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Good day everyone, and welcome to the Littelfuse first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I will turn the call over to the Vice President of Investor Relations, David Kelley. Please proceed.

Good morning and welcome to the Littelfuse first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. With me today are Greg Henderson, President and CEO, and Abhi Khandelwal, Executive Vice President and CFO. This morning, we report the results for our first quarter, and a copy of our earnings release and slide presentation is available in the investor relations section of our website. A webcast of today's conference call will also be available on our website. Please advance to slide two for our disclaimers. Our discussions today will include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements may involve significant risk and uncertainties. Please review today's press release and our forms 10-K and 10-Q for more details about important risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. We assume no obligation to update any of this forward-looking information. Also, our remarks today refer to non-GAAP financial measures.

A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measure is provided in our earnings release available in the investor relations section of our website. I will now turn the call over to Greg.

Thank you, David, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. This morning, I'll start with highlights from our first quarter and then provide an update on the progress we're making on our strategic priorities. We delivered a strong start to the year, with first quarter results exceeding our expectations. Net sales were $657 million, up 19% year-over-year, 9% organically, and we delivered meaningful margin expansion across our segments. Our teams executed well as we capitalized on broad-based demand strength across several key markets. We continue to benefit from our leadership position in safe and efficient electrical energy transfer as our markets and applications transitions toward higher power and higher energy density architectures. Our strategic focus and customer-centric go-to-market model are enabling us to engage earlier and more deeply with our customers.

Importantly, we are seeing early tangible benefits from our sales force realignment as we solve our customers' increasingly complex challenges with our full technology portfolio. Taking a closer look at our performance by end market in the quarter, we delivered strong double-digit growth in data centers and grid utility infrastructure, where demand continues to be fueled by the broader electrification megatrend. Across our diversified industrial market, we drove meaningful revenue growth supported by broad-based demand and strong channel execution. In construction and industrial equipment markets, we're seeing mixed demand trends as strength in construction and industrial automation was partially offset by continued soft residential HVAC demand. Finally, in passenger vehicles, sales were up high single digits, reflecting content expansion and share gains amid a soft global production environment. Commercial vehicle sales expanded mid-single digits driven by solid execution.

We exited the first quarter with a book-to-bill well above 1.0, while bookings were again up more than 20% versus the prior year. We expect continued growth momentum and focused execution in the second quarter. I want to recognize our global teams for delivering a strong start to the year and for positioning the company well going forward. Let's shift to our strategic priorities, starting with our sharpened growth focus. A key pillar of this strategy is our expansion within the grid and utility infrastructure market. Having closed the Basler acquisition this past December, we have already begun to see the transformative impact of this integration. Basler significantly strengthens our position in high-power applications, and I'm pleased to report that Basler outpaced our initial expectations during its first full quarter as part of the Littelfuse portfolio.

We are seeing an acceleration in demand for high-power protection and excitation systems driven by the critical need for grid modernization to support the global build-out of data center infrastructure. As an example of our momentum in the quarter, we secured a strategic design win with a market leader for data center power system solutions. This customer chose our protection, automation, and control capabilities for a new 800 volt system deployment due to our advanced feature set and differentiated high voltage DC solution. Our integrated system ensures comprehensive high power protection while enhancing system reliability and reducing architectural complexity for the customer. We also secured a significant design win with a leading U.S. grid infrastructure utility for our high power excitation systems in the quarter. With shipment slated to begin in 2027, this win provides meaningful long-term visibility into Basler's growth trajectory.

While we are in the early stages, the potential for Basler and Littelfuse revenue synergies is increasingly clear. The complementary nature of Basler's technologies and our protection capabilities allows us to move up the value chain, offering more comprehensive and higher power solutions to our customers. Turning to our second strategic priority, which is to partner more closely with our customers to help better understand and solve their technology challenges. As we mentioned in our Q4 call, we went live with a new go-to-market model at the beginning of 2026, where our sales teams are realigned to our customers and enabled to sell our complete portfolio. Today, I wanted to update you on recent progress we're making in our transportation market. In transportation, we are a market leader for low, medium, and high voltage overcurrent and overvoltage solutions.

Even though the end market is growing slowly, the rising complexity of electronic architectures is driving unique requirements for our advanced protection solutions. By partnering closely with our lead global OEM customers and demonstrating very high reliability solutions and predictable delivery, we have been able to increase our share in a number of key overcurrent and overvoltage protection platforms. In the first quarter, these share gains led to our high single-digit growth. In addition, due to our collaboration on next generation platforms, we've been meaningfully expanding our pipeline and are on track for double-digit design win growth in the transportation logistics market in 2026. Now, turning to our third strategic priority, enhancing operational excellence. As we continue to scale best practices across the organization and take a more programmatic approach to measuring execution, we're seeing clear evidence that these efforts are delivering tangible results.

By applying consistent operational and financial discipline across the company, we are driving meaningful margin expansion across the portfolio. Transportation is a good example of how this discipline is translating into results. With targeted productivity initiatives and improved execution across our footprint, we're driving solid profitability expansion despite mixed underlying market conditions. The results are reflected in a strong 200 basis point increase in transportation margins for the quarter. Turning to our semiconductor products business, we see meaningful long-term profitability enhancement opportunities. This starts with protection, a model franchise within Littelfuse, with a demonstrated track record of execution and operating discipline. Once again, in the quarter, protection delivered significant revenue growth and attractive profitability as we capitalize on accelerating customer demand. In power semiconductors, we are applying the same disciplined approach.

As we outlined last quarter, we are increasing our focus on higher growth, higher value applications while rationalizing lower value products and optimizing our footprint. We are seeing signs of improving power semiconductor demand, but we are balancing that momentum with continued portfolio actions as we work toward long-term structural profitability improvement. We remain early in this process, and as we finalize our path forward, we will continue to update you on our regular progress. Across Littelfuse, operational excellence remains a key pillar of our long-term strategy. As we execute on this framework, we believe we are positioning Littelfuse for sustainable and scalable long-term margin expansion. We look forward to detailing our full financial playbook at our Investor Day next week. Taking a step back, we are encouraged by our momentum as we move into the second quarter, supported by strong backlog, high customer engagement, and disciplined execution.

We look forward to sharing additional details on our strategy, long-term growth drivers, and financial objectives at our Investor Day on May 14th in N.Y. With that, I'll turn the call over to Abhi to walk through the financials in more detail.

Thank you, Greg, and good morning, everyone. Today, I will walk you through our first quarter results, followed by our second quarter outlook. Please turn to slide eight for details on our first quarter performance. All comparisons are versus the prior year, unless noted otherwise. Net sales in the first quarter were $657 million, up 19% and 9% organically. The Basler acquisition contributed 6% to sales growth, while foreign exchange was a 3% tailwind. Adjusted EBITDA margin finished at 22.9%, up 280 basis points, reflecting strong volume leverage, favorable mix, and operational execution. Adjusted diluted earnings per share were $3.31, up 51% versus the prior year. We generated solid cash flow in the quarter.

Operating cash flow was $80 million, and free cash flow was $66 million, up 55% year-over-year. We ended the quarter with strong liquidity, a net leverage ratio of approximately 1 times, and returned $90 million to shareholders through our dividend. Please turn to slide 10 for our segment highlights, starting with the electronics product segment. Sales for the quarter increased 18% year-over-year, with organic growth of 15%. Passive products again delivered strong growth, up 22% organically. Semiconductor products grew 8% organically, driven by strong demand for protection semiconductors. Across the electronics product segment, we benefited from increased data center and diversified industrial demand. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the electronics segment was 25.1%, up 300 basis points, reflecting strong volume leverage and execution.

Into the second quarter, we expect to deliver on broad-based demand strength and continued execution as we balance power semiconductor product rationalization. Moving to our Transportation Product segment on slide 11. Sales increased 5% year-over-year. Organic growth was 1%, driven by strength in passenger vehicle content expansion, share gains, and pricing that drove passenger vehicle organic sales of +4%. This was partially offset by lower commercial vehicle volumes due to the impact of the marine business exit. Excluding the marine exit, commercial vehicle sales were flat versus the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margin increased 200 basis points to 19.1%, reflecting disciplined execution and productivity initiatives. Our teams remain focused on driving operational excellence, and we expect continued progress on our Transportation profitability initiatives through 2026. Turning to slide 12. Industrial segment sales increased 45% year-over-year.

Organic growth was up 5%, supported by strong grid and utility infrastructure and data center demand, which was partially offset by soft residential HVAC volumes. The Basler acquisition contributed 39% of growth, outpacing our expectations. Adjusted EBITDA margin increased 340 basis points to 21.9%, driven by volume leverage and mix. We will continue to execute on our favorable industrial positioning in evolving markets to drive growth and profitability expansion. Turning to our outlook for the second quarter on slide 13. We expect continued solid demand across several of our key markets, supported by strong backlog and customer traction. Based on current market conditions, we expect second quarter net sales in the range of $690 million-$710 million. This represents 14% growth versus the prior year.

We expect 8% organic growth and a contribution of 6% to growth from the Basler acquisition. We also expect 2Q adjusted diluted EPS to be in the range of $3.65-$3.85 with an adjusted effective tax rate of 21%-22%. We look forward to sharing our full strategy with you next week at our Investor Day in N.Y. With that, operator, please open the call for Q&A.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. We will go first to Christopher Glynn at Oppenheimer.

Hey, thanks. Good morning, and congrats on the really strong results and across the board progression. Did want to drill into the electronics growth a little bit. The data center side is, you know, a continuing transparent story. Just wanna double click on the comment about increasing diversified industrial demand. We could go in a couple layers on there in terms of new design wins flowing in, specific end markets driving traction.

Thanks, Chris. I think I'll start just by saying, yeah, we had very strong performance across our electronics segment. If you drill down to kind of our market-based view, we as we said, we had very good performance in the quarter in data center. Pipeline was up meaningfully again as well, so we had strong performance in data center, and we have strong growth in the pipeline. In the industrial market, we have significant momentum as well. We mentioned this in the call that I think last quarter we mentioned that we're starting to see broadening. If you go back to last year, really it was largely about data center. We're seeing broadening across the industrial segments. Actually all of our industrial segments, with the exception of HVAC, are doing well.

We did see very strong performance in the diversified industrials. Just as a reminder, you know, our diversified industrial segment includes things like aerospace and defense and medical. We have good, strong strength across the portfolio.

Chris, just to add to our book-to-bill in the quarter was well above one as well. It again supports what, you know, Greg's talking about, which is broad-based demand and broad-based momentum, supported by a book-to-bill.

Yeah, great. Thanks for that, Abhi and Greg. I did want to ask a little further on book-to-bill. I know you're not quantifying them discreetly each quarter, but, you know, curious if the book-to-bill or the absolute orders expanded sequentially, if that kind of trend through the back half is continuing or if there's a characterization of the overall orders growth, any kind of metrics help there or directional or quantitative would be great?

Absolutely, Chris, great question. Look, I think as I think about the order momentum and kind of think about Q4 to Q1, we saw sequential improvement. Even within Q1, as I kind of look at the, you know, look at the progression of the quarter, we saw sequential improvement as we went through the quarter. Again, you know, book-to-bill north of one, we saw bookings, you know, higher than 20% on a year-over-year basis. Continued momentum across the board and sequentially we saw improvement as well.

Okay, that covers a lot of ground. was curious, I think I heard in the prepared comments, Greg, you speak quickly. Did I hear you expect for commercial vehicle, double-digit design wins are expected this year?

I guess I'll let Abhi speak to the exact number, but I think just we would say across transportation, what I would start to say is across the transportation business, we have good momentum. There's not a lot of, you know, as you know, production is kind of soft, but we had good performance, and I would say two ways. One, we are seeing content and share gains across transportation business, both passenger and commercial vehicles. Also we see good momentum in our pipeline. I think we see strong growth. I'll let Abhi speak to the exact numbers that we that we quoted.

Yes, Chris, your statement is absolutely correct. Greg did state that in his prepared remarks.

Great. Thanks.

We'll move next to Luke Junk at Baird.

Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Greg, maybe if we could start, I want to start data center, but maybe go off of where we usually talk about this in that, you know, certainly the growth has been quite visible in your passive business, but hoping we could maybe double click on the protection portfolio, where it seems like we're seeing some benefits that are pretty material this quarter and in the data center piece of industrial from a segment standpoint as well. Thank you.

Yeah. Okay. I'll start with data center, maybe, we can try it. I'm not sure if you're asking about. Can I just clarify, Luke? Are you asking about industrial segment revenues into data center?

Yeah.

Are you asking about-

Yeah, Greg.

Protection in industrial market?

Protection within the context of the electronic segment.

Yeah

Industrial data center related opportunities and what we're seeing right now.

I understand. Yeah.

From a segment standpoint.

Okay.

Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think one of the good things about our position in data center is that we participate, actually all of our segments participate in the data center market, and we're seeing good strength across. That includes our passive electronics portfolio. That includes our semiconductor portfolio. Actually, both our protection semiconductors and our power semiconductor. It includes our industrial portfolio, high power fuses, and actually in our transportation segment, we have circuit breakers, for example. We have a lot across our portfolios that participate in data center. We have strong growth kind of in, I would call it, on-rack solutions, which tend to be more of the onboard solutions. Tends to be more of the electronics content, both semiconductor and passives, we also have strong growth in the infrastructure.

I mentioned the design win that we had in the quarter, actually from Basler. That's part of their control and protection relay solutions, which goes into data center infrastructure. We also have power semiconductor design wins in the infrastructure that go into transfer switches and UPS solutions. We are actually really seeing broad-based strength in the data center from all of our segments, and really across that ecosystem, we talk about solutions that go from grid to chip.

Look, just to build on what Greg just said. If you kind of think about data center, we grew strong double digits within the quarter, and it was one of the leading market contributors to Littelfuse growth in the quarter. Two, I'd say you would expect similar performance again from us tied to our data center and market in the second quarter as well.

That's helpful. In terms of the design award activity so far this year, especially in data center, hoping we could get some color there as well. I think in total in 2025, those design awards more than doubled year-over-year, just early momentum vector here in the beginning of 2026 and maybe even the mix of those opportunities. I know some of this is fast-moving things that you could maybe turn on later this year, as well as, you know, longer-dated things that would maybe be tied to future architectures and whatnot. Thank you.

Yes, yeah, thanks, Luke. First, just to reiterate what you said, right? We had mentioned this last call in 2025, our design wins were up more than double last year, and we were pleased with that, and we attribute some of that also to our new go-to-market model, which we put in place for data center last year, and now we're scaling across the company. What we can say is that, you know, our pipeline is up meaningfully in Q1. This continues to be the fastest growth market for us in Q1. It was also the fastest growth market. We continue to see momentum. Like I said before, we continue to see that momentum broadly from solutions that go on rack all the way through the infrastructure.

Got it. Maybe switching gears, Abhi, just hoping you could walk us through some of the margin dynamics this quarter. You know, some pretty strong breadth across each of the segments from a margin percentage. That's despite the fact that you were dealing with higher commodity costs coming into the quarter, copper, precious metals, those sorts of things. Can we talk about some of the offsets, be it operational or, you know, getting price recoveries into the channel and, you know, really building to an incremental margin that was quite a bit better than the 25% that you had guided to underlying. Thank you.

Absolutely, Luke. Would love to. first of all, if I start at the highest level, our flow-through in the quarter was about 38%. If you kind of think about what we've been talking about, we've been saying, "Hey, look, long term, if you think about Littelfuse, you should be expecting a 30%-35% flow-through for the business, okay?" For the enterprise. For the quarter, we came in at 38%. If you look at the guide that we laid out for Q2, it's at 31%. Again, in the range of 30%-35%. That's at the highest level. Now, if you kind of think about the question around commodities and where we are.

Look, we are seeing pressure from the commodities, the things that you mentioned, you know, silver, copper, and it's no different than what we talked about last year. Our teams are working diligently to offset those commodity, you know, inflationary pressures that we're seeing, whether it's through supply chain savings, whether it's through driving incremental productivity, whether it's through pricing or surcharges, right. Yes, we're seeing inflation, but our teams are focused on it, and our goal is to be price cost neutral, just like we were in 2025.

Got it. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

We'll take our next question from David Williams at Needham.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question, and congratulations on a really strong performance here. I guess maybe first, Abhi, if you kind of think about the margin that passive you just talked about, kind of given where your guidance is, it looks like about 25%-26% of that top line is falling directly through to the bottom line. Do you think that that's kind of a pace that we can continue as you kind of move through this cycle? Or do you think we could get better than that from a top line to bottom line kind of pass through?

Well, look, I'll go back to the highest level again. I think if I think about a flow through, right? It's hard to call a quarter versus the other quarter because look, things happen within a quarter. We make investments within a quarter. I'd say long term, as we continue to grow the business, continue to, you know, continue to put organic growth in the books, a 30%-35% flow through on an annual basis is how I would think about it. Quarter-to-quarter, you could have noise, like I just said, right? Q1 was 38%. Q2, our guide, you know, contemplates a 31% flow through. Long term, think of it as a 30%-35% flow through business.

Okay, great. Certainly appreciate the color there. Then maybe, on the data center and not to beat this horse, but just kind of curious, as you think about the different areas that you play in across the data center, what do you think the magnitude of that looks like? Is there a way to size that TAM or how should we think about maybe Littelfuse exposure across the entire data center footprint?

I think, like I was saying, we participate broadly across the data center. I think what I'll say on this one is that we have our investor day next week, and we're giving a lot more color at that time on all of our markets and specifically focused on the high-growth markets that we've talked about, data center being one. We're going to provide more color on the SAM and our opportunities in data center in our investor day next week.

Okay, great. Just one last one, if I could, again, this may be an Investor Day question, but if you kind of think about the electronics margin, do you think you could ultimately get back to where you were maybe in that 2022 timeframe, in that lower 30% range? Maybe what would it take? Is it a volume dynamic, or do you think that's kind of a mix of the portfolio rationalization volume and the self-help that you're putting in? Thanks.

Yeah, look, I mean, here's where I talk about electronics margin profile. I guess I'll not commit to where we were in 2022 and pick a number and say, "Yes, I can get to that number." There's a couple things that are going on in the electronics segment. First of all, as I kind of think about the electronics segment, there's really two pieces, right? Passives is, I would say, a big part of the segment. If I think about where passives is, we love the business, we love the margin profile, and honestly, it's all about growth for us. If I kind of look at the other part of the electronics segment, it's really the semiconductor business unit. Semiconductor business unit is, you know, two pieces. The protection franchise is one of the most profitable franchise.

It's growing double digits, has a great margin profile. Where we do have an opportunity is on the power semiconductor side that we talked about the last quarter. You know, what we're working through is product rationalization, footprint optimization. As we do that work, and again, that work can't be done overnight. You know, that kind of stuff takes a lot longer because you're talking about, you know, factory consolidation and whatnot. What you should expect is margin improvement in the electronics segment over the mid to, you know, long term as we make that work come through.

Great. Thanks so much.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. We'll pause just a moment. We'll go to Christopher Glynn at Oppenheimer.

Yeah, thanks. You know, you got your hands full. You got Investor Day, a lot of material coming up. You're working on the power semis portfolio, working on the go-to-market strategies and integrating Basler. Curious, how is the acquisition pipeline? Is it something that, you know, maybe better to think about another day to continue pursuing attractive deals? Just curious. It's kind of a bandwidth question, I guess.

First, yeah, maybe I'll just start. I think, look, we have, you know, maybe on the one hand it looks like we have a lot going on, but on the other hand, we have a very clear strategy. We have our three priorities. We're focused on those, and we have a really excellent team. I'm confident that we can, you know, we have a lot of focus now on the things we care about and what we're focusing on, and I think that's going well. To the specifics of acquisition, I think our growth strategy is gonna continue to be organic and inorganic. Not to be a broken record, but we're gonna talk more about the details of our model and thinking about how we're thinking about acquisitions a little bit in Investor Day.

I will tell you that, you know, we continue to have an active pipeline. We continue to be disciplined about it, and we wanna focus on doing acquisitions that align to our strategy, and we are gonna give more details on that next week. I think you should expect to continue to see us doing acquisitions. I also will say, like we said, I think the integration of Basler is going extremely well. We're very pleased with that. We have a, you know, we're building a playbook around acquisition integration, and it's going very well. We see that momentum that we talked about, so we're very pleased that we can support that and others as they come.

Yeah, and look, we've got ample capacity for acquisition, given our balance sheet and where we are. Our net leverage is, you know, one time. Again, to Greg's point, it's a big part of our strategic imperative. It's a big part of our focus area. We're gonna lay out clear targets next, you know, next week in terms of what we expect to do over the next five years, and our balance sheet supports it.

Okay, then just one more kind of a little housekeeping, then I'll hold my horses till next week's Investor Day. The residential HVAC market, anything interesting going on sequentially in terms of, you know, stocking regulatory transitions? Should we assume the second half comparison there is pretty accommodating?

I mean, look, I think that this market tends to have kind of cycles, right? That's the way that this market goes, and we have a reasonable exposure in our industrial segment. That's why we see some of this affecting us. There is some regular seasonality to this, right? Some of that is seasonality, and then there's some of the timing of the seasonality. What I will say is that medium to long-term in this space, we expect to continue to see good performance and growth like we do, but there's sometimes noise in the short term.

Great. Thank you.

That concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the conference back over to CEO Greg Henderson for closing remarks.

Thank you. I just want to close with first off thanking our team. We had a very strong start to 2026. We see continued momentum across the markets and see the breadth of that momentum, we feel good about our start to the year and our momentum into the second quarter. Like we said many times today, we look forward to seeing many of you next week in New York for our Investor Day. Thank you very much.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.