Good morning, everyone. Starting off day three here on the conference, and on a strong note here with the guys from Cummins. Chris Clulow, to my left, has continued the long-standing history of having excellent IR folks at running the department at Cummins, and so I think just to start, for those that are newer to the story, maybe we just, Chris, if you would help just kind of give an overview. Cummins today is a lot different than it would have been, you know, 10, 20 years ago, so kind of just walk through the story, and then we'll go into Q&A, and if anyone has any questions as we go along, just raise your hand, and I'll get to you.
Yeah, you're absolutely right, Tim. This is a very different company. I joined about 21 years ago, 2004, and it's now we're about five times the size in revenue and in a much better place. I think Cummins is a global provider of power, is how I'd say it. Starting with diesel engines is our history, our 100+ year history. But we also have natural gas. We go into the big engine space, which gets into mining, data centers, which I'm sure everybody's interested in, backup power generation. And then we have battery electric, we have hydrogen, we have a multitude of fuels. Kind of our strategy is Destination Zero, which is taking all of our products and decarbonizing over time. And it's a business opportunity for us because, you know, harder emission standards and difficult technical challenges is kind of our bread and butter. That's where we shine.
And so we have continued to grow really globally over the course of the last 20 years, really, and expand out into different spaces, different avenues. We're certainly, North America is a big piece of our business, but we have a presence in nearly every country in the world, including our global distribution network. So if you have a product anywhere in the world, we can service it, which is a huge advantage for us. And it's been a really nice growth story. This year is a really remarkable year for us where in our North America heavy-duty and medium-duty truck markets, we expect a bit of a downturn, which I'm sure we'll get into. And we're raising our profitability guidance.
That's historic for the company where that's been usually the cycles that we've gone through, but we have other pieces of the business that have compensated, and we've driven a lot of efficiency and improvement in the business to enable that improvement in profitability, and we're not done. I think we're still early in the journey on improving our margins and really looking forward to the next 100+ years of the company.
That's great. Maybe to your point on the globality of Cummins, maybe just spend a minute or two kind of taking us around the world in terms of the key geographies, and you know, in a year overall, from a Cummins top-line perspective, that's flattish. You've obviously got some markets that are moving up and down.
Yeah, so I'd say the big markets for us, North America, that's the truck markets, the construction markets, and then the big engine markets, mining and power generation being the big ones. When I go around the world, probably the next biggest market for us is China, biggest truck market in the world by far. It's a down market this year, and still, including exports, is about a million trucks, which is bigger than probably the next three markets combined. So still a very significant market. And we've been playing there. This is our 50th year. So this is not a new market for us. We're well established. We have some joint venture relationships that go back several decades that really give us a good foothold in that what is a very big market for us. And that market is starting to, we're starting to see some recovery signs.
It's been stable and at the low end for a couple of years, at least in the truck space. The big engine side, the big industrial side has been strong for four or five years still with power generation, with mining, and so forth. India is probably our next biggest market. Again, it's another market where we've been in 60+ years. Have a publicly traded entity there that's in for our large engine space as well. And that's been a, that's the market I think that has probably got the least of barriers for growth. It is starting to hum. We're seeing a lot of infrastructure build out. That is kind of starting to see the signs where they're getting through many of the bureaucratic barriers that were there in the past. And now it's really starting to grow.
We see a really good growth scenario in both power generation currently, the truck market, and all the industrial markets. So that's an exciting market for us. Europe, we play a bit. I'd say we have a good presence there, lots of manufacturing there. We don't play as much in the truck market there, but in the big engine side, that's more of a global market where we play. And then everywhere else around the world, I think, is the other pieces that still are important for us. So we have a large presence in Africa and Australia and really pretty much everywhere.
Just on China, obviously a key driver for Cummins. If you look at the profitability of the joint ventures over time, maybe better than if someone were to look at industrial PPI in China down 2.5%, you'd think, boy, it's probably a difficult market to get priced, probably one that is a little harder to improve margins, but Cummins has been able, it seems, to do that. Maybe spend a minute on that.
Very much so. Yeah, I think this has been a market where we've taken different approaches to improving our profitability there. And it's a big profit driver. It's not as big a revenue driver given some of our joint venture structures. It's 10% or so of our revenue, but it can be in the high teens in terms of our profitability overall, or EBITDA overall. And what drives it is we have our joint venture structures, and we've moved those over time where we get good profitability out of those joint ventures, but we also have license fees and tech fees and different ways to extract value. And then we set up our components business as emissions have changed in China. They're at Euro VI equivalent right now. They've taken more after treatments, different turbos, different things.
Those are our wholly owned businesses for us, and we sell into our joint ventures. That's been a very good growth mode for us and quite a profitable one because it's become more and more difficult for the local players to hit those emission standards. This has opened up business opportunities for us and pricing opportunities. I think we've navigated through it pretty well. I would say that we've also done well in terms of moving cash. It's good when you have profits, but if you don't have cash, it doesn't make as much of a difference. We've done well in terms of getting cash from the country as well over the past several decades.
Switching to North America, you know, on the truck market, the monthly orders don't probably tell us as much as they used to. But still, we have seen some deceleration here in the past month or two. We saw some numbers last night. Does that change the view of, obviously, one month isn't, but just the trends? Does it change the outlook in terms of the expectation for the year as we start slow and then we build as we get into the back half of the year? Maybe just how you're thinking about that.
Yeah, I don't think it changes our outlook in terms of the base market. It is. We expected Q1 to be the lowest point. Q4 was down. Production remains at a relatively low level currently, and we expect it to ramp through the year. So that's not too surprising. The orders were stronger than people thought, including us, in the back half of last year. And so we look at it kind of average over time, and it's still strong.
Medium duty, it was nice to see medium duty strengthen a little bit because that had been down for a couple of months. But we don't read too much into the orders. I think our long-term view is what we've seen from the orders. I'll take heavy duty. It's not pre-buy behavior ahead of the EPA 27 emissions. It's more of indicating that the base market is strengthening. The base market is at about replacement level, which is, you know, I guess you could, it's a downturn, but getting to replacement level is hardly a downturn.
So I think we're still at a pretty stable level. The demand is strong with freight showing some signs of improvement. I think that'll certainly help. This is a very unique cycle. We've drawn out the cycle a long time. Usually when freight trends down, our markets trend down, but it's been just different because of a long backlog coming out of the pandemic from years ago. And then the OEMs probably realizing the benefit of building stable, as have we. So I think overall, I think we're feeling pretty bullish about the market in terms of how it will improve for the rest of the year. I will put the proviso on there. That's a non-terrifying comment. So that can put a wrinkle into our markets for sure.
Yeah, and the uniqueness of this cycle as we look forward, you have the prospects of what may be the biggest ever year in 2026 as we look ahead to a potential pre-buy. But at the same time, it wasn't too long ago that supply chain challenges were with us in a big way. So, you know, and again, that's hard to forecast, but in terms of, you know, the supply chain's ability to ramp up, and then with the view that maybe 2027 is a really soft year. So how do you manage that and your suppliers manage that?
For sure. I think, you know, it used to be the case where you'd get the year ahead of an emissions change, even if it was not even a big price change, that this customer base, end customer base doesn't like change. So they like the tried-and-true product. So you would get the industry would ramp up to near 400,000 truck production for heavy duty. It won't do that anymore. There's a cap on the supply chain now. People will not ramp up for one year. I think that, you know, I think it could get up in the 350 range. I think that's what we're feeling from our OEM partners is the art of the possible. But to ramp up and then come back down is unhealthy for most of the business, most of the supply base as well.
And so I think you'll see it a little bit more muted. And, you know, from our perspective, the pre-buy is not helpful for us. I mean, we'd rather have a steady build that, of course, would help us. So we'll see how this works out. We think it's, you know, if we do expect some level of pre-buy, even pushing back into 2025 because of that dynamic, it's not going to be, you're not going to be able to get it in 2026 ahead of 2027 emissions.
On the market share in North America, medium duty has been a big, you know, a tailwind for you. Maybe speak to heavy and medium duty in terms of where Cummins is as we look ahead to, you know, 2026.
Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, from a market share perspective, we've continued to grow. And this is in North America and really around the world. We expect that to continue for the most part. I'd say in the medium duty space, don't have much more. The competitor in that space now is really Ford. They're mid-single digits. And so we provide for the rest of the market.
That's a gasoline product.
Yeah, primarily gasoline products and some diesel. But I think our position there is really very strong. And it's been a journey from when I think started, it was around 17% and now up in the 90 plus is nice to be. And now I'd say in the heavy duty space, probably over the last decade, we've seen a journey from a little bit below 30% to now we're just slightly under 40% in market share.
Really good reception of our product, a lot of end customer pull. And that's what it is. When an end customer or fleet customer, as an example, goes to buy a truck, they buy for the engine oftentimes. And so they will, you know, we provide to all the OEMs and so we can have a good pull through that. And so I think we think there's still some potential for us to continue to grow share. We don't see big chunks moving in the next few years, but our steady growth in shares is what we expect.
Yeah. One of the larger for- hire trucking companies presented here yesterday and asked about the pre-buy. And their thought was, hey, EPA 27, this administration likely takes a hard look at that. I think that, you know, the timing is we're getting closer. So there's got to be.
Two years ago is closer. Yeah.
Yeah, but again, in terms of the hard to answer questions, what's the latest view on that in terms of?
Yeah, our view is, you know, we do think, you know, the most desired thing for the industry really is to have some level of certainty. This is not the case, of course, right now, and really clarity in terms of regulation. Normally you have four, five, six years ahead of regulation. So we would have a decent idea what 2030 regs would be. We have no idea what 2030 regs. We think the greenhouse gas regs are, those are not going to go into place. We thought they were aspirational to begin with, but I think those seem less likely. The 2027 emissions, we do expect some changes in those. We'll see what they are. We do, from a technical standpoint, most of the industry is there or just about there in terms of development and ready to go.
It is what is delivered with this product: not just lower emissions. For us, it's a 5%-7% more efficient product. That's a big economic value for when their sometimes number one cost is diesel. Having 5%-7% more efficiency is a big gain for them. We do see this continuing to move. From a technical standpoint, we're kind of continuing forward that this is going to go into place and we'll be ready for it. There are some question marks and murmurs about. There's an additional warranty piece, which takes the warranty to the end of useful life. It does add a considerable amount of cost. We think that is probably more under debate. I will say there's not a lot of vocal advocates for that versus detractors. That probably is more likely to be adjusted or taken away. That would take away about half the cost increase.
Let's shift gear to some of the off-highway markets and within power systems specifically. A couple of years ago, no one would have probably associated Cummins with data centers. So maybe just talk to where Cummins plays and the role of distribution and how that presumably, as you think about more of those builds moving outside North America, how the role of the Cummins distributor facilitates that.
Yeah, yeah. So I'll hum a few bars now. Our power systems business, large engine business, you know, up to, you know, 95-liter engine, which, for a power gen set, that's about three and a half megawatts. It's right in the sweet spot for backup power generation for data centers, but it also is sold into mining markets, rail, and other industrial markets that we utilize. It's been a really nice growth story. I would say the power systems business going back four or five years. I was traveling with our leader there, Jenny Bush, yesterday. No one asked about it. No one talked about it because it was like, you know, okay margins, 12% every year. Now we're up near 20%.
And the improvement in that has been data centers has been kind of icing on the cake, but it's been a lot of internal work, taking out extra costs, thinning the product line, driving strategic pricing. And then data centers on top of that has really helped drive that margin forward. But the data center play is we do backup power for a data center. So if you have a 100 MW data center, it has at least 100 MW of backup power. And think of that as for our large engine, our 95-liter gen set is about the size of this room lengthwise. They're very large, very hard to do. There's only a few players in the world. The key thing you need for a gen set is an engine. There's only really three providers, and that's ourselves, Caterpillar, MTU. And so it is a robust market.
I think we're seeing a lot of growth potential there. As you mentioned, Tim, distribution is a key differentiator for us. Not only do we make the gen set, we make the engine, the alternator, and the radiator. We make all three of those pieces. We're the only ones to do that, and then we have our distribution network, which will take that, install it, do the wiring, do the commissioning. It's one-stop shopping for the hyperscalers or the colos, whoever's building out those data centers. They can come to us and we can provide it wherever in the world. So I think, and we're seeing over the last couple of years, of course, massive growth in the U.S. We do expect that to continue, maybe not at the same clip, but it is growing elsewhere in the world as well.
I would say we're the number one player in the China data center market. They use slightly smaller engines, but they're still 2 MW-2.5 MW gen sets, so they're hard to compete in, and so we see that growth profile there in India, in Europe as well, and we're serving all of those markets around the world. It's exciting. There's been, you know, people often ask us about like the DeepSeek, did that change anything? The only thing it did was increase demand in China. It didn't really disrupt any of the other demand. Everybody expected certain changes in this industry over time, so it didn't cause much of a disruption as we work with all the big hyperscalers. It's kind of full steam ahead. We don't think it's infinite.
We are currently building out, doubling our capacity, investing a couple hundred million dollars around the world, U.K., U.S., and in India to raise our capacity, but the way we're approaching it is just cautiously, making sure we're investing in our current plants. We have the assembly capability already. It's adding machining. It's working with our suppliers. It's not building whole new plants. Because this is, we're cautious because of this, you know, it seems like every boom comes with a trough right after it. There's always been an overbuild in this industrial space, and so we, you know, investing a couple hundred million dollars in this space is a very quick payback. And we have line of sight for that demand probably for at least the next three to five years.
In terms of how you can protect yourself from a pricing standpoint, as you think about, you're probably quoting into at this point, what, 2027?
Yeah, we're in 2027 now. Yeah, we haven't opened up 2028. That's why we're not in 2028. Yeah, yeah. So we do protect ourselves on pricing. We have long-term contracts with many of the big hyperscalers with price protections in there, some cancellation clauses, things like that. But yeah, we have given the movements on pricing and, you know, other disruptions, we always make sure we protect ourselves on price. It's been a good pricing market, as you might expect over the last few years with a very, very high demand and only a few people able to supply it. It's not, these are tough customers when you're dealing with the, you know, Microsofts, Amazons, and others like that. It is tough negotiations, but we've been able to price pretty well.
Yeah. I think one of the things you mentioned from a distribution standpoint that's worth highlighting is that servicing, that the wrench turning, the difference between your big competitor and CAT, that those revenues would be going to a distributor or a CAT dealer rather.
Yeah, so we just have a greater value capture of the whole thing, and it's easier for the customer.
Yeah. As you think about the power systems business and the margins there, going back to CAT, obviously they've got a very profitable oil and gas business in there, but, you know, they're going to do 20-ish% operating margins this year. As you think about, is that a, you know, historically you lag them in a big way. Is that a reasonable target to think that the margins can be, you know, closer to CAT's E&T business?
Yeah. Because, I mean, the top end of our guide this year is about 20%. And then we're adding capacity. And as you add capacity in existing plants, you get really good incremental margins. So we do think that we still have some good runway to go here in terms of expanding margin. We did a lot of the efficiency and all that structural work within the business that gained us a few hundred basis points. Most of that is largely done, but there's still a lot of room with this capacity expansion to drive margins up.
One of the things you talked about earlier was, you know, as emission standards increase, there's kind of a content opportunity for Cummins. The components business is really where you see a lot of that leverage. If you look back over, you know, recent years, the margins have kind of, you know, moved around a bit. But it seems like this year, as you look in, you know, flattish revenues, you're seeing now some steps to take the margins up. Can you just take us through what's leading that?
Yeah. So it's been an up and down couple of years for the components business with the acquisition of Meritor, which had slightly lower margins. We're driving those upward, and then the disposition of the Atmus filtration business in first quarter last year. So it's been a, now that we're getting apples for apples, we see a much clearer sight of how do we improve margins, how do we drive them forward. And a lot of it's, there's some, a little bit of pricing in there.
A lot of it's cost out, driving costs out and making sure that we're being as efficient as possible, manufacturing in the right locations where we're in the markets that we serve in the most efficient way possible. And I think that's really been the key. Meritor has been a big piece of this, the former Meritor business driving that margin upward, but now it's taken hold and we're expanding in the emission solutions business, which are the after treatments for every engine. That continues to grow and be a really good profit center.
Yeah. And within, we'll talk about corporate margins in a second, but Accelera, maybe just talk about, you know, and this is one of the advantages of having a kind of a hedge portfolio between the legacy, the base business versus the playing, you know, as we move towards this energy transition, that's kind of the play of Accelera. That's clearly not been moving at the pace anyone thought. So how does the company think about just kind of tapering the investments there while also keeping, obviously, a longer-term view?
Yeah, yeah. We definitely take the long-term view. And within Accelera, we have battery electric and we have e-mobility, which includes fuel cells, which is likely a decade plus away. And then we have hydrogen generation. All of these markets are going slower, even slower. We thought they were going to go slower than most people thought, but they're going slower still with adoption. There's some places in the world where they're maintaining a pretty swift pace. China's a great example, but I think we are pacing our investments for this. We are targeting to get break-even in that business in 2027. We don't think that's likely under the current scenario because of just the slow adoption rate. In balance, it's probably better for the company.
I mean, from a profitability standpoint, more internal combustion will continue to grow our base business and our overall targets are probably, you know, running at or above those overall targets. But we just need to be really judicious about how we invest. And you have to take the long-term view, but be very critical. So, you know, as we look at it and someone who's been asked like over the next few years, are you going to trim losses? Yes, we do expect to significantly trim losses as we go to 2027. We just don't think we'll get all the way to break-even. And if adoption continues to slow, that may be further reducing investments. Or in some of it will be, you know, volume tick up. But we still see the really good long-term potential in the business.
It allows us to serve all the needs of the customers around the world. And the slow pace, I'll take battery as a great example. The slow pace of adoption has been an opportunity for us to gain share in what is a smaller market, but that is going to be meaningful in the long run. So pure plays are largely gone from the market. And the OEMs aren't rushing to make big investments here. So we're gaining a bigger share in probably the battery electric space than we expected going back a couple of years. And I think that's going to help us in the long run.
Yeah. It was Air Products that recently canceled a couple of big hydrogen projects. So that clearly eviscerated a business today versus what two, three years ago.
Yeah. And we took a pretty big charge in the first, at the end of the year because of, you know, slower pace and, you know, writing down some assets and so forth. And then it's interesting that we had a couple of our biggest orders right after that. You know, there's still some movement in different parts of the world on electrolyzers and some of the hydrogen production, but it is, the challenges are very real in that in terms of infrastructure.
Yeah. Maybe a question that I'm guessing you fielded once or twice yesterday in New York just on tariffs. Obviously, Mexico historically has been a solid, you know, footprint for Cummins. You know, who knows what this looks like, what happens with the peso. There's a lot of moving pieces. But how do you kind of frame the risk and where can you kind of potential mitigation strategy?
Sure. Yeah. Largely we source and manufacture where we sell. So China for China, North America for North America. Because historically, for industrial companies, it's been an industrial supply chain is all of NAFTA or all of USMCA. So we don't source from a lot of external suppliers in Mexico, probably very little in Canada. But we have some intercompany stuff that moves across the board. And we have things that sell down and some trucks are assembled. So from an industry perspective, we're probably medium to probably less exposed than the industry. But I guess the concern really is what does it do to the industry?
You know, so if these remain for the long term, then it is, you know, we've clearly signaled and everybody in the industry knows this will come through in pricing. So we've had the conversations with our customers. We have it in most of our long-term agreements already, these clauses for this. So we will be having those conversations, you know, this week and we'll continue to move forward with that. But what does that do to demand? So it's okay if we can get the pricing for it and it kind of flows through, but if it will tamp in demand, that's probably the bigger worry. So we'll see how we'll navigate through. I think they're, you know, making huge changes in your supply chain. We've changed over time and so forth. It takes years. So I don't think I wouldn't expect any big shifts in supply chain.
See if there's any, anyone has any questions from the audience? Okay. Maybe talk a bit about distribution. I think, you know, going back, I guess it was over 15 years now at this point when you bought in, bought out the stakes in North America. So just kind of talk to the evolution of that business. Obviously, a business that doesn't cycle up and down like your engine or power systems business. So maybe spend a minute on that.
Yeah. So we're pretty unique in that we own most of our distribution network globally. We had joint ventures in North America structured for many years and bought those out in the last decade. So now it's wholly owned. It's a huge advantage for us for maintaining the relationship with the end customer. So we have a close relationship with every fleet, every end user because they're getting service done and buying parts from our distribution network. It's also the primary path to market for our power systems business, not just data centers where they're doing the outfitting, but passing through all the other power generation equipment, passing through some of the rail equipment and others, servicing the mining equipment. So it has a really key piece there.
Aftermarket is a big driver of that business, as you might expect. Overall, aftermarket is about 30% of our revenue and a good, very good profit driver. We don't carve it out separately. And that flows through our distribution network. So having that owned is a really big asset. It has progressed, you know, when we changed the accounting structure and took away the joint ventures, the profitability, you know, EBITDA percentage went down, but now it's on its way back up and probably up in, you know, plus 12% right now. I mean, it is finite because you're distributing our own products. So we have driven a lot of efficiencies in that operation and it's proved to be a really, really big asset for us.
Yeah. Despite that the mix tied to parts has been coming down as you've seen this growth in power gen. So naturally that would be something you would think would dampen profitability.
A little bit, but I think, you know, our, like- for- like the data center work, that's about on par profitability for us in the distribution network. And demand for parts is, you know, it can ebb and flow with some economic cycles, but the really biggest driver is population. And population, because we've gained share so significantly over the last, you know, couple of decades, that it usually comes into the parts sweet spot about five to seven years after initial purchase. And so a lot of things that we've gained in the past, our population just keeps growing. Our parts consuming population keeps growing. And that offsets, you know, any dampening of downturn. So we expect a little bit of parts growth even this year with the market down.
Got it. So wrap it all up. So you outlined a target at the last investor day, 2030, get to 17%-18% EBITDA margins. This year you're closing in on the lower end of that. What's driving that? What, you know, is that a market dynamic? Is it some of the pricing coming in faster? How would you?
Yeah. It's a nice embarrassment to have is when we get to the lower end five years in advance. I think it is a couple of things. We don't expect a linear line. It's not going to be all roses in markets for the next five years. We don't expect that. But it is. We've driven the improvements in engine business and components that are playing through the better than expected profitability and power systems and distribution all are contributing. It's like all the businesses are moving in the same direction other than the Accelera, as I mentioned, but it's. I think we're seeing bigger steps early on, which it hasn't taken away from our runway going forward either.
So I think we're, you know, we're feeling very bullish about achieving that. And, you know, we've got a lot of questions at the time, like, yeah, we haven't seen you do that in many years. And, you know, just a couple of years on, you know, or actually six, eight months on, we're already kind of there. So I think it's, I think we're feeling, we're happy at our analyst day to raise our guide. And then, you know, just a couple of months later, people are asking, are you going to raise it again? That's a nice question to get. It really is. So I think we're feeling very positive about the outlook.
Got it. Last one and then we'll move on. But as you've delevered post-Meritor, what are the priorities here from an allocation of capital?
Yeah, yeah. So continuing investment in the business is really important to us. That will start to wane off after 2026 in terms of both capital and R&D investment. We do expect that to step down a bit after we launch these new platforms. So that's key. Dividend is absolutely key. We've grown it for 15 years plus. And we expect to continue to do that. And then we don't see a lot of M&A priorities.
We're very comfortable with our portfolio. Don't see a lot of opportunities or needs to go externally. And so that opens up us to do more share buybacks and things like that. We have a long-term target at 50% of operating cash back to shareholders. In many years, we've done well more than that. I think we peaked at 98% one year. So if we don't have a use, we have the same philosophy. It's always been our philosophy. We'll give it back to shareholders if we do not have a good internal use.
Excellent. We'll wrap there and then we'll head downstairs for a breakout.
Perfect.
Thank you, Chris.
Thank you.