It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Vice President of Marketing Communications, Teal Hoyos. Please go ahead, Teal.
Thank you. Welcome to the 2026 first quarter earnings call. This call will include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements contain projections of our future results of operations or of our financial position or other forward-looking information. We intend these forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. We believe that it is important to communicate our future expectations to investors. However, investors are cautioned not to unduly rely on forward-looking statements, as such statements should not be read or understood as a guarantee of future performance or results.
Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or performance to differ materially from those discussed as a result of various factors, including but not limited to risks and uncertainties discussed under Item 1A, Risk Factors in our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2025, our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ending March 31, 2026, as well as other reports we file from time to time with the SEC. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the day in which the statements are made, and we do not undertake or intend to update any forward-looking statements after this call as a result of new information. At this point, I would like to turn the call over to Plug Power's CEO, Jose Luis Crespo.
Thank you, Teal. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our first earnings call of 2026. The first quarter results we announced today represent another important step forward in achieving the objectives we laid out for the year, delivering positive EBITDAs in the fourth quarter and sustaining revenue growth directionally consistent with 2025. In the first quarter, revenue increased 22% year-over-year to $163.5 million, with growth across each of our three strategic focus areas: material handling, electrolyzers, and hydrogen fuel. Gross margin also improved substantially year-over-year, increasing from negative 55% to negative 13%. This represents a 42 percentage point improvement in gross margin. The cost actions initiated under Project Quantum Leap are now substantially flowing through our P&L, and we expect gross margin to improve sequentially through 2026.
This is supported by a combination of volume leverage, mix, and continued cost discipline. In material handling, we continue to see a strong customer engagement driven by the combination of proven productivity gains, improved product reliability, and reduced dependence on electrical grid. In addition, the reinstatement of the Investment Tax Credit earlier this year has improved the economic attractiveness of hydrogen-powered solutions for many customers. As a result, we continue to project increasing demand from both Amazon and Walmart through new deployments and fleet refresh programs, with activity levels increasing across both existing, including our automotive customers and new customer accounts. Our electrolyzer business continues to demonstrate a strong commercial and operational momentum. Electrolyzer revenue increased significantly, growing from $9.2 million in the first quarter of 2025 to $40.8 million in the first quarter of 2026.
This reflects the timing of a specific project milestones across our portfolio with multiple large-scale projects now advancing through commissioning and delivery phases. We're currently in the commissioning phase of the 25 megawatt project with Iberdrola and BP in Spain, and we are finalizing installation activities for the 100 megawatt project with Galp in Portugal, two of the largest PEM electrolyzer projects currently under deployment in Europe. In addition, we recently announced the award of the front-end engineering design work for the 275 megawatt project with Hy2gen in Canada, further strengthening our global project pipeline. We're also seeing continued advancement from Allied Green Ammonia on the 2 gigawatt project in Uzbekistan, where several important milestones were achieved during the quarter. In April, Allied Green secured a binding project implementation agreement with the Uzbekistan government, establishing the tax and customs incentive framework supporting the project.
Just this past Friday, Allied Green signed a memorandum of understanding with Uzbekistan airports to collaborate on SAF and eSAF deployment initiatives. We're seeing increased activity across our approximately $8 billion electrolyzer opportunity funnel, especially within the aviation sector, where fuel availability due to the ongoing energy supply constraints and geopolitical instability affecting global fuel markets is renewing the interest in energy security and synthetic fuel production. Our fuel business delivered approximately 20% top-line growth year-over-year, driven primarily by new material handling site deployments and with margin improving by 54 percentage points year-over-year. We continue to improve plant performance, logistics efficiency across the network, and plant utilization. We still have a lot of work to do, but we are advancing in the right direction.
From a liquidity standpoint, we ended the quarter with $223 million in unrestricted cash and $579 million in restricted cash, for a total cash of $802 million. We continue to advance multiple asset monetization initiatives, including the Stream Data Centers that are expected to generate more than $275 million in additional proceeds with the first transaction for approximately $142 million expected to close in June. Our first quarter results represent another important step towards achieving our stated objectives of positive EBITDA in the fourth quarter of 2026 and advancing our broader path towards long-term profitability. The foundation is in place. Our focus is now execution, margin expansion, and converting scale into sustained profitability. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Paul, our CFO, for a more detailed review of the quarter financials.
Paul?
Thanks, Jose Luis. Let me start by emphasizing a few key of the takeaways for this call. First, demand across our core platforms remains strong, driving 22% year-over-year revenue growth. We continue to drive margin improvement, and the year-over-year progress reinforces our belief that we've hit an inflection point. Lastly, we believe we have more than adequate capital to fund 2026 based on our existing cash position through ongoing operational improvements, the varied asset monetization efforts, significant reductions in CapEx, and the quarterly restricted cash releases. Now, let me dig a bit deeper into the sales growth. Year-over-year sales growth stemmed from traction across all core platforms and reflects strong customer interest, which positions for continued growth throughout 2026.
Q1 results also stem in part from the timing of program deliveries and our conscious efforts to pull programs forward where possible. We will continue to focus on accelerating programs, but as of today, we think the first half will be in the 40% range for the full year in context of our overall guidance of the full year sales growth of 13%-15%. More specifically, excluding charges for customer warrants, year-over-year material handling platform grew by 15%. Our electrolyzer platform grew by 343%, and our hydrogen fuel sales grew by 10%. There will be ebbs and flows as we progress through 2026, but these results are indicative that we continue to expand our core markets, and we expect all the core platforms to continue growing.
Regarding margins, the improvement we delivered in Q1 stems from a culmination of ongoing efforts to optimize and scale the investments we've made. We've made a conscious effort to focus on margin and cash flow improvement, that includes the actions undertaken based on our product cost down roadmaps and conscious efforts to increase leverage on our OpEx cost. What you're seeing in Q1 is how those efforts are clearly showing up in the underlying economics of the business. On a year-over-year basis, gross margin improved by 71%. The drivers are the same ones we've been talking about. First, sales growth drivers operating leverage across the platform. Second, service continues to improve with quarterly per-unit GenDrive service costs down more than 30% year-over-year, driven by improved stack reliability and the pricing actions we continue to undertake.
Third, our fuel margin rate improved by approximately 50.4 percentage points. We're getting better leverage out of our hydrogen platform, driving enhanced network efficiency, and the third-party gas sourcing agreement we signed last year continues to deliver cost downs. Still a lot of work to do, but these structural improvements are driving the right direction. Equally important to these overall results is the fact that we see continued progression as we drive towards our 2026 financial targets. We expect a full year of benefits in the actions undertaken last year, and we anticipate continued improvement. Incremental leverage from growth in sales given our installed capacity, continued improvements in service cost profile, additional improvements in fuel efficiency and network leverage, and continued scrutiny over OpEx.
Given these continued efforts, we expect the margin breakeven threshold to continue to lower given traction in cost downs and our increasing ability to get more out of the platforms we have. Turning to cash, as a reminder, Q1 has historically been our heaviest cash usage quarter, given the seasonality of sales and timing of working capital flows. Q1 of this year is consistent with that pattern. There are two things I'd flag specifically. First, we made strategic buyouts of certain operating lease liabilities associated with our legacy PPA business during the quarter, which added to outflows, but is a net positive for us going forward. This is based on a conscious effort to accelerate the wind down of the PPA business model, and these efforts will be accretive to margins and cash flow going forward, serves as a means to accelerate the release of restricted cash reserves.
We expect more of these transactions as we progress through the year. Second, the underlying burn in Q1 tracked moderately better than our internal plan. We ended with over 10% more cash than we initially anticipated. This stemmed from many factors, including ongoing focus on margin enhancement and working capital leverage. We expect sequential improvement in cash usage across the balance of the year as we move towards our target of positive EBITDA run rates in the Q4 of 2026. CapEx was very nominal in the quarter, only about $7 million, which is consistent with what we said on the last call. Our hydrogen production network is built. We're now in a leverage the asset base phase, the CapEx run rates reflects that.
It postures us really well because as we talk about getting to an EBITDA positive run rate in Q4 2026, the combination of margin progression and a very low CapEx run rate mathematically puts us in a position where the cash burn for the year is very manageable given our capital resources and liquidity management plans. On liquidity, we ended the quarter with over $802 million in total cash. That's a $223 million in unrestricted cash and cash equivalents, and approximately $570.9 million in restricted cash that is expected to release at a rate of approximately $50 million per quarter over the next several years. On top of that, we have several specific levers tracking through 2026.
The first is the asset monetization program we announced in the fourth quarter of last year, which includes the expected Stream Data Centers transactions. We expect approximately $275 million in aggregate proceeds from these hydrogen project monetization efforts. In addition, we're underway with the sale of the Section 48 investment tax credit associated with the St. Gabriel joint venture, the platform we have there in Louisiana. That's $39.2 million in total, currently targeted to close by the end of May. We have an effectively unleveraged balance sheet given the debt restructuring we did in Q4 of last year, which also lowered our cost of capital and extended our maturity profile. We have optionality.
Our working plan is that the existing capital plus the expected asset monetization proceeds, coupled with the restricted cash release schedule, we believe collectively will provide adequate capital to fund the operating plan for 2026. Our adjusted EPS for Q1 2026 was -$0.08 compared to adjusted EPS in Q1 of 2025 of -$0.17. Excluded from our adjusted EPS in Q1 2026 is approximately $140 million in primarily non-cash charges related to adjustments for convertible debt and warrant valuations associated with changes in the stock market and the company's stock price escalation. I think the progression in the adjusted EPS is illustrative of how operationally the company is making real progress. To wrap up, Q1 was another step on the same trajectory we've been on.
We're growing the top line, we're delivering structural margin improvement, we're being disciplined on operational expenses and CapEx, we have multiple identified levers to fund the operating plans for the year. We continue to be laser-focused on driving margin and cash flow improvement and achieving our fourth quarter goal of positive EBITDA run rate, which sits within the roadmap Jose Luis described, including positive operating income in 27 and full profitability in 28. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Jose Luis.
Thank you both. Now we can go on the question section of the call.
Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to be placed into question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove yourself from the queue. As a reminder, please ask one question and one follow-up, then return to the queue. Our first question today is coming from Colin Rusch from Oppenheimer. Your line is now live.
Thanks so much, guys. You know, Jose Luis, you know, you're close to all these European customers. You know, it's good to see some of the progress that you're seeing on the electrolyzer side. I'm just curious about, you know, urgency and what you can comment on that pipeline starting to move towards, you know, final investment decisions besides the projects that you've talked about, and how we could think about that, you know, starting to materialize here later this year or next.
We continue working on, as I mentioned, on all the projects that we have in the funnel. These projects are quite complex, as you know, Colin. They require a lot of different parts of the projects to align to get to FID. I'm just gonna give you an example. I have a project in Australia. It's a 50-megawatt project, 50. The project is completely approved by the financial committee of the company that I'm working with. There is one permit that they need from a port. It's an easement permit that is actually holding the FID of the project for a month or so. The project is gonna happen. There's some bureaucracy around it.
My point is that there is certain level of complexity getting all these, all the things aligned on the FID of the projects. It takes time to get them to the point of final investment decision. We have a lot of projects now in the last quarter in the eSAF industry that have started accelerating. As you can imagine, the situation in Iran has created an issue with the availability of jet fuel in many areas of the world. In Europe, companies like Ryanair announced a couple of weeks ago that they will have limited amount of jet fuel available to run their operations, and they could run out of some of that fuel by the end of May, beginning of June.
This is leading to many companies actually pushing towards trying to accelerate these type of projects. Energy independence is becoming and security is becoming also, again, an important item in Europe. We see that these projects are beginning to accelerate a little bit more than what we were seeing a couple of quarters ago.
That's super helpful. Thanks, guys. Paul, just on the cash, you know, two questions. In terms of OpEx run rate on a cash basis, should we think about this first quarter run rate being stable here going forward? Secondly, you know, the inventory levels continue to remain relatively high. I'm just curious about how quickly you might be able to start drawing those down in a real meaningful way.
Thanks, Colin. On the OpEx, there was a few charges in there that won't repeat. You know, we're targeting roughly $75 million per quarter is where we expect that to land in. We're working hard to provide a lot of scrutiny over that so we can keep it contained and not grow that investment base. On the inventory, there was a slight, you know, reduction over the quarter, but the reality is, where you're gonna see the big movement this year is over the balance. Each quarter, we expect to grow sequentially, and then, and even more so in the second half. We're targeting about a $100 million reduction minimum this year in overall inventory levels, and we're working hard to beat that target.
I think you'll see the majority of that play out in the second half.
Perfect. Thanks so much, guys.
Thank you, Colin.
Thank you. Next question is coming from George Gianarikas from Canaccord Genuity. Your line is now live.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I think last quarter, and even in prepared remarks, you've talked about the value proposition for the materials handling solutions only getting stronger with rising electricity prices. Just curious, could you talk a little bit more specifically to some of the conversations you've had with the prospective customers? Not necessarily some of the core customers, but some of the ones that are either smaller current customers or prospective customers, and how those conversations have evolved over the past few months. Thanks.
Hi, George Gianarikas. Thank you for the question. Mainly is, the conversations are always around productivity or that's our traditional value that we bring to the table. In the latest type of conversations that we're having with customers, there's an addition, which is the reduction of electricity demand on the site. Usually, in a site with 200 forklifts, you can reduce the demand on the site by 2 MW or so. That is really helpful, given the constraints of utility power that we're seeing, you know, in the country due to the demand from other industries like data centers. That is a huge value for customers.
Added to our traditional value on productivity gains, it creates an additional tailwind for the business case. That is the main topics that we usually discuss with new customers and even with existing customers.
Great. That's really helpful. Just one follow-up. In terms of the gross margin improvement, I believe you called out specifically the GenDrive service cost reductions. Maybe talk to some of the specific operational improvements and blocking and tackling that you've done that are really driving those savings there.
You wanna go with that?
Yeah. you know, it's multifaceted 'cause there's lots of elements to it. If you just think about it fundamentally, you know, we have equipment, we got service, and we got fuel. On equipment, you know, as we continue to grow sales, you're gonna get volume leverage. There's a lot of things we're doing in our production processes, you know, especially when you ramp electrolyzers as we have as an example. We talked last year about a program we rolled out at the end of the year, which we called a new diffusion bonding process that's just a microcosm example of cost reduction opportunities. In that, by using a new process, we were able to cut the cost of that component almost in half, you know.
It's as you scale and you get more of those opportunities with volume, you can do more of those kind of things. On the service front, you know, we've rolled out a lot of programs that's which is driving that per unit cost reduction. With less touches, we've actually been able to reduce the labor techs this quarter and increase the unit per labor tech rate. We've rolled out more programs and expect more that will continue to drive increased re-reliability on that. On the fuel, you've seen over the last, you know, year and a half, you know, a continued progression in the margin. Every quarter, it continues to get better.
That's a combination of leveraging on our plants, taking advantage of the new supply agreement with the third party provider, driving enhanced delivery, reducing delivery costs and optimizing that network and driving network e-efficiency. We've, you know, still got a long way to go there, but it's, you know, going the right direction. We expect those trends to continue. Those are some of the themes that we've been able to take advantage of and certainly consistent with what we're focused on to keep driving in the course of this year.
On services for GenDrive, for material handling, I'm just gonna add that the stack life of the product, we've been able to double it and in some type of models, even triple. That helps with the cost of parts for services, which is really important, but also because we're doing less changes in the field and less touches, as Paul was saying. We have also been able to reduce the labor in each one of the sites by one tech in some cases, or even two in some cases, which has had an incredible impact on the cost of labor for services.
Great. That's very helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is coming from Eric Stine from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Your line is now live.
Hi, Jose Luis. Hi, Paul.
Hi, Eric.
Hey, Eric.
Hey. So maybe just on material handling, as we think about 2026 and 2027, just curious, thoughts on how we should view the makeup, new versus existing customers. Also, in your prepared remarks, you talked about, you know, with Walmart and Amazon that you've got some new sites but also some refreshes. Just curious kinda where you see things in terms of that refresh of sites that, you know, maybe you did five, 10 years ago.
Thank you for the question, Eric. On material handling, for refreshes, we're gonna see in the next few years, specifically for Amazon, a refresh of the complete fleet. Our first site with Amazon was in 2016, and we are in 2026. They basically are using the GenDrives for about 10 years. Our first site, as I said, was in October of 2016. We're gonna begin to see big refreshes at the end of this year because the following year we did about 12 sites. We're gonna see a refresh of 12 sites between the end of 2026 and 2027. Then you will see a cadence of around 10 to 12 sites for the next 5 or 6 years or so.
We're gonna get refreshes of around 20,000 units during that timeframe. Walmart is similar. With Walmart, we have done refreshes in years five and six, and we are right now discussing a substantial refresh of the install base in 2026 and 2027. That is gonna create a increase on demand for GenDrives. As Paul was saying before, equipment margins are usually healthy, so we will see the impact of that in the next few years. In terms of new, and even growth with other existing customers, what we're seeing is, for example, on the automotive side, we are doing refreshes on new sites with BMW, a couple of new sites in Europe with BMW.
We are also seeing some growth with Stellantis and other European automakers. We are signing either second sites or new sites with other customers. Like, for example, this quarter, we signed a brand-new pretty large site with Southwire, with a value of $11 million. We're seeing activity everywhere. We still see, you know, obviously, our two main customers, Walmart and Amazon, and two of the largest companies in the world. We are gonna see, you know, a lot of impact on their demand in the next couple of years, but that's just healthy. We have the diversification of all of our other products.
We see the material handling market moving forward and growing in this year and in the following years.
Okay. I appreciate it. I'll leave it there. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Sherif Elmaghrabi from BTIG. Your line is now live.
Hey, good afternoon. Thank you. Paul, you touched on this, Q1 saw another big improvement in fuel margins. The new gas supply contract is obviously helping with that. Have all of your legacy contracts with the IGCs rolled off at this point? I guess really I'm trying to understand if there's room to increase utilization at your captive plants, Louisiana, Georgia, and Tennessee.
The short answer to your question is on the sourcing, you know, the portfolio runs at different cycles in some of those contracts, and they all terminate at different time periods. Today, consciously, it's, you know, roughly 50/50 sourcing third party versus internally leveraging our plants. You know, and there's strategic reason why to keep that relationship in good standing and leverage those because our plants are as an example are in the Southeast. It, you know, it can be expensive to truck, you know, hydrogen all the way over to California or up to the Northeast.
Fortunately, with the agreement that we signed, it put us in a good footing, with a substantial reduction in the cost per molecule, as well as a means by which to work with them to continue driving improved efficiencies and network optimization. You know, the drivers for us as we go forward are, you know, leveraging our plants, you know, and as we continue to grow sales in more sites, and third-party sales. You know, you've seen some smaller announcements recently where we're starting to sell into the merchant market, as an example, and take an opportunistic opportunity there where we can to do that. Leveraging those plants will continue to grow and scale and leverage that overhead.
The second is really optimizing the delivery network, really getting into, you know, how you deliver and when you deliver and how you manage that. You know, there's tons of opportunities there. Then, the efficiencies of network. We've made huge strides on improving efficiencies of our storage systems and our dispensing, you know, capabilities, but there's still opportunities there as well. Those are some of the drivers as to what you've seen as to why the margin continues to get better quarter after quarter. It's certainly the same themes that we've got a daily focus on across all those opportunities, that will continue to drive that over the course of this year.
Got it. That's helpful. Paul, I have one more for you. I missed how much you're expecting from the monetization of the Louisiana tax credit, and if you could share how that compares with Georgia, that'd be helpful.
Yeah. Absolute value, it's actually a little bit more. On a gross basis, it's like $39.4 million, I think the number was. It's just to clarify, it's for our joint venture that we have in Louisiana. That's proceeds that joint venture will get for selling that. We obviously, as you, I think you probably know, we consolidate that entity, those results will show up in our consolidated results. We'll work with the JV partner, whether we leave that $39 million in the JV to fund operations or whether they take their portion and we take our portion. Obviously, if it goes that route, it's incremental $20 for plug to fund operations, which is obviously very helpful.
We actually got better terms on that than we did in Georgia just because of the, you know, passage of time and the learnings that we got out of the Georgia sale. On a net basis, in terms of the gross tax credit, we got a better rate.
Great. Thanks again.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Dhrushant Alani from Jefferies. Your line is now live.
Yes, thanks for taking my question. Just one quick one. I guess, if you're talking about the revenue progression for the year, you know, I think it implies that maybe 2Q might be slightly down quarter-over-quarter. Is that correct? Then maybe, you know, what's kind of driving that? Was there any demand kind of pulling in, into 1Q? Then also, if 2Q is gonna be down quarter-over-quarter, then how do we think about just the margin progression there in terms of, you know, the polymetric leverage that you have shared previously?
Yeah. Let me try. There's many parts to your question, you know, if you look historically, we're somewhere between one-third to 40%. You know, on the first half of any year, it varies a lot based on timing of customer programs and, you know, most times Q1 is lower than Q2. You know, let me, let me be clear. We expect Q2 to grow sequentially. I think, you know, we're giving you guys a directional guidance and using that 40% in relation to our 13%-15% growth rate for this year. You know, it may only be slight growth off of Q1, but it's definitely gonna be, you know, slightly better.
Then, and then, you know, then you have the second half. The timing of that, we know, you know, we'll see as we continue to progress through the year how that's gonna play. On the margin progression, you know, again, just to be direct, we absolutely expect the margin rate to continue to improve sequentially quarter-over-quarter. All the cost down and things that we're doing, you know, are gonna continue to drive incremental benefits. We expect that margin rate to improve, you know, in Q2 and then, and then continue to ramp from there.
Volume makes a big difference, the fact that the second half is, you know, using my math, of roughly 60% of the sales, you know, it means there's even more equipment sales in that second half, that means it's even more accretive. You know, I think what you're gonna see is quarter-over-quarter, you're gonna see growth in the sales number, you're definitely gonna see or I should say, you know, we expect it to see growth in the margin rate.
Yeah. I just want to reinstate what you just said, Paul. Q2 will be progression in terms of top line compared to Q1.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is coming from Chris Dendrinos from RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now live.
Thank you. I just wanted to circle back to Europe a little bit here. I'm curious, you know, looking at some of these refineries and then the customer base there, are they kind of ultimately settling out on a long-term partner here and, and picking tech? I guess just looking back over some of these, you know, the competitors out there, it looks like there have been, you know, testing of different technologies, et cetera. I'm just kinda curious what you're seeing on that front. Thanks.
We're seeing specifically with the companies that we're doing business in the refinery side, the largest ones that I mentioned during the call. We're seeing that they are looking at expansions in the sites that we have done and in other sites. We're seeing that the progression that we're making on the commissioning of the product is very satisfactory, and we are looking with them about working together for some of those expansion projects.
Given the directives that the EU is pushing through every country, through a process that they call transposition, which is as simple as a European law converted into a law in each one of the countries that are members of the EU, they have a mandate to convert a certain percentage of the hydrogen they use into green hydrogen, and this is what's driving these projects. They are committing to do it, and we're working with them to satisfy those needs.
Got it. Thank you. I guess maybe as a follow-up here, you know, just on the opportunity with Allied Green and Uzbekistan and maybe in Australia as well, you know, can you speak to the potential timing of this and how you see that kind of trend, I guess, playing out over the course of the year? Thank you.
Yes. I mean, I can speak to the timing that I've discussed with Alfred from Allied Green in the last discussions I had with him as last week, right? These timings, as I said before, because of the complexity of these type of projects, usually, you know, change. Right now, the objective will be to do a BDEP on the Uzbekistan project in the second. BDEP is a Basic Design and Engineering Package. In the second half of 2026. His target is to get to FID in the following months with a potential loan notice to proceed to Plug earlier than that.
It is a project that could, and I insist, I don't, I don't wanna create an expectation that I cannot live up to because there are so many things that are outside of my control in these projects, right? In the last conversations, it's, it's a project that should be moving forward in the next 12 months, with a BDEP happening before and with a loan notice to proceed also, in that timeframe.
Got it. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question is coming from Craig Irwin from Roth Capital Partners. Your line is now live.
Hey, guys. It's Andrew on for Craig. Thank you for taking my questions. I've been hopping across a couple calls, so I apologize. If this has been asked already, just let me know, I can ask something else. You guys called out expansion with Amazon and Walmart with the material handling. Can you guys kind of talk to any new logo pipeline expansion? Just overall kind of the mix between, you know, site expansion with the existing customers versus, you know, new customer wins, that would be great.
Our team was in MODEX. MODEX is the largest event for manufacturing and supply chain in April. Our team met with a large amount of companies, new companies, new logos that were interested in the material handling business case, given the points that I made before, mainly associated with productivity, with the ITC, and also the advantages associated with reducing the grid demand. At this moment, the majority of the growth that I see in 2026 are related to existing customers. As I said before, mainly Amazon, mainly Walmart, and also associated with automotive. We have new projects with BMW, we have projects with Stellantis and with other European automakers. We closed another second site with Southwire, as I mentioned before.
That's not a new name, but it's a second site that we closed with them. We have a fairly, you know, healthy pipeline of new names and new customers. At this moment, I'm not in position to tell you right now that we're gonna get, you know, orders for certain specific names, but I can tell you that the team is working in a few new potential accounts that could be added between now and the end of the year for projects in 2027.
Great. Well, I really appreciate the color there. Second for me, kind of in the same vein, I noticed the GenDrive cost per unit was down 30% year-over-year. Can you just kind of talk about the potential to, you know, leverage cost reduction throughout your install base?
Yeah. I think our anticipation is that that unit cost will continue to come down, and it really comes from 2 key drivers. Well, I'd say 3. First is the parts cost continues to go down as we get the units to continue to run longer, so you just need less parts to keep them up and running. Second is, as that happens, you need less touches of the units throughout the year. When you need less touches, then you can manage the fleet with less labor techs. We're able to, as Jose said earlier in the call, we're able to reduce, in some cases, 1 tech per site, in some cases, even 2 techs per site. You know, we expect that leverage continues as we get and continue to grow and scale.
The third is you sell more units and you grow your sales base, you know, you can leverage the overhead for that service business. That continues to scale and grow and ramp as well. You know, we expect that rate per unit will continue to go down in the course of the year. You know, we expect that to continue to drive in the right direction.
Understood. Appreciate the detail, and congrats on the continued progress.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Jose Luis for any further closing comments.
Well, thank you, everyone, for for the questions and for your engagement and your support. The first quarter results that we just announced provide a solid foundation for the balance of the year. Our priorities for 2026 are the same. They remain unchanged. Drive continued sales growth, execute with discipline, continue improving our cost structure, reduce cash usage, and deliver positive EBITDAs in the fourth quarter. The underlying business fundamentals continue to improve. Demand drivers across our core markets are strengthening, and now it's just about consistent delivery. Again, we appreciate your continued support and look forward to updating you on our progress in the next quarter. Thank you, everyone. Have a nice evening.
Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.