Given that pricing pressure, that is another one of the reasons we decided to stand up the TNC Robotic Ventures so that we have a group of people inside the company that are thinking, planning more entrepreneurially, and going after the market as it exists today, acknowledging the reality of those robotics-only competitors and making sure that our value proposition is at a commandable premium to them. We do think that our value prop, our product, and our ecosystem support can command a premium. But there is a limit to that premium.

And so one of the first things that the robotics group is working on is making sure that we are competitively priced in the marketplace, as well as have a competitive offering of solutions as well as products.

Aaron Reed: That makes sense. And then one more question here, and then I will pass it off. Just switching back to your guidance. So your guidance on 2026 reflects like a mid-single-digit growth and an EBITDA margin expansion in line with that of your long-term goals. So taking a step back, how should we think about 2026, especially in the first quarter?

Fay West: Yes. So I think we will see, it is almost going to be like a tale of two halves. And I think I mentioned just previously and in the prepared remarks that Q1 will be impacted by the shutdown of the facilities for the physical inventory and the ramp-up. And so we are going to see an impact on sales, an impact on margin. The margin is not recoverable long term, but the sales will be recoverable within the year. So that is really just kind of from a timing perspective.

We are going to slowly see kind of a ramp-up in Q2, and I think, you know, when you look at the first half versus the second half, we will see significant improvement in the second half. As we, you know, work through the kinks and stabilize the system and increase our efficiency and have the physical inventory and the impacts of that behind us. So, you know, we will see improvements throughout Q2, but really a ramp-up in Q3 and Q4.

Aaron Reed: Great. Thank you very much.

Operator: And as a reminder, it is star one if you would like to ask a question. And our next question comes from the line of Stephen Michael Ferazani with Sidoti. Your line is open.

Stephen Michael Ferazani: Morning, David. Morning, Fay. Appreciate all the detail on the call. Got to ask a couple of difficult questions as you would imagine, David. Apologize for it ahead of time. But in terms of disclosing what were clearly issues that were going to be material to your results, you obviously knew probably by early December. It is now late February. What was the decision process in terms of not disclosing some of these issues earlier to shareholders?

David W. Huml: Thanks for the question, Steve. We knew we had challenges. We were still in triage mode to understand what the magnitude of the challenges were and whether or not we were going to be in a position to recover some or all of it as we came through the year. And ultimately, as we closed the books, which included our physical inventory, the first two weeks of January. You know, you can imagine when we were unable to book orders for three weeks in November, if you cannot book orders you cannot build, ship, invoice, collect. You also cannot supply dates to customers on when they can expect to get their product.

And so as we unlocked the challenge in play getting orders into the system, dumped not only the cutover orders from pre-go-live, but also three weeks’ worth of orders that had come in. We dumped those into the system and had to reconcile who was going to get the limited production we were going to have in December, and allocate the output across the customer base. So it was not like turning on a light switch and getting back to business as usual. We really did not have any sense for, if we could recover, how much could we recover, what it would look like as we were scrambling to satisfy customers coming through December.

Having said that, from Thanksgiving through the end of the year, we threw every lever forward we could, and I think you see that reflected in our cost of the revenue we generated in December in the quarter. We were inefficient. We had overtime. We ran multiple shifts and overtime. We were expediting freight. We were doing everything we could with the goal of satisfying customers and reducing the customer frustration level that we had created with our challenge in the first three weeks of November. So, you know, yes, we knew we were having challenges.

Being able to estimate and quantify what the impact of those challenges would be, what the implications, we really did not know that until we got through with the close. And so by that point, we were very close to our earnings release date. And so we, as soon as we knew, we knew, you knew.

Stephen Michael Ferazani: Thanks for that thoughtful response. You know, obviously, you are not the first company that has had these ERP implementation issues. The concern becomes when you could not book orders for three weeks, permanent customer loss, because you are still guiding for 3% to 6.5% revenue growth next year. Do you have a sense, and I am sure it is too early, about the potential for permanent customer loss that might damage that growth rate? And more specifically, obviously, I am thinking about your larger direct customers. Have you been able to survey, get any feedback, have any sense on that? Right? Because that would seem to me to be the downside risk.

David W. Huml: Yes. It is a great question. It is one top of mind for me and us. You know, obviously, we come through this experience over Q4 and now starting Q1. Throughout this journey, our customers showed an amazing amount of patience with us. We communicated the original go-live early. They knew it was coming. I think they showed us a tremendous amount of patience and grace coming through kind of the first week. By second week, they had concerns. And by third week, we had frustrated them, not only with our lack of ability to deliver, but our lack of ability to provide dates.

So in response to that, you know, in addition to everything we did internally to try to right the ship and get the system stable and get the orders in and build and produce, you know, in addition to that, we have drawn very close to our customers. We have been very transparent and open with them, large customers and small customers, to make sure that we understand their priorities and needs. They understand not only that we regret that it happened, but what can we do to try to get them through this period and back on track. Largely speaking, we are still in contact with all of our customers.

Where we have lost business, it is customers and distributors that told us we were going to lose it. It was, you know, a customer needed a machine, and we just could not physically get a machine produced. Or there were some, you know, parts. We could not get parts out and they had an alternative source for them. I think we are aware of where we took the, where we lost the sales in Q4. Similarly, as we came through kind of our Q1 January experience, we are close to customers. I think we understand where that leakage has been. We have work to do.

And I am, the customers are still talking to us and telling us what their needs are and maybe expressing frustration but working with us as we dig out of the hole. I am very concerned about them. I am less concerned about them than a customer that just walked, right, and just said, hey. I am frustrated and I am moving on. The vast majority of our customers, certainly the largest, are in that first camp, where they are frustrated. They are, we are working with them.

You know, in some cases, we are on a daily reporting of their orders and their orders in process and their shipments to let them know how we are getting back on track. We have made significant progress coming through December, and then we took another step back, I will say, with the physical inventory from a customer perspective. And we have made progress since that physical inventory. When I look at just the raw output at a macro level, you know, we are trending positively since the physical inventory. You know, we are projecting to be above water, kind of back at output rates as we exit the quarter, mostly in February.

We also have to work down the backlog. And so even though we are operating and the output is at target, we still have to work down the backlog. And my sense is our customers are not going to be ready to listen to us about recovery until they can feel it, and they have got their back-ordered product in hand. Then we will make a concerted effort to get back with our customers, understand how we begin to rebuild trust. But the biggest thing we can do is start performing, so that they can rely on us to predictably deliver the way we have for the past years in some cases, in some cases, decades.

So having said that, I think Fay commented earlier. There are some of these sales that we think are just gone, certainly some of the sales we could not recover in 2025 from the November experience. But if you open the aperture and look at a two-year period, the lost sales are reflected in our guidance. So you can see that we still think we can gain back and claw back our rightful share of the market and rebuild the trust that we lost with customers.

Stephen Michael Ferazani: Really helpful, David. I appreciate that. I could ask—

Operator: Go ahead. Sorry.

David W. Huml: Sorry. Just another point I made, please.

Stephen Michael Ferazani: Go ahead, David.

David W. Huml: When you think about customer frustration, it is not directly correlated to the size of the revenue in a particular order. What I mean by that is if a customer is going to order a $40,000 or $50,000 or $60,000 piece of equipment from us, an industrial piece of equipment, that has a four- to eight-week lead time. So when they put the order in November, and we gave them a four that became a six, or a four that became an eight, they are not happy with it. And I get that.

But if they buy a piece of equipment every four, five, six years, that is a bit easier conversation than a customer that has a machine down and needs a repair part today. So in the first case, we are dealing with a $50,000 or $60,000 piece of equipment and that revenue. In the second case, we may be dealing with a $100 parts order, but the machine is down and they need it today because they have to get the machine running. It is a different sense of urgency and frustration. So the customer frustration does not correlate exactly to revenue, is my point.

Operator: Yep. That is fair. That is helpful.

Stephen Michael Ferazani: Looking at your balance sheet, noted net leverage is still, despite the operational issues, you still came out of the year at one times net leverage. You talked about you have used the buyback a little bit. But in terms of looking at the stock price today, it seems like if you are going to work through these issues, and you seem to have confidence based on your guidance, it seems like there is an obvious best return of investment case here. How are you thinking about the buyback?

David W. Huml: Yes. Well, I think we exercised our authorization quite aggressively last year. We took down 1,100,000 shares for $88,000,000, 6% of shares outstanding at the time. So although our leverage remained low, I think we exercised the authorization, and I am pleased with how we actioned share buybacks. And we bought back shares last year because, one, the price was attractive at the time versus our view of the intrinsic value of the company and the stock, in line with our capital allocation priorities.

And so, as we have said before publicly, as we look out next quarter, two quarters, if we do not have a strategic M&A opportunity of size that is imminent, and the stock is at an attractive price, then we are going to participate in buybacks. We will continue that stance. We are staged to continue that stance into 2026. And we will be equally as aggressive. We have stated that we want to keep our leverage within that one to two times. So, you know, do not be surprised if we start flexing that here, especially if the stock reacts negatively to our ERP challenges and that presents a greater buying opportunity for us.

We think it is a great value creation opportunity for us. We are not really in the business of timing the market. But consistent with our capital allocation prioritization, we will have a plan in place.

Stephen Michael Ferazani: Great. That is helpful. If I get one more in, there were some filings recently around the change to your Board structure and composition. Could you comment about those filings?

David W. Huml: Yes. I would be happy to. I think we, I will reinforce, we as a Board, the management team and I are really very open minded about value creation opportunities for this business. So we engage, we routinely engage investors and analysts alike on their ideas for value creation from our business. And we thoughtfully consider those as they are proposed. And we have discussed them, and we digest them as a leadership team and a Board and decide which ones make sense and analyze the pros and cons and move forward. We have been engaged with VisionOne since they took a position in our stock late in 2024.

More recently, we had a series of very constructive conversations with the principals of VisionOne, myself, and our Chairman of the Board and some of our Board members as well. That VisionOne constructive conversation really centered primarily around Board topics, Board composition, Board governance. And so in addition to our robust existing Board governance processes, including Board refreshment and our skills assessment and our director assessments, in addition to that, we entertained their comments and thoughts about composition and governance in a very thoughtful manner. And the output of that conversation is we have landed two new great directors on our Board, one of which was nominated by Tennant Company. That is Jim Glarum.

The other, Patrick Allen, was nominated by VisionOne and vetted by the company. We think we have added significant skill sets to our Board, and we are pleased to have Jim and Patrick on Board. You probably saw a cooperation agreement that has some fairly customary clauses in it, including a standstill, some committee assignments for the new directors, and we have committed to move away from a staggered Board starting in 2027, or at least make the proposal to move away from a staggered Board. So I would say these two new Board directors, you know, welcome to Jim and Patrick. I am sure they are on the line.

Talked to them just last night, and they are excited to be part of the Tennant organization and Board of Directors. And we are moving forward. Those were a constructive set of conversations, and we are really focused on creating maximum value for the business in any way possible as we go forward.

Stephen Michael Ferazani: Got it. Thanks, David.

Operator: Thanks, Steve. And with no further questions at this time, I would like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

David W. Huml: Thank you. If you would like to learn more about Tennant, we will be participating in the following conferences: the Sidoti Virtual Small Cap Conference on March 19, and the 38th Annual ROTH Conference in California on March 23. Thank you all for your continued interest in our company. This concludes our earnings call. Hope you have a great day.

Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s call, and we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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