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The Manitowoc Company, Inc. (MTW)

Q3 2025 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 6, 2025

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Manitowoc Company Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ion Warner, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Ion Warner

Analyst

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our earnings call to review the company's third quarter 2025 financial performance and business update as outlined in last evening's press release. Joining me this morning with prepared remarks are Aaron Ravenscroft, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Brian Regan, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, we posted our slide presentation on the Investor Relations section of our website, manitowoc.com, which you can use to follow along with our prepared remarks. Please turn to Slide 2. Before we start, please note our safe harbor statement in the material provided for this call. During today's call, forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 are made based on the company's current assessment of its markets and other factors that affect its business. However, actual results could differ materially from any implied or actual projections due to one or more of the factors, among others, described in the company's latest SEC filings. The Manitowoc Company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether the result of new information, future events or other circumstances. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Aaron.

Aaron Ravenscroft

Analyst

Thank you, Ion, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to Slide 3. To start, I'd like to thank the Manitowoc team for their hard work and persistence through a very complicated period. The great trade reset continues to unfold, presenting new challenges every day. Nevertheless, our team continues to fight to the process, service our customers and execute our CRANES+50 strategy to grow our aftermarket. Overall, I was pleased with the quarter, especially considering the tariff headwinds. Sequentially, the third quarter is usually much softer than the second quarter, but we were able to recover some lost ground. And compared to last year, the numbers look good, too. During the third quarter, we generated $553 million in revenue and adjusted EBITDA of $34 million, which was up 30% year-over-year. Orders were $491 million versus $425 million last year, and backlog ended the period at $667 million. Our non-new machine sales were $177 million, up 5% versus last year, reaching a record $667 million on a trailing 12-month basis. Please turn to Slide 4. Moving to the Manitowoc Way. I recently visited our Zhangjiagang factory in China, where we produce tower cranes for the Belt and Road markets. As we've mentioned on previous calls, we recently developed several new large capacity cranes and upgraded the factory to support their production. While it was great to see the value stream running in full swing, the biggest surprise to me was the improvements in the smaller crane value stream. The team has done an amazing job with kitting and point-of-use materials, significantly improving our flow and throughput in roughly half the space. Overall, the team increased its earned hours by 30% compared to last year with flat headcount, a great increase in productivity. A huge thanks to [indiscernible] Gary Wong and the rest…

Brian Regan

Analyst

Thanks, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. Please move to Slide 6. During the quarter, we had orders of $491 million, an increase of 16% compared to a year ago. The year-over-year increase was largely attributable to higher orders in the Americas and European tower crane businesses, where comps were fairly easy. In the U.S., the prior year was significantly impacted by uncertainty from the election and Europe was experiencing a downturn. As Aaron mentioned, our European tower crane business continues to show signs of improvement with a 34% increase in new machine orders compared to last year, the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year improvement. As it relates to backlog, we ended the quarter at $667 million and expect approximately 60% of it to ship by the end of the year. Net sales in the third quarter were $553 million, up 5% versus the prior year. Non-new and new machine sales at both our European tower crane business and MGX drove the year-over-year revenue improvement. From a trailing 12-month perspective, non-new machine sales reached $667 million, reflecting another great quarter by the team in progressing our CRANES+50 strategy and another record. On an adjusted basis, SG&A expenses as a percentage of sales were flat year-over-year. Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $34 million, an increase of 30% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 6%, an increase of 120 basis points over the prior year, reflecting a better mix of revenue. Please move to Slide 7. Net working capital ended the quarter at $622 million. The majority of our net working capital increase from the prior year was driven by inventory, which was impacted by unfavorable foreign currency exchange rates, tariffs as well as a few missed units we had planned to ship during the quarter. Similar to last year, we expect…

Aaron Ravenscroft

Analyst

Thank you, Brian. Please turn to Slide 8. To close, I'd like to focus on our CRANES+50 strategy, which provides higher margins and more consistent revenue streams. Over the last 12 months, our non-new machine sales grew 8% to $667 million. Given that this revenue generates roughly 35% in gross margins, every sale is crucial to offsetting the softness in the U.S. OE market. I'd like to share a few highlights from my recent visits to our service branches in Denver, Langenfeld, Germany and Meru, France. Starting with Denver, we opened this greenfield location in 2023 to replace a low-performing dealer. Today, we have 13 team members and the branch has almost doubled sales into the territory by focusing on the customer. In addition to selling Manitowoc equipment, the team has done a great job of also selling extreme telehandlers in this region. These machines are perfect for managing a crane yard, and this is a great example of the entrepreneurial spirit within MGX. One of the coolest things that I saw at the branch was that the local service manager used his personal 3D printer to manufacture a homemade tool to help technicians perform wheel alignments. It's a significant safety improvement and saves 4 hours of work on the job. In Langenfeld, Germany, we expanded our legacy aftermarket location to start our tower crane rental fleet initiative. I'm pleased to say that 67 cranes of our 75-unit rental fleet were in service during my visit, while the remaining 8 units were reserved for upcoming projects. Back to my earlier comments on the German tower crane market, this is a great indicator of the improving market. With the mobile business, Langenfeld also plays a critical role in our trade-ins and used sales. This is where we homologate used cranes that…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] There are no questions in the queue. I'd like to hand the call over back to Ion Warner -- we have a question from Tyler Russell from Barclays.

Tyler Russell

Analyst

So great quarter. Margins were up year-on-year, quarter-on-quarter. So you mentioned positive mix, but yes, I wanted to ask about the drivers of the margin improvement.

Brian Regan

Analyst

Yes, it was really -- you saw the growth in our non-new machine sales, and we talked about the tower crane business as well. So those 2 businesses are really -- starting to operate a lot better, in particular, the tower crane business and both have good margins.

Tyler Russell

Analyst

Got it. Got it. So the non-new machine sales have been consistent, but yes, I noticed that the total sales were up more, 5.4% versus 4.9%. Is that mainly driven by the tower cranes up 34% as well?

Aaron Ravenscroft

Analyst

Sorry, Tyler, I think the phone cut out...

Ion Warner

Analyst

Can you repeat your question, please?

Tyler Russell

Analyst

Sorry. Yes, I just was mentioning the non-new machine sales have been consistent, but the total sales were up more, 5.4% versus the 4.9%. So was that driven by the tower cranes as well? Or where are you seeing the improvement?

Ion Warner

Analyst

Some of that was the misses that we had in the second quarter that would have pulled in the third.

Operator

Operator

There are no more questions in the queue. I would like to turn the conference back over to Ion Warner for any closing remarks.

Ion Warner

Analyst

Thank you. Please note that a replay of our third quarter 2025 earnings call will be available later this morning by accessing the Investor Relations section of our website at manitowoc.com. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today and your continued interest in -- the Manitowoc Company. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.

Operator

Operator

Conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.