管理層發言
Hello, good day, and welcome to Diebold Nixdorf's first quarter 2025 earnings call. My name is Kate, and I'll be coordinating today's call. I provided instructions on the question-and-answer procedures. I'd now like to turn the call over to our host, Chris Sikora, Vice President of Investor Relations. Chris, please go ahead.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2025 earnings call. To accompany our prepared remarks, we posted our slide presentation to the Investor Relations section of our website. Before we start, I will remind all participants that you will hear forward-looking statements during this call. These statements reflect the expectations and beliefs of our management team at the time of this call, but they are subject to risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. You can find additional information on these factors in the company's periodic and annual filings with the SEC. Participants should be mindful that subsequent events may render this information out of date. We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures on today's call. As noted on Slide 3, a reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures can be found in the supplemental schedules of the presentation. With that, I'll turn the call over to Octavio.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Starting on Slide 4, 2025 is off to a strong start with Q1 performance on track with our expectations. By staying focused on execution and exceeding customer expectations, we delivered another quarter of standout results. Importantly, we are maintaining our financial outlook for 2025, while monitoring the tariff situation. Our market-leading automation and self-service technologies drove a significant 36% year-over-year growth in product orders, with growth across banking and retail and in all major geographies. We saw continued strength in the adoption of cash recyclers. This robust momentum positioned us well to achieve our revenue growth in the second half of the year. Our lean operating model and continuous improvement mindset are delivering. Gross margin expanded 20 basis points year-over-year and 140 basis points sequentially. We are starting 2025 on solid footing and are making solid progress to hit our three-year targets, growing product gross margins 25 basis points to 50 basis points annually and service gross margins approximately 100 basis points annually.
We are maintaining our fortress balance sheet with low net leverage to support our capital allocation priorities, while strengthening our free cash flow generation. We generated $6 million in positive free cash flow in the quarter, the best first quarter in our company's history, as we deliberately take steps towards improving our cash flow seasonality, and we are delivering for shareholders, kicking off our $100 million share repurchase program in March by repurchasing $8 million of DN shares. We are proud to take this important first step to increasing capital returns. We believe there is upside potential to our stock and we expect to continue executing this initial program in a prudent manner. In line with our commitment of maximizing value, we remain focused on returning capital to shareholders in the form of share repurchase. Regarding the geopolitical backdrop and the new tariff policy, we're prepared for tariffs, given our long-time global operations and investments in local-to-local manufacturing.
There are some areas of potential impact in our supply chain, but the team is already taking action, leveraging our local manufacturing and LEAP principles to keep costs in check. Tom will dive deeper into this in a moment. I am incredibly proud of our global team for staying focused on delighting customers and advancing our continuous improvement culture. Let's move to Slide 5. Taking a step back, we wanted to reiterate what we see as the key drivers of value creation for Diebold Nixdorf, which we communicated at our February 2025 Investor Day. We are focused on delivering on the three-year growth acceleration plan we set to drive meaningful value as a global leader, providing mission-critical hardware, service, and software transforming the way people bank and shop. To that end, we are delivering across three key pillars. First, we're capturing secular tailwinds across our two complementary businesses, banking and retail, where customers continue to seek more self-service and automation solutions.
Both banking and retail are large and growing opportunities representing a combined $32 billion total addressable market. Second, we are driving growth and improved profitability. In banking, we are accelerating growth through branch automation solutions and fit-for-purpose devices and through a long-term ATM refresh cycle. In retail, we are driving enhanced AI-driven checkout capabilities and penetration of the North American market. We are improving profitability through our lean operations. There are significant operational efficiencies being unlocked across the organization. This is really becoming part of our culture and ingrained in the minds and hearts of our employees. We are seeing great action from our team, and we expect continued benefit from these initiatives. Third, we are increasing our cash generation. Higher free cash flow conversion enables us to increase shareholder returns via share repurchase.
Taken together we believe our plan will enable us to deliver mid-single-digit annual revenue growth by 2027, as well as double-digit adjusted EBITDA growth and 15% margins by 2027. This works out to $800 million in cumulative free cash flow over the next three years and 60% plus free cash flow conversion in 2027, while maintaining a fortress balance sheet and increasing capital return for our shareholders. With that, I would like to turn to Slide 6, where we will discuss our growth acceleration strategy progress. I'm excited to share that Q1 shows we're already advancing on the priorities we outlined. In banking, we are transforming how financial institutions operate with cutting-edge branch automation and tailored ATMs for high-growth regions like Asia Pacific and the Middle East. Our branch automation solutions integrate advanced ATM and teller cash recyclers with our pre-packaged managed service and software offerings, enabling banks to streamline operations and enhance customer experience.
We're gaining traction with the number of large national and regional banks in the US, and our pipeline continues to grow. Meanwhile, our tailored fit-for-purpose ATMs and recyclers like the India-made units now rolling out are designed for local needs, compact, energy- and cost-efficient, and paired with bundled software and services. Similarly, our high capacity recycler unit developed for the Middle East and Africa has allowed us to win several new logos this quarter. By expanding our install base in these high-growth regions, we will drive high-margin recurring service and software revenue. In retail, we are redefining self-checkout with AI-driven solutions like Vynamic Smart Vision. This technology uses advanced computer vision to reduce shrink by detecting unscanned items and streamlining checkout with automatic produce recognition, saving time for shoppers and cutting costs for retailers.
Pilots are underway with major chains, showing strong results, including a 70% reduction in fraud for one of our European customers. Beyond applying AI-driven solutions to self-checkouts, we are leveraging our deep expertise to deploy fraud prevention solutions at the traditional point-of-sale terminal and in store aisles. And as we execute our North America expansion strategy, our investments in local manufacturing in Ohio and expanding our North America sales team are showing steady progress with opportunities identified that would contribute to the expected second-half recovery in 2025. On manufacturing, supply chain and product, we remain well-positioned to achieve our targets, given our established strategy of local-for-local manufacturing and the initial impact of applying lean principles. We are acting swiftly to deploy mitigating actions for our supply chain in the face of rising tariffs, and accelerating our development of an in-country supplier base to help mitigate pricing costs.
We also implemented targeted price adjustments in North America. And in services, we are rolling out Oracle Deal Services and combining it with our All-Connect data engine analytics platform to deliver faster, smarter support, making our customers' lives easier. These solutions aren't just about innovation. They're about solving real problems and creating lasting value for customers and shareholders. Now, on to Slide 7. Service is the heartbeat of our business, and in 2025, we're doubling down on making it world-class. In Q1, we held intensive Kaizen events across six countries, from Canada to India, and as you can see from the pictures, hundreds of employees participated. We are advancing our cultural transformation and helping streamline how we serve our customers. The results are clear. Improved safety for our teams, faster repairs, fewer repeat calls, happier customers, and a reduction in average days of inventory on hand.
As I met with many of our customers this quarter, I was encouraged by the recognition of the positive impact we're driving in their operations. These improvements do more than delight our customers. They boost margins, strengthen loyalty, and ensure technicians work safer, fueling our team well-being and profitability. By pairing lean principles with tools like Oracle Deal Services, we're not just meeting service agreements, we're focused on exceeding them consistently. This is our path to becoming the undisputed leader in service, delivering unmatched value to our customers and shareholders alike. With that, I'll turn it over to Tom to walk us through our financial results.
Thank you, Octavio. Starting on Slide 8, we provide a five-quarter financial trend, which shows how our business typically builds throughout the year. Overall, first-quarter results represent a solid start to the year. Most importantly, we delivered in areas that position us well to achieve our full-year objectives. First-quarter product backlog increased to approximately $900 million, up from approximately $800 million at year end on strong new order entry, which was up 36% year-over-year with improvements across both banking and retail. Coming into the year, we expected a 45-55 revenue split weighted to a strong second half of the year, and our teams are converting on those opportunities. Our first-quarter performance, along with achievable Q2 order entry targets, will give us approximately 80% to 90% visibility into full-year product revenue, and this is supported by our April order entry levels.
Gross margin continues to improve, up 20 basis points year-over-year and 140 basis points sequentially, primarily due to better geographic and product mix, as well as the impact from our lean initiatives. We are maintaining our cost discipline and continuing our work to improve our overall cost profile. In the first quarter, operating expense was up year-over-year due to higher incentive compensation and investments in supporting our strategic growth initiatives that Octavio outlined earlier. Continuing on to Slide 9, we remain committed to strengthening our profitability and improving our free cash flow generation. We delivered adjusted EBITDA of $87 million in the first quarter. We also generated $6 million of free cash flow in Q1, which is the best first-quarter performance in Diebold Nixdorf’s history during our seasonally weakest quarter. This is a solid start on our journey to improve free cash flow conversion to 40% plus in 2025, which was driven by lower interest expense, working capital efficiency around inventory and accounts payable, reduced professional fees as well as a better process around timing of non-income tax-related payments that benefited the quarter.
I also want to reiterate our commitment to increasing transparency for investors and our results. Our first-quarter results represent an initial step for us in delivering simpler, easy-to-understand results with fewer adjustments to EBITDA. Moving to Slide 10, banking delivered another solid quarterly performance with accelerated adoption of cash recycling technology and its associated software and service business. Order entry was very strong, up approximately 50% year-over-year, and supports our revenue outlook for the year. Banking revenue was up $9 million year-over-year, excluding the impact of FX and the non-recurring Brazil tax item in Q1 of 2024. Gross margin was up 20 basis points year-over-year and 180 basis points compared to the prior quarter, with margin expansion across both product and service, driven by the impact of lean initiatives and improving North America service performance.
We continue to see strong ATM refresh activity and the adoption of recycling. The initial traction we are gaining with branch automation solutions and our fit-for-purpose product portfolio, plus our outstanding order entry performance, gives us confidence for the remainder of the year. Turning to Slide 11, the macro environment continues to impact retail product revenue, but as we mentioned before, we are seeing signs of stabilization that point to a second-half recovery and sequential quarter improvement throughout the year. This is supported by our improved order entry in the quarter, up approximately 10% with stronger demand for our self-service solutions. In the U.S., we are gaining traction and building a strong pipeline with several new customers conducting proof-of-concepts and pilots with our solutions. Despite declining volumes, gross margin was up year-over-year and sequentially, as we continue to implement our lean operating principles and maintain pricing discipline.
We are confident in our ability to improve service margins in 2025, given that most of our self-service deliveries represent new deployments in the market. Despite the near-term market challenges, our long-term outlook in retail remains positive. We are especially excited about our Vynamic Smart Vision capabilities and early positive signs in North America with a growing pipeline. Moving to Slide 12. We wanted to share additional details with you on how we are framing the tariff policy risk. Keep in mind that we have dealt with tariffs in the past, as we are a global company operating in more than 100 countries. As we have previously stated, our local-to-local manufacturing structure means we don't anticipate a material impact from tariffs. However, given the evolution of the tariffs announced, we wanted to provide a little bit more context. Importantly, even despite broader and higher tariff policies announced since we last spoke, we continue to reiterate our original 2025 financial guidance.
Based on enacted or proposed tariffs, we estimate the gross impact for 2025 is approximately $20 million, and we are working to mitigate up to approximately 50% of the headwind for the year. Our 2025 guidance ranges incorporates this framework. However, we will continue to monitor and adjust if required, as the tariff landscape continues to evolve and our mitigation efforts take hold. We see the largest impact from our imports from China and Germany, collectively about $15 million, based on current tariff conditions of 145% for China and 10% for all other countries. Our framework assumes these conditions remain in place for the full year. Our mitigation strategies prioritize the impacts from China and Germany with accelerated productivity efforts from our lean initiatives, sourcing alternative parts, negotiating with our suppliers, and where appropriate, pricing initiatives, and as required, greater SG&A controls.
Keeping this in mind and turning to our guidance on Slide 13, we are maintaining our 2025 guidance ranges. Our solid start to the year, combined with the current demand levels and our backlog, reinforces this outlook. However, as a global company, our visibility is affected by the recent macroeconomic uncertainty, and we will continue to monitor this going forward. We are still planning for low-single-digit banking and retail revenue growth in constant currency. The FX environment has been volatile, so we'll continue actively monitoring for potential impacts. As it relates to quarterly cadence, we continue to expect revenue to be weighted towards the second half of the year, with a 45% first half and a 55% second half. This split is based on our customer orders currently in our backlog. In 2025, we expect adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $470 million to $490 million, primarily driven by continued focus on service gross margin, with the team targeting approximately 100 basis points of gross margin expansion through lean operations.
In manufacturing, we expect a small incremental improvement in full-year product gross margin by maintaining operating expense discipline. Free cash flow is expected to be in the range of $190 million to $210 million, representing 40% plus free cash flow conversion. We remain confident in our ability to deliver another strong year of results and build upon our improving SAYDU ratio. Moving on to Slide 14 with more details on our free cash flow outlook, there is nothing more important to the company than strengthening our free cash flow. We are pleased with the progress so far in the first quarter, generating $6 million of positive free cash flow as this helps to de-risk the year and is a key step toward improving our seasonality. We have line of sight to deliver on our free cash flow guidance range based on the debt pay down and refinancing we completed in December of 2024, which provides $70 million in annual cash interest savings, $30 million contribution from higher adjusted EBITDA using the midpoint of our guidance range driven primarily by service gross margin expansion.
Approximately $20 million contribution from reduced professional fees related to our corporate restructuring, and we are also factoring into our bridge approximately $30 million of impact from strategic investments, including CapEx combined with the impact of strong accounts receivable harvesting in 2024. This outlines what we can achieve this year as we drive towards our goal of free cash flow conversion of 60 plus percent over the next three years. Turning to Slide 15, we are benefiting from our fortress balance sheet and bolstered liquidity position that support our capital allocation priorities. At the end of the quarter, we have more than $635 million of liquidity, comprised of $328 million of cash and short-term investments and $310 million of capacity on our revolving credit facility. Our net leverage ratio is 1.5 times, well within the range we have set for the company of 1.3 to 1.7 times, representing one of the strongest balance sheets in the industry.
And after executing the first $8 million of share repurchase in March, we expect to continue strategically executing on our remaining $92 million authorization throughout the year. This is not the Diebold Nixdorf of old; the work we have done to build our fortress balance sheet and implement our local-to-local manufacturing footprint are foundational elements for the company, and position us well to serve our customers and respond operationally to the current macro uncertainty. Lastly, this is another quarter of DN doing what we said we would do and we intend to keep this positive momentum through the remainder of the year. With that, I'll turn it back to Octavio for some closing comments.
Thank you, Tom. To wrap things up on Slide 16, we delivered a strong quarter, focusing on our customers and employees while improving operations, demonstrating significant progress against our multi-year growth plan. In banking, we see steady demand for our DN series ATMs and our focus on optimizing the end-to-end cash ecosystem with our branch automation solutions. In retail, we have invested in accelerating our North America growth opportunity and enhanced our self-service offerings with AI capabilities. Retailers are impressed with how our solutions address their pain points and drive higher efficiencies while better serving their customers. We have made tremendous improvements in building efficiency in our operations through a disciplined lean culture. We are expanding our lean efforts throughout the enterprise over the course of 2025 and beyond, and we are focused on maintaining a fortress balance sheet and nearly doubling year-over-year free cash flow generation. My thanks go to our 21,000 employees around the world, as we work to build a top-performing company. It is an exciting time at Diebold Nixdorf. We have taken numerous steps to position the company for long-term success and create value for our customers and shareholders. And with that, operator, please open the line for questions.
分析師問答
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. I provided instructions on the Q&A procedures. Our first question will come from the line of Matt Bryson with Wedbush. Your line is open.
Hi, sorry. I've had some problems—I've been muted on my end. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the positive cash flow.
Thanks, Matt.
The new orders or the backlog growth was impressive, particularly in Q1. It looks like it was broad-based across both product categories. Can you talk a little bit more about what you saw driving that, both on the banking and the retail side?
Yes. So, what we're seeing is healthy banking cash recycling adoption. We continue to see strength in Europe and Latin America, and improved retail self-service activity, both of which support our second-half recovery. We also see robust momentum to help us achieve our revenue growth not only in the second quarter but for the remainder of the year. Remember our weighting of revenues is 45% first half and 55% second half, so hitting the order entry targets that we have for Q1 was important. Given what we're seeing and the activity in April, this continues to support our expectations for a solid full year. I will say, I'm almost a year into the role, so my history isn't that deep, but at this point, we have about 80% to 90% visibility on our full-year product revenue. As you mentioned, backlog did increase from approximately $800 million at year-end to $900 million at the end of the quarter.
And it sounds like on the tariff side, the impact isn't that substantial, and you already have mitigation plans in place to offset at least a portion of the tariffs. But have you seen customers accelerate their order rate given uncertainty around what things might look like going forward, or is that not playing into your business at all?
Not in business, Matt. No, not really. Remember, the tariffs were announced after our quarter had ended. So even though there was some talk about it, there was no real impact during Q1 from the tariffs. I would say it was the strength of the business during Q1 that drove the higher orders in the quarter. I had the chance to speak with many of our customers here in the U.S. in both banking and retail. After the quarter ended, we discussed the possible impact of tariffs, and I would say customers understand there might be an impact in pricing, but nobody has expressed real concern about slowing down or changing their investment plans for the year.
Awesome. And just one last one from me and I'll jump back in the queue. You have a relatively large foreign exchange expense — I think it was $18.5 million. Can you just talk about the dynamics there? Obviously currencies fluctuated a lot this past quarter, and if that hadn't been in the income statement the net profit would've looked really good.
Yeah. First, let me reiterate this is a non-cash, non-operational impact to our P&L tied to our intercompany loans and the volatile currency fluctuations in the first quarter. It's driven primarily by some of the loans that we have with Brazil and Europe through our internal banking structure that lost value from a weakened dollar. We've seen some reversal of this trend in the second quarter, and this is something we intend to monitor as we go forward through the year. But again, it's non-cash and non-operational.
Yeah, that's what I wanted to hear. Because again, if that wasn't in the income statement the net profit would've been a positive surprise versus consensus. Thanks for the color, guys.
Our next question will come from the line of Matt Somerville with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open.
Thanks. Excuse me, a couple of questions. First, on the banking side, orders were up 50% year-over-year. Can you give a little more granularity in terms of how that played out across the four major regions in which you compete? Additionally, with respect to recycling adoption, are we starting to get a little long in that cycle at this point, or how much runway do you still see? I have one or two follow-ups after that.
Sure, Matt. I'll start with the refresh cycle and recycling adoption. I would tell you we're still fairly early. At the beginning of the year, we shipped 200,000 DN-series ATMs globally. If we look at our install base, we still have 600,000 devices to upgrade, so we're roughly 25% to 30% in. I still think we have a lot of runway. Looking at the major markets supports this. In the U.S., there are important new orders around recycling, and some large financial institutions are in the midst of a refresh cycle that is now permeating regional accounts, credit unions, and community banks. The U.S. had very positive momentum through the first quarter with a lot of forward activity, so we feel good about North America. We're very focused on improving our service because that continues to drive additional customer awards. The better service we provide, the more orders we get. In Europe, we've had a very positive surprise in the ATM side.
Europe is a stable market with a lot of consolidation and shared networks, but we continue to win and gain share in those networks. We've had significant awards in France and Belgium, and I'm proud of our European team. In Latin America, cash remains prominent, and we continue to see momentum. In Q1 we had a large opportunity in Brazil with TecBan, the bank network owned by many banks in Brazil, and we started delivering in late March. For Asia Pacific, our fit-for-purpose device strategy is progressing; products in India are in production and being certified by multiple customers. We also had success with our high-capacity recycler in markets like the Middle East, where we won significant new customers. So overall, we saw healthy demand across our four regions and we see the trend continuing into April despite global uncertainty. For retail, orders were up year-over-year, and our new U.S. retail team has built a solid pipeline that should fuel our second-half growth.
I want to dovetail off your last comment on the retail side in North America. You've said twice now that it's going to contribute to your growth in the second half. Do you have customers in hand? Anything more tangible you can give us? At Investor Day, teammates were upbeat about potentially breaking into some of the biggest retailers. Can you give additional color?
Yes. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but we have pilots and proof-of-concepts with some of the largest retailers in North America as we speak. We are the new entrant in the U.S. market, so our products are being tested by large grocers and general merchandising companies. As those pilots evolve, we believe the technology and solutions will prove valuable, and as these large companies make purchasing decisions, we have a real shot at gaining market share in the U.S.
One more question on the tariff side. I imagine you learned lessons about contract structure during the supply chain crisis. Why not flex more pricing muscle today to fully offset the $20 million tariff impact? What limits your price power?
Hi Matt, I'll take that one. If we step back, our local-to-local manufacturing structure and agility mean we can greatly mitigate the material impact of these tariffs. On the $20 million estimate, we have a clear line of sight to mitigate up to 50%. That mitigation breaks down roughly one third from lean productivity efforts, one third from supplier negotiation and sourcing alternatives, and one third from pricing. We have more left in each of those areas and we expect to continue mitigation efforts as the year progresses. Additionally, we are focused on SG&A and OpEx discipline, which provides another operational lever. That's why we're comfortable with our current guidance range: lean, supplier, pricing, and additional SG&A actions provide the overall mitigation plan.
We will take our final question from the line of Justin Ages with CJS Securities. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions.
Yes, Justin, go ahead.
On the improvements in free cash flow both in the quarter and for guidance and the long-term guide, can you give more color on the working capital improvements? I know you mentioned accounts payable contributed positively this quarter, but there was an AR headwind. Hoping to get more detail there.
First, I want to congratulate the organization on the first-quarter free cash flow results — positive $6 million. That's the first time in a long time we've achieved positive cash flow in our seasonally weakest quarter. If I bridge Q1 2024 to Q1 2025, the refinancing we completed in December alleviated cash interest expense. We also had working capital efficiencies on inventory and accounts payable. The new Diebold is very conscious about when we buy raw materials to get into production for the second half of the year, so you're seeing more operating discipline on the manufacturing side. Last year we had a lot of accounts receivable coming out of bankruptcy that we were able to collect, so that will be a headwind likely for the remainder of the year, but we expect to continue to drive DSO improvement and manage inventory and AP. We also saw reduced professional fees, which helped. Importantly, we exercised better discipline around prepayments and avoided offering discounts to pull prepayments into Q4, which previously resulted in a large VAT payment in Q1. By letting things happen in the natural rhythm of the business and avoiding those discounts, we improved free cash flow by about $20 million. It's operating discipline, not doing things the way we used to, that is starting to show benefits.
Very helpful. Thanks for the comprehensive breakdown. Then my last question on capital allocation priorities: how are you thinking about that, especially in light of starting to generate more free cash flow? I know you repurchased $8 million of shares this quarter, but how do you think about that going forward?
Yes, happy to. We repurchased $8 million of shares this quarter, but remember our repurchase program started in March, so that was essentially one month of activity. A typical quarter would likely be larger depending on seasonality of cash flow toward the end of the year. Let me be clear: our excess cash is returned to shareholders. Right now, we feel the best ROI is our stock price, and that's what we're doing via the share repurchase. At the same time, we're making the investments needed in CapEx and to drive our growth strategies forward. But excess cash flow is being returned to shareholders through repurchases.
Thank you. At this time, we have no further questions. I'll now turn the call over to Chris Sikora for his closing remarks.
Thank you for participating in today's call and your interest in Diebold Nixdorf. If you have any follow-up questions to the call, please feel free to reach out to investor relations. Thanks again, and have a good rest of the day.
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.