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Jefferies Mining and Industrials Conference 2025

Sep 4, 2025

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

All right. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to day two of the Jefferies Industrials Conference. For the machinery sector, we're gonna kick off this morning with Oshkosh. Very pleased to welcome Matt Field, the CFO, and Pat Davidson, who looks after investor relations, to the podium here. So we'll have a few minutes of opening comments, I think, from Oshkosh. We'll do a little bit of a fireside chat with me, and then we'd love to have any questions from you guys that might be interesting as well. So with that, welcome, guys, and let's kick it off.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Thanks for having us, Steve. So for those who don't know Oshkosh well, we're a roughly $11 billion revenue company. We've got about 18,000 employees globally. We're a global industrial technology company, providing machinery that's custom-built for people who do the hardest jobs. Our strategy, which we outlined at Investor Day, which was in June, which is all up on our website. I suggest people take a listen, watch all the videos 'cause we spent a lot of time on them, and they're actually quite good, but it's innovate, serve, and advance, which focuses on innovation for people who do the toughest jobs, serving them throughout their lifecycle, so parts and accessories, and then advancing into new adjacent categories, but also increasing our capacity, which we'll talk about today, I'm sure.

We're also focused not just on the here and now, but shaping the future because if you think about the industries we serve, neighborhoods, airports, as well as job sites, they all have challenges, and we all experience those. Everyone here probably flew in, or maybe you drove in, but I can guarantee everyone who attends this conference flies at some point. How often have you sat on that plane waiting for that JetD ock to come out and meet the plane? You're thirty minutes early, excited, you're gonna make your connections, and then all of a sudden, you're thirty minutes late 'cause nobody was at the JetD ock. One of the solutions we have is an autonomous JetD ock.

So our AeroTech division, which is part of our Vocational segment, has developed an autonomous JetD ock, which takes the JetD ock almost all the way to the plane, and then you just need someone to move the last couple inches because, you know, you know everything about the plane. You know the size of the plane, you know which one it is, how high the door is, where the door is, and so you can use AI and technology to support that. So focused on solving those jobs, whether that's the airport, the neighborhood of the future or the job site of the future. We do have three segments, so I'm sure we'll be talking about all three today. But first and foremost is the Access segment.

That builds equipment that helps people get at heights on the job site. So that's booms, scissors, where you go vertically, and telehandlers, which help you move materials. You'll see them on job sites all over the world. We saw a couple here in New York when we were walking around in meetings yesterday. Second is the Vocational segment. Here, we build fire trucks, refuse vehicles, airport products. Those are the key things. We have a number of other products, but those are the key segments, and we've been in this business for a significant amount of time. Oshkosh is a hundred and eight years old, but I was talking with Jeff Tralka, our VP of Finance for this segment, just yesterday.

Pierce, which is the number one fire truck brand in the United States, is even older than Oshkosh, so been making fire trucks since they were probably pulled by horses, so that's our second segment, and our third segment is the Transport segment, where we have both the next-generation delivery vehicle for the U.S. Postal Service, but also vehicles for the U.S. Department of Defense, and so we've been providing vehicles for the U.S. Department of Defense for a few decades now, primarily focused on medium and heavy tactical wheeled vehicles, as well as export opportunities for our light tactical wheeled vehicle, which we used to build for many years. We do see this as a growth business, so at our Investor Day, we shared our 2028 targets. I'm sure everyone in the room has read them exhaustively and modeled them.

We do have substantial growth between now and 2028, 7%-10% annual compound growth rate for revenue. We increase our operating income from roughly 10%- 12-14%, so 200-400 basis points growth there. And we almost double our EPS from our guide this year, as of the second quarter, of $11 per share to $18-$22 per share. Last but not least, we're focused on cash flow, so we'll increase our cash conversion to about 90+% through the cycle of 2025 through 2028. So that's a quick wrap-up. We think that's a compelling investment thesis. Certainly, externally, it was well-received. I think we've gotten a lot of positive feedback on Investor Day. Recommend it.

If you haven't seen it, you know, read through the slides, watch a couple of videos. In particular, if I had to point one highlight reel out, it would be the vocational video, which does a nice job outlining why the capacity expansion that we'll talk about today and we focus on in many of our discussions is very possible. 'Cause if you love assembly plants, which I definitely do, you get a good sense for-

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Mm-hmm

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

... what a high-flow line is, that we installed in McNeilus, which is our refuse vehicles, compared to the bespoke, customized production of a Pierce fire truck, where every vehicle is a snowflake, but there are opportunities to improve our capacity. So with that?

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

... Great. Okay, so let's kick it off. We are on a webcast here this morning, so when that is the case, I always like to give companies the opportunity if there's any sort of recent developments that you think we all should be aware of. One question that we've been getting all through this conference is relative to tariffs, and especially the additional 407 line items that are covered under Section 232 now. So is there anything sort of in terms of an update you'd like to provide?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

That's a great question, and it's one we've been getting quite a bit. So if you think about our business, really strong businesses, but one thing about how we build, we do have a lag, generally speaking. I think we've certainly talked about this on our calls. I know many industrial companies talk about this. When we buy our materials, they go into inventory, obviously. We then build the product and sell it. In many of our any of our segments, we're working through backlogs, but generally, that inventory-to-sell cycle is more than a quarter for us.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Mm.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

And so, because these tariffs, this extension of tariffs, I guess, went into effect mid-August, I really wouldn't expect any material impact on the third quarter. We'll start seeing that in the fourth quarter. We're still evaluating the magnitude of that, because unlike most tariffs, or the ones we've been working through, most recently, those are on direct materials, and so you have your kinda tier one and moderate visibility in tier two. These are very nuanced tariffs, and those are, these are on the steel components within something you buy, and so you've really got to start digging into all your bill of materials and try and figure out how does that compute. So we're still working through the computations on that, so no specific announcements, but that's how in, investors, how people should think about it for Oshkosh, specifically.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

And do you think these tariffs or any of the other noise that's in the world right now are causing any change in activity at the customer level? Are they trying to buy ahead? Are they sitting on their hands, waiting to see how it plays out? Just how does it work from a demand perspective?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

I wish I knew exactly. We have three very distinct segments. We see tariffs, we see the economy kind of flow through our business differently by segment, and I'll start with the smallest first. In the Transport segment, our customer is the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Defense. No impact on their demand, on their need for product, on their cycles. No impact there. By the way, for those who are not familiar with the nuances of DFARS and defense contracting, you don't pay tariffs on defense products, so for what it's worth. Which kinda makes sense, because you're collecting money that they're gonna pay back to you, so it's like circular. Anyway, I digress. The second is the Vocational segment.

Vocational segment, largely you're selling to municipalities and airports. Again, long arc investments in communities and airports, so limited impact from near-term gyrations from uncertainties around tariffs. Two of our segments really are largely non-cyclical. They have a little bit of a cycle, but the sine wave, the amplitude is very low. The third segment is the Access segment. It is our largest segment, but reducing in its impact as Vocational grows, as Transport grows again, which I'm sure we'll talk about, but the Access segment really supports construction. That's the big business there, as everyone's familiar, construction, the metrics are a bit mixed right now, so we've got really strong demand from data centers, really strong demand from mega projects, but some of the non-residential construction's still weak.

Interest rates, while I think the consensus is probably two cuts this year, coming later than what we thought early in the year. That industry is holding up better than candidly I would have expected, but, you know, that, that's probably where you see more uncertainty, more delays of projects, from what we're kinda seeing in the data and reading.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay, good. All right. With that out of the way, let's talk a little bit about the segments, and I wanna actually-

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Sure

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

... turn things a little, on their head and start with vocational rather than-

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Wonderful

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

- access.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yeah.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

So that's, I think, your biggest backlog business, and, you know, I think you probably have, at this point, a couple of years of visibility. You talked about some capacity additions that you're doing. Just talk about why that business... You know, why is demand so strong in that business, and what are you doing on the capacity side?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yeah, so, so much like many businesses, you look at the age of fleet, and there's definitely the need to replace aged products. But then there was a unique factor. I think, you know, COVID hit a lot of industries differently. For us, in fire apparatus specifically, the CARES Act funding pushed a lot of funding into municipalities. And then the run-up of property prices that followed COVID also made municipalities flush with money. And so those two factors really drove demands for refreshing the fire truck fleet. And so, if you think about, that took the number of orders we took up substantially, and this was an industry-wide phenomenon, and so that built this backlog. So traditionally, if you think about it, in...

If you ordered a fire truck, traditionally, you'd wait about 12-18 months for a fire truck. And just so you guys know, what happens when you order a fire truck, typically, you'd put a deposit down, so about 30% of our orders were getting deposits. Well, with this spike in demand, you had this surge in orders. And there was no massive way to expand capacity, 'cause as I said, the production of a fire truck is really almost bespoke. It is. I grew up in automotive industry, and it's kinda like automotive out of the 1930s. And for good reason, it's not like it's actually an assembly plant from the 1930s, but there's good reasons for it. But it is much more a unique construction job shop, if you will, in many areas.

And so you couldn't ramp up capacity to meet that, so now you've got backlog. So if you place an order for a custom fire truck today, you might be getting that in 2028 and 2029, and so you're having a much longer lead time, which we don't want. It's, it's not something we want. The customers don't want it, and so what we're doing is we're doing really intelligent capacity expansions, looking at bottleneck, investing in those to have more flexible manufacturing. You know, a great example, and again, I, I recommend the video we have, because, you know, pictures tell a thousand words, and I don't know what videos tell, but it's more. You know, investing in robots, so we used to have people who would go in and sand these big cabs before we could paint them.

Now we've got robots that do that. It's more ergonomic, because now we can take that person and have them doing something where they're not just standing like this all day.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Mm.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

But it's also faster, and so investing in these smart capacity actions that allow us to address that backlog faster is probably the number one priority. Certainly for vocational, it's a great investment for the company, so it's high on my priority list as well.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

I think the first time I visited that plant, the plant manager was very excited to tell me that he had 60 or 70 different shades of red that you

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yes! I think it's more than that. I don't know

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Is it higher now?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

It's, I think it might be like 100 or something.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

But

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

It's a crazy paint room.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

So yeah, talk

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Beautiful

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

about the specific builds. Anyway

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yeah.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

So you talked about how, you know, COVID and various government funding has helped the fire cycle, but that's the question I get sometimes, is, are we at the peak of the fire cycle?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

That's a great question. It's a question we get too. And so, the way I think about this is there's an ambient level of demand, because you have fire trucks that are maturing, you have new communities coming on stream, and so you need new fire trucks in new communities, obviously. So that's kind of your base water level of demand, and then you have this peak in orders. And so, unlike every other industry, the industry for fire trucks is actually orders and not deliveries, and so what that does is that increases the level of need on top of that ambient level of demand. And so, as you work through that backlog, I think it'll go up and then come back down to the normal levels.

Even if it dips a little bit, it won't dip that much, because it just hasn't historically dipped that much, and so it'll normalize, and that's why when we think about capacity, it's really this intelligent, kind of prudent capacity actions. As opposed to putting up a whole new plant for new trucks, it's really making sure you're building in more efficiency, which can benefit us for the longer term, because A, it's more difficult to get skilled workers. It'll become even more difficult in the future, so it's kind of future-proofing, but B, it allows us to take opportunities for growth where we see it.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

So let's segue just slightly, because the refuse business has also had a nice run here.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yeah.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

You know, what's kind of driving that?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

So again, it's municipalities, it's growth, as people move further out, as people relocated during COVID, but also the age of the fleet again, driving demand for refuse vehicles. And so, you know, if you think about refuse vehicles, they basically come in three types. So there's the front loaders for picking up commercial waste, there's the side loaders, which is what many of us would see in neighborhoods, and then there's the rear loaders that you use when you've just got bags on the street, like you do in New York. And so you can't really swap those out. So as communities grow, they need a specific type of product, and so we're very focused on providing that. There's also technology upgrades that people are focused on, whether that's safety features, whether that's efficiency features.

So we've invested heavily in technology to allow, let's say, a faster side loader. We invented a ground-up electric refuse vehicle. So it's if you think about, for those of you who live in neighborhoods with side loaders that stop every five to ten feet, and they're diesel, and they make a ton of noise at 4:00 A.M., like my old life, electric's quiet, and so it's much more efficient. No fumes in your neighborhood, no noise as they rev up to go ten feet. And they're designed so they can make every cul-de-sac turn, and so you don't have them doing three-point turns on cul-de-sacs, so no beeping.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Mm.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

So really great vehicle, ergonomic, all sorts of wonderful things I could talk about. But there are opportunities, I think, as people think about tech refresh in refuse as well, which isn't necessarily where we all wake up in the morning, we think, you know, new technology and refuse vehicles, but there's a lot of exciting opportunities there.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay, great. Let's segue to Access now. That's a business that's been a little bit weaker in the most recent history.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yeah.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

You know, where do you think we are in that cycle?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

So, yeah, we guided. With the second quarter earnings, we guided to a revenue of $4.4 billion, and that's down about 15% off last year. I think last year, we'd all agree, was probably a peak for that segment. So what we see is really twofold. One is unique to us, but two is more macro. One, we used to build telehandlers for Caterpillar. They've decided to insource that. It was a 20-year contract that ended last year, and so that's part of the headwinds for us on a year-over-year comp basis. But overall, it's really just weaker construction and uncertainties on construction project, as we talked about earlier. So I think certainly we're in a down cycle. How that shapes up for next year is too early to tell.

I think, like many people, I've got my Magic 8 Ball and shaking it twice a day, and looking at what the indicators say. Look at Dodge Momentum Index, it's still quite strong. A lot of good projects, some projects on pause. You look at the manufacturing trends about reshoring and some of the needs there that have been accelerated with this administration. I think that's a great opportunity. And then you look at some of the resurgence on non-residential construction with lower interest rates. That could be a good tailwind. You kinda have pluses and minuses as you look forward, whether this is a trough or whether it's a two-year down cycle.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay. I talked to another access supplier yesterday, forgot the name, and they were talking about how the business from their perspective, that the large national rental companies were still ordering sort of relatively stably. I don't know if that's a word.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Sure.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

but that the independents had really sort of dried up, and so in a lower interest rate environment, that they would expect those to come back, and that might be sort of the catalyst. Would you agree with that?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yeah.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Is that the right-

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

I think broad brush strokes, that's right. So if you think about the nationals, the Uniteds and the Sunbelts of the world, they're public companies, so luckily they talk about their capital plans and how their businesses are shaping up publicly, so we get good visibility through that. And then, obviously, we talk to them privately, but I can't talk about those conversations. But then they do a lot of the big national projects for the major construction firms because these are, you know, big relationships, and so... You know this better than I do, candidly. But so they service these big mega projects and the larger hospitals and what have you. But then that case cascades down. Local contractors use local independents, but then you have the smaller projects, you know, the works you'll see locally.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Mm.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

So I think that is the weaker segment, without getting into, non-residential commercial real estate, which is probably the weakest of the weak. But certainly, lower interest rates, we believe, and certainly as the consensus seems to be, will help those smaller projects gain traction again, which should help some of the independents. We did see really strong independents last year, into early this year, but, I think, you know, that could be a tailwind if we get lower interest rates.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

So how do you handle pricing in this segment? Because demand is obviously not great, but you're seeing a fair amount of inflation and tariff costs, et cetera. So, you know, how do you sort of handle pricing against a weaker demand backdrop?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yeah, luckily, we've got a really experienced team in the Access segment. They've seen multiple cycles, and so they manage this very effectively. We did see, you know, pricing headwinds, incentives in the first half of the year.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Mm-hmm

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

as we had some of the down cycle dynamics we discussed. I think that's normal for this cycle. I've gone back a lot of the cycles to look at historic norms. It's within

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Mm-hmm

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

what you would see traditionally.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Mm-hmm.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

What's important for people to think about, and what our team is incredibly good at, is managing, adding value, and the ability to meet customer needs because we are a large player in this segment. And the ability to, if they need booms, we can get them booms, and so that long-term relationship is critically important. The other piece is we have a really strong back-end service business for them and supporting them on the service side. And why that's important is because top-line pricing is one factor, but the residual value and service on the back end is another critical factor in the equation of our customers as well. It's important in our equation, but it's also important for our customers. And so managing the upfront top line and then making sure you maintain a strong residual and strong back-end support are important.

And then the other piece, I would be remiss, and the Access segment leadership would chastise me afterwards if I didn't highlight, is the additional value added from things like ClearSky and some of the other technologies that they put in the product that make them more sticky. And we see people who use that technology appreciating our product even more. So it's differentiating yourself

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Mm.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

It's being responsible on your top-line pricing, managing the back end, so you add value at the end as well. So that's the whole equation that the team manages.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay, great. And maybe the sort of follow on that is there has been some capacity addition.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Mm-hmm.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

You guys have added a little.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yeah.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Others have added a little. There's even been some sort of non-US guys in Mexico or Canada.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Mm-hmm.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

You know, how do you view sort of the supply-demand balance in aerials at this point?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Great question, Steve. So when you think about capacity addition, there's really two benefits. So, in access, the benefit of capacity for us is, one, it allows us to provide more product to more people as demand recovers. But the other thing it did is by pulling specifically telehandlers into a Jefferson City facility, it allowed us to take what was a defense facility, utilize it for building a telehandler production. But even more important, by pulling telehandlers out of some of our other assembly plants, it gave us capacity to build Ultra Booms and high-reach booms, which there's still tremendous demand for. And so it's really a kind of multidimensional capacity add that we worked through, as we brought on capacity. So really pleased with the capacity.

It allows us to flex a bit more than we could before, allows us to be a little more nimble, although that's kind of contrary to what people think when you talk capacity, but really, really good utilization of our existing facilities with those actions.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay, good, so let's spend a minute on transport, and then we'll see if there's some questions-

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yeah

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

From the field here or there.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Exciting.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Transport seems like the segment where there is, shall we say, the most margin upside opportunity?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Correct. I think so.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Talk about sort of how that process will emerge.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yeah, and I think this is an area where investors largely haven't dug in to the fullest extent possible, candidly. I'm not calling you lazy, but, it's an area I think it was poorly understood because-

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Obviously, you're talking about me.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yeah, of course, of course.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

No, no.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Your team. But so the aerospace and defense sector, for those of you who aren't familiar with how aerospace contracts and defense contracts, which is where we fall in, traditionally worked. When there was no inflation, which basically was the last, what, since the 1980s

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Hmm

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

you had fixed price contracts that were just fixed price. And so in 2022, when you had inflation kick in, there was no adjustment factor in defense contracts, and so you saw all the defense contractors that were under fixed price contracts have their margins squeezed. And the only way you can change that is getting a new contract because, you know, the government's. It's a contract. And so unlike a traditional industry where you just price your way out of it, and you make other adjustments, all defense contractors got squeezed. That was no different from us. So our margin in 2024 for this sector was about 2.5% margin, and before, it was even weaker than that. First quarter, we were basically break even. Now, what we did is we've signed new contracts.

Again, we built two primary products: heavy trucks and medium trucks. We signed a new contract for heavy trucks in 2024. It's a five-year sole source contract. It starts off with new pricing that reflects our actual cost, but then it has an economic price adjustment clause to it. So all the new contracts, again, not unique to us, but still, a better framework than what we had before, is a firm fixed price contract, so a defined price. But then there's an economic price adjustment if you do see inflation or disinflation in the economy, and so they reset a margin baseline. And so we have the heavies will be building under that contract late this year. We signed a contract with the mediums in June, so just a week after Investor Day.

We'll start building under that contract in second half of 2026, and so those will roll on and improve our margins on the defense side. The other part of transport is the delivery side, where we're building the next generation delivery vehicle for the Postal Service. There, we're in the middle of our production ramp. So if you think about that, we built a big assembly plant. We're hiring people in advance of our line rate increases, so we have a lot of structural inefficiencies this year, certainly last year, but especially this year, as we ramp up our production. By year end, we'll be at full rate production. That's roughly sixteen to twenty thousand units a year. So 2026, we'll get good efficiencies and production in that plant.

So you really have those three elements, the two new contracts and NGDV production ramp up, that support that margin expansion from what we guided to this year at 4.5%, to the 2028 guidance of 10%. And I think when people understand that those building blocks are all in place, then that margin walk, which seems large, starts to make sense because it's within the normative bounds of what you see in a defense contractor, which is 7%-13%. So really comfortable with the stairsteps that get us there, even though if you just look at it from afar, you're like: Wow, that's a really aggressive margin walk.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Does that postal contract also have economic escalators?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

It does, yeah. So, all our contracts that we're building in that have firm fixed prices, we have those economic price adjustments now. I think we all learned from 2022, and if you learn, you adapt.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Good. And then, there has been some noise around this, postal contract. Has anything actually changed?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

No. So we have a really great relationship with the Postal Service. Every vehicle we field, people are really excited when they're a postal driver and delivering mail in them. I don't see a lot in the wild yet. They did ship two up to Green Bay, some all-wheel drive variants, which makes perfect sense. I did see a couple in Boston. So we're slowly rolling those out. Really great receptivity from the Postal Service and the postal delivery carriers. They're now the service technicians are looking at them, so we're getting good feedback there as well. So really it's about ramping up and delivering to the contract.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay, good. All right, let's take a quick break. Anybody want to ask a question? Yes.

Just to follow up on that last point a bit. It has been a little bit of a political football, but just in case they said, "Okay, we want all ICE rather than EVs moving forward," what would that mean operationally for you guys?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yeah, great question. So, we're fortunate to be building both. We're grateful, I guess, to build both the ICE and BEV, so it's one factory that builds both. I tease the factory manager that he's got the simplest factory in the world because every vehicle's white, they all have the same decals, and the only difference is ICE, BEV, and the underfloor, and so right now, it's a contract for 165,000 units. We have an order for 51,500. That order is about 70% electric, 30% gas. If they wanted to change that order, if they want to change that mix for future orders, it just means we need to place the orders for the parts.

Again, the assembly plant is neutral as to what we build, and so we would just adapt our supply chain to manage the demand. If they wanted to change the existing order, you know, we'd obviously have a conversation 'cause we've placed orders for parts and so forth, so we'd work with the customer for what they want. So that's how it would work. But it's an incredible assembly plant, and since they both go down the same line with, you know, 90% common parts, rough math, you know, we just build what the customer wants.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Is there any reason to think the margins would be different versus?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Margins, yes, they will be different, because simply put, we've invested a lot in the product and the assembly plant. So if you think about engineering costs, which in this case, because of how the accounting works for ASC 606, is capitalized, and all the fixed assets, they're gonna depreciate the same per unit, whether I build one gas unit or one electric unit. It's the same cost per unit in current terms of depreciation and amortization. With EVs having a higher revenue, it gets a larger denominator, so obviously, that becomes a smaller % of revenue if you build more EVs than gas. There will be a bit of a margin impact just because of the fixed per unit structural pieces. You know, that's just math.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Anyone else? No. Okay. Let's maybe shift a little bit to kind of capital deployment. But you guys, you know, you did this AeroTech acquisition. I find that people don't really talk about that one too much. Can you just sort of update us on, you know, how that's doing, how your integration's going, any synergies that you've been able to get or maybe that are still on the come?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yeah. So, the AeroTech acquisition is a really exciting expansion of our business. So I talked briefly about the innovate sort of advance strategy we have at Oshkosh. This falls in the advance because we were selling products into the airport space already through our airport rescue and firefighting vehicle, which is just a massive truck that fights fires on airports. There's not one on that picture, but

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Oh, yeah, there is.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Yeah. Middle right, in the kind of left side of that picture. It's a bespoke vehicle that's customized for airport. And you ask--you might ask yourself, why is there a unique vehicle for fighting fires on airports relative to a normal vehicle? Well, two reasons: one, it has to get to the fire even faster. So because you're talking about jet fuel fires, you need to be to the airplane within, I think it's ninety seconds or something. And so these vehicles are designed to move very, very quickly. But then because it's high heat, they're designed to have remote controlled spraying technology. It used to be there'd be two people on the top hanging onto a bar as you drove out to them. Now they sit in the cab.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Jeff, but that's basically how it works now. It also can spray foam, which traditional fire trucks can't do, and it has to carry all its own water, 'cause obviously, when you drive out to the airport, you can't, you know, attach into a fire hydrant, so very unique vehicles. We had a great relationship with airports already there. When the opportunity came to acquire AeroTech, we felt this was a great way to expand in on airport, serving people in a difficult situation, building highly complex machinery, and so a great acquisition for us. It allows us to add jet bridges to our portfolio, which I talked about, but also a lot of ground support equipment, and then we can bring our technology stack to that.

So we had at CES, an autonomous baggage cart, for example, which can help, you know, get your bags faster, and reduce the need for workers. There's a lot of autonomy we believe we can bring to the airport, but specifically to AeroTech, for us, we saw a lot of opportunity to grow that business, and that's growing it both through efficiencies. So, you know, the simplest example would be steel buys, things like that, where we have larger scale, so we fold them into our buys for cost efficiency, operational efficiency, you know, consolidating the number of ERPs they have, all that fun stuff that brings joy to the heart of finance people. But also, we brought in a leader in Ranjit, who's just spectacular, great experience at Deere, Black & Decker, and so, unleashed him on this business.

I think there's tremendous growth potential in the U.S., but also internationally. You might think of this isn't a surprise. Jet bridges don't ship well, and so figuring out how do we grow internationally with jet bridges, we're dominant here in the U.S., but opportunities grow internationally where you have so many airports under construction in Southeast Asia, Middle East. And so I think there's tremendous potential to grow there while we execute on synergies as well.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

So, what type of sort of three to five-year top line CAGR are you expecting in that business?

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Again, so that business, we just break out vocational and total. So we've had substantial growth this year. We expect that to continue, maybe at not the torrid rate we've seen in the last two years, but we guided for. Boy, I'm blanking on the number now.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Yeah.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Thrown me on the spot there for one segment for 2028. Now, you've hit the bingo card of the matrix numbers, but we've got it in all our materials, but it's continued growth out through 2028 for that segment.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay, great. All right. Well, we are almost out of time. Anyone quick question? All right, let's call that.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Awesome

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

a wrap then.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Hey, thanks for having me, Steve.

Steve Barger
Equity Research Analyst and Managing Director,, KeyBanc Capital Markets

Thank you so much. Yep, great to see you guys.

Matt Field
CFO, Oshkosh Corporation

Appreciate it. Yep.

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