Good day, and welcome to the Zebra Technologies first quarter earnings conference call. I would now like to hand the call over to Michael Steele, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and welcome to Zebra's first quarter earnings conference call. This presentation is being simulcast on our website at investors.zebra.com and will be archived there for at least one year. Our forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially, and we refer you to the risk factors discussed in our SEC filings. During this call, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures as we describe business performance, with reconciliations shown at the end of this slide presentation and in our earnings press release. Throughout this presentation, unless otherwise indicated, our references to sales performance are year-on-year on a constant currency basis and exclude results from both business acquisitions and dispositions for 12 months. This presentation will include prepared remarks from Bill Burns, our Chief Executive Officer, and Nathan Winters, our Chief Financial Officer.
Bill will begin with his perspective on our first quarter results, our value proposition, and strategic priorities. Nathan will then provide additional detail on our financial results and discuss our outlook, followed by Bill's closing remarks. Bill and Nathan will take your questions. Now let's turn to slide 3 as I hand it over to Bill.
Thank you, Mike. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. The year is off to a great start. Today, I want to take a step back to put our results into a broader context to what our performance says about Zebra's position in the market, the momentum in our business, and the opportunity ahead. There are three takeaways I want to leave you with this morning. First, we achieved strong Q1 results, and we are seeing continued momentum that supports our increased outlook for the full year. Second, our performance reflects Zebra's industry leadership and our unique value proposition backed by our integrated portfolio of solutions that combines hardware, software, and services to solve our customers' complex challenges.
We are deeply embedded in our customers' operations and increasingly central to their efforts to drive productivity through automating workflows, improving how work gets done across the front line of business, and beginning to integrate AI into their operations. Third, we are executing a clear strategy to create long-term shareholder value by driving profitable growth, building on our leadership and track record of innovation, and enhancing our financial strength and flexibility. With that, let's start with our first quarter results. Turning to slide 4. We delivered results near the high end of our outlook, driven by our team's strong execution and positive demand trends across our portfolio. For the quarter, we generated sales of nearly $1.5 billion, a 14% increase or 4% on organic basis from the prior year.
An adjusted EBITDA margin of 23.2% and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $4.75, an 18% increase over the prior year. We achieved growth across both our segments and all regions with outperformance in our manufacturing end markets. Elo Touch also contributed solid profitable growth, and we are encouraged by our customers' interest in our combined portfolio of solutions and our progress in driving synergies. We expanded adjusted EBITDA margin by 90 basis points, driven by a multiyear high gross margin and operating expense leverage reflecting the benefits of our productivity initiative. These results demonstrated the durability of demand for our solutions and our ability to convert that demand into profitable growth.
Supported by our strong financial position, we have executed $500 million of share repurchases year to date through early May, following more than $300 million in the fourth quarter. Our business momentum and progress in navigating the current memory supply environment gives us confidence in raising our outlook for the full year, with our recently elevated stock repurchase activity underscoring our conviction. In a few minutes, Nathan will discuss our outlook and our progress in managing memory supply. Turning to slide 5. We have significant runway for growth with our clear and differentiated value proposition, supported by trends in automation, digitization, and AI across a $35 billion served market. Our broad portfolio of integrated hardware and software solutions enables us to deliver value across the entire workflow, not just a single use case, creating a meaningful competitive advantage.
Our industry leadership puts us in a unique position to be the supplier of choice of AI for the frontline. We have a resilient financial model with strong margins and cash generation, supported by disciplined capital allocation that drives long-term shareholder value. Moving to slide 6, Zebra provides the foundation for intelligent operations. We help our customers understand what's happening across their operations in real time and then act on that information to drive better outcomes. We operate across two segments, the Connected Frontline, providing the digital touchpoints necessary to improve productivity, collaboration, and the customer experience. Our solutions include enterprise mobile computing, interactive displays, frontline software, and AI agents. Asset Visibility and Automation enables real-time insights from assets, inventory, and operations to automate environments through our portfolio solutions, including advanced data capture, printing and supplies, RFID, and machine vision.
Together, these segments give us a broad and complementary portfolio that allows us to meet customers where they are in their automation journey and advance their capabilities. Zebra is well-positioned to benefit from the megatrend shown on slide seven. Across industries, our customers are operating in increased complex environments shaped by labor constraints, cost pressures, higher consumer expectations, and the growing need for real-time visibility and execution. As a result, priorities like mobility, intelligent automation, Asset Visibility, cloud connectivity, and physical AI are becoming increasingly central to how enterprises run their operations. We see these as durable, long-term demand drivers that support Zebra's growth opportunity. Slide eight illustrates how Zebra's end-to-end presence across the supply chain is a key differentiator. Our embedded role in daily operations generates the insights that power smarter solutions and AI at scale.
Our broad portfolio enables us to address mission-critical workflows that span from factory floor to the warehouse to the end customer, and all touch points along the way. Zebra's products and solutions can be utilized more than 30 times as an item travels through the supply chain, and this number continues to increase with the need for real-time visibility. Slide 9 highlights the breadth of our customer base and the significant opportunities in front of us. Zebra supports more than 80% of the Fortune 500 across large and growing end markets, each with distinct needs shaped by their unique business models. That said, there's a common need across all of them, greater operational visibility and productivity. We play a critical role in helping our customers better understand what's happening across their operations, allowing them to take action in real time.
We are deeply embedded in their workflows as a trusted partner, enabling us to co-innovate as they adopt new technologies to digitize their operations and look to leverage AI. On slide 10, we highlight the three strategic priorities guiding our business. Our first priority is driving profitable growth. We see meaningful room to grow across both of our segments, supported by a large and diverse market and a long runway of adoption in many of the environments we serve. We believe both Connected Frontline and Asset Visibility and Automation have a 5%-7% organic sales growth profile over a cycle and are confident in our ability to deliver. Penetration is still relatively low across the markets we serve, highlighting the opportunity in front of us. For example, based on third-party research, nearly three-quarters of warehouses globally are in the early stages of their automation journey.
Our growth prospects are supported by investments in RFID, machine vision, and AI that enhance our differentiation and expand our relevance with customers. We are also driving efficiency initiatives in our business to enhance profitability, which include operating margin leverage through cost discipline, including our previously announced restructuring actions, accelerating software development velocity by deploying new AI tools, and enhancing our go-to-market model to improve market coverage and efficiency. Our second strategic priority is to continue building on our market-leading position by advancing innovation. Recent progress includes launching an entirely new line of enterprise mobile computers and wearables with embedded RFID and optimized AI processing capabilities. A global logistics customer has selected our new Frontline AI Picture Proof of Delivery capability. This on-device AI solution is driving faster delivery times while improving the consumer experience.
These are just a couple of examples of innovation that are tightly aligned with customer needs and designed to drive both growth and differentiation. Our third strategic priority is enhancing our financial strength and flexibility by driving consistency of earnings and cash flow generation through our capital-light business model. We will also continue to execute on our balanced capital allocation strategy, prioritizing investments in our business that elevate our portfolio of solutions while consistently returning capital to shareholders. I will now turn the call over to Nathan to review our Q1 financial results and improved 2026 outlook.
Thank you, Bill. Let's start with the P&L on slide 12. In Q1, total company sales increased 14.3% or 4.3% on an organic basis with momentum across our business. Our Connected Frontline segment grew 20.6%, including the recent Elo Touch acquisition, or 3.8% on an organic basis led by mobile computing. Our Asset Visibility and Automation segment grew 4.8%, led by printing and machine vision. We realized solid performance across all our regions. North America sales increased 4%, led by strength in manufacturing. EMEA sales grew 2% with broad-based growth across Europe, partially offset by softness in the Middle East. Asia Pacific sales increased 11%, led by India and Southeast Asia. Latin America sales grew 10%.
Adjusted gross margin improved 80 basis points to 50.4%, primarily due to productivity initiatives, favorable FX and business mix, with a modest impact from memory inflation in the quarter. Adjusted operating expense leverage improved by 20 basis points. This resulted in first quarter adjusted EBITDA margin of 23.2%. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were $4.75, an 18% year-over-year increase, exceeding the high end of our outlook. Turning now to the balance sheet and cash flow on slide 13. In the quarter, we generated free cash flow of $163 million. As of Q1, we had a modest debt leverage ratio of 2.1 and $1.1 billion of credit capacity. We have been deploying capital consistent with our allocation priorities.
For the quarter, we repurchased $300 million of stock and have repurchased an additional $200 million in the second quarter to date. Turning to slide 14. We have a proven track record of navigating dynamic environments, and we are applying that same disciplined playbook as we manage the current memory cost and supply landscape. While this remains an area we are monitoring closely, we are increasingly confident in our ability to successfully mitigate impacts based on the actions already underway and the visibility we have today. We are working proactively across multiple fronts, including direct supplier co-planning, alternative sourcing options, and transitions to higher density memory components, where capacity is expected to increase into 2027. Based on the progress we have made, we currently have line of sight to the supply we need to support our outlook.
In addition, the component pricing trajectory for the year is tracking in line with our prior guidance. Our cost position remains favorable relative to spot market rates given our direct supplier relationships, and we have line of sight to fully mitigate the margin impact for the year. This is not a new muscle for Zebra. Our teams have managed through prior component disruptions by acting early, maintaining close supplier partnerships, and using our scale to create flexibility in the supply chain. We are taking that same approach here. Let's now turn to our outlook. We've entered the quarter with a strong backlog and pipeline that supports our sales growth guidance range of 14%-17%, including approximately 10.5 points of contribution from business acquisitions and favorable FX.
Our second quarter adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be slightly higher than 21%, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share are expected to be in the range of $4.20 and $4.50. For the full year, we expect sales growth between 10% and 14%, reflecting a 1 point increase at the midpoint from our prior outlook. Our guide factors in year to date performance, a strong pipeline of opportunities, momentum in manufacturing and machine vision, the previously announced price increases, constrained memory availability, and a 7-point favorable impact from acquisitions and FX. Our full year adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be approximately 22%, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share is now expected to be between $18.30 and $18.70.
Our full year guide continues to reflect full mitigation of the memory 2-point headwind, which we are increasingly confident in achieving. We are driving this through targeted price increases and other direct memory initiatives, net of savings from our restructuring actions, volume leverage, and FX favorability. Free cash flow for the year is expected to be at least $900 million, which reflects a conversion rate of approximately 100%. We are continuing to optimize our working capital levels balanced with our supply chain resilience objectives. Please reference additional modeling assumptions on slide 15. With that, I will turn the call back to Bill.
Thank you, Nathan. Before we turn to your questions, let me conclude with the points I highlighted at the start of the call. We delivered a strong quarter and are moving forward with confidence in our increased outlook for the full year. Our integrated portfolio of solutions continues to differentiate Zebra, enabling customers to automate workflows and improve their operations, and we remain focused on executing our strategy to drive profitable growth and deliver long-term value for our shareholders. I will now turn the call back to Mike.
Thanks, Bill. We'll now open the call to Q&A. We ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up to give everyone a chance to participate.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Our first question will come from Andrew Buscaglia of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone.
Morning, Andrew.
Yeah, just, you know, I wanted to check on some of the comments you made on memory. Clearly, you know, a concern amongst investors. You guys say you have a line of sight to mitigate these costs through the end of the year. Are you implying, you know, have you secured capacity at this point? 'Cause shortages are a concern. What are your memory price assumptions baked into the rest of the year in terms of the memory price spiking?
Andrew, maybe I'll start and then hand to Nate for specifics. I'd say that, you know, memory continues to be a dynamic environment, overall. Our teams have, you know, done a great job, quite honestly, working closely with, you know, our suppliers, and the relationships, the long-term relationships we have, you know, with them, but also with our customers and partners to make sure that we get early visibility into, you know, their needs and on the demand side. You know, we're confident in our ability to mitigate the memory challenges and to achieve both our second quarter and full year guide. A lot goes into that. A lot of, you know, thinking and planning and the teams have been working this memory issue since, you know, the second half of 2025.
you know, we're in a good position to enter Q2 and where we're at for the full year. I'll let Nate add some more color.
Yeah, Andrew, I think if you look two pieces, one from a supply perspective, as we mentioned, pursuing numerous mitigation strategies, great relationship with our direct suppliers, as well as looking at new alternatives, as well as a lot of work in terms of transitioning to the different memory types where we expect capacity to increase, as we get into 2027. I think we feel, you know, really confident in what we have for the first half. Q1, we got the supply we needed to deliver on the outlook. Great visibility for what we need here in Q2. Our second half guide assumes a similar memory supply as received in the first half. We've received no indication that our second half allocation will be any less than the first half.
If anything, the teams are working options for increased supply to meet the unconstrained demand we have, which is near the high end of our guidance range. Again, a lot of actions right now in terms of how do we increase the supply to give some upside to the guide that we provided this morning. Then on the costing, as we mentioned, the market pricing trajectory is in line with our prior guidance. There's variability obviously across the different memory types. But as a reminder, we purchased the vast majority of our memory direct, which has been favorable to the spot market rates that a lot of folks have visibility to. We have built in escalations through the balance of the year.
So far those are playing out, which has enabled us to maintain our margin guidance for the year relative to memory.
The next question comes from Tommy Moll of Stephens. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions.
Yeah, morning, Tommy.
I wanted to start on margins. You were well ahead of your guidance for the first quarter on a EBITDA margin % basis. If we look at the second quarter, that % steps down sequentially. It's a two-part question. What were some of the favorable items you would call out that drove that outperformance in 1Q that may fall away into 2Q? Are there any headwinds sequentially as we move from 1Q to 2Q? Thank you.
Yeah, Tommy. If you look at Q1, I think it starts with the operational gross margin, which was at record levels, at 50.4%, increase of 80 basis points, driven by, you know, a combination of factors. One, you know, the productivity initiative the teams have been actively working on. We had favorable deal mix. You know, we had real strength across our manufacturing vertical, which is favorable from a run rate perspective, but also our print, scanning, machine vision portfolio. The deal mix was a benefit in the quarter, that drove a, you know, a portion of the upside to our guide. FX was a tailwind as we entered the quarter.
Again, I think, you know, Q1 just had a combination of favorable deal mix, along with the productivity the team's been actively working on. You know, memory was, I'd say, a modest headwind in the quarter. Really, if you looked in from Q1 to Q2, on the EBITDA line, EBITDA margin guidance, the decline is really driven by the step-up in memory costs in the second quarter. If you look kind of 2 points lower sequential, about 1.5 points of that is the higher memory costs from the quarter, as well as just normalized deal mix as we go into Q2. I think what it really showed is that Q1 is, you know, part of our mitigation strategy on memory.
If you recall, half was the price increase we announced. The other half was underlying operational benefits from restructuring actions, as well as all the other actions the teams have taken. I think that beared out in Q1, and now it's being utilized to offset some of the headwind here as we go into Q2 in the back half of the year.
The next question comes from Amit Mehrotra of UBS. Please go ahead.
Good morning. This is Pratap on for Amit Mehrotra. Yeah.
Morning.
I just wanted to, yeah. I just wanted to catch up on the Elo. Like, it has been a couple of quarters for the Elo acquisition now. Can you provide any early feedback on your progress with the business?
What is the growth rate and, like, what kind of revenue or margin synergies you are seeing there? Thank you.
We continue to be excited about the Elo acquisition as really it elevates our strategic position across our Connected Frontline, you know, segment and, you know, adds to the breadth and depth of our portfolio and delivers a set of complementary solutions to what we've got, you know, already across mobile computing and our software assets inside the Connected Frontline pillar. You know, Elo in the quarter grew it in line with our expectations. Certainly, you know, a solid pipeline of opportunities. You know, we'd expect 2026 growth to be in the mid-single digits, you know, that's playing out as expected. We're seeing progress in the synergies, you know, both revenue and cost. A lot of work on the, you know, integration and that's, you know, taking place today.
You know, a lot of focus across the teams around the globe on building a commercial pipeline of opportunities, working together, you know, with our global teams as one team and then positioning with our customers. You know, we've entered some new geographies with the Elo portfolio where they haven't, you know, had a presence before. And we've got our first wins in India, which was one of those, you know, geographies overall. You know, we feel good about, you know, what's happening so far across the portfolio. We're still super excited about it. It gives us another opportunity to have a digital touch point and things like, you know, modernizing point of sale within our retail customers, you know, streamlining self-service, you know, payment, touchscreen displays across areas like manufacturing and healthcare.
You know, overall, it expands the breadth and depth of our portfolio, and so far, things are going well.
The next question comes from Ken Newman of KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys.
Morning.
Maybe if you could just give us a little bit of color on how sales trended through the quarter, Bill, and just maybe help us quantify, you know, if you saw any indications of a pull forward. I think you mentioned that the price actions really for the memory cost really took place in late March. maybe help us kind of quantify what that's supposed to add to the full year sales growth, if that was kind of in line with expectations. Again, just, you know, if you saw any indications of people trying to get ahead of that price action.
I'd say that, you know, Q1 overall, excellent execution by the teams, really strong start to the year that, you know, we're pretty happy about. Double-digit, you know, sales growth and EPS growth in the quarter. I'd say that, you know, the results demonstrate the durability of demand for our solutions, you know, across all the verticals we serve. Broad-based growth across both vertical markets, regions, products as well. Really our ability to convert that demand into profitable growth for Zebra. You know, the momentum has continued into Q2, you know, across the business.
You know, we're obviously, as Nate talked about, you know, progressing the navigating of the memory challenges, and we've made a lot of progress there and have more confidence certainly, you know, in the full year guide and what we've seen in Q1 and then, and what we have visibility to moving throughout the year, both in the demand perspective and then, you know, the strict constraints to that demand. You know, the unconstrained demand pushes us to the, you know, higher end of our, you know, outlook range, and I think we're seeing that. We feel good about where we're at in the momentum across the business. We saw no real pull forward of demand across our customers related to memory or price increases, you know, overall.
I think that, you know, we're seeing our customers continue to execute on their plans for deployed, you know, technology across their environments to make their businesses more effective and more efficient and moving ahead with that. We haven't seen any real change in demand based on it. The only thing we've really seen is we've worked closely with our suppliers and our customers and our partners on the demand side to make sure we have early visibility to what they need to make sure we have the right products. We're procuring memory and then building the right products for them. We've been working closely with our customers to make sure we really understand, but no pull forward that we've seen across the business.
Only thing I'd add is if you really look at the Q1, you know, the upside to our guidance to the high end was driven by Asset Visibility, and the strength in manufacturing, which did not have the price increase. The real strength in the quarter, which drove some of the gross margin favorability, was around Asset Visibility, which is again, where we didn't have the price increase to just, you know, add to what Bill had mentioned. The other one, we did incorporate the full year pricing benefit of a point into our guide. We offset that by lower volume assumptions in the back half due to the memory constraints.
If you look at it kind of net neutral from the benefit on the pricing side, but then lowering the overall demand or volume given the constraints. That balances out for the second half of the year.
The next question comes from Brad Heffern of Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question.
Morning, Brad.
Kind of tagging on that last question. You raised the full year organic growth guidance by about 1 point to 5%. You mentioned the Q1 outperformance in manufacturing in Latin America and Asia. Curious if you could elaborate a bit more on what drove the implicit organic growth guidance range for the rest of the year, whether that's by vertical or by geography.
I'd say that, you know, demand trends overall remain strong. You know, as I said a minute ago, customers continue and invest, you know, across each of the vertical markets. It was really broad-based growth, quite honestly, across regions, across vertical markets, and across both of the segments. I would say, you know, certainly manufacturing is helping, right? Manufacturing has been, you know, a lower growth profile than the other vertical markets we serve. Now clearly has been a strength, including, you know, in print scanning and we saw double-digit growth in machine vision in the quarter. We feel good about, you know, machine vision. I'd say demand for Elo continues to be strong. You know, our customer conversations that we've had, we've had our three largest trade shows of the year, most recently.
Start the year with our retail, with the national retail show and then, you know, logistics and, a warehousing show and then, you know, healthcare as well. All of those trade shows, we were able to demonstrate our innovation, the depth and breadth of our portfolio, our new solutions that we're bringing to market across mobile computing and machine vision, RFID, you know, our AI solutions. All of those have been, you know, positive conversations with our customers. They continue to invest as their businesses continue to grow. I'd say broad-based demand across regions, segments, verticals, which we feel really good about. That's really given us confidence in the full year outlook.
We'd be at the top end of our outlook range only I see, you know, constraints from memory, which we've factored in, and then we feel good about the momentum we're seeing in the marketplace.
The next question comes from Meta Marshall of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks. A couple of questions. Just one, in terms of kind of the demand that you're seeing within manufacturing, you know, are there any verticals kind of within manufacturing where you're seeing strength, or do you think that some of this is starting to be some of the refresh of some of the devices bought during COVID? Then as just a second question, just any commentary around increased freight and whether that has any impact to kind of your assumptions for the rest of the year. Thanks.
From manufacturing perspective, I would say that, you know, strong across, you know, each of the sub-verticals within manufacturing. Semiconductor, you know, auto, we've seen some additional strength across our machine vision portfolio. Maybe I'd call out. I would say that the investments are really, you know, across visibility across the supply chain. More drive to continue to have more visibility, both in warehousing but across the entire supply chain. You know, clearly automating quality control that's driving, you know, machine vision inside manufacturing overall. You know, outside of manufacturing, we're also seeing strength. Retail e-commerce, you know, was very vertical in the quarter, so solid demand across that and, you know, continues to be a long-term growth driver for us. You know, healthcare continues to have solid growth in the quarter.
When you were talking about, you know, more of the refresh opportunities, that's really focused, you know, from a retail perspective, they're continuing to refresh. Every customer has a different refresh cycle. Transportation & Logistics is really the larger refreshes that, you know, we're working with our customers on today, building a pipeline of opportunities. Really, we see that, you know, coming in and beginning in 2027, so that opportunity continues to grow. Transportation & Logistics cycle is a large, you know, order compare from prior year, but we see, you know, healthy pipeline of opportunities in that. Those conversations about the refreshes in 2026, we really have forecast about the same level of refresh activities across the different vertical markets as we did in 2025 in our guide.
Really 2027, we would see clearly an opportunity to these bigger refresh cycles where T&L begin to play a role in our numbers.
Yeah, Meta, the second question, which I believe was on the freight rates, and what we're seeing from a logistics standpoint. We have experienced, you know, 20%-30% price increases across the various lanes that we use for our products. That's stabilized here recently. We've incorporated that increase into our guidance. You know, transportation or freight costs are less than 2% of revenue. You know, right now it's in a range that we can manage and use other levers to offset. We've incorporated that higher pricing into the guidance for the full year. The teams are actively working on, you know, different lanes and different options given the environment.
Great. Thanks.
The next question comes from Keith Housum of Northcoast Research. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. I do want to say congratulations on the gross margin improvement. Good to see. In terms of the machine vision, I think, you know, Bill, you quoted that was up double digits here. Obviously, machine vision has had a little bit of a challenging time over the past year or two. Do we see an inflection point here? Or what's the teeniest kind of thing in terms of where the machine vision improvement's coming from and what the expectations are for the rest of the year?
Machine vision, you know, for us, we see as an integral part of really the future of our Asset Visibility and Automation segment, right? You know, as you know, Keith, drives both, you know, the logistics market, so transportation logistics, then, you know, clearly, manufacturing. We saw machine vision grow, you know, double digits, strong double-digit growth year-on-year in first quarter. You know, we've been, you know, looking for this inflection point in the market. I think you'll see that really aligned with, you know, the industry as a whole. You know, I'd say recent logistics wins across the U.S. and Europe continue to, you know, be encouraging signs for us in delivering our new solutions.
We're seeing growing opportunities in manufacturing and e-commerce that's, you know, driving what we would expect to be double-digit growth for the full year, so continuing the momentum and growth throughout 2026. I'd say overall, our value proposition is resonating with customers. You know, ease of use, the idea that, you know, we're using a single software platform that's unified across the portfolio of products that allows our customers to easily set up and use our products. We think of, you know, how do we make it simple for our customers to leverage machine vision portfolio? How do they get speed of deployment inside their environments?
Then, you know, how efficient are the reads and how good is our product overall from a machine vision and fixed industrial scanning portfolio? I think that, you know, we're continuing to invest in go-to-market. We've expanded the portfolio with the Photoneo acquisition. We continue to invest in software assets around AI and deep learning, which allows that simplification of deployment in our customers' environment. I think we're feeling good about, you know, where we're at in machine vision. We do think it's an inflection point. We've been working really hard to drive growth across this business, and I think the market opportunity allows us to do that. Then we're seeing it both in T&L and manufacturing, where, you know, it's really broad-based working with our customers around the world.
Great. Thank you. Appreciate it.
The next question comes from James Ricchiuti of Needham & Company. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the color on your machine vision business. I'm wondering if you can talk to, the kind of growth you're seeing across your RFID portfolio, maybe in the same light.
Yeah. RFID continues to build a strong pipeline of opportunities across the supply chain. We're seeing not just in retail, but transportation logistics, manufacturing, government. All of that creates opportunities for us in machine vision. You know, we saw strong compares from a year ago in RFID. We would expect a decline in first quarter, but not a concern to us. We had, you know, large cycling of compares in the first quarter. Expecting growth certainly in second quarter and then for the full year. Momentum in RFID continues, I would say, overall. You know, we're seeing the move in retail, beyond retail apparel really into things like fresh foods, which is, you know, a new opportunity for RFID inside grocery.
Broader, you know, merchandising as well within retail, you know, beyond apparel. Transportation logistics, you know, parcel tracking through, you know, logistics providers is creating a market as well or a new market for us, which is another place we're working closely with our customers. Quick serve restaurants, healthcare, you know, anything you need to track and trace across the supply chain is seeing momentum, you know, in RFID. From a Zebra perspective, we've got the broadest set of solutions, so we're the market leader in fixed and handheld, you know, RFID readers. We've got a portfolio of our printing printers and labels to go along with that. You know, we've recently released our new line of mobile computers that have embedded RFID capabilities into those and our wearable products as well across that portfolio.
We continue to expand RFID functionality across our portfolio. We see this as a long-term growth opportunity as people are continuing to drive visibility across the entire supply chain within their environments.
A question. Just with respect to the large project business, any change in the outlook looking out to the second half, you know, either macro related or, you know, the result of potential changes in the competitive landscape as it relates to the pending transaction with Brady and Honeywell?
No, Jim, we haven't seen any changes, you know, related to the second half. As Bill mentioned earlier, the project funnel remains strong. A great pipeline of opportunities as we look out through the balance of the year and into 2027 as particularly some of the large T&L refreshes start to come online. No change overall in terms of the overall pipeline relative to the recently announced transaction. I think it's playing out as we expected. You know, the large deals, they are in line with the total growth as we announced in our last earnings. No change that, you know, kind of the mix of large deal and run rate both equally contributing to the full year guidance.
Maybe the second part of your question, I'd say, you know, our focus is really, you know, on our business and continuing to expand, you know, our lead in the marketplace. I'd say that, Look, we've got deeply embedded relationships with our enterprise customers, and we're focused on continuing to innovate and drive our solutions portfolio to continue to take share in the marketplace.
The next question comes from Rob Mason of Baird. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. My question is just around capital allocation, if there's been any change in the thought process for 2026. I think originally you had earmarked about half the free cash flow for the year towards share repurchase. It sounds like, you know, year to date, we're already at that point or thereabouts. You know, any change in the thought process around half the free cash flow going to share repurchases?
Hey, Rob, as you, as you mentioned, you know, we've already repurchased $500 million through April, so, I mean, already above the 50% outlook that we provided in the last update. Obviously taking advantage of what we believe is an attractive stock valuation, and we're gonna continue to be active in the market. If you look at now our full year EPS guide assumes we do an additional $100 million of share repurchase. We have the flexibility to allocate all of our free cash flow for the year, if we see it's again, an attractive price, and an opportunity for us to continue to repurchase.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Joseph Giordano of TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys.
Morning, Joe.
One of, like, the more structural pushbacks people give on Zebra's story is like a terminal value question about in the future, as we have more and more automation and more and more robotics and less people in the buildings that you currently serve, there's just a structural smaller need for your products and services. How would you answer and address that question on, like, a much longer term view?
Yeah, Joseph Giordano, I'd say that the, you know, automation trends, right, and the, and the trend towards physical AI is clearly a benefit or, you know, I'd even say tailwind for Zebra as a whole. It's really our business is all about driving, you know, automation and productivity within our customers' environments. I'd say that we've got a long runway of growth ahead of us that, you know, we've got, you know, relationships with our largest customers and even the, you know, the most advanced customers today that are the most advanced from an automation perspective continue to grow their installed base of Zebra solutions, and that includes, you know, mobile computers to drive labor productivity.
I think that when we look at, you know, the one place you talk about automation, 'cause it doesn't really apply in things like front of store retail or, you know, nurses in hospital settings or, you know. Really you're talking about warehousing. You know, today, nearly 75% of warehouses around the world are really in the early stages of an automation journey. That we're seeing that if you look at the numbers, the number of frontline workers are continued to project it to increase. You know, warehouse footprint continues to grow, and, you know, really driven by things like e-commerce, now manufacturing growth along with that. You know, we see our customers wanting to have flexible, you know, solutions for automating and that's really what we do across the environments.
I think that, you know, we're seeing that continue to provide that from a quick ROI modularity and our solutions overall. When you think of what Zebra does, you know, we collect the data, ultimately reading a barcode, printing a label, all the things we do in our Asset Visibility portfolio to feed, you know, either automation trends, because you need data, or physical AI trends for analytics, and then leverage workers within the environment to get work done, and those workers are augmented by technology and automation to make their jobs easier overall. I'd say, you know, automation augments workers, doesn't, you know, replace workers, and we've seen automation in place for a long time, and we continue to see the demand for Zebra solution continue to grow.
I think that we feel good about, you know, where we're at, you know, as a business, and we see the terminal value being strong and things like physical AI being a net positive for us versus a detractor.
When you think about AI deployment, how do you where do you see the sweet spot for you, whether it's developing your own AI tools, or, you know, having a software partner deploy those tools on a Zebra device where you get just like the device sale? When you think about, like, monetizing, how what's the right balance for you there?
Yeah. It's, Joe, it's really all of the above. If you start at the highest level, AI adoption trends, as I said, just like automation, are net positive for us in that, you know, we really understand our customers' workflows and that we've got a large installed base of solutions today that really are fundamental to driving automation or AI for the frontline because AI is really the analytics that drives automation. I would say that we're really uniquely positioned to be the supplier of choice for AI for the frontline. What I mean by that is that at the highest levels, the Asset Visibility and Automation portfolio we have, printing, scanning, machine vision, optical character recognition, you know, parcel dimensioning, all that information is required on the front line to create data around the physical world to feed AI models.
So we give-
You know, assets, a digital voice within our customers environments that feed AI models that ultimately tell our customers how to be more effective and more efficient. The way today you get that work done is through automation in the environment or people doing the work. Those, you know, workers are using mobile devices today and our software. Think of task management software, think of communication collaboration software, think of our new AI for the frontline agents. All of those are used to be able to drive the productivity within our customer's business and the answers from, you know, the AI engine. I'd say that, you know, the entire portfolio benefits from AI.
From a Frontline AI Suite, we've got on our mobile devices now specifically, we have Enablers, Blueprints and Companions, all of which allow our customers to easily deploy AI on the front line of business, we're at the very early stages of that. We've, you know, won a new opportunity and parcel proof of delivery with T&L provider. We're in multiple pilots with our customers around retail, transportation, logistics, other areas around the world. That's still very early days. Overall, the portfolio we have of Asset Visibility and Connected Frontline AI, physical AI deployment is a net positive for Zebra across the entire portfolio. Specifically, there's software opportunities with things like our Frontline AI Suite that allows our customers for us to meet them wherever they're at in the journey of automation or deploying AI.
The next question comes from Guy Hardwick of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Congratulations on the quarter. Excellent performance. Nathan, I appreciate that you expect to fully offset the 200 basis points of margin memory impact. Do you expect any impact from a lag of recovery in any one quarter? The reason I ask is that one of your competitors called out memories being ahead when specifically for Q3 to their gross margins, and then a major mobile device manufacturer mentioned gross margin headwind in their June quarter. I just wonder if you could comment on that.
No, I think the only thing, obviously you see the step up in, you know, the cost profile from Q1 to Q2, just as we, you know, work through our inventory position, coming into the year, as well as the prices have escalated, in line with what we had expected, escalated here over the, you know, the past quarter. Obviously, there's a step up from Q1 to Q2, and we'd expect that to continue to increase modestly, stepping up from Q3 to Q4, but offset as we get higher price realization on our own products and the flow through of that.
I think Q2 is kind of the inflection point in terms of step change sequentially, just as we roll through with that, and then, a modest increase as we go to Q3 and Q4, but that's mitigated as we get more price realization on our side, to help mitigate the inflow. There's I wouldn't say there's any other particular macro or market-driven reason for it. I'd say it's more just timing of inventory, and the flow through that through the P&L.
Just as a quick follow-up, just wondering whether the changes in the tariff regime could have had any impact on the business, either positively or negatively in Q1 and how it maybe impacts your Q2 guidance.
If you look at the elimination of the IEPA rates, but, you know, most of that, a big chunk of that was offset by the Section 122 tariffs. I'd say it really didn't have a meaningful impact on the P&L in Q1. Again, most of that, just given the timing of the announcement, and the carryover from inventory. It'll have a small benefit in Q2, but we don't expect really any impact for our full year guidance. Our expectation is that as we go into the back half of the year, second half of the year, you know, whatever the new form, whether that's Section 301 or others, will replace what was the effective IEPA rates coming into the year.
I'd say the full year, we're not expecting any material changes due to the new tariff regime, just as there's gonna be a new form factor of that, presumably in the second half of the year. If that changes, we'll obviously update as we go through the year. In the short term, I'd say pretty modest, just given inventory impact than the differentiation between the rates between IEPA and 122.
The next question comes from Brian Drab of William Blair. Please go ahead.
Yeah. I think my question was just taken there, but I wonder if you can just elaborate more on, you know, one of the questions I've been getting all quarter is around is Section 232 going to impact you? You know, you've moved a lot of manufacturing to Mexico. You know, how does this, you know, specifically for 232, does that have any impact? I can see that, you know, tariffs weren't mentioned in the transcript here until that last question, the Q&A, so I guess it's not a big deal, but wonder if you could just give some detail around that.
Yeah, look, I think it would all depend on, you know, what exactly comes out in terms of, you know, the scope. I think that's not clear today. We've been obviously monitoring and tracking with our trade compliance team, and, you know, we leverage the largest semiconductor companies in the world, and continue to assess country of origin across all of our different products, in terms of the flow of semiconductors through the supply chain. Again, actively working both our supply base and our government relations team, but I think there's nothing really to specifically comment on, relative to 232.
As it's, you know, it's been out there for quite some time, I'd say just like anything, whether that was the, you know, tariff round 1, tariff round 2, and all the other changes, as those change, we'll take the necessary actions to mitigate the impact of the P&L and communicate that implications with our customers. That's no different on whatever the next, you know, version of whether it's, you know, 301 or 232 that comes later this year.
This dynamic of, you know, a product being taxed based on its metal content at 50%, transitioning to a product being taxed on its entire value at 25%, like that type of dynamic is not a big deal for bringing a barcode printer or any other device into the country, say from Mexico or elsewhere.
Yeah. Again, I would say it all depends on what's actually ultimately written in terms of country of origin, and how they scope it in terms of, you know, what content and what rate. I'd say right now there's just not enough details to speculate on what the impact would be until we get further clarity.
The next question comes from Robert Jamieson of Vertical Research. Please go ahead.
Hey, congrats on the results. Just a couple from me. Bill, you know, you all have been very active on the ecosystem side, including the strategic investments like the Apera AI for, 4D vision for factory automation, as well as like the broad ISV network that you're building out for AI and mobile compute. Just curious, like how central are these partnerships and investments to your AI strategy? You know, on the near term ROI side, like where are you seeing the most tangible benefits from AI enhanced solutions today, and which verticals do you think, you know, or would you expect to see the most, you know, incremental AI revenue contribution from as we look ahead?
I'd say first that, you know, our venture investments, again, we view as another lever ultimately to be able to stay close to new innovation. You know, these are relatively small investments from our perspective. It allows us to invest across the portfolio in, you know, interesting companies, technologies that we ultimately see as interesting to us, you know, longer term. In this case, really around, you know, machine vision and physical AI in the most recent one. I think that's always of interest to us, but these are small investments overall. I think it's important for us to continue to keep our pulse on what's happening in the, you know, across venture.
I'd say our independent software vendor relationships and just our relationships as a whole is we're seeing that, you know, it's important that whether it's our relationship with Qualcomm or Google or the memory suppliers in this case most recently, but also the software vendors, large and small. You know, everyone from the biggest players to the smallest are part of our ecosystem of partners that we leverage to work with our customers. You know, our channel partner community ultimately serves a lot of our customers around the world as well. All those are, you know, incredibly important to us as we bring our solutions to market.
Across AI, we see it a combination of really meeting our customers wherever they're at in the journey. I think that, you know, their ROI is driven by, you know, our Frontline AI Suite is kinda three components to it. One is Enablers that allows our customers to leverage our next generation mobile devices that we've recently, you know, released, the idea of, you know, capabilities to support the processing and memory required for AI, allow those Enablers to be used by our customers that wanna deploy their own AI agents in their own, you know, AI software at the frontline of business. Our Blueprints allows our customers to leverage those Enablers where we package them together into a specific use case. Like, parcel proof of delivery is a good example of that.
We talked about the recent transportation logistics win in that area. That's combining our Enablers along with agents from Zebra, and then packaging those together that'll fit underneath our customer's application. The third is where we do the full application ourselves. That's Companions. We meet our customers wherever that they're at in their journey. They wanna use our Enablers on the device and leverage those to build their own AI agents, that's okay. If they want us to create that software for them, we've got an offering and generate revenue associated with that. If they want us to build a full application for them, we'll do that as well.
We meet our customers wherever they're at in our journey. That's what we do leveraging our independent software vendors and our AI partners, along with our customer, along with our offerings, complete the full suite of offerings to our customers, so we can meet them wherever they're at on their AI journey or wherever they're at in their automation journey. That's what our customers really wanna see from us, that we're not driving them in one direction or another. If they wanna do a lot of the development themselves, and some of our largest customers wanna go do that, the majority of our customers do not. They want help from us or our software vendor partners to be able to deliver an entire solution.
Our last question comes from Piyush Avasthy of Citi. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys, and thanks for fitting me in. Bill, I think you mentioned AI-
Good morning.
Bill, you, I think you mentioned AI helping your customers improve efficiency. Are you deploying AI internally as well? Like, you mentioned productivity initiatives helping you this quarter. If you could elaborate on what you're doing there, and like how should we think about like margins in the longer term? Like, does AI kinda, you know, improve that 50 bps off year-on-year margin, you know, that's baked into the expansion that's baked into your long-term outlook?
Yeah, we do see AI driving internal productivity within our business. You know, at the areas you really would expect, software development, right? A lot of work being done using AI tools across our development process, you know, within research and development. You know, our sales and marketing teams leveraging, you know, AI across what they're doing, you know, around the globe, working with customers in their marketing platform and others. Supply chain forecasting, we're seeing that. Our customer service teams as well. We're using AI tools broadly across the entire organization, so we've encouraged, clearly, our employees to leverage, you know, the AI tools we have available to them, and we're seeing broad-based adoption across AI. We do believe that ultimately it drives efficiency and allows us to continue to increase, you know, our margins moving forward.
Absolutely we believe that AI will be a productivity tool inside Zebra, but we actually believe that you know, overall the biggest opportunity is what we provide to our customers. It's also important from a profitability perspective. Really both.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to Bill Burns for any closing remarks.
I'd just like to wrap up by thanking our employees and partners for delivering solid Q1 results and certainly excellent progress we've seen so far on our 2026 priorities. We're excited about the opportunities ahead. Thank you everyone for joining.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation, and you may now disconnect.