Zebra Technologies (NASDAQ:ZBRA) reported first-quarter financial results on Tuesday. The transcript from the company's first-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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Summary
Zebra Technologies reported strong Q1 results with nearly $1.5 billion in sales, a 14% increase year-over-year, and a non-GAAP diluted EPS of $4.75, an 18% year-over-year increase.
The company is executing its strategy of driving profitable growth and enhancing financial strength, supported by trends in automation, digitization, and AI, across a $35 billion served market.
The company raised its full-year sales growth outlook to 10-14%, with an adjusted EBITDA margin expected to be around 22% and non-GAAP EPS between $18.30 and $18.70.
Zebra Technologies is actively managing memory supply challenges with mitigation strategies, including supplier co-planning and alternative sourcing, and has confidence in meeting demand.
The company executed $500 million in share repurchases year-to-date and plans to continue repurchasing shares, potentially using all free cash flow if favorable conditions persist.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Good day and welcome to the Zebra Technologies first quarter Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the Star key followed by zero. After today's presentation there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press Star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press Star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to hand the call over to Michael Steele, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Michael Steele (Vice President of Investor Relations)
Good morning and welcome to Zebra's first quarter Earnings Conference call. This presentation is being simulcast on our website at investors.zebra.com and will be archived there for at least one year. Our forward looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially and we refer you to the risk factors discussed in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings. During this call we will reference non-GAAP financial measures as we describe business performance with reconciliations shown at the end of this slide presentation and in our earnings press release throughout this presentation. Unless otherwise indicated, our references to sales performance are year on year on a constant currency basis and exclude results from both business acquisitions and dispositions for 12 months. This presentation will include prepared remarks from Bill Burns, our Chief Executive Officer and Nathan Winters, our Chief Financial Officer. Bill will begin with his perspective on our first quarter results, our value proposition and strategic priorities. Nathan will then provide additional detail on our financial results and discuss our outlook followed by Bill's closing remarks. Then Bill and Nathan will take your questions. Now let's turn to slide three as I hand it over to Bill.
Bill Burns (Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you Mike. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. The year is off to a great start. Today. I want to take a step back to put our results into a broader context to what our performance says about Zebra's position in the market, the momentum in our business and the opportunity ahead. There are three takeaways I want to leave you with this morning. First, we achieved strong Q1 results and we are seeing continued momentum that supports our increased outlook for the full year. Second, our performance reflects Zebra's industry leadership and our unique value proposition backed by our integrated portfolio of solutions that combines hardware, software and services to solve our customers complex challenges. We are deeply embedded in our customers operations and increasingly central to their efforts to drive productivity through automating workflows, improving how work gets done across the front line of business and beginning to integrate AI into their operations. Third, we are executing a clear strategy to create long term shareholder value by driving profitable growth, building on our leadership and track record of innovation and enhancing our financial strength and flexibility. With that, let's start with our first quarter results. Turning to Slide 4, we delivered results near the high end of our outlook, driven by our team's strong execution and positive demand trends across our portfolio. For the quarter we generated sales of nearly $1.5 billion, a 14% increase or 4% on an organic basis from the prior year, an adjusted ebitda margin of 23.2% and non GAAP diluted earnings per share of $4.75, an 18% increase over the prior year. We achieved growth across both our segments and all regions with outperformance in our manufacturing end market. Elo Touch also contributed solid, profitable growth and we are encouraged by our customers interest in our combined portfolio of solutions and our progress in driving synergies. We expanded adjusted EBITDA margin by 90 basis points driven by a multi year high gross margin and operating expense leverage, reflecting the benefits of our productivity initiative. These results demonstrated the durability of demand for our solutions and our ability to convert that demand into profitable growth. Supported by our strong financial position, we have executed $500 million of share repurchases year to date through early May, following more than $300 million in the fourth quarter. Our business momentum and progress in navigating the current memory supply environment gives us confidence in raising our outlook for the full year with our recently elevated stock repurchase activity underscoring our conviction. In a few minutes, Nathan will discuss our outlook and our progress in managing memory supply. Turning to Slide five, we have significant Runway for growth with our clear and differentiated value proposition supported by trends in automation, digitization and AI across a $35 billion served market. Our broad portfolio of integrated hardware and software solutions enables us to deliver value across the entire workflow, not just a single use case, creating a meaningful competitive advantage. And our industry leadership puts us in a unique position to be the supplier choice of AI for the front line. We have a resilient financial model with strong margins and cash generation supported by disciplined capital allocation that drives long term shareholder value. Moving to slide 6 Zebra provides the foundation for intelligent operations. We help our customers understand what's happening across their operations in real time and then act on that information to drive better outcomes. We operate across two segments the Connected Frontline, providing the digital touch points necessary to improve productivity, collaboration and the customer experience. Our solutions include enterprise mobile computing, interactive displays, frontline software and AI agents. Asset visibility and automation enables real time insights from assets, inventory and operations to automate environments through our portfolio of solutions including advanced data capture, printing and supplies, RFID and machine vision. Together, these segments give us a broad and complementary portfolio that allows us to meet customers where they are in their automation journey and advance their capabilities. Zebra is well positioned to benefit from the megatrend shown on slide 7. Across industries, our customers are operating in increased complex environments shaped by labor constraints, cost pressures, higher consumer expectations and the growing need for real time visibility and execution. As a result, priorities like mobility, intelligent automation, asset visibility, cloud connectivity and physical AI are becoming increasingly central to how enterprises run their operations. We see these as durable long term demand drivers that support Zebra's growth opportunity. Slide 8 illustrates how Zebra's end to end presence across the supply chain is a key differentiator. Our embedded role in daily operations generates the insights that power smarter solutions and AI at scale. Our broad portfolio enables us to address mission critical workflows that span from factory floor to the warehouse to the end customer and all touch points along the way. Zebra's products and solutions can be utilized more than 30 times as an item travels through the supply chain and this number continues to increase with the need for real time visibility. Slide 9 highlights the breadth of our customer base and the significant opportunities in front of us. Zebra supports more than 80% of the Fortune 500 across large and growing end markets, each with distinct needs shaped by their unique business models. That said, there's a common need across all of greater operational visibility and productivity. We play a critical role in helping our customers better understand what's happening across their operations, allowing them to take action in real time. We are deeply embedded in their workflows as a trusted partner, enabling us to co innovate as they adopt new technologies to digitize their operations and look to leverage AI. On Slide 10, we highlight the three strategic priorities guiding our business. Our first priority is driving profitable growth. We see meaningful room to grow across both of our segments, supported by a large and diverse market and a long Runway of adoption in many of the environments we serve. We believe both connected frontline and asset visibility and Automation have a 5 to 7% organic sales growth profile over a cycle and are confident in our ability to deliver. Penetration is still relatively low across the markets we serve, highlighting the opportunity in front of us. For example, based on third party research, there were three quarters of warehouses globally are in the early stages of their automation journey. Our growth prospects are supported by investments in rfid, machine vision and AI that enhance our differentiation and expand our relevance with customers. We are also driving efficiency initiatives in our business to enhance profitability which include operating margin leverage through cost discipline, including our previously announced restructuring actions, accelerating software development velocity by deploying new AI tools and enhancing our go to market model to improve market coverage and efficiency. Our second strategic priority is to continue building on our market leading position by advancing innovation. Recent progress includes launching an entirely new line of enterprise mobile computers and wearables with embedded RFID and optimized AI processing capabilities and a global logistics customer has selected our new frontline AI picture Proof of Delivery capability. This on device AI solution is driving faster delivery times while improving the consumer experience. These are just a couple of examples of innovation that are tightly aligned with customer needs and designed to drive both growth and differentiation. Our third strategic priority is enhancing our financial strength and flexibility by driving consistency of earnings and cash flow generation through our Capital life business model. We will also continue to execute on our balanced capital allocation strategy, prioritizing investments in our business that elevate our portfolio of solutions while consistently returning capital to shareholders. I will now turn the call over to Nathan to review our Q1 financial results and improved 2026 outlook.
Nathan Winters (Chief Financial Officer)
Thank you Bill let's start with the P and L on Slide 12 In Q1, total company sales increased 14.3% or 4.3% on an organic basis. With momentum across our business. Our connected frontline segment grew 20.6% including the recent Elo Touch Solutions acquisition or 3.8% on an organic basis. Led by Mobile computing. Our asset visibility and Automation segment grew 4.8%. Led by printing and machine vision, we realized solid performance across all our regions. North America sales increased 4%, led by strength in manufacturing. EMEA sales grew 2% with broad based growth across Europe partially offset by softness in the Middle East. Asia Pacific sales increased 11%, led by India and Southeast Asia and Latin America sales grew 10%. Adjusted gross margin improved 80 basis points to 50.4% primarily due to productivity initiatives, favorable foreign exchange and business mix with a modest impact from memory inflation. In the quarter, adjusted operating expense leverage improved by 20 basis points. This resulted in first quarter adjusted EBITDA margin of 23.2%. Non GAAP diluted earnings per share were $4.75, an 18% year over year increase exceeding the high end of our outlook. Turning now to the balance sheet and cash flow on slide 13 in the quarter we generated free cash flow of $163 million. As of Q1 we had a modest debt leverage ratio of 2.1 and $1.1 billion of credit capacity. We have been deploying capital consistent with our allocation priorities for the quarter, we repurchased $300 million of stock and have repurchased an additional 200 million in the second quarter to date. Turning to Slide 14, we have a proven track record of navigating dynamic environments and we are applying that same discipline playbook as we manage the current memory cost and supply landscape. While this remains an area we are monitoring closely, we are increasingly confident in our ability to successfully mitigate impacts based on the actions already underway and the visibility we have today. We are working proactively across multiple fronts including direct supplier co planning, alternative sourcing options and transitions to higher density memory components where capacity is expected to increase into 2027. Based on the progress we have made, we currently have line of sight to the supply we need to support our outlook and in addition, the component pricing trajectory for the year is tracking in line with our prior guidance. Our cost position remains favorable relative to spot market rates given our direct supplier relationships and we have line of sight to fully mitigate the margin impact for the year. This is not a new muscle for zebra. Our teams have managed through prior component disruptions by acting early, maintaining close supplier partnerships and using our scale to create flexibility in the supply chain. We are taking that same approach here. Let's now turn to our outlook. We've entered the quarter with a strong backlog and pipeline that supports our sales growth guidance range of 14 to 17%, including approximately 10.5 points of contribution from business acquisitions and favorable foreign exchange. Our second quarter adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be slightly higher than 21% and non GAAP diluted earnings per share are expected to be in the range of $4.20 and $4.50. For the full year we expect sales growth between 10 and 14% reflecting a 1 point increase at the midpoint from our prior outlook. Our guide factors in year to date performance, a strong pipeline of opportunities, momentum in manufacturing and machine vision, the previously announced price increases constrained memory availability and a 7 point favorable impact from acquisitions and FX. Our full year adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be approximately 22% and non GAAP diluted earnings per share is now expected to be between $18.30 and $18.70. Our full year guide continues to reflect full mitigation of the memory two point headwind which we are increasingly confident in achieving. We are driving this through targeted price increases and other direct memory initiatives net of savings from our restructuring actions, volume leverage and FX favorability. Free Cash Flow for the year is expected to be at least $900 million, which reflects a conversion rate of approximately 100%. We are continuing to optimize our working capital levels balanced with our supply chain resilience objectives. Please reference additional modeling assumptions on slide 15. With that, I will turn the call back to Bill.
Bill Burns (Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you, Nathan. Before we turn to your questions, let me conclude with the points I highlighted at the start of the call. We delivered a strong quarter and are moving forward with confidence in our increased outlook for the full year. Our integrated portfolio of solutions continues to differentiate zebra, enabling customers to automate workflows and improve their operations. And we remain focused on executing our strategy to drive profitable growth and deliver long term value for our shareholders. I will now turn the call back to Mike.
Michael Steele (Vice President of Investor Relations)
Thanks, Bill. We'll now open the call to Q and A. We ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow up to give everyone a chance to participate.
OPERATOR
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Our first question will come from Andrew Viscalia of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Andrew Viscalia (Equity Analyst at BNP Paribas)
Hey, good morning, everyone. Morning, Andrew. Yeah, just, you know, I wanted to check on some of the comments you made on memory. Clearly know, a concern amongst investors, but you guys say you have a line of sight to mitigate these costs through the end of the year. Are you, are you implying, you know, do you, have you secured capacity at this point because shortages are a concern. And what are your memory price assumptions baked into the rest of the year in terms of the memory price spiking? Andrew, maybe I'll start and then hand the Nathan for specifics. I'd say that, you know, memory continues to be a dynamic environment overall. Our teams have, you know, done a great job, quite honestly working closely with, you know, our suppliers and the relationships, the long term relationships we have, you know, with them, but also with our customers and partners to make sure that we get early visibility into, you know, their needs. And on the demand side, you know, we're confident in our ability to, to mitigate the memory challenges and to achieve both our second quarter and full year guide. A lot goes into that, a lot of thinking and planning and the teams have been working this memory issue since the second half of 2025 and we feel we're in a good position to enter Q2 and where we're at for the full year. But I'll let Nathan add some More color. Yeah.
Nathan Winters (Chief Financial Officer)
So I think if you look two pieces, one from a supply perspective, as we mentioned, pursuing numerous mitigation strategies, great relationship with our direct suppliers, as well as looking at new alternatives as well as a lot of work in terms of transitioning to the different memory types where we expect capacity to increase as we get into 2027. And I think we feel, you know, really confident in the what we had for the first half. So, you know, Q1, we got the supply we needed to deliver on the outlook, great visibility for what we need here in Q2. And our second half guide assumes a similar memory supply is received in the first half. We've received no indication that our second half allocation would be any less than the first half. And if anything, the teams are working options for increased supply to meet the unconstrained demand we have, which is near the high end of our guidance range. So again, a lot of actions right now in terms of how do we increase the supply to give some upside to the guide that we provided this morning. And then on the costing, as we mentioned, the market pricing trajectory is in line with our prior guidance. There's variability obviously across the different memory types. But as a reminder, we purchased the vast majority of our memory direct, which has been favorable to the spot market rates that a lot of folks have visibility to. So we have built in escalations through the, through the balance of the year and so far those are playing out, which has enabled us to maintain our margin guidance for the year relative to memory.
OPERATOR
The next question comes from Tommy Mole of Stevens. Please go ahead.
Tommy Mole (Equity Analyst at Stevens)
Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. Yeah, morning, Tommy. I wanted to start on margins. You were well ahead of your guidance for the first quarter on a EBITDA margin percentage basis. And then if we look at the second quarter, that percentage steps down sequentially. So it's a two part question. What were some of the favorable items you would call out that drove that outperformance in 1Q that may fall away into 2Q? And then are there any headwinds sequentially as we move from 1Q to 2Q? Thank you.
Nathan Winters (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, Tommy, so if you look at Q1, the operational, I think it starts with the operational gross margin, which was at record levels at 50.4% increase of 80 basis points, driven by, you know, a combination of factors. One, you know, the productivity initiative the teams have been actively working on, we had favorable deal mix, you know, we had real strength across our manufacturing vertical, which is favorable from a run rate perspective. But also our print scanning machine Vision portfolio. So the deal mix was, was a benefit in the quarter and they drove up, you know, a portion of the upside to our guide and FX was a tailwind as we entered the quarter. So again, I think, you know, Q1 just had a combination of favorable deal mix along with the productivity the team's been actively working on and you know, memory was, I'd say a modest headwind in the quarter. So really if you look then from Q1 to Q2 on the EBITDA line, EBITDA margin guidance, the decline is really driven by the step up in memory costs in the second quarter. So if you look kind of 2 points lower sequential, about a point and a half of that is the higher memory costs in the quarter as well as just normalized deal mix as we go into Q2. And I think what it really showed is the Q1 is part of our mitigation strategy on memory. If you recall, half was the price increase we announced. The other half was underlying operational benefits from restructuring actions as well as all the other actions the team have taken. And I think that beared out in Q1 and now it's being utilized to offset some of the headwind here as we go into Q2 in the back half of the year.
OPERATOR
The next question comes from Amit Malhotra of ubs. Please go ahead.
Pratap
Good morning, this is Pratap on for Amit Meratra. Yeah, I just wanted to catch on the. Hello. Like it has been a couple of quarters for the acquisition. Now can you provide any early feedback on your progress with the business? What is the growth rate and like what kind of revenue or margin synergies you are saying there are? Thank you. Yeah. We continue to be excited about the ELO acquisition as really it elevates our strategic position across our connected frontline segment and adds to the breadth and depth of our portfolio and delivers a set of complementary solutions to what we've got already across mobile computing and our software assets inside the cactus frontline pillar, you know, ELO in the quarter grew in line with our expectations. Certainly, you know, a solid pipeline of opportunities, you know, we'd expect 2026 growth to be in the mid single digits, you know, and that's playing out as expected. We're seeing progress in the synergies, you know, and both revenue and cost. So a lot of work on the, you know, integration and that's taking place today. But you know, a lot of focus across the teams around the globe on building a commercial pipeline of opportunities, working together, you know, with our, our global Teams as, as one team and then positioning with our customers. You know, we've entered some new geographies with the ELO portfolio where they haven't, you know, had a presence before. And we've got our first wins in, in India which was one of those geographies overall. So we feel good about what's happening so far across the portfolio. We're still super excited about it. It gives us another opportunity to have a digital touch point and things like modernizing point of sale within our retail customers, streamlining self service payment touchscreen displays across areas like manufacturing and health care. So overall it expands the breadth and depth of our portfolio and, and so far things are going well.
Bill Burns (Chief Executive Officer)
The next question comes from Ken Newman of KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Ken Newman (Equity Analyst at KeyBank Capital Markets)
Hey, good morning guys. Morning. Maybe for my, maybe if you could just give us a little bit of color on how sales trended through the quarter Bill and just maybe help us quantify, you know, if there, if you saw any indications of a pull forward. I think you mentioned that the price actions really for the memory cost really took place in late March. Maybe help us kind of quantify what that's supposed to add to the full year sales growth that was kind of in line with expectations. And again just you know, if you saw any indications of people trying to get ahead of that price action, I'd
Bill Burns (Chief Executive Officer)
say that, you know, Q1 overall, excellent execution by the teams, really strong start to the year that, you know, we're pretty happy about double digit, you know, sales growth and EPS growth in the quarter. I'd say that, you know, the results demonstrate the durability of demand for our solutions, you know, across all the verticals we serve. So broad based growth across both vertical markets, regions, products as well and really our ability to convert that demand into profitable growth for Zebra, you know, the momentum has continued into Q2 across the business. We're obviously as Nate talked about progressing the navigating of the memory challenges and we've made a lot of progress there and have more confidence certainly in the full year guide and what we've seen in Q1 and then what we have visibility to moving throughout the year both in the demand perspective and then you know, the constraints to that demand. You know, the unconstrained demand pushes us, pushes us to the higher end of our outlook range and I think we're, we're seeing that so we feel good about where we're at in the momentum across the business. We saw no real pull forward of demand across our customers related to memory or price increases. You know, overall. So I think that, you know, we're seeing our customers continue to execute on their plans for deployed, you know, technology across their environments to make their businesses more effective and more efficient and moving ahead with that. We haven't seen any real change in demand based on it. The only thing we've really seen is we've worked closely with our suppliers and our customers and our partners on the demand side to make sure we have early visibility to what they need to make sure we have the right products, that we're procuring memory and then building the right products for them. So we will work closely with our customers to make sure we really understand, but no pull forward that we've seen across the business.
Nathan Winters (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, only thing I'd add is if you really get the Q1, you know, the upside to our guidance to the high end was driven by asset visibility and the strength in manufacturing which did not have the price increase. So the, the real strength in the quarter which drove some of the gross margin favorability was around asset visibility, which is again where we didn't have the price increase to just, you know, add to what Bill had mentioned. And then the other one, we did incorporate the, the full year pricing benefit of a point into our guide, but we offset that by lower volume assumptions in the back half due to the memory constraints. So if you look at it kind of net neutral from the benefit on the pricing side, but then lowering the overall demand or volume given the constraints. So that balances out for the second half of the year.
OPERATOR
The next question comes from Brad Hewlett of Wolf Research. Please go ahead.
Brad Hewlett (Equity Analyst at Wolf Research)
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Morning, Brad. So kind of tagging on that last question. So you raised the full year organic growth guidance by about a point to 5%. You mentioned the Q1 outperformance in manufacturing in Latin America and Asia, but curious if you could elaborate a bit more on what drove the implicit organic growth guidance range for the rest of the year. Whether that's by vertical or by geography, I'd say that demand trends overall remain strong. And as I said a minute ago, customers continue to invest across each of the vertical markets. So it's, it was really broad based growth, quite honestly, across regions, across vertical markets and across both of the segments. I would say, you know, certainly manufacturing is helping. Right? Manufacturing has been a lower growth profile than the other vertical markets we serve. But now clearly there's been a strength including imprint scanning and we saw double digit growth in machine vision in the quarter. So we feel good about you know, machine vision. I'd say demand for ELO continues to be strong. So you know, our customer conversations that we've had, we've had our, our three largest trade shows of the year most recently. So start the year with our retail, with the national retail show and then you know, logistics and, and warehousing show and then you know, health care as well and all of those trade shows. We were able to demonstrate our innovation, the depth and breadth of our portfolio, our new solutions that we're bringing to market across mobile computing and machine vision, rfid, you know, our AI solutions, all of those been, you know, positive conversations with our customers. They continue to invest as their businesses continue to grow. So I'd say broad based demand across regions, segments, verticals which we feel really good about and that's really given us confidence in the full year outlook. We'd be at the top end of our outlook range only we see constraints from memory which we factored in and then we feel good about the momentum we're seeing in the marketplace.
Bill Burns (Chief Executive Officer)
The next question comes from Meta Marshall of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Great, thanks. A couple of questions, just one. In terms of kind of the demand that you're seeing within manufacturing, are there any verticals kind of within manufacturing where you're seeing strength or do you think that some of this is starting to be some of the refresh of some of the devices bought during COVID and then as just a second question, just any commentary around increased freight and whether that has any impact to kind of your assumptions for the rest of the year.
Nathan Winters (Chief Financial Officer)
Thanks. From manufacturing perspective, I would say that, you know, strong across, you know, each of the sub verticals within manufacturing, semiconductor, you know, auto. We've seen some additional strength in, across our, our machine vision portfolio. Maybe I'd call out, I would say that the investments are really, you know, across visibility across the supply chain. So, so more drive to continue to have more visibility both in warehousing but across the entire supply chain. You know, clearly automating quality control that's driving, you know, machine vision inside manufacturing overall, you know, outside of manufacturing we're also seeing strength. So retail E commerce, you know, was great vertical in the quarter. So solid demand across that continues to be a long term growth driver for us. Healthcare continues to have solid growth in the quarter. When you were talking about more of the refresh opportunities, it's really focused from a retail perspective. They're continuing to refresh. Every customer has a different refresh cycle. Transportation logistics is really the larger refreshes that we're working with our customers on today, building a pipeline of opportunities, really we see that you know, coming in and beginning in 2027. So that opportunity continues to grow. Transportation logistics cycled a large, you know, order compare from prior year. But we see, you know, healthy pipeline of opportunities in that those conversations about the refreshes in, in 26 we really have forecast about the same level of refresh activities across the different vertical markets as we did in 25 in our guide. But really 27, we would see clearly an opportunity to these bigger refresh cycles for TNL begin to play a role in our numbers. Yeah, the second question which I believe was on the freight rates and what we're seeing from a logistics standpoint. We have experienced 20 to 30% price increases across the various lanes that we use for our products that stabilized here recently. We've incorporated that increase into our guidance. But transportation or freight costs are less than 2% of revenue. So you know, right now it's in a range that we can, we can manage and use other levers to offset. So we've incorporated that higher pricing into the, into the guidance for the full year and the teams are actively working on, you know, different lanes and different options given, given the environment.
OPERATOR
Great, thanks. The next question comes from Keith Howsom of North Coast Research. Please go ahead.
Keith Howsom (Equity Analyst at North Coast Research)
Good morning guys. And I do want to say congratulations on the gross margin improvement. Good to see in terms of the machine vision I think Bill you quoted that was up double digits here. Obviously machine vision has had a little bit of a challenging time over the past year or two. Do we see an inflection point here or what's the TV kind of thing in terms of where the machine vision improvement is coming from and what the expectations are for the rest of the year. Machine vision, you know, for us we see as an integral part of really the future of our asset visibility and automation segment. Right. Is that, you know, as you know, Keith drives both, you know, the logistics market, so transportation logistics and then you know, clearly manufacturing. We saw machine vision grow, you know, double digits, strong double digit growth year on year and first quarter. So you know, we've been, you know, looking for this inflection point in the market. So I think you'll see that really aligned with, with you know, the industry as a whole. So you know, I'd say recent logistics WINS across the U.S. and Europe continue to, you know, be encouraging signs for us and delivering our new solutions. We're seeing growing opportunities in, in manufacturing and E commerce. That's driving, you know, what we would expect to be double digit growth for the full year. So continuing the momentum and growth throughout 2026, I'd say overall our value proposition is resonating with customers. So you know, ease of use. The idea that, you know, our we're using a single software platform that's unified across the portfolio of products that allows our customers to easily set up and use our products. So we think of, you know, how do we make it simple for our customers to leverage machine vision portfolio? How do they get speed of deployment inside their environments and then how efficient are the reason and how good is our product overall from a machine vision and fixed industrial scanning portfolio. So I think that we're continuing to invest in go to market. We've expanded the portfolio with the Foto NEO acquisition. We continue to invest in software assets around AI and, and deep learning which allows that simplification of deployment in our customers environment. So I think we're feeling good about, you know, where we're at Machine vision. We do think it's an inflection point. We've been working really hard to drive growth across this business and I think the market opportunity allows us to do that. And then we're seeing it both in TNL and manufacturing where you know, it's really broad based, working with our customers around the world. Great, thank you.
Bill Burns (Chief Executive Officer)
Appreciate it.
OPERATOR
The next question comes from Jim Rashutti of Needham and company. Please go ahead.
Jim Rashutti (Equity Analyst at Needham and Company)
Thanks for the color on your machine vision business. I'm wondering if you can talk to the kind of growth you're seeing across your RFID portfolio, maybe in the same light. Yeah, RFID continues to build a strong pipeline of opportunities across the supply chain. So we're seeing not just in retail, but transportation, logistics, manufacturing, government. So all of that creates opportunities for us in machine vision. You know, we saw strong compares from a year ago in rfid. So you know, we would expect, you know, decline in first quarter but not a concern to us. We had, you know, large cycling of compares in the first quarter, expecting growth certainly in second quarter and then for the full year. So momentum and RFID continues. I would say overall, you know, we're seeing the move in retail beyond retail apparel really into things like fresh foods, which is, you know, a new opportunity for RFID inside grocery, broader, you know, merchandising as well within retail, you know, beyond apparel, transportation logistics, you know, parcel tracking through, you know, logistics providers is creating a market as well or a new market for us which is another place we're working closely with our customers. But quick serve restaurants, health care, you know, anything you need to track and trace across the supply chain is seeing momentum, you know, in RFID from a zebra perspective. We've got the broadest set of of solutions. So we're the, the market leader in fixed and handheld, you know, RFID readers. We've got a portfolio of our printing printers and, and labels to go along with that. You know, we've recently released our new line of mobile computers that have embedded RFID capabilities into those and our wearable products as well across that portfolio. So we continue to expand RFID functionality across our portfolio. So we see this as a long term growth opportunity as people are continue to drive visibility across the insider supply chain within their environments. Question just with respect to a large project business, any change in the outlook looking out to the second half, either macro related or the result of potential changes in the competitive landscape as it relates to the pending transaction with Brady and Honeywell?
Nathan Winters (Chief Financial Officer)
Jim, we haven't seen any changes related to the second half. As Bill mentioned earlier, the the project funnel remains strong. A great pipeline of opportunities as we look out through the balance of the year and into 27 as particularly some of the large TNL refreshes start to come online. But no change overall in terms of the overall pipeline relative to the recently announced transaction. So I think it's playing out as we expected. The large deals, they are in line with the total growth as they were as we announced in our last earnings. So no change that you know, kind of the mix of large deal and run rate both equally contributing to the, to the full year guidance.
Bill Burns (Chief Executive Officer)
Maybe to the second part of your question, I'd say, you know, our focus is really, you know, on our business and continuing to expand, you know, our lead in the marketplace. I'd say that look, we've got deeply embedded relationships with our enterprise customers and we're focused on continuing to innovate and drive our solutions portfolio to continue to take share in the marketplace.
OPERATOR
The next question comes from Rob Mason of Baird. Please go ahead.
Rob Mason (Equity Analyst at Baird)
Hi, good morning. My question is just around capital allocation, if there's been any change in the thought process for 2026, I think originally you were earmarked about half the free cash flow, but a year towards share repurchases, it sounds like, you know, year to date we're already at that point or thereabouts. You know, any change in the thought process around half the free cash flow going to share repurchases?
Nathan Winters (Chief Financial Officer)
Hey Rob, as you mentioned, you know, we've already repurchased 500 million through, through April so above, already above the 50% outlook that we provided in the last update. I'm obviously taking advantage of what we believe is an attractive stock valuation and we're going to continue to be active in the market. If you look at now our full year EPS guide assumes we do an additional 100 million of share repurchase. However, we have the flexibility to allocate all of our free cash flow for the year if we see it again, an attractive price and an opportunity for us to continue to repurchase.
OPERATOR
Thank you.
Joe Giordano (Equity Analyst at PD Cowen)
The next question comes from Joe Giordano of PD Cowan. Please go ahead.
Bill Burns (Chief Executive Officer)
Hey, good morning guys. One of like the more structural pushbacks people give on Zebra story is like a terminal value question about in the future as we have more and more automation and more and more robotics and less people in the buildings that you currently serve, there's just a structural smaller need for your products and services. How would you answer and address that question on like a much longer term view? Yeah Joe, I'd say that the you know, automation trends, right and, and the trend towards physical AI is clearly a benefit or you know, I'd even say tailwind for Zebra as a whole is really our business is all about driving, you know, automation and productivity within our customers environments. And I'd say that we've got a long Runway of growth ahead of us that you know, we've got, you know, relationships with our largest customers and even the, you know, the most advanced customers today with that are the most advanced from an automation perspective continue to grow their installed base of, of Zebra solutions. And that includes, you know, mobile computers to drive labor productivity. And I think that when we look at you know, the one place you talk about automation because it doesn't really apply in things like front of store retail or you know, nurses and hospital settings or you know, so really you're talking about warehousing. You know today nearly 75% of warehouses around the world are really in their early stages of an automation journey. And that we're seeing that if you look at the numbers, the number of frontline workers are continue to project it to increase, you know, warehouse footprint continues to grow and you know, really driven by things like E commerce now manufacturing growth along with that. So you know, we see our customers wanting to have flexible, you know, solutions for automating and that's really what we do across the environments. And I think that you know, we're seeing that continue to provide that from a quick ROI modularity and our solutions overall. When you think of what Zebra does, we Collect the data, ultimately reading a barcode, printing a label, all the things we do in our asset visibility portfolio to feed either automation trends because you need data or physical AI trends for analytics and then leverage workers within the environment to get work done. And those workers are augmented by technology and automation to make their jobs easier overall. So I'd say, you know, automation augments workers, doesn't you know, replace workers. And we've seen automation in place for a long time and we continue to see the demand for zebra solution continue to grow. So I think that we feel good about where we're at, you know, as a business and we see the terminal value being strong and things like physical AI being a net positive for us versus a detractor. When you think about AI deployment, how do you, where do you see the sweet spot for you? Whether it's developing your own AI tools or having a software partner deploy those tools on a zebra device where you get just like the device sale. And so when you think about like monetizing, what's the right balance for you there? Yeah Joe, it's really all of the above. If you start at the highest level. AI adoption trends, as I said, just like automation are net positive for us and that we really understand our customers workflows and that we've got a large installed base of solutions today that really are fundamental to driving automation or AI for the front line. Because AI is really the analytics that drives automation. And I would say that we're really uniquely positioned to be the supplier of choice for AI for the front line. And what I mean by that is that at the highest levels, the asset visibility and automation portfolio we have printing, scanning, machine vision, optical character recognition, parcel dimensioning. All that information is required on the front line to create data around the physical world to feed AI models. So we give assets a digital voice within our customers environments that feed AI models that ultimately tell our customers how to be more effective and more efficient. And the way today you get that work done is through automation in the environment or people doing the work. And those workers are using mobile devices today and our software. So think of task management software, think of communication, collaboration software, think of our new AI for the frontline agents. All of those are used to be able to drive the productivity within our customers business and the answers from, you know, the AI engine. So I'd say that you know, the entire portfolio benefits from AI from a frontline AI suite we've got on our mobile devices. Now specifically we have enablers, blueprints and companions, all of which allow our customers to easily deploy AI on the front line of business and we're at the very early stages of that so we've you know, want a new opportunity in parcel proof of delivery with T and L provider. We're in multiple pilots with our customers around retail, transportation, logistics, other areas around the world. So that's still very early days. But overall the portfolio we have of asset visibility and connected frontline AI, physical AI deployment is a net positive for Zebra across the entire portfolio. Then specifically their software opportunities with things like our front line AI suite that allows our customers for us to meet them wherever they're at in the journey of automation or deploying AI.
OPERATOR
The next question comes from Guy Hardwick of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Guy Hardwick (Equity Analyst at Barclays)
Hi, good morning. Congratulations on the quarter, excellent performance. Nathan, I appreciate that you expect to fully offset the 200 basis points of margin memory impact, but do you expect any impact from a lag of recovery in any one quarter? The reason I asked is that one of your competitors called out memory Spring ahead when specifically for Q3 to their gross margins and then a major mobile device manufacturer mentioned gross margin headwind in their June quarter. So I just wonder if you could comment on that.
Nathan Winters (Chief Financial Officer)
No, I think the only thing obviously you see the step up in the cost profile from Q1 to Q2 just as we work through our inventory position coming into the year as well as the prices have escalated in line with what we had expected escalated here over the past quarter. So obviously there's a step up from Q1 to Q2 and we'd expect that to continue to increase modestly stepping up from Q3 to Q4, but offset as we get higher price realization on our own products and the flow through of that. So I'd say Q2 is kind of the inflection point in terms of step change sequentially just as we roll through with that and then a modest increase as we go to Q3 and Q4, but that's mitigated as we get more price realization on our side to help mitigate the inflow. So there's, I wouldn't say there's a any other particular macro or market driven reason for it. I'd say it's more just timing of inventory and the flow through that through the P and L. And just as a quick follow up, just wondering whether the changes in the in the tariff regime could have had any impact on the business either positive or negatively in Q1 and how it maybe impacts your Q2 Yeah, so if you look at the, the elimination of the IEPA rates, but you know, most of that, a big chunk of that was offset by the Section 122 tariffs. I'd say you really didn't have a meaningful impact in the P and L in Q1. Again, most of that just given the timing of the announcement and the carryover from, from inventory. It'll have a small benefit in Q2, but we don't expect really any impact for our full year guidance. Our expectation is that as we go into the back half of the year, second half of the year, you know, whatever the new form, whether it's Section 301 or others, will replace what was the effective IPA rates coming into the year. So I'd say the full year we're not expecting any material changes due to the new tariff regime, just as there's gonna be a new form factor of that presumably in the second half of the year. And if that changes, we'll obviously update as we go through the year. So. And in the short term, I'd say pretty modest, just given inventory impact and then the differentiation between the rates between IEIPA and 122.
OPERATOR
The next question comes from Brian Drab of William Blair. Please go ahead.
Brian Drab (Equity Analyst at William Blair)
Yeah, I think my question was just taken there, but I wonder if you can just elaborate more on, you know, the. One of the questions I've been getting all quarter is around, is section 232 going to impact you and you know, you've moved a lot of manufacturing to Mexico. You know, how does this, you know, specifically for 232, does that have any impact? And I can see that, you know, tariffs weren't mentioned in the transcript here until that, that last question, the Q and A. So I guess it's not a big deal, but wondering if you could just give some detail around that.
Nathan Winters (Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, look, I think it would all depend on what exactly comes out in terms of the scope and I think that's not clear today. We've been obviously monitoring and tracking with our trade compliance team and we leverage the largest semiconductor companies in the world and continue to assess country of origin across all of our different products in terms of the flow of semiconductors through the supply chain. So again, actively working both our supply base and our government relations team. But I think there's nothing really to specifically come on relative to 232 as it's, you know, it's been out there for quite some time and. But I would say just like anything, whether that was the, you know, tariff round one, tariff round two and all the other changes as those change, we'll take the necessary actions to mitigate the impact of the P and L and communicate that implications with our customers. So that's no different on whatever the next version of whether it's 301 or 232, that comes later this year. So this dynamic of a product being taxed based on its metal content at 50%, transitioning to a product being taxed on its entire value at 25%, like that type of dynamic is not a big deal for bringing a barcode printer or any other device into the country, say from Mexico or elsewhere. Yeah, again, I would say it all depends on what's actually ultimately written in terms of country of origin and how they scope it in terms of what content and what rate. And I'd say right now there's just not enough details to speculate on what the impact would be until we get further clarity.
OPERATOR
The next question comes from Rob Jamison of Vertical Research. Please go ahead.
Rob Jamison (Equity Analyst at Vertical Research)
Hey, congrats on results.
Bill Burns (Chief Executive Officer)
Just a couple from me, Bill. You know, you all have been very active on the ecosystem side, including the strategic investments like the Apera AI for 4D vision for factory automation as well as like the broad ISV network that you're building out for AI and mobile compute. Just curious, like, how central are these partnerships and investments, your AI strategy and then, you know, on the near term ROI side, like where are you seeing the most tangible benefits from AI enhanced solutions today? And which verticals do you think you know or would you expect to see the most, you know, incremental AI revenue contribution from as we look ahead? I'd say first that, you know, our venture investments again, we view as another lever ultimately to be able to stay close to new innovation. You know, these are relatively small investments from, from our perspective, it allows us to invest across the portfolio in, you know, interesting companies, technologies that we ultimately see as interesting to us, you know, longer term in this case, really around, you know, machine vision and physical AI in the, in the, the most recent one. So I think that that's always of interest to us, but these are small investments overall. But I think it's important for us to continue to keep our pulse on what's happening in the, you know, across venture. I'd say our independent software vendor relationships and just our relationships as a whole as we're, we're seeing that. It's important that whether it's our relationship with Qualcomm or Google or the memory suppliers in this case most recently, but also the software vendors large and small, everyone from the biggest Players to the smallest are part of our ecosystem of partners that we leverage to work with our customers and then our channel partner community ultimately serves a lot of our customers around the world as well. So all those are incredibly important to us as we bring our solutions to market. Across AI, we see it a combination of really meeting our customers wherever they're at in the journey. And I think that their ROI is driven by our frontline AI suite has kind of three components to it. One is enablers that allows our customers to leverage our next generation mobile devices that we've recently released and the idea of, you know, capabilities to support the processing and memory required for AI but allow those enablers to be used by our customers that want to deploy their own AI agents and their own, you know, AI software at the front line of business. Our blueprints allows our customers to, to leverage those enablers where we package them together into a specific use case like Parcel Proof of Delivery is a good example of that. We talked about the recent transportation logistics win in that area that's combining our enablers along with agents from Zebra and then packaging those together that'll fit underneath our customer's application. And then the third is where we do the full application ourselves, so that's companions. So we meet our customers wherever they're at in their journey. They want to use our enablers on the device and leverage those to build their own AI agents. That's okay. If they want us to, to create that software for them, we've got an offering and generate revenue associated with that. And if they want us to build a full application for them, we'll do that as well. So we meet our customers wherever that in our journey and that's what we do. Leveraging our independent software vendors and our AI partners is to them along with our customer, along with our offerings, complete the full suite of offerings to our customers so we can meet them wherever they're at on their AI journey or wherever they're at in their automation journey. And that's what our customers really want to want to see from us, that we're not driving them in one direction or another if they want to do a lot of the development themselves. And some of our largest customers want to go do that, the majority of our customers do not and they want help from us or our software vendor partners to be able to deliver an entire solution.
OPERATOR
Our last question comes from Piyush Avasi of Citi. Please go ahead.
Piyush Avasi (Equity Analyst at Citi)
Good morning guys and thanks for fitting me in.
Bill Burns (Chief Executive Officer)
Bill, I think you mentioned, I think you mentioned AI Helping your customers improve efficiency. Are you deploying AI internally as well? Like you mentioned productivity initiatives helping you this quarter. So if you could elaborate on what you're doing there and like how should we think about like margins in the longer term? Like does AI kind of improve that 50 bits of year on year margin that's baked into the expansion, that's baked into your long term outlook? Yeah, we do see AI driving internal productivity within our business. You know, the areas you, you really would expect. Software development. Right. And a lot of work being done using AI tools across our development process. Within research and development, our sales and marketing teams leveraging AI across what they're doing around the globe, working with customers and then marketing Platter and others, supply chain forecasting. We're seeing that our customer service teams as well, we're using AI tools broadly across the entire organization. So we've encouraged clearly our employees to leverage the tools we have available to them. And we're seeing broad based adoption across AI and we do believe that ultimately it drives efficiency and allows us to continue to increase our margins moving forward. So. So absolutely we believe that AI will be a productivity tool inside zebra, but we actually believe that the, you know, overall the biggest opportunity is what we provide to our customers. But it's also important from a profitability perspective. So really both.
OPERATOR
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to Bill Burns for any closing remarks.
Bill Burns (Chief Executive Officer)
I'd just like to wrap up by thanking our employees and partners for delivering solid Q1 results and certainly excellent progress we've seen so far on our 2026 priorities. And we're excited about the opportunities ahead. Thank you everyone for joining.
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