Modine Manufacturing Company - Earnings Call - Q2 2026

Executive Summary

• Modine delivered 12% YoY revenue growth to $738.9M, driven by 42% YoY data center growth within Climate Solutions; adjusted EPS was $1.06 (up 9% YoY) while gross margin compressed 290 bps to 22.3% due to temporary launch inefficiencies tied to rapid capacity expansions.
• Guidance: revenue growth raised to +15%–20% (from +10%–15%) while adjusted EBITDA of $440–$470M was reaffirmed; management expects >60% data center revenue growth in FY26 and >90% YoY growth in H2, with margins normalizing in Q4 as new lines ramp.
• Beat/miss vs S&P Global consensus: Revenue $738.9M vs $698.4M* (beat); EPS $1.06 vs $1.01* (beat); EBITDA (S&P-defined) $100.3M* vs $103.1M* (slight miss). On company-adjusted basis, EBITDA was $103.8M (+4% YoY).
• Key swing factors: higher build-out costs (1,200 new hires, parallel line launches) and mixed HVAC seasonality weighed on margins; segment cost actions in Performance Technologies improved EBITDA margin +90 bps YoY despite softer end-markets.
• Setup into H2: sequential revenue/margin expansion expected as 7+ new chiller lines come online (2+ in Q3; +5 in Q4), with Q4 margins “more in line with prior year”; free cash flow weighted to H2 given inventory build and capex for the ramp.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Climate Solutions growth: Segment sales up 24% to $454.4M on 42% data centers and 25% HVAC Technologies growth (incl. $28.1M from M&A); adjusted EPS rose to $1.06 (+9% YoY).
• Strategic capacity ramp on track: Launched chiller production in Grenada, MS; Franklin, WI to launch in Q3; Jefferson City, MO in Q4; secured Grand Prairie, TX; >60% DC revenue growth targeted in FY26 and >$2B by FY28.
• PT margin improvement: Despite -4% revenue, Performance Technologies adjusted EBITDA grew 3%, with margin +90 bps YoY to 14.7% on cost reductions and efficiencies.

Management quotes:

• “We now anticipate Data Centers revenue to grow by more than 60 percent year-over-year… keeps us on track to achieve our target of more than $2 billion in Data Centers revenue by fiscal 2028.” – CEO Neil Brinker.
• “For Q4, we should begin to see more significant volumes from our new production lines… exit the year at more normalized profit margins.” – CFO Mick Lucareli.

What Went Wrong

• Margin pressure from ramp: Gross margin fell 290 bps to 22.3% due to temporary costs from adding capacity, lower HVAC seasonality, and absence of prior-year pricing settlements in heat pumps.
• One-time charges: $4.1M non-cash impairment in Europe and $3.1M restructuring weighed on operating income; tax expense also affected by the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (+$3.1M).
• Cash flow headwinds: Q2 free cash flow was -$30.5M; YTD FCF -$30.3M on inventory builds and capex for data center expansion; net debt rose to $498.3M to fund acquisitions and growth.

Transcript

Speaker 4

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Modine's second quarter fiscal 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star, then zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Ms. Kathy Powers, Vice President, Treasurer, and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Good morning, and welcome to our conference call to discuss Modine's second quarter fiscal 2026 results. I'm joined by Neil Brinker, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mick Lucareli, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The slides that we will be using for today's presentation are available on the Investor Relations section of our website, modine.com. On slide three of that deck is our notice regarding forward-looking statements. This call will contain forward-looking statements as outlined in our earnings release, as well as in our company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, I'll turn the call over to Neil.

Speaker 6

Thank you, Kathy, and good morning, everyone. Last quarter, we announced plans to significantly expand our U.S. manufacturing capacity for data center products. We are continuing to invest in our fastest-growing businesses and are actively advancing this strategy. In fact, we are accelerating other planned investments to meet the unprecedented demand for our products. Our Climate Solutions segment continues to deliver, posting a 24% increase in revenue. This includes contributions from our three acquisitions earlier this year: Absolute Air, L.B. White, and Climate by Design International. As we integrate these businesses, we are applying 80/20 principles to drive value by improving margins, increasing capacity utilization, and unlocking commercial opportunities to cross-sell into new markets. Bringing these respected brands into the Modine portfolio not only broadens our product offerings but also brings scale to HVAC technologies.

Excluding these acquisitions, organic sales increased 15% from prior year, driven primarily by a 42% increase in data center sales. Over this past quarter, we've made substantial progress in our capacity expansion. I'm pleased to report that we've officially launched chiller production in our Grenada, Mississippi, facility. In total, we plan to have five chiller lines in Grenada and are currently producing on two of these lines. We're working on getting the incremental production lines in place and are on schedule to launch full production by the end of this fiscal year. We've also made good progress in Franklin, Wisconsin, and Jefferson City, Missouri. Franklin is scheduled to launch initial production of data center products this quarter, with volumes ramping through Q4. We will have four chiller lines in Jeff City, with the first two launching the fourth quarter and the remainder planned for later next fiscal year.

The final site for our expansion has been secured in Grand Prairie, Texas, just outside of Dallas. This facility is planned to fully come online early next fiscal year and will have five chiller lines. Both the Franklin and the Dallas locations are being designed for flexible manufacturing, with the ability to produce multiple products that can be flexed based on demand. Both facilities will be able to produce modular data centers, which we see as a great opportunity. We've made initial shipments to one customer and are currently working through some design modifications. In addition, we are in early stages of discussions with others, including both hyperscaler and NeoCloud customers. We are excited to be able to support our strategic customers with an innovative product that offers rapid deployment and scalability.

We are making good progress overall, but current hurdles include the hiring and training of the workforce, which is a heavy lift for the organization. In total, we've hired 1,200 employees to support data centers so far this year, including temporary and contract workers and talent we've strategically redeployed from our Performance Technologies segment. This added significant additional costs this quarter, with little incremental revenue, resulting in temporary margin erosion in Climate Solutions. We expect this to continue in Q3 and then improve in Q4 when volumes begin to ramp. We expect a significant jump in revenue between Q3 and Q4, driven by new capacity coming online. Outside of the U.S., we successfully launched production of data center products at our new Chennai, India, facility. This strengthens our ability to serve customers in the APAC region with locally manufactured product.

Furthermore, we are planning to expand chiller capacity in the UK to support demand for both hyperscaler and colocation customers in Europe. This incremental capacity is anticipated to come online early next fiscal year. I currently see a path to deliver more than 60% revenue growth in data centers this year, on our way to achieve over $2 billion in revenues in fiscal 2028. This year marks a period of major investment in our data center businesses, driven by strong market demand. This is hard work for our organization, and we are addressing challenges and making adjustments along the way. In addition, this represents a major transition for the business, evolving from a low-volume, high-mix manufacturing operation to a high-volume producer. This is not a shift in strategy, as we remain committed to serving as a premium, highly customizable provider.

However, we will now be able to deliver these specialized products at scale to meet the needs of our largest customers. This is important, as large data centers, especially those specializing in AI applications, require our products to be delivered at a much greater rate than we have historically provided. Fortunately, Modine is highly capable of ramping scale production on highly engineered product designs, a competency we have honed over many years with our Performance Technologies business. This expertise is also why we have been successful in leveraging internal resources to support these critical projects. We have the right team in place, and we are hyper-focused on execution to deliver these innovative products our customers require. I want to stress again, this is a very heavy lift for the data center team, but I remain confident in our ability to execute, meeting our targets and customer commitments.

Please turn to page five. Our end markets and Performance Technologies segment continues to be challenged, but actions we've taken in response to these conditions are having a positive impact. Although revenues this quarter were down 4% from the prior year, adjusted EBITDA was up 3%. The segment adjusted EBITDA margins increased by 90 basis points, primarily due to the cost control measures we've taken out over the past few quarters, including actively reallocating resources to the Climate Solutions segment. We are monitoring market conditions closely, and we will continue to make adjustments as necessary. I'm pleased to announce that the segment is now being led by Jeremy Patton, who joined our team as the President of Performance Technologies segment last month. Jeremy's previous experience with transformational change with an 80/20 mindset makes him uniquely qualified to take on the challenges and opportunities ahead.

I'm happy to welcome Jeremy to the team and have confidence that he will continue the momentum created over these past quarters to drive margin improvement as we transform this portfolio. I'm extremely proud of the hard work being done in both segments to drive towards our vision of evolving our portfolio in pursuit of highly engineered, mission-critical thermal solutions. This is creating a great deal of organizational change and a heightened level of complexity. This includes integrating three acquisitions, expanding capacity across multiple locations around the globe to support data center growth, and exploring strategic divestiture opportunities in Performance Technologies. We are moving people into new roles in support of these plans and are incurring temporary cost increases to support future growth. Although we will encounter obstacles along the way, this team is up for the challenge, giving me further confidence in our ability to reach our long-term targets.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Mick.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Neil, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to slide six to begin reviewing the Q2 segment results. Climate Solutions delivered another quarter of strong revenue growth with a 24% increase in sales. Driving this growth was data centers, which grew $67 million, or 42%. HVAC technologies increased $17 million, or 25%, driven by inorganic sales from our recent acquisitions. This was partially offset by lower indoor air quality sales and lighter pre-season stocking orders for heating products. Heat transfer solutions grew 2%, or $3 million, due to higher volume with commercial refrigeration and coatings customers. Climate Solutions' second quarter profit margins were lower than normal, and adjusted EBITDA declined 4%. I want to review a few temporary factors that contributed to the decline this quarter.

The largest impact was due to significant investments relating to the data center capacity expansion, including direct and indirect labor and overhead expenses needed to build out new production lines and facilities. As Neil previously covered, we're expanding production lines at several existing locations while also preparing to launch a few new facilities. These actions are required to meet the growing customer demand for Modine products and more than double our revenue. While we expect to see sequential revenue growth in Q3, we won't begin to realize significant volumes in the new production facilities until our Q4. We also had a lower margin in HVAC technologies, which was mostly due to a negative mix impact. This was driven by lower pre-season heating sales, combined with the early integration steps for the three most recent acquisitions.

Heating represents some of our highest margin products, and the acquisitions are very early in the integration 80/20 phases. Within this product group, we anticipate a sequential margin improvement as we enter the heating season and begin to implement 80/20 across the acquisitions. Finally, in HTS, the prior year included several million dollars of commercial pricing settlements from heat pump customers. As we implement a major step function change in our data center production capabilities, we anticipated that there would be significant unabsorbed costs as we launch the expansion plans. Looking to the second half of the year, we currently expect sequential margin improvement in Q3, but the margin will remain below normal operating levels until Q4.

In Q4, we should begin to see more significant volumes from our new production lines, which will allow us to more fully absorb the fixed incremental costs and exit the year at more normalized profit margins. Before moving on to Performance Technologies, I want to highlight that the demand for Modine data center solutions continues to grow, and we're increasing our revenue outlook for the current fiscal year. In order to support this growth and achieve our $2 billion goal, we need to make significant capacity investments while still delivering on our earnings targets. This will set the stage for further revenue growth and margin improvement, with the ability to move well above historical profit margins. Please turn to slide seven. Performance Technologies revenue declined 4% from the prior year. Heavy-duty equipment revenue is relatively flat, with stronger sales to construction and mining customers offset by lower GenSet sales.

On-highway applications decreased 3%, or $7 million, driven by lower commercial vehicle demand, including specialty vehicle and bus customers. Despite the tough market conditions, adjusted EBITDA improved 3% from the prior year, and the adjusted EBITDA margin increased by 90 basis points to 14.7%. The margin increase was mostly driven by significant cost reductions and improved operating efficiencies. Tariffs remain a significant challenge for all market participants, but our team is working hard to recover these increases through surcharges, along with our normal pass-through mechanisms. In addition, we're reorganizing this business and reducing costs wherever possible, which resulted in a nearly $7 million reduction in SG&A expenses this quarter. The team remains focused on margin improvement despite ongoing challenges with the end market demand. As we look ahead, Q3 typically represents the lowest volume quarter due to seasonal patterns and holiday shutdowns by our OE customers.

As a result, we expect that the Q3 margin will be down sequentially from Q2 but should be above the prior year, then stepping back up sequentially in Q4 as we've done in previous years. Until the markets turn around, we'll stay focused on costs and operating efficiencies, which will allow us to drive higher operating leverage and margins when volumes improve. Now let's review total company results. Please turn to slide eight. Second quarter sales increased 12%, driven by the revenue growth in Climate Solutions. The gross margin declined 290 basis points to 22.3%, driven primarily by the factors I covered on the Climate Solutions slide. SG&A expenses declined in the quarter, driven by Performance Technologies cost savings initiatives, partially offset by incremental SG&A and the acquisitions in Climate Solutions. The net result was a 4% improvement in adjusted EBITDA from the prior year, with a margin of 14%.

With regards to EPS, the adjusted earnings per share was $1.06, or 9% higher than the prior year. I want to again summarize the key items that impacted the Q2 margin and how we currently see our consolidated results for the balance of the year. For Q2 consolidated results, the adjusted EBITDA margin benefited from the year-over-year improvement in Performance Technologies. This was offset by the lower margin in Climate Solutions, as I reviewed on that segment slide. As we look to Q3, we anticipate the adjusted EBITDA margin will remain below normal levels in this quarter. Based on the sequential improvements by both segments in Q4, we expect a significant increase in the sequential margin, which should be more in line with the prior year.

Based on this second half outlook, we would exit the fiscal year at the highest quarterly margin rate, and we would fully expect additional margin expansion in the new fiscal year, consistent with our fiscal 2027 goals. Now moving on to cash flow metrics, please turn to slide nine. Free cash flow was a negative $31 million in the second quarter. We anticipated lower cash flow primarily due to higher inventory builds and CapEx in Climate Solutions. We continue building significant data center inventory to support customer demand and delivery schedules in the second half of the year. Second quarter free cash flow also included $9 million of cash payments, primarily related to restructuring and acquisition-related costs. Net debt of $498 million was $219 million higher than the prior fiscal year end, directly related to the acquisitions of Absolute Air, L.B. White, and Climate by Design International.

With the investments and acquisitions in capital during the first half of the year and the associated earnings, our balance sheet remains quite strong with a leverage ratio of 1.2. Based on our earnings and cash flow outlook, we expect that the leverage ratio will decline further by fiscal year end. Now let's turn to slide 10 for our fiscal 2026 outlook. As we cross the midpoint of our fiscal year, we're raising our revenue outlook and reaffirming our earnings outlook. For fiscal 2026, we now expect total company sales to grow in the range of 15% to 20%. For Climate Solutions, we're raising our outlook for the full year's sales to grow 35% to 40%, with data center sales now expected to grow in excess of 60% this year.

With regards to data center sales growth, we anticipate sequential increases in Q3 and in Q4, with the second half year-over-year sales growth exceeding 90%. During the next quarter, the team will be further preparing numerous production lines, both in existing and new facilities, to support the strong orders. In Q4, we anticipate our first full quarter of significant production volume from these new production lines. For Performance Technologies, we're raising our sales outlook, with revenue now anticipated to be flat to down 7%, improving from the prior range of down 2% to 12%. We expect that the end markets will remain depressed, with the ongoing trade conflicts and cautious market sentiment having a negative impact on market recoveries. However, last quarter, I explained that revenue was trending more favorable due to foreign exchange rates and the large amount of material cost recoveries.

While the underlying market volumes have not recovered, we expect higher revenue as these trends have continued and we're adjusting the outlook accordingly. I want to point out that while the large cost recoveries help to protect our absolute level of earnings, they don't have a positive impact on our profit margins. With regards to our full year earnings, we're balancing the higher revenue outlook with margins running temporarily below normal levels. Based on this, we're holding our fiscal 2026 adjusted EBITDA outlook to be in the range of $440 million to $470 million. For cash flow, we anticipate generating free cash flow in the second half of the year, but lower as a percentage of sales compared to the prior year. For the full year, we expect free cash flow to be in the range of 2.5% to 3% of sales.

This is directly related to the significant investment in data center capacity that we're making this year, along with higher working capital to support this rapidly growing business. This also includes cash required to fully fund our U.S. pension plan prior to our planned annuitization in the third quarter. With the conclusion of this large project, we'll be able to remove a very large liability from the balance sheet, along with the time and cost to manage it. Consistent with our previous outlook, we're not including any cash proceeds from potential divestitures this year. Looking ahead to next year, we anticipate that our free cash flow margin will return to previous levels and be in line with our fiscal 2027 targets.

To wrap up, we have a lot of moving pieces this quarter, including significant cost reductions in Performance Technologies, combined with large investments in Climate Solutions for the three acquisitions and the data center expansion. This represents a lot of change, and the team will continue to execute, as we've done throughout our transformation. These activities are critical elements of our strategic transformation and capital allocation strategy. We remain confident that these actions are setting the stage for long-term, sustainable growth for Modine shareholders. With that, Neil and I will take your questions.

Speaker 4

Thank you. If you have a question at this time, please press the star, then one key on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star, then two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Again, that is star one to ask a question. Our first question will come from Matt Summerville with DA Davidson.

Thanks. Morning, guys. Can you maybe first, on the climate side of business, maybe first parse out year-over-year margin contraction on sort of what was data center driven, what was mix driven, and what those headwinds were, maybe providing a bridge in basis points, and then sort of a more definitive layout in terms of how you get back to, to quote, "normal" in fiscal fourth quarter, which I would assume implies 21%-ish at the segment level. Mick, in your prepared remarks, you also added color on a comment that climate has the potential going forward to punch well above historical profitability. Maybe if you could frame that, and then I have a follow-up.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Neil, do you want me to take it first? Yeah. Hey, Matt, thanks for the question. If we start first with your Q2 question, as we break down the margin, if we want to talk about basis points, the biggest portion of the margin in the quarter was on the data center expansion side, about 225 to 250 basis points on the data center side. That was about $10 to $12 million of higher costs, really split between labor and overhead, a little bit of material in there. Neil can talk a little bit more about that. On the HTS side, last year, we had some really large heat pump settlements, if anyone would recall, after the market downturn. That was about 125 basis points. On the HVAC technologies and kind of other, it was about 100 basis points.

HVAC technologies was mostly a mix issue and some startup integration costs on the acquisitions. That's the breakdown of Q2. Neil and I can give you a walk to, as we get to Q3 and Q4. Before I turn it back to Neil, the thing you asked at the end about beyond. When we give you the walk, we are building capacity to not only get to our goal of the $2 billion, but we'll have capacity to produce more than that. That's not running every plant three shifts, seven days a week. Obviously, once you get to normal production levels and you start moving towards full capacity, the incremental margins are quite high. That's why I said once we get to normalized levels, production levels, we'll get to more normal EBITDA margins for CF and then beyond, very high incremental or variable contribution rates.

Neil, maybe I'll turn it back to you on how we're looking at Q3 and Q4.

Speaker 6

Yeah. The piece that I'll add to that is that, you know, we expected some level of launch costs. I mean, that's to be expected. We added over 1,200 people into the organization over the last few months. Those are a little, you know, turned out to be a little bit more, a little higher than what we anticipated. We have to understand root cause and what that is, and we do understand that. Essentially, we had such high demand and expectations for our customers to pull in dates and ship product early that we had to divide our resources, and we went with multiple launches at once. We recognize the impact of that. We recognize the cost of that. We have now reverted back to the standard launch process, which is more controlled.

We have the right amount of specialists on the job in terms of how we do it. We're leveraging 80/20 for scheduling and lead times, and we've got better alignment around our customer expectations and schedules. We tried to do something a little bit different to meet the demand. We tried to do something a little bit different to launch faster, to help support our customer schedules, and it was costly to do that.

Appreciate the color. If I can, you know, stay in.

Speaker 1

Just quick, you asked about the ramp to the step up. We talked about some improvement in Q3, and then you asked, I want to make sure we address, you asked about getting back to a 20+% type level in Q4. For us, implied guidance, about 90% in the second half. We do see sequential growth, the growth rate continuing to improve. For us to get to our Q3 targets, we probably need $40 to $50 million of incremental capacity coming online. That's, if we have two plus chiller lines, we're good there. To get to Q4, another $75 to $100 million of volume revenue capacity, and that would be roughly a minimum of another five chiller lines. We can cover that with you guys online or offline. A lot of you know those plans. We're on track.

That doesn't include sales of any other products, air handlers or on the modular side. If you're thinking about that ramp up, it's really bringing on, fully producing at least two lines in Q3 and then another five lines, talking chillers only in Q4.

Super helpful. Appreciate all that detail. I want to stay inside the data center business for my follow-up. Ninety days ago, you mentioned establishing a data center sort of goal, approaching $2 billion in fiscal 2028. Now you're talking about a number over $2 billion just ninety days later. Did something change with order activity, funnel, customer acquisition? Ultimately, as you get to the tail end of this capacitization journey, both in North America and now in the UK, where will your capacity actually be? Should we be thinking about maybe something a bit materially higher than $2 billion in 2028 based on what I'm describing there? Thank you.

Speaker 6

Yeah. Thanks, Matt. You know, what's changed in the last 90 days is definitely the order and the funnel rates. We're seeing more demand. We're seeing our relationships with our customers continue to evolve in a great way. The aperture in terms of the scheduling and the outlook has widened to where we can see more. It gives us more confidence to continue to deploy CapEx. That's what has changed. We've seen it with not only expanding our product lines and what we have today, but also new products that we're going to market with and launching. One example of those would be our modular data centers. The market looks pretty promising, and we feel that we have the right technology to support it, and we feel we have the right timelines to meet the customer demands. It's just confidence, giving us more confidence in terms of where we're at.

Thanks, Neil.

Sure.

Speaker 4

Our next question comes from David Tarantino with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Hey, good morning, guys.

Speaker 1

Good morning.

I just want to follow up on the margin commentary. What gives you the confidence that margins should normalize going into Q4 beyond just the accelerated capacity, just given investments should continue? I know it's further out, but how should we think about margins as it relates to the longer-term targets that you laid out as you accelerate the rate of production here? Is the Q4 implied run rate a sustainable way to think about kind of the longer-term margins?

Speaker 6

Yeah. Thank you, David. A few things, right? We're doing a lot of, there's a lot of new product, new process, new plant, new people, and that's not efficient, most of the time in these launches, and we recognize that. Every time we do this, for every product that we ship, we learn from it. When we learn from it, that's going to make us better. As we worked through the Grenada launch, we worked through our Rockbridge launch and data centers. We learned a lot that we know that we can apply those lessons learned as we continue to roll out more chiller lines, for example, or more modular lines in different facilities and different factories. It's the learning. It's the ability to get more efficient.

It's our expertise in terms of design, design for manufacturability, design for quality, all those things that we're getting better at as we launch gives us the confidence that we'll improve the margins, as we move out later in the calendar year.

Speaker 1

Yeah. David, the only thing I would add is that margin improvement is twofold, building on what Neil said. If you think about the challenges of starting a new facility or a new line, I'd say our mature data center regions and plants are operating at margins that are above the segment. We knew as we fold more volume into existing stable facilities, we could get the margin higher. As we launch a new greenfield, there are fixed cost absorption issues just to get to a scale to cover the incremental fixed costs. What Neil also covered in some of these cases where we've had extra labor or training, you have inefficiencies. The message and how the ramp will work is we are, as the new lines come on, now bringing on more volume to leverage our fixed costs.

As we get better at it, the negative on a normal conversion is inefficiency. We're also chipping away and improving our processes. It's a volume and a lean initiative if you want to think about it that way.

Okay. Great. I want to follow up on Matt's second question. Just given the acceleration in investments here, how are we thinking about this as it relates to the shape of the growth longer term to get to the targeted above $2 billion in sales by fiscal 2028? I just want to clarify that that is kind of a slight raise versus the prior expectations. If so, what is the new target in terms of sales capacity, in terms of the investments you're making?

Speaker 6

Yeah. I mean, we haven't come out with a specific number. We're always going to give ranges. You know, again, the order profiles, the new product launches, the new product development that we're working on, new regions that we see, that are timed perfectly for our execution in terms of how we launch these facilities and factories and deploy the CapEx. You know, we just have a lot of visibility, and there's a lot of interest, and there's a lot of desire for our products because of the technologies. We've put ourselves in a really good position over the last few years where we've acquired the right technologies. We've developed the right technologies. We've built the relationships with all the major hyperscalers, NeoCloud providers, colocation providers. They're generally growing at pretty good rates.

We have, you know, our funnel continues to grow, which gives us the further confidence to deploy capital and to hire people to launch products.

Great. Thanks, guys.

Speaker 4

Moving next to Chris Moore with CJS Securities.

Hey, good morning, guys. I'm with Stay With Data Centers. When you've talked about data centers in the past in terms of Modine's positioning, expected growth, one of the consistent themes has been you're focused on providing a relatively small subset of the market exceptional products and services. When you think about, just for example, $2 billion data center targeted fiscal 2028, I'm just trying to get a sense as to how you view the total addressable market in calendar 2027. Is $2 billion, is that 10% of the available HVAC market? Is it a bigger percentage of that? Just trying to understand kind of where that puts Modine in the overall structure of the HVAC market, on the data center side.

Speaker 6

Sure. Thank you for that. You know, around $2 billion, and remember the TAM is going to continue to grow as we've seen the amount of CapEx that's being deployed in the data center market across the board. Your TAM is expanding. Are we expanding at a similar rate? We're growing above the market. We're growing faster than the market, so we're gaining share. You know, we were a single-digit, low single-digit when we started this journey. Last year, we got into double-digit, low double digits. If we get into the $2 billion range with some assumptions that we've made on market size and what that available market is that we can address, it probably puts us anywhere between 15% and 20% at that point, Chris.

Very helpful. Thank you. Maybe just my follow-up. You know, recognizing you don't necessarily look at your data center cooling solutions discretely, you know, air-cooled versus liquid-cooled. When you talk, again, about the $2 billion target, how do you view the relative contribution of air versus liquid at that level?

You need both in this space today. It requires both. They complement one another. Where we're seeing a lot of the growth and where we're seeing a lot of the demand with our closest customers is with the deployment of AI. It's going to require a great chiller product, which we have. It's going to require the air-cooling products that we have that help augment it and, you know, CBUs as well. We're seeing the growth, and a lot of the growth is coming from AI expansion.

Speaker 1

There is a relatively consistent margin profile across the product suite. Obviously, service is at the highest end, and we get a lot of questions on that. That will grow as our installed base grows over time. The contribution margin is relatively consistent across our product suite.

Got it. I appreciate it, guys. I will leave it there.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Our next question comes from Noah Kaye with Oppenheimer.

Thank you. So much focus today on margins and the incrementals, certainly for good reason. I may want to ask a different way. Is the right way to think about what's going on here that you've largely front-loaded a lot of the investments associated with the multi-year capacity ramp and that perhaps starting with 4Q, we started to see more normal incrementals in Climate Solutions and specifically in data center? If that's the case, even though you're opening more plants over the coming years, again, what gives you confidence that we can see that kind of level of normal incrementals based off of the specific products that you're making and the configuration of the lines that you're setting up?

Speaker 1

You want me to take notes? Yeah. No, it's Mick. Probably the best example we can give if we look at the last year, where a year and a half ago or before that, we moved and we launched production of chillers in North America for the first time. Last year on the data center side, we were able to generate margins that were in line with the rest of the segment or the rest of our data center business. If I recall, we had a quarter or two of really high margin on leveraging that volume, and we had nice improvement last year. It really is about, and Neil is talking about this, it's a rinse and repeat of products, existing products that we know how to make and doing that in a disciplined manner. Challenges can become when you're making a new product in a new location.

We're basically, it's a copy-paste of what we've been doing in the UK and in North America. It's the bigger, again, the bigger issue, like you said, for the first six months, it's literally getting the building, the equipment, and then bringing in everyone and training them and bringing in all the materials. There's still a practice and an improvement as you launch. That to me is the biggest hurdle. Once that's done, we've been doing this for 10 years. We know what the profit margins will be.

To put a finer point on it, what should incrementals look like as we get into 2027?

It's early to say in 2027, but what I would say on incrementals is typically at a gross profit line, we'd be looking at a 30% type, incremental gross profit to each dollar of sales when we're running at, you know, existing facilities and we're adding more volume.

Very helpful. Just to ask one question on PT, you know, bringing Jeremy in, getting some traction on, you know, margin improvements, maybe just talk a little bit about current focus areas for the business and, you know, any update on the divestiture process.

Speaker 6

Yeah. Certainly, it's a great resource to have, having Jeremy on board, and he's going to continue to drive the same playbook that we've been driving, to continue stabilizing the business, making sure that we are running the business as efficiently as possible, stay close to our customers, continue to build out the order funnel, the order and the funnel. When we start to see some market recovery, we're put in a really good position that we can execute on platforms and programs that we've won through our innovation and technology. It's the same playbook, and he's going to be able to accelerate that and bring some more structure around it.

Okay. Thanks. Any update on the strategic divestitures or we save that for another call?

Business as usual there. I mean, we're always looking strategically in terms of what our best options are. I think we've got a pretty good history and a trend that, you know, through product line strategies, that we can execute on those year over year. You've seen that over the last few years, and I'm pleased with where we're at in terms of the progress of that today.

Okay, thanks very much.

Sure.

Speaker 4

We'll go next to Brian Drab with William Blair.

Hi. Thank you. Just given that we just touched on the Performance Technologies there, what are you seeing, Neil, in those end markets, you know, off-road, on-road, demand for your components in those end markets, you know, over the next 12 months?

Yeah. We've been in this cycle for quite some time. I mean, it's been, you know, a year and a half. These cycles typically can last anywhere from a year and a half to two years. We're really following the trends and the announcements of the large OEMs to position ourselves for when there is a rebound in the market. We're tracking that closely with our customers, the largest OEMs. We're looking at their inventory levels. We understand, you know, what programs we're on and where we can, you know, facilitate and turn on manufacturing faster. We're reading the end markets through our OEMs at this point.

I mean, my sense there is that it's stabilizing. I mean, would you agree with that, or do you think there's another way to break it down?

I think there's some recent reports even as of today that suggest there could be some stabilization and that the inventory levels are right. Those are early indicators. I'd like to see a trend first, but yeah, that's fair.

Okay. There's, you know, no surprise, I'm going to ask a question on data centers. There's some massive projects, obviously, happening all around the world. I'm just wondering, specifically in the U.S., some of these massive projects I assume you'll be part of. Are you seeing any in some different regions where you don't have manufacturing capacity, maybe close enough to the site or service capability close enough to the site, that have come up in the last several months where you're saying, "Okay, we're going to be, we won this business. We're probably going to have to set up some new capabilities closer to one of these massive sites," kind of like you, I think you're doing in Texas?

Speaker 6

Yeah, it's a fair question. Yeah, you're correct. There's opportunity to expand globally. Priority one is the United States. I mean, that is where our biggest customers are. That is the biggest market. That's half the global market. We've got to make sure that we're executing and we're delivering on the products that are desired in this industry today, which we provide, that improve total cost of ownership, improve power use effectiveness, and improve water use effectiveness. We need to do that in the U.S. We need to do that well, and that's what we're working on. We've also launched in India recently. We did our first pilot build there, and that new India facility will help us with our customers as they grow, not only in India but in Southeast Asia as well.

That's another area that we have a disparate team that's focused on, that is going to launch and follow our customers per their request. We're also seeing demand in Europe as well. We have our facilities there. We can support Europe. We're adding another chiller line there. We added a facility there last year, another 400,000 square foot facility to help expand and grow in Europe. Lastly, we're seeing large opportunities, and we're communicating with potential customers in large regions, particularly in the Middle East. We have won some orders there. We've been able to service those orders out of our Spain facility, and you know, at some point in time, would we make some investments there potentially. With the current capacity that we have, we can serve the Middle East through India as well as Spain, and we're pretty comfortable with that. Definitely, we're global.

Definitely, we see the reach. We see expansion. Probably the biggest programs and projects outside the United States and Europe we're seeing is in the Middle East.

Okay. Just one more on that topic again. Inside the U.S., when you've won this opportunity in Texas, it came kind of, my impression was that it came kind of suddenly and was just this incredible opportunity that presented itself. Have you had any other situations like that, or maybe as a result of that one where you've had another giant project come your way over the last, I guess since we talked to you last on the 1Q call?

Yes. I mean, we see, we for sure. We're seeing these things, and we're on earlier stages. We're on earlier stages, and we have more ability to have influence as well.

Yeah, okay. All right, thanks very much.

Sure.

Speaker 4

As a final reminder, that is star one if you would like to ask a question. We'll go next to Jeff Van Sinderen with B. Riley Securities.

Hi, everyone. Since we're on the topic, in the data center area, is there any more color you can provide on how customer concentration is evolving? You mentioned some other new customers you might pick up. I think at one point you spoke to one, there was one hyperscaler that you maybe didn't have yet as a customer. Has that converted to a customer? Are there still major new customers pending that could further increase demand? Also, just curious on the modular product demand, how that's progressing?

Speaker 6

Yeah. Thanks for that question. We have great relationships with the hyperscalers, and we're building relationships with the hyper. We're building further along with some of our new hyperscalers. We're advancing in terms, we're advancing our products. We're advancing our discussions. That gives us confidence that we can grow those. If we think about the five major hypers today, two of them are the majority of what we do today. There's a lot of expanding and expansion that can happen now that we have the networks inside the other three, and now that we have the technical specs and capabilities that we've been able to prove and meet with them. There's a lot of expansion just within the hypers today. You can expand outside of that with the NeoCloud providers.

I think we've been very successful with one NeoCloud provider that gives us the ability to, it's proven our capabilities that it has driven genuine interest with the others. Geographically, we talked about some other areas that there are going to be some large players where we can expand. Certainly, there's the ability to do that. The only reason why we have that ability is because we have the products, and now we have the relationships with the biggest, with some of the biggest data center providers in the world.

Okay. Great. I think you mentioned in some of your earlier comments about having a wider aperture, and generally improving visibility for the data center product demand. How far out can you see in the data center business at this point? I know sometimes maybe customers pull sooner than you think. I think you spoke to that a little bit. What does demand for the data center solutions look like if you go out a year or two years or as far as you can see?

You're right. Some of these things are pretty urgent, sudden, and they can be, you know, we want to do the best we can to please our customers, especially our largest ones. Those are things that we have a pretty quick reaction, and we're very quick to react in terms of being able to produce and get that product out. Albeit inefficiently, we can at least drive the revenue growth and satisfy the customer's demand. When that's not the case, and it's more strategic, and you're working with customers that are thinking about, you know, where they're going to advance and where they want to move and deploy capital, we can see anywhere from three to five years out.

I would say with the majority of our largest customers, we have that visibility, and that's really helpful in terms of allowing us to make sure that we're strategically deploying capital in the right places and that we're adding the facilities and factories in the right regions.

Okay. Great. Just one example.

One example of that is what we did in India, right? That was in place. We talked about that a year ago, and we want, you know, the major driver to move and have facilities and capacity in India was because our customers asked for it. They specifically said, "Hey, we're going to be here in a couple of years, and we need your help and support. Are you guys willing to invest in that region?" That's a good example of the outcome of having these conversations years in advance so that we can have the facility up in time.

Right. In other words, you're not going someplace with a new facility where there might not be demand. You're really building to demand.

Correct. Yes, we're building to demand, and their demand is high. There's great demand for our products. The technology and the solutions are a premium in the marketplace, and we see it. That's why we're deploying the amount of CapEx that we are.

Okay. If I could just squeeze in one more, just on the CDU part of your business, how do you see the liquid cooling business evolving? How does that become a concentration business for you? How much of the business do you think liquid cooling could comprise, I don't know, a couple of years out?

Yeah. That’s specific direct-to-chip liquid cooling. All of our products can apply in the liquid cooling space. You need our products for that. The air cooling solutions will apply in the liquid cooling space. If you get direct-to-chip CDUs, they’re certainly beneficial and helpful. I continue to see that market evolve. I think, you know, there’s been some new technologies in that space. I think there’s some interesting areas that we’ve helped our customers in terms of providing different ways of doing that. You can see some of those announcements out there. We’ll have a product. There’ll be customers that need it, but not everybody, in order to do liquid cooling. It’s just one more product in an ever-evolving suite of products that we have. We’ll always try to do it in a way to differentiate, so it’s not a me-too product.

We’ll do a unique custom bespoke CDU for our customers, tie it to our firmware and software so it does things that others can’t do, and it’s differentiated. Again, it’s just one more product in a series of products that we have that continue to evolve.

Thanks for taking our questions. Continued success.

Thank you.

Speaker 4

We have a follow-up question from David Tarantino with KeyBank Capital Markets.

Hey, thanks for taking the follow-up. Could you just give us some color on the range of outcomes you embedded within the ramp implied in the second half? Just kind of what's inside and outside of your control in terms of hitting both the sales and margin targets this year?

Speaker 1

Yeah. We really tried to take it, as we always do, David, down the middle. We've got, as Neil said, one of the challenges we're trying to balance is the demand has increased. Neil has said this before multiple times, but the more we can make, the more we can sell. We've aligned to internal targets that we're stretching to get to from a manufacturing, and we've pulled those back, both with customers so we don't disappoint them and with guidance where we've tried to kind of strike down the middle. On the other side, you always have risks that you have a hiccup with a line or some more inefficiencies. I would say as we look at it now, we try to go right down the middle.

In addition, we talked a lot about the chiller ramps, the other areas where we're getting equal opportunities for more cross on the air side. Certainly, a lot of customers are interested on the modular side, even though those are early days. Those are things we've tried to balance to keep to balance out the chiller launch risk as well.

Great. Maybe one more, if I may, just on HVAC technology and the weakness there. Could you break out kind of the underlying trends between the core business and the recent deals and how we should expect this to progress through the balance of the year on both the top and margin lines?

Speaker 6

Yeah. Generally, the acquisitions are on target. They're doing what we would expect them to do. The indoor air quality business is performing well. It's in line with what we expect, at market rate. What we're entering now is what we call our heat season. This is the next couple of quarters for the heat business, which is going to be big for us. That's the traditional Modine heaters as well as the L.B. White acquisitions. This is the time of year where we start to see our customers and distributors really start to draw on our inventory levels.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Just a quick couple of numbers on that to help you out. As we look at the total segment for Climate Solutions in there with the acquisitions, we would assume HVAC technologies would have a total growth well over 40% to 45%, and organically, that would be mid to high single-digit organic with the balance being from the acquisition.

Okay, great. Thanks, guys.

Speaker 4

That does conclude our question and answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back to Kathy Powers.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Thanks to everybody for joining us this morning. The replay will be available through our website in about two hours. Thanks.

Speaker 4

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.