Good day, and welcome to Diebold Nixdorf's third quarter 2026 earnings call. My name is Melissa, and I will be coordinating today's call. Following our speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. In order to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. I would now like to turn the call over to our host, Maynard Um, Vice President of Investor Relations. Maynard, please go ahead.
Hello, and welcome to our third quarter 2026 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 the 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 risks in the company's periodic and annual filings with the SEC. Participants should be mindful that subsequent events may render this information to be out of date. We will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures on today's call. As noted on slide three, reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures can be found in the supplemental schedules of the presentation. With that, I will turn the call over to Octavio, who will begin on slide four.
Thank you, Maynard. Good morning, everyone. Before discussing the quarter, I want to highlight today's announcement of a new $250 million share repurchase authorization, our largest to date, following our previous $200 million program. This reflects our confidence in the long-term outlook of the business, the strength of our balance sheet, and our commitment to delivering value to shareholders. Turning to the third quarter, we delivered solid performance with continued revenue and earnings growth, good business activity, and further progress against our strategic priorities. Revenue increased 5% year-over-year to $991 million, while adjusted EBITDA also grew 5% to $128 million. Year to date, our book-to-bill ratio stands at 1 times. In banking, we saw growth across nearly every region, including North America and Europe. We continue to see encouraging opportunities as financial institutions modernize their branches and invest in automation, software, and services.
We recently hosted our largest-ever banking customer event in Nashville, Tennessee, where a consistent theme emerged. The physical branch continues to play an important role, but how banks use their branches is evolving. Financial institutions are increasingly focused on automating routine transactions and allowing employees to dedicate more time to higher-value customer interactions. These trends align well with the breadth of our portfolio. In retail, we delivered another quarter of double-digit growth, supported by continued strength in Europe and increasing momentum in North America. We are winning new customers, expanding existing relationships, and building a stronger foundation for future growth in the market where we see substantial opportunity. We also continue to make progress in services and operational efficiency, both of which are critical to improving profitability and cash generation over time.
While our third-quarter performance was solid, we continue to navigate elevated component costs, particularly around memory, an unfavorable product mix, and timing of certain large banking projects. We have taken pricing and operational actions that have partially mitigated these pressures, but their combined effect has led us to revise our expectations for the full-year outlook, which Tom will discuss in more detail. Overall, with a strong balance sheet, continued progress against our strategic priorities, and significant opportunities across banking and retail, we remain confident in our long-term outlook and focus on translating our business momentum into sustainable growth, stronger profitability, and improved cash generation. Let's turn to slide five. We are excited to announce we are in the early stages of developing a strategic collaboration with Euronet to deliver integrated ATM outsourcing solutions globally.
By combining our cash recycling technology, software, and global service capabilities with Euronet's ATM operations and transaction processing expertise, we can help banks improve operational efficiency, expand self-service capabilities, and create new revenue opportunities. We believe this combination of efficiency, revenue generation, and flexibility would create a differentiated value proposition for our customers. Turning to review banking on slide six. We delivered growth in three of the four regions we serve, including North America and Europe, our two largest markets, as well as Latin America. The Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Africa region faced a difficult year-over-year comparison following significant shipments of high-capacity ATMs last year, along with a more complex operating environment in the Middle East. Nevertheless, we continue to see attractive opportunities across our banking portfolio in this region.
In our core ATM business, we secured several important wins, including an order for 520 DN Series cash recyclers with one of the largest banks in North America. This is an important validation of our technology and our ability to compete and win with leading global financial institutions. We also secured a contract for more than 1,450 ATMs in a large market in Asia that will further expand our installed base in that market. We are making progress with our branch automation solution strategy, where we are expanding beyond the ATM to help financial institutions better connect their physical and digital channels, while automating more transactions within the branch. In Latin America, we secured a contract for 360 in-branch cash recyclers together with a long-term service agreement. We also signed a significant service contract with a major Spanish financial institution to manage a network of approximately 6,000 ATMs.
These wins demonstrate how our integrated portfolio of hardware, software, and services enables banks to modernize their operations, create more seamless customer experiences across physical and digital channels, and expand our recurring revenue opportunities. We are also beginning to extend our Smart Vision AI capabilities into banking. Building on our experience in retail, we are working with financial institutions to explore how AI computer vision can improve branch operations, automate processes, and enhance the customer experience. Finally, our fit-for-purpose portfolio continues to gain traction in India, where we expect growth in sequential unit shipments in the fourth quarter. These opportunities also include long-term service contracts, and we are exploring additional geographies where this portfolio can address market-specific needs, as well as the expansion of the portfolio.
Together, these developments reinforce our confidence in the long-term opportunity across banking from our core ATM business to broader branch automation, software, and recurring services. Let's turn to slide seven to discuss retail. Turning to retail, we delivered another strong quarter with revenue growing 16% year-over-year, reflecting continued customer demand and the significant opportunities to expand our market presence, particularly in North America.
Our North America opportunity pipeline continues to grow, and we see substantial growth opportunities ahead. An important part of our strategy is to establish relationships with new customers and expand those relationships over time by demonstrating the value of our broader portfolio. A good example is a national U.S. retailer where we began with a software integration project. Successful execution helped establish us as a trusted partner, leading to a hardware opportunity with the potential for significant volume, and more recently, opening the door for our Smart Vision AI solution. We are seeing this approach translate into additional wins.
During the quarter, we secured a new customer with a regional North American grocer for approximately 1,200 point-of-sale lanes across 200 stores. Each of these wins expands our customer base and strengthens our presence in North America. Just as importantly, we are gaining market recognition and building confidence in our ability to deliver at scale, creating additional opportunities to compete for larger customer engagements. In Europe, we continue to build on our market leadership. During the quarter, we secured a 6,000-lane self-checkout refresh with a major grocer and a service agreement valued at more than $25 million with a U.K.-based retailer. This service win is particularly encouraging because it demonstrates how our technology and expertise can create opportunities beyond traditional checkout solutions and help customers improve their broader retail operations. Finally, Smart Vision AI continues to gain traction with major retailers.
Our pilots and initial deployments are meeting or exceeding customer shrink reduction targets, and we remain on track to exceed 1,000 deployments by year-end. While Smart Vision AI's current revenue contribution remains relatively small, it is offered as a software-as-a-service solution, creating a growing base of recurring software revenue. Beyond its direct software revenue contribution, Smart Vision AI differentiates our broader portfolio, helps drive hardware and service opportunities, and deepens customer relationships. Our leadership in Europe, growing momentum in North America, and increasing adoption of Smart Vision AI reinforce our confidence in the long-term growth opportunity ahead. Let's turn to slide 8 to discuss services. We continue to make progress against our priorities of delivering industry-leading service levels, improving operational efficiency, and expanding recurring revenue opportunities. During the quarter, we maintained high levels of service performance globally and delivered on our commitment to grow service gross margins.
Service gross margin reached 27.7%, reflecting a one-time benefit of approximately $8 million. Even when excluding that benefit, service margins grew meaningfully sequentially and year-over-year, driven by operational discipline and the investments we've made in the business. We are continuing to strengthen our service delivery capabilities. In Latin America, we completed the consolidation of our regional support organization, creating a more integrated and efficient service platform. In North America, our service fleet modernization is helping us improve technician safety and first-time fix rates. These improvements matter beyond cost efficiency. Consistently delivering high service levels builds customer confidence, strengthens retention, and creates opportunity to expand our relationships. Ultimately, our service strategy is about more than maintaining equipment. It is about delivering greater value to our customers, strengthening long-term relationships, and creating a more predictable, profitable business.
Let's turn to slide nine and discuss our progress with Lean and continuous improvement. Lean continues to be a critical part of how we operate at Diebold Nixdorf, helping us improve safety, quality, delivery, and cost across the company. A good example is our manufacturing operation in Manaus, Brazil, where we've made significant progress in strengthening our local for local capabilities. Through better planning, redesigned manufacturing processes, and improved warehouse operations, we've reduced lead time by several weeks and increased on-time delivery to approximately 95%. We've also reduced our ATM assembly footprint by approximately 45% and identified more than $1 million in annual freight saving opportunities.
These improvements strengthen our cost competitiveness and position us to serve the Latin America market more efficiently. Safety is another important part of our Lean culture. Globally, we achieved multi-year highs in safety performance, supported by greater focus on prevention, workplace design, and root cause analysis. We're also pleased to announce that we've been recognized as one of America's best companies by TIME Magazine, and as a great place to work in India, Brazil, Colombia, and Costa Rica. With that, I'll turn it over to Tom to review our financial performance.
Thank you, Octavio. Starting on slide 10. Non-GAAP revenue grew to $991 million, up 5% year-over-year. Both banking and retail revenue grew, with retail once again posting double-digit growth. Backlog ended the third quarter at $689 million, reflecting strong shipments and shorter lead times. Order entry moderated following the strongest first half of order entry in four years. We expect a couple of large tenders in the pipeline in both banking and retail in the fourth quarter. Non-GAAP gross profit grew slightly year-over-year, driven by increased revenues. Non-GAAP gross margin was 25.3%, down 90 basis points year-over-year. Non-GAAP product gross margin declined year-over-year to 22.1%, down 530 basis points year-over-year, primarily impacted by mix. In banking, lower margin product shipments in Latin America and large U.S. enterprise accounts increased versus prior year.
In retail, continued strength in point-of-sale volumes, which more than doubled year over year, impacted margins. Non-GAAP service gross margin improved to 27.7%, up 230 basis points year- over- year. Results in the quarter included a tax benefit of approximately $8 million, which contributed approximately 100 basis points to service gross margin. Excluding this one-time tax benefit, gross margin still showed sequential improvement due in part to ongoing operational improvements. Non-GAAP operating expenses decreased 2% year- over- year as we continued to see the results of our operational excellence and cost savings program. This marked the third consecutive quarter of improvement. For the full year, we expect operating expenses to decline by at least 2% year- over- year. Non-GAAP operating profit increased 7% year- over- year to $93 million. Now let's turn to slide 11. Adjusted EBITDA grew 5% year- over- year to $128 million in Q3.
Adjusted EBITDA margin was 12.9%, flat compared to prior year. Non-GAAP earnings per share were $1.34, down 4% year- over- year, but up 22% sequentially, driven by improved profitability and a lower share count. Turning to free cash flow, we reported a cash use of $46 million. Free cash flow was primarily impacted by the timing of a VAT refund of approximately $12 million that we typically receive in the quarter but received on October 1st, as well as approximately $8 million of non-cash EBITDA associated with the tax credit that will convert to cash flow over the course of future periods and higher working capital requirements. Continuing on to banking on slide 12.
Revenue was up slightly year- over- year, driven by growth in Latin America, Europe, and North America, three key markets, and that was slightly offset by the Asia-Pacific and Middle East region, which faced tough comps in a complex operating environment. The banking segment delivered solid margin growth in quarter, increasing 40 basis points year- over- year to 27.2%. Banking product gross margin was 26.3%, down 380 basis points year- over- year due to regional and customer mix. Banking service gross margins were 27.9%, up 350 basis points year- over- year as we started to see benefits of the investments we've been making and the one-time tax credit previously mentioned. As branches grow and evolve in markets like the U.S. Demand for automation and modernization is expanding, and we believe our portfolio is built to capture that opportunity.
Turning to slide 13, retail revenue grew 16% year- over- year, delivering double-digit growth for the fourth consecutive quarter, with both the European and North American markets continuing to perform well. Retail gross profit was $61 million, and total gross margin was 20.7%. Gross profit decreased approximately 3% year- over- year, and total gross margin declined 400 basis points, reflecting the higher mix of point-of-sale products and the related impact of higher memory costs as we continue to work through pricing across a portion of our customer base. Retail service margin decreased 100 basis points year- over- year to 27.1%, driven by higher point-of-sale and installation mix. The strong performance of our solutions and growing adoption among major retailers reinforces our confidence in the growth opportunity ahead, particularly in North America, where we are building momentum across a large greenfield market for us.
Continuing on to slide 14, as we look at the remainder of 2026, we are updating our outlook to reflect a more measured view of our full-year performance. On revenue, we are now guiding to a revenue range of $3.86 billion-$3.9 billion. This excludes contributions from our banking business in Turkey, which is in the final stages of winding down in Q4. For adjusted EBITDA, our updated expectations reflect the change in product mix, with a higher proportion of retail products and lower banking product volumes than originally planned. To put this into perspective, banking products generated year-to-date gross margins of approximately 30%, compared with year-to-date retail product gross margins of approximately 15%, reflecting higher levels of point-of-sale volumes we have seen this year where higher component costs have continued to weigh on profitability.
In addition, throughout 2026, component cost inflation, primarily related to memory, has represented an approximately $25 million net headwind. We have taken actions to mitigate these pressures, and with continued component cost volatility expected, we are strengthening our pricing practices and building greater flexibility into customer contracts, as well as redesigning product features to better manage future cost increases. Taking these factors into account, we are updating our adjusted EBITDA outlook to $490 million-$510 million. For free cash flow, we are updating our outlook to $190 million-$210 million, reflecting lower earnings expectations and higher working capital requirements. Finally, we now expect adjusted earnings per share of $4.50-$4.85 for the full year, considering a non-GAAP effective tax rate of approximately 38%. Let us turn to slide 15 and review our financial position and capital allocation. The foundation of our company remains strong.
We have a fortress balance sheet with liquidity of $495 million as of the end of Q3. The net debt leverage ratio stood at 1.5 times. Today, we announced our new $250 million share repurchase. $5 million as of the end of Q3. The net debt leverage ratio stood at 1.5 times. Today, we announced our new $250 million share repurchase program. This demonstrates our commitment to disciplined capital allocation and returning the vast majority of our free cash flow to shareholders. We expect free cash flow conversion for the year to be in the range of 40%-45%. With that, I will turn it back to Octavio for closing remarks.
Thank you, Tom. As we conclude, I want to reinforce a few key messages. We delivered a solid third quarter with continued revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth, strong retail momentum, and meaningful progress against our strategic priorities. At the same time, we have taken a realistic view of our full-year outlook. While we are not satisfied with every aspect of our financial performance, we remain focused on actions necessary to strengthen our execution and improve profitability. Importantly, our strategic position remains strong. Banks continue investing in automation and modernization. We are expanding our presence in North America retail, and innovations like Smart Vision AI are creating new opportunities across our business. With a strong balance sheet, clear strategic priorities, and a continued commitment to operational discipline, we believe we are positioned to deliver sustainable long-term value. Thank you for joining us today. Operator, please open the line for questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Matt Summerville with D.A. Davidson. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Morning. Maybe first, can you talk about in the context of what you are seeing in the business, whether it be banking or retail, how you are thinking about profitability. Ultimately, is there any sort of early read you can give us high level on what you are thinking so far as it pertains to 2027, and whether or not the performance that you are likely to track to this year basically implies an inability to deliver the analyst day targets?
Yeah. Look, Matt, we are still going through our annual planning process as it relates to the 2027 guidance and update to that. We do expect a stable banking market. Retail in Europe will face much tougher comparisons, and we still believe there are many opportunities in North America retail to capture. We are working on known headwinds like we shared earlier in the year, like the $30 million of higher cash taxes in Germany. We will see what the market looks like as it relates to our debt refinancing. But right now, we are going to be a little bit more patient and opportunistic, depending on what the market conditions are. So I would say more to come in February when we get through that annual planning process.
And Matt, this is Octavio. Probably-
You may. Sure.
More than the financial picture, I am more focused on what are we seeing out there in the market. As we know, banking is a stable market that is up slightly, down slightly. Probably this year, one of the biggest changes that we saw is that banking will be a little bit slower than what we were hoping. As you know, we had some of these large tenders that have been pushed out that we are still expecting for the remainder of the year. Plus, a little bit of a complicated operating environment, as I mentioned in some of our Asian countries, particularly in the Middle East, where had been very strong growth markets and unfortunately this year have been a lot more muted. But what we see, Q3 was strong with growth in Latin America, which is rebounding nicely from last year. The U.S. remains stable and growing slightly.
Europe, the third quarter, once again, grew year-over-year, even after a very strong year that they had last year. What I would say for banking, we remain very confident that it is a stable market. We have not seen any significant erosion in install base globally or anything like that. We are very focused on improving service quality. We are entering the renegotiation of our largest contracts in the U.S., delivering the highest service level. We should see some of that pricing hopefully start to flow through as we enter the year. I would say that in banking, our thesis has not changed much. Our product margins remain strong there. Again, the opportunity is how do we accelerate opportunities. Which brings me, and sorry for being so long this time, Matt, probably I will jump into some of your other questions that I know you always like asking.
We are also seeing, in some markets, the need for more integrated solutions. That is part of why we are partnering with Euronet in the initial stages to see how we can accelerate some of the transformation some banks are looking for. We are very committed to the idea that banks look at the branch in a holistic level, ATMs, tellers, personnel. We think that by partnering with Euronet, we will not only be able to deliver some very significant operational efficiency, but also migrate and accelerate new transactions at the ATM and additional revenue-generating services for banks. We are excited about that. Let me turn to retail. This year in retail, as you have seen, has been double-digit growth throughout the year. Very large European wins like this 6,000 refresh that we just had with a large grocer in Europe gives me confidence for the future.
These are long rollouts, but we are excited about that. In the U.S., we will continue to see very strong growth into the future. I would say that our focus right now is how do we better manage some of the cost pressures that we are seeing in that business. Some of it has to do with pricing. Some of it, as Tom mentioned, has been redesigning the products. We really made some conscious decisions on how much we pushed in some customers to make sure that we could keep momentum going. I would say that our thesis is strong. We see big opportunities across both segments, and I look forward to updating you as we close the year on how we feel about 2027.
Thank you for the color. Maybe one back to Tom. Can you talk a little bit about what is implied in your guidance as we think about fourth quarter product gross margins, service gross margins? I know on the latter, you had been hoping to see a pretty nice sequential bump up in Q4, some of that volume driven, just given seasonality of the business. Maybe expand on how we should be thinking about the margin dynamics specific to Q4.
Yeah. Let me hit service gross margins first. We had committed to being up 50 basis points. We do not expect to be able to achieve that this year. We do see slight improvement. We would expect service margins in Q4 to be in the range of 26.7%. As it relates to product margins, we expect product margins for the full year closer to, or for the fourth quarter, excuse me, closer to 24%.
That is the trajectory that we are on.
Help me move the car without moving your.
I would say, Matt, just add some color
Go ahead.
Sure. No, please go ahead, Matt. Sorry.
Sorry. I was just going to say, maybe just put a little bit more meat on the bone in terms of what's happening in the services business, that you're not able to hit the target you were looking for, especially when you talk about all-time record SLAs. I guess I would assume that that would also be a contributor to profitability. Then maybe if you can comment, put a little more meat on the bone with respect to the North American retail pipeline, then I'll get back in queue. Thank you.
Sure, Matt. You were cutting out a little bit. I hope it was only on my end. I would say that when you think of quarter, most of the impact is mixed. We have a much higher volume of retail products, particularly point-of-sale, and a little bit lower volume of ATMs. As you can see, the margin differential right now is quite significant. Banking is always in the high 20s, low 30s, and retail is in the mid-teens. We need to make sure that as we go into the future, we equalize those things. They'll never be retail margins the same as banking, but there's clearly opportunity there as we better manage the input cost that. I would say that that's how you should think about product margins, a significant mixture from what we had planned originally.
Around services, you are absolutely correct. Better service levels should translate into higher pricing. We are right now in the middle of our pricing renegotiations with, I would say, the majority of our customers. Our initial read is quite positive. We're seeing positive momentum there, but this translates into Q1 go-lives, very little contracts run on an annual basis. When we look at the overall year, we will improve service margins slightly, not up to the five points that we.
I would say 50, sorry, the 50. If you look at the report with a tax benefit there. We will see improvement, and that is the area where we remain very focused. I think the good news is a lot of the investments that we make to achieve these great service levels are all behind us. Now we should really start harvesting the benefit of the investments that we've made. I think your last question was retail North America, a little bit of color there. Hopefully, you've seen every quarter we've laid out more and more-
Especially on the pipeline.
We're winning. Yes. So I would say that you've seen that we've announced several new wins every quarter, point-of-sale, a couple hundred self-checkouts, some initial rollouts with our Smart Vision AI computer vision solution. So the pipeline keeps growing, and I would say we have a great market opportunity. The openness of our product portfolio. A lot of customers looking for more modular software-as-a-service, as many large retailers are looking to modernize operations. I think it's, and you can see that retail in North America remains a highly untapped opportunity for us. And even though we're winning every single quarter, new clients, the pipeline keeps growing, and every win keeps building on the momentum that we're seeing that we become a player in the market and somebody that large retailers can start trusting with their investments.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Justin Ages with CJS Securities. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, all. I just wanted to talk about the working capital pressures. I understand around memory costs and inventory. Is there anything else going on? You guys were having a lot of good efficiencies in accounts receivable. I just wanted to see if you're continuing to make progress on those fronts.
Yeah, look, our working capital as we look for the remainder of 2026, it's being impacted by a couple of things. We are seeing slightly lower prepayments than we've historically seen. But that number is offset by better collections as well as some DIO improvements as well. So net working capital has impacted our free cash flow for the year by about $30 million higher.
Okay, great. Then switching to some of the Middle East pressures. Is there a way to parse the complex environment there outside of the conflict? Are you still seeing good demand for fit-for-purpose devices in the region?
Yeah. Justin, I was very deliberate in talking about the complex environment in the Middle East, Africa region. If you think some of the fastest growth markets in that part of the world are severely impacted.
But as far as India goes, fit-for-purpose will grow significantly during Q4. Through the year, we've built a pipeline and won new deals. We're excited about that opportunity still, and as we mentioned, we are planning on expanding even the lab with cash dispensers, and we're very excited that we will soon be launching a fit-for-purpose recycler specifically for the India market. So we see demand there to remain very adequate, and we believe that we will be able to continue. And hopefully, as the situation normalizes in the Middle East, those growth markets like Egypt, Saudi Arabia will return to their normal traditional run rate, which frankly, this year has been very depressed.
Thank you for taking the question.
Your final question comes from the line of Matt Bryson with Wedbush. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. With memory costs, they clearly weighed on gross margins and were probably the largest factor in the lighter EBITDA and cash flow. I know it's something affecting all manufacturers, and it's outside of your control and will eventually be offset by price and inventory adjustments. But I think it was a larger impact to Q3 than you expected. When can you be certain that you've fully accounted for the shifts in memory pricing, and we just don't have to worry about them anymore?
And in our second quarter. Oh, sorry about that. I do not know what you heard there. So anyway, I was saying that from a first half of the year, we experienced pricing headwinds of about $15 million related to memory, the majority of which was offset by tariffs. As we continue to work through the memory pricing environment with our customers and honor some of the commitments we made in backlog, we are now seeing headwinds of about $10 million in the second half. So all in for the year, it is about $25 million of a net headwind for us on memory and pricing in retail. The majority of the contracts should be done, 95%-98% by the time we exit Q4, with escalators and pricing provisions in for memory. So we would expect that to be vast majority behind us beginning in Q1.
Thank you. At this time, we have no further questions. I will now turn the call over to Maynard Um for his closing remarks.
Thanks, everyone, for joining today's call, and your interest in Diebold Nixdorf. If you have any follow-up questions after the call, feel free to reach out to the investor relations team. Thanks again, and have a great day.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.