Aebi Schmidt is a Swiss specialty-vehicles maker that, in July 2025, swallowed Michigan's Shyft Group in a Nasdaq-listed merger that roughly doubled its scale and handed it a walk-in-van and truck-body franchise to go with its snowplows, street sweepers, and airport equipment. A year on, the investment case rests on a single number: the order backlog. It stood at $1.3 billion at the end of the first quarter, up 23% from a year earlier, with order intake up 9%. The company is telling investors that the orders are real and, crucially, that the walk-in-van backlog in particular converts into revenue this half. The second quarter, reported two days after this note, is the first test of that claim.
The quarter itself was a study in two speeds. Net sales of $455.5 million were essentially flat on a like-for-like basis - up 7% excluding a $26.3 million Blue Arc divestment in the year-ago quarter. Adjusted EBITDA rose 6% to $33.1 million, a 7.3% margin and 40 basis points of expansion, powered by Europe and rest-of-world more than tripling its adjusted EBITDA while North America fell 9% as the company spent on ramping walk-in-van production. The trouble sits one line further down the income statement: GAAP net income was just $671 thousand, roughly $0.01 a share, on a balance sheet carrying $455 million of net debt and leverage of 2.88x - against a covenant at 3.75x and a year-end target of 2.0x. The order book is the bull case; the wafer-thin profit and the debt are the thing it must outrun. The stock, at $12.87, sits 19% below its $15.96 high but roughly a third above its 52-week low.