Kyra Yates
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Wabtec's Q2 2026 earnings call. With us today are Chairman and CEO Rafael Santana, CFO John Olin, and Senior Vice President of Finance, John Mastalerz.
Today's slide presentation, along with our earnings release and financial disclosures, were posted to our website earlier today and can be accessed on the investor relations tab. Some statements we are making are forward-looking and based on our best view of the world and our business today.
For more detailed risks, uncertainties, and assumptions relating to our forward-looking statements, please see the disclosures in our earnings release and presentation. We will also discuss non-GAAP financial metrics and encourage you to read our disclosures and reconciliation tables carefully as you consider these metrics.
I will now turn the call over to Rafael.
Kyra Yates
Rafael Santana
Thanks, Kyra, and good morning, everyone. We're proud of the progress we have made in the H1 of the year, which is strengthening our position as a leading industrial technology company.
It reflects the strength of the leadership position we continue to build across our portfolio and the continued focus of the Wabtec team to deliver for our stakeholders. With that, let's move to slide four.
I'll start with an update on our business, my perspectives on the quarter, and progress against our long-term value creation framework. Then John will cover the financials.
We delivered a strong H1 of the year, which exceeded our expectations despite tariff headwinds, unfavorable business mix, and challenging prior year comparisons. Through disciplined execution across the organization, we achieved robust growth, expanded margins, and delivered double-digit earnings per share growth.
Looking ahead to the H2, I remain encouraged by the healthy pipeline, continued demands for our core products and services, the profitable growth of our 12-month and multiyear backlogs, and our focus on driving productivity and efficiency. This momentum is evident in our Q2 operational execution and our overall financial results.
Having said that, sales were $3.2 billion, which was up 17.5%. Adjusted EPS was up 22% from the year ago quarter.
Total cash flow from operations for the quarter was $441 million. Backlog remains a key strength.
Twelve-month backlog was up 11% from the prior year, while the multiyear backlog exceeded $30 billion, up 42%. Our financial position remains strong.
We continue to execute against our capital allocation framework, expect to continue to compound long-term value for our shareholders. Shifting our focus to slide five, let's talk about our 2026 end market expectations in more detail.
While key metrics across our freight markets remain mixed, we continue to be encouraged by the overall strength and resilience of our business. We are seeing solid momentum in our international markets, the pipeline of opportunities across geographies remains strong.
In North America, car load traffic was up 4% in the quarter. As a result of this growth, Wabtec's, the industry's active locomotive fleet was up compared to last year's Q2.
Internationally, car loads growth during the quarter was mixed. The long-term car load growth trends continue to be robust.
Significant investments to expand and upgrade infrastructure are driving our international orders pipeline. Looking at the North American railcar build, the industry forecast for new railcars is slightly up compared to the prior quarter and is now projected to be approximately 25,000 cars for 2026, which is still down 21% from 2025.
Finally, turning to the transit sector, we continue to see positive underlying indicators for growth. Ridership continues to increase in key markets such as Europe and India, and we continue to see strong backlogs at car builders, supported by robust levels of public investment for fleet expansion and renewals.
Now let's turn to slide six and highlight several recent business wins. During the quarter, we secured a billion-dollar order from an Australian customer, spending across locomotives, services, components, and digital solutions.
This award highlights the breadth of Wabtec's capabilities and demonstrates how our integrated offering are creating value throughout the product lifecycle. We also signed a $184 million order for Positive Train Control with Vale, strengthening our long-standing partnership and marking an important step forward in advancing rail safety, efficiency, and automation across Brazil's rail network.
In transit, we were awarded a $55 million platform door order for the Grand Paris Express project. Moving to mining, our APAC team secured a $52 million order to supply drive systems for 240 ton mining trucks.
Overall, these successes continue to demonstrate our leadership in the markets we serve, the strength of our pipeline, and the commitment of the Wabtec team to deliver meaningful results for our customers and stakeholders. With that, I'll turn it over to John to review the quarter, segment results, and our overall financial performance.
John?
Rafael Santana
John Olin
Thanks, Rafael, and hello, everyone. Turning to slide seven, I'll review our results in more detail.
Our Q2 results came in better than expected, driven by stronger revenue growth and increased operating margin expansion. As we discussed in our last call, we expected the quarter's revenue growth to be similar to Q1's results.
Q2 revenue growth came in stronger than the Q1, driven by a combination of a couple things. First, we had favorable timing of shipments, and second, we experienced incremental flow business revenue.
We also expected our margin expansion to be similar to the Q1. In actuality, our operating margin expansion also came in favorable to Q1's results.
This was driven by better than expected product mix and our continued focus on productivity and efficiency with programs such as Integration 3.0. Having said that, sales for the Q2 were $3.18 billion, which reflects a 17.5% increase versus the prior year, with strong contributions from both the freight and transit segments.
Excluding the impact of currency, Q2 sales were up 16.6%. For the quarter, GAAP operating income was $600 million, which was up 27.1% versus the prior year.
The increase was predominantly driven by higher sales, improved gross margin, and lapping prior year's transaction costs resulting from our recent acquisitions. Adjusted operating margin for Q2 was 21.9%, up 0.8 percentage points versus the prior year.
This improvement was achieved despite tariff-related headwinds, unfavorable mix, and tough year-over-year comps. GAAP earnings per diluted share was $2.33, which was up 18.9% versus the year-ago quarter.
During the quarter, we had net pre-tax charges of $6 million for purchase accounting charges and transaction costs associated with our recent acquisitions. In the quarter, adjusted earnings per diluted share was $2.76, up 21.6% versus the prior year.
Overall, the quarter reflects the strength of our execution, the resilience of our business, and solid momentum as we move through the year. For the H2, we expect year-over-year revenue growth to temper as we lap the inclusion of Inspection Technologies in the prior year period.
We also expect the majority of our margin expansion for the year to occur in the back half of the year. Our H2 margins are expected to benefit from, first, tempering year-over-year tariff impacts as we begin to lap 2025 tariff increases.
Next, increasing productivity momentum from our Integration 3.0 and portfolio optimization initiatives. Finally, lapping more moderate prior year margin growth.
When we look at the cadence of growth between the third and the Q4s, we expect revenue growth to be slightly higher in the Q3 versus the fourth. On the margin side, we anticipate the opposite dynamic.
We expect a meaningful acceleration in margin growth in the Q4, with Q3's performance generally consistent with the margin growth rates delivered in the H1 of the year. Now turning to slide eight, let's review our product lines performance in more detail.
Q2 consolidated sales were up 17.5%. Equipment sales were up 35% from last year's Q2.
This was driven by higher locomotive deliveries and increased mining sales. Our services group drove strong core services sales growth in the quarter, which was offset by lower modernization deliveries, as we expected.
Looking ahead, we expect modernization deliveries to grow in the H2 of the year, returning services to growth in the back half. That said, we continue to expect full-year services revenue to be down due to the lower number of modernization deliveries that were shipped in the H1 when we compare that to the prior year.
Consequently, as modernization deliveries ramp up in the H2, we would expect equipment revenue growth to remain positive, but at a very moderate pace versus the 43% growth achieved in the H1. Component sales were down 0.7% versus last year due to the industry's decline in the North America rail car build and due to lower revenue from our portfolio optimization efforts, partially offset by increased industrial product sales.
Digital intelligence sales were up 88.5% from last year. This was driven by contributions from the Inspection Technologies and Frauscher acquisitions.
In our transit segment, sales were up 18.9%, driven by the Dellner acquisition and growth across our products and services businesses. Foreign currency exchange had a favorable impact on sales in the quarter of 1.3 percentage points.
Moving to slide nine, GAAP gross margin was 36.5%, which was up 1.8 percentage points from the Q2 last year. Adjusted gross margin was up 1.9 percentage points during the quarter.
GAAP operating margin was 18.9%, which was up 1.5 percentage points versus last year. Adjusted operating margin improved 0.8 percentage points to 21.9%.
Operating margin was positively impacted by cost recovery from contractual price escalation, increased productivity, and integration savings, partially offset by rising manufacturing costs, higher year-over-year tariffs, and unfavorable mix. Adjusted and GAAP SG&A expenses were higher year-over-year, due largely to the SG&A expense associated with our acquisitions.
Engineering expense was $70 million, $20 million higher than Q2 last year, primarily due to acquisitions. We continue to invest in engineering resources and current business opportunities, but more importantly, we are investing in our future as a leading industrial technology company focused on improving our customers' fuel efficiency, labor productivity, capacity utilization, and safety.
Let's take a look at segment results on slide 10, starting with the Freight segment. As I already discussed, Freight segment sales were up a strong 16.9%.
GAAP segment operating income was $504 million, driving an operating margin of 22.5%, up 0.9 percentage points versus last year. Adjusted operating income for the Freight segment was $579 million, up 20.6% versus the prior year.
Adjusted operating margin in the Freight segment was 25.8%, up 0.8 percentage points from the prior year. The increase was driven by higher gross margin of 1.7 percentage points, partially offset by an increase of 0.9 percentage points in our operating expense, expressed as a percentage of revenue.
The key driver of this is due to the mix of higher gross margin businesses as a result of our acquisitions of Inspection Technologies and Frauscher, and our continuous focus on productivity and efficiency. Finally, the Freight segment's 12-month backlog was $6.64 billion.
Our 12-month backlog was up 10.2%, while the multi-year backlog of $25.33 billion was up 47.8%. Turning to slide 11.
Transit segment sales were up 18.9% at $936 million. When adjusting for foreign currency, transit sales were up 17.7%.
GAAP operating income was $146 million, which reflected the quarter's robust revenue growth and operating margin expansion. These strong results were partially offset by $20 million of purchase accounting charges and non-cash amortization expenses, which were primarily associated with the acquisition of Dellner in the Q1.
Adjusted segment operating income was $166 million. Adjusted operating income as a % of revenue was 17.7%, up 2.5 percentage points from prior year, with the underlying momentum of the business and the Dellner acquisition serving as key contributors to this quarter's margin expansion.
Finally, Transit segment 12-month backlog for the quarter was $2.5 billion, and our 12-month backlog was up 14.5%, while the multi-year backlog was up 19.4%. Let's turn to our financial position on slide 12.
Our Q2 cash flow generation was $441 million, resulting in a cash conversion of 82%. Our balance sheet and financial position continue to be very strong, as evidenced by, first, our liquidity position, which ended the quarter over $2 billion, and our net debt leverage ratio, which ended the quarter at 2.2x.
Our leverage ratio remained in our stated range of 2-2.5x, even after funding the purchase of Dellner during the Q1 for approximately $1 billion, and repurchasing $457 million of our shares in the H1. We continue to allocate capital in a disciplined way to maximize returns with an expectation of compounding our earnings for our shareholders.
During the quarter, we repurchased $215 million of our shares and paid $53 million in dividends. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Rafael to talk about our 2026 financial guidance.
John Olin
Rafael Santana
Thanks, John. Now let's turn to slide 13 to discuss our 2026 outlook and guidance.
Overall, the team delivered a strong Q2 with operational results ahead of our expectations. Importantly, we continue to see underlying demand for our products and solutions across the business.
That demand is reflected in a strong pipeline, and both our 12-month and multi-year backlogs provide clear visibility into profitable growth ahead. With that backdrop, we are increasing our full year guidance.
We now expect 2026 revenue of approximately $12.5 billion at the midpoint, up 11.5% from last year, which is an increase of one percentage point versus our prior guidance. We also now expect adjusted EPS to be in the range of $10.60 to $10.90, up 20% at the midpoint.
Now let's wrap up on slide 14. As you heard today, our team continues to execute against our value creation framework and our five-year outlook.
The strength of our performance is driven by our resilient install base, world-class team, innovative technologies, and our customer-focused approach. We are also encouraged by the integration and early performance of our recent acquisitions, which are strengthening our portfolios and expanding our total available markets for future growth.
Overall, I believe Wabtec is uniquely positioned as a leading industrial technology company. With a strong foundation, a talented global team, and significant opportunities ahead, we are well-positioned to deliver profitable growth and continue to compound shareholder value over time.
With that, I want to thank you for your time this morning, and I'll now turn the call over to Kyra to begin the Q&A portion of our discussion. Kyra?
Rafael Santana
Kyra Yates
Thank you, Rafael. We will now move on to questions, but before we do, and out of consideration for others on the call, I ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question.
If you have additional questions, please rejoin the queue. Operator, we are now ready for our first question.
Kyra Yates
Operator
Our first question comes from Ken Hoexter with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Operator
Ken Hoexter
Hey, great. Good morning, and congrats on raising the outlook.
Rafael or John, maybe you noted kind of the mixed carload outlook on a global basis, some wins on international, Australia in particular, maybe thoughts on sustaining the 12-month backlog at that nearly one-time book-to-bill. Are you seeing maybe, Rafael, just give an update on kind of what you're seeing out in the market in terms of keeping that progress going on the orders?
Ken Hoexter
Rafael Santana
Okay. Ken, in terms of demand and backlog conversion, we're seeing improved demand in the year, and we're converting a strong pipeline into multi-year backlog and higher margins.
You certainly see that globally. You saw that strong win we had in Australia in the Q2.
We continue to have opportunities of size, and you're going to see a couple of those coming to the H2 of the year, so strong from that perspective. On the execution front, I'd say we're continuing to drive better execution, and that's really coming with improved margins, and that's driven by productivity gains and the progress on simplification, Integration 3.0.
Despite the headwinds we still face with inflationary pressures, still managing through tariffs, and chip shortages with the impact to electronics. I think the other item to highlight is the acquisitions, which continue to perform very well early days.
Overall, it's been a stronger year with our teams delivering ahead of plan in support of long-term guidance. John, you might want to comment more on the specifics of the quarter.
Rafael Santana
John Olin
When we look at the Q2, Ken, revenue was ahead of expectations as well as earnings. When we look at revenue was driven by a couple things.
Number one, on more of a sustainable basis, we saw our flow businesses accelerate, and that is on the freight side. As you pointed out, Ken, partially driven by the improvement in carloads, which has driven to higher year-over-year locomotives and operations during the quarter.
We also saw some strength in the aftermarket in our transit business. The other piece of our revenue in the Q2 was some timing on shipments.
We did see some pull forward from the back half into the Q2. Also, as we talked about in the Q1, we had a lower organic growth.
We saw some push-outs of that. They landed in the Q2 as well.
Overall, very strong revenue growth at 17.5% with organic growth up 8.5%. When you kind of shift to the earnings side of it, and I'm sorry, going back to revenue for that and the piece that is really more sustainable on the flow business, we've looked at that.
We've forecasted it forward, and that growth to continue in the second and the third and the Q4s at largely the same rate. That has resulted in us raising our overall revenue guidance by $110 million or a full percentage point on the year.
Now we're sitting at a midpoint of 11.5%. On the other side is the earnings.
We did see earnings come in a bit more than what we had expected, and a fair amount of that was driven by two things. Number 1 is on the revenue, on the flow revenue, it comes at typically a higher margin, and we saw that reflected in favorable mix in that aspect.
Overall, mix was still unfavorable, but less unfavorable than what we had anticipated. The other area is on their integration and productivity came in stronger, making really good progress on Integration 3.0.
With that, we did the same thing and extended that goodness over the back half. With that, raised our midpoint of our guidance by $0.30 up to the $10.75.
John Olin
Ken Hoexter
Hey, John, if I can just get a follow-up there. You mentioned the 3.0.
Can you talk about how much cost savings were realized? It sounds like, I don't know, maybe the message you're trying to give from margins into the Q3 from Q2 based on the run-up you gave us.
Ken Hoexter
John Olin
Yeah. Ken, as you know, in the Q1, we raised our guidance by $15 million on Integration 3.0.
We saw the momentum and the timing of these projects at that time, we've seen that convert certainly in the Q2, we would expect from our original thoughts on the year that Integration 3.0 is going to drop more goodness on the year. Again, that is part of that increase in the EPS guidance of $0.30.
John Olin
Ken Hoexter
Thanks, John.
Ken Hoexter
Operator
Our next question comes from Scott Group with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Operator
Scott Group
Hey, thanks. Good morning.
If I look, the 12-month backlog's up 11%, the total backlog's up 42% year-over-year. I think that's the biggest spread we've ever seen between the two.
I guess I'm trying to understand what's the timing for that multi-year backlog to start converting to revenue? And ultimately, I guess what I'm trying to figure out is, we had high single-digit organic growth in Q2.
Is that sustainable?
Scott Group
Rafael Santana
Well, sure, thanks. I'll start with just the total backlog.
This is very strong coverage, Scott, to your point. That's how we run the business, make sure that we have that coverage.
It's probably the strongest coverage we've had, and some multi-year backlog that call over really a multitude of years. That's very good and really strengthens our position to deliver on the long-term guidance we provide.
In terms of the 12-month backlog, I think that number really supports the mid-single digit growth on 5%-6% that we've described for the year. I think you've got to extract from that some of the nuances associated with especially the acquisitions we've done.
John, I don't know if you want to add to that.
Rafael Santana
John Olin
Yeah. Scott, you had mentioned organic growth in the Q2.
When you look at our overall growth of 17.5%, the easy way to look at this is half of it, about 8.5%, is driven by the year-over-year impact of acquisitions. The other half of it, about 8.5%, is driven by organic growth.
That's certainly an acceleration from what we saw in the Q1. If you remember, our Q1 organic growth was up 2.3% based on timing of shipments as well as the write-down of a digital project.
I think the best way to look at organic growth is to look at it on the H1 basis that takes care of some of the timing nuances there, for which we're up 5.5%. We feel good about that.
When you look at the 12-month backlog as an indicator of that, if you take out the acquisitions and currencies and more normalize that, we are in that range of the mid-single digits. We see that continuing on in the back half of the year, given the strength that we're seeing in particular of our flow business.
John Olin
Scott Group
Okay, that's helpful. Just one follow-up for you, John.
I think your comment about the pace of margin suggests Q4, we see some really strong year-over-year margin improvement. I know it's early, is that a good way to think about what 2027 could look like, that exit rate?
Scott Group
John Olin
I would say looking at the half, Scott, is more indicative of that. Let's talk about why we're expecting what we're expecting, right?
We're expecting the probably significant majority of our margin growth to be in the Q4. We expect growth in the Q3, but that's going to be in the range of around a half a point that we saw in the H1 of the year.
Why is the Q4 going to be up so much? I think first we start with what happened a year ago in the Q4.
If you remember, Scott, we had one heck of a cash flow in the quarter, and actually cash conversion was just shy of 300%. As I think you also know, is our comp plans and our focus on cashes throughout the organization, it is embedded in both our short-term and long-term comp plans, that drove a higher expense than we had anticipated.
The second area in last year was the fact that our transit business was level loading some production and moved forward some benefit through production and moving production forward in the second and the Q3, consequently, we had a pretty weak margin in transit in the Q4, that was driven by the manufacturing inefficiencies as we rebalanced that. We're lapping those two things that aren't going to repeat again this year.
The other piece of it, again, goes back to tariffs, right? Our tariff expense is going to be pretty even between quarters this year and certainly in the back half.
The comparable is very different. In the Q3 last year, we had very little expense.
We just started to see some, but it was nominal at best. The Q4, though, we saw a large rise in our expense for tariffs as things came off the balance sheet right from when we incurred the tariff.
The headwind in the Q4 is going to drop quite significantly between what we saw in the first three quarters. Between the confluence of those three things, we expect our Q4 to be up more than we would typically expect in a quarter with regards to margin growth.
John Olin
Scott Group
Okay. Super helpful.
Thank you, guys.
Scott Group
Rafael Santana
Thank you.
Rafael Santana
Operator
Our next question comes from Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Operator
Angel Castillo
Hi, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. Just maybe wanted to start on components.
Was hoping we could kind of unpack that a little bit more. I guess, you still have rail cars down, even though the outlook has improved a little bit, but just the 1% decline is quite notable, and you've talked about some of the pieces around flow.
You also mentioned, I guess, industrials business. Can you just help quantify, I guess, how much has the flow business improved?
How much is maybe the rail cars OE side down? On the industrials part of the business, we'd love to just hear a little bit more about how that's progressing, what changes you're seeing there.
In particular, I guess, the data center part of your components business. Just curious, one, what you're seeing in terms of demand there, and then just more broadly from data centers, how is your strategy kind of changing or evolving based on the demand you're seeing?
I know there's a lot in there, but all kind of related to components.
Angel Castillo
Rafael Santana
Always is, Angel. Angel, I'll start.
I'll let John dive into a little bit of the details. As we described, I mean, we saw North America freight volumes strengthening.
With that, we saw really more of a demand for our full product rebid on parts, some fleets being unparked as part of that. We've seen that continued strength of the transit backlog.
When you talk specifically about the components business, I think despite of the lower freight car build, I think our teams have continued to adjust, number 1, the operations to align with that volume. I think they've driven significant cost discipline and margin improvement for the business.
We are continuing to see strong demand in the industrial applications. Some of that is particularly visible in the heat exchangers, which go into some of the demand for power generation, which is a positive in that regard.
John?
Rafael Santana
John Olin
Yeah, specifically, Angel, the components was down seven-tenths of a percentage point. Actually, if you go back over the last six quarters, we've really seen pretty much the same thing, is we're bouncing around that flat.
Certainly, the team has been absorbing a significant downstroke with regards to rail car business, which is about 60% of overall revenue. The other piece of it that we're finding this year or seeing this year is the exit of some non-strategic business and revenue in there.
They're fighting, as Rafael had mentioned, from a cost standpoint, certainly from a market share, and they're offsetting a fair amount of what they can, but also getting a little bit of help on the industrial side. We're not seeing a big shift in what we've seen in the industrial side for the last six or so quarters.
It is up on a small basis. It's up pretty good.
Again, benefiting from some of the data center stuff. It's a small base, but it is enough to largely offset what we're seeing that in the work of the team to offset what we're seeing with rail cars being down.
Now we're hoping that that turns in 2027, and that's what the early forecasts are. We still got a couple more quarters that we expect rail cars to be down in the 20% range.
John Olin
Angel Castillo
Got it. That's very helpful.
Maybe just as a follow-up, I guess, could we maybe unpack the data center portion of power generation, maybe separate from what you might be seeing in heat exchangers and how that's progressing versus maybe any potential equipment demand and how your strategy, if it's changing at all, how you're viewing that market, the attractiveness to potentially look to target that a little bit more readily, I guess, just how are you thinking about that or what are you seeing?
Angel Castillo
Rafael Santana
Angel, as you mentioned, I'll start with the positive. Heat exchangers is a positive for us.
You're seeing that as, I mean, a significant offset to some of the pressures we've got on the freight car side of the house. In terms of the engine side, when you look at engines in specific, I mean, our engines are really built for some of the most demanding applications in the world.
They're exceptional for reliability and fuel efficiency. With that being said, when we think about data centers, a large portion of that is connected to backup power-only applications, which our engines are generally not the most competitive solution for that application.
We're continuing to look into selective opportunities for power generation application, especially where we have more restriction around emission standards. This is very much a niche segment of the market, and at this stage, we have had really only very, very nominal sales in the space.
Rafael Santana
Angel Castillo
Very helpful. Thank you.
Angel Castillo
Operator
Our next question comes from Bascome Majors with Stephens. Please go ahead.
Operator
Bascome Majors
Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to revisit the EVO Advantage modernization program.
I know you guys reported quite a bit of orders earlier this year in that space. Can you just give us an update on how the product is resonating with the Class I railroads in North America, where you are on the ramp-up of actual delivery to where you think you'll be a run rate into next year, and how the pipeline compares to the backlog, and just a big picture of how you expect that to evolve as this product continues to root in the marketplace.
Thank you.
Bascome Majors
Rafael Santana
Thank you. First, I think we've seen continued progress in terms of the EVO Advantage program, we've announced that in the Q1.
We've gotten our first order in North America in the Q2, so that's consistent with what we expected. We see that as an opportunity to really continue momentum with regards to refreshing our install base around the world, but especially in North America, providing what I call more value for our customers with fuel efficiency, and really driving, I think, greater and better value outcomes for our customers.
We continue to expand on the value that we can bring to our customers on fuel efficiency, and continue to stay ahead and widen really the competitive advantage versus our competition. Positive from that perspective.
Rafael Santana
Bascome Majors
You said first order in 2Q. Just to be clear, the $1.3 billion in orders you received later last year, that was not for the EVO Advantage.
The order conversion for this product is still mostly ahead.
Bascome Majors
Rafael Santana
Exactly. That's correct.
Rafael Santana
Bascome Majors
All right. Thank you.
Bascome Majors
Operator
Our next question comes from Rob Wertheimer with Melius Research. Please go ahead.
Operator
Rob Wertheimer
Thanks. Rafael, you just touched on some of the fuel savings.
Just given the global uncertainty around diesel, could you remind us of the fuel economy savings on mods and new? Then just how do your customers react to that?
Do we have to see elevated prices for a year, and then they think about doing more mods? Do they park older locos and run newer ones?
Is there any impact from your business from diesel spiking now?
Rob Wertheimer
Rafael Santana
Let me start at high level. The short answer is we're much more efficient on moving goods through rail than by road.
That's favorable to the overall business as we see it, and I think that drives positive dynamics. When we look at it specifically in North America, I think some of the comments I'll make is, you're seeing some of that movement of freight going into rail.
I think that has translated into, I'll call, more visibly in our flow businesses, especially in freight, but we've seen that with especially parts. With that, we have not seen yet any, I'll call, shift on demand for mods or new units on that.
It's remained consistent with the demand as we have described before. Fuel prices up, it's a positive for the overall business.
Rafael Santana
Rob Wertheimer
Perfect. Then just in your last question, you touched on EVO orders.
Are people still doing work on mods on older FDLs as well? Or are they kind of waiting for EVO to be exciting?
I'll stop there. Thanks.
Rob Wertheimer
Rafael Santana
Yes, they are. I think this is twofold, keep in mind, it's not just a function of North America, it's a function of international as well.
These programs drive, I'll call it, an average 5+% advantage point on the fuel side, so very significant returns for our customers. It's very customer dependent.
You've got to look at the application. You've got to look at how they run their fleets.
This is a program that's going to advance our ability to continue to modernize the fleets, and that's how we think about it. It's continue to drive replacement, continue to drive modernization in that context.
Early days on EVO mods, but it's good to see the first order here in the Q2.
Rafael Santana
Rob Wertheimer
Thank you.
Rob Wertheimer
Operator
Our next question comes from Ben Mohr with Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Operator
Ben Mohr
Hi. Good morning, Rafael, John, Kyra.
Thanks for taking my questions. Congrats on the quarter and the raise.
Just wanted to continue on Ken's and Scott's questions there on revenue-related backlog. Your midpoint of your revenue guide raise of up 1%, can you help us parse out how much of that is related to the rail volume strength in North America rails in 2Q that could help generate non-backlog revenue?
You got your 2Q organic revenue up 8.5%. Sounds like you're guiding to H2 organic revenue being roughly closer to mid-single digits.
How much are you embedding continued rail volume strength to generate non-backlog revenue in the H2? Is it assuming the up 4% carloads is still there, or is it more bringing that down to flattish and anything above could be upside?
Ben Mohr
John Olin
Going back to when we look at the revenue raise of the $110 million is largely driven by the flow business. Ben, as we've talked about 30% of our business is flow, 70% is backed up by long-term agreements.
That's really just executing against the orders that we have. Where we've seen the growth is coming strictly from that.
As I mentioned, it's coming from two places. One is on the freight side.
That is driven by that increase that we saw in the H1. Overall, carloads were up about just shy of 3% on the half, 4% on the Q2.
What we've done is we've looked at that and held what we're seeing in the Q2 throughout the back half. Looking at the revenue that's behind us, driven by the flow business in the Q2 and adding on what we believe is a similar run rate in the H2, that's delivering the $110 million of additional benefit.
John Olin
Ben Mohr
I appreciate that. Thank you for that color.
That's very helpful. Maybe looking further ahead, can I just and congrats on this $1 billion Australia order.
Seems like it's across equipment and services and other segments as well. Has that entered into your 2Q backlog?
Related to that- It has. Great.
Related to that, are you still looking ahead in 1-2 year negotiations with some of those regions? I'll quickly list them out.
Australia, East Asia, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Brazil, parts of Africa. Are you still excited about potential orders from these in upcoming quarters where you're still in one to two year negotiations?
Ben Mohr
Rafael Santana
Very much, that's why I mentioned really continued strength in the pipeline of opportunities. I feel like we've been talking about Australia for more than a couple of quarters.
It has materialized. We're continuing to progress.
Those international deals can take a bit longer than you'd normally see. We feel very strong about more than a couple of significant deals happening here in the H2 of the year.
They're exactly tied to what you described there. They're meaningful in that context.
Pipeline remains strong. I think it's providing us stronger and stronger coverage as we look at the years ahead for Wabtec.
Rafael Santana
Ben Mohr
Fantastic. Thanks for the time and insights, as always.
Ben Mohr
Rafael Santana
Thank you.
Rafael Santana
Operator
Our next question comes from Steve Barger with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Operator
Christian Zyla
Hello. Good morning.
This is Christian Zyla on for Steve Barger.
Christian Zyla
Rafael Santana
Morning.
Rafael Santana
Christian Zyla
Can you just give us a sense of the current breakdown of the backlog for freight? Is it primarily equipment and services in there, or does it look more like the product mix for freight?
Then, I guess, just following up, which category are you seeing the most growth in the backlog?
Christian Zyla
John Olin
Christian, the backlog would be made up of more of the equipment side. They've got long lead times, not so much on the flow stuff.
That doesn't fall into the 12 or the multi-year backlog because it's more of a turn product. Again, about 70% of our revenue falls into that backlog category, either 12 or the multi-year.
It is predominantly on the longer lead time equipment.
John Olin
Christian Zyla
Got it. That makes sense.
Thank you. Then just second question, kind of switching gears on the international opportunities and the regions you talked about.
Are you guys starting to see a deeper penetration for the digital offering in international, or is it still mainly core equipment, mods, service, et cetera?
Christian Zyla
Rafael Santana
No, we are, and I think that's a very exciting part of what we're seeing is this, if you think about the technology and the strong momentum in digital innovation and automation, you asked specifically internationally. I mean, we're seeing meaningful advancements.
You saw our win on PTC 2.0. That's becoming more of a vital element of how you run the railroad internationally.
You combine that with Zero-To-Zero, this really brings great advantages to our customers. Significant advantages there.
We're continuing to also advance versus competition. I think we mentioned about EVO Advantage.
We're continuing to advance on hybrid battery programs. A lot of those things are really driving, I think, significant opportunities for us to continue to win internationally.
Rafael Santana
Christian Zyla
Great. Thank you.
Christian Zyla
Operator
Our next question comes from Harrison Bauer with SIG. Please go ahead.
Operator
Harrison Bauer
Great. Thank you for taking my questions.
As you've implemented some of your tariff mitigation actions, have any of those changes proven structurally beneficial enough that they're likely to remain permanent regardless of how tariff policy evolves? Specifically regarding sourcing, localization, supplier diversification, stickiness of pricing processes.
Thank you.
Harrison Bauer
Rafael Santana
Thanks, Harrison. I would say that some are, and some are waiting to be implemented once we see some of the shifting of tariff rates it'll become more concrete.
Some of these moves on the supply side. Harrison, we talk about a four-point plan to minimize these.
One of those is working with the supply chain. Yes, where we can, we've moved products from higher tariff areas to lower tariff in the U.S.
A lot of these require a fair amount of investment to move. There's still opportunity ahead of us once we get some stability in the overall rates before we start to change things around.
Yes, some have proved to be good moves, and that will stay that way if rates change again.
Rafael Santana
Harrison Bauer
Okay, great. Thank you.
Maybe just to follow up on some of the discussion regarding your mix. Within your long-term margin framework, I know you don't separately disclose the freight component of margin growth, but can you help us understand what the relative contributions are from operational improvements, mix, and synergies from some of your recently acquired businesses?
Maybe just the natural maturation of your install base toward a higher margin aftermarket and digital revenue, and how each of those contributes to steady freight margin expansion over time. Thanks.
Harrison Bauer
John Olin
Harrison, number one, in terms of strictly mix, over the long term, we would expect there to be a mix headwind as we grow our mods and locals at a faster rate than the average. Harrison, what I would like to say is there's two kinds of mix in this world.
There's good mix and bad mix. What we have here is a case of really good mix, right?
Because putting these out, even at a lower margin than the average, allows for us to garner service revenue off those for the next 20 to 30 years, and the components, and certainly the modernizations that come from that. When we look at overall the margin growth that we expect in our long-term plans, we've talked about 350+ basis points of margin growth.
I think the way to think about that, Harrison, is about two-thirds of it is going to come from the hard work that we do on managing the company's productivity and driving the company's productivity, right? Those are things such as everyday productivity and lean.
We got a lot of opportunity to continue to propagate lean throughout the organization. There's the integration programs, which are more structural changes that are driving significant margin expansion.
We got portfolio optimization, as getting rid of some of the things that aren't going to take us to the future that we aspire to. That's how we see a fair amount of that 350 basis points going forward.
The rest of it is on adding more value, which is recovering the cost and the inflationary aspects that we have. Most of our contracts, or 60% of our revenue, have long-term contracts, and they have predominantly price escalators in.
That, along with the innovation that we're investing in, and the selectivity that we're displaying, certainly on the transit side, would drive the extra third of that margin expansion over our time horizon.
John Olin
Harrison Bauer
Thanks.
Harrison Bauer
Operator
Our next question comes from Jerry Revich with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Operator
Jerry Revich
Yes. Hi, good morning, everybody.
Nice quarter. Rafael, I wanted to ask on service, as we've seen these really good freight volumes this year, has your service business picked up steam?
Are you looking for the pure service part to accelerate? Back on the mods part of the conversation, we've got obviously a product line transition here, or lifecycle transition here.
Are we thinking about mods being down again 2027 versus 2026, given that FDL to EVO transition? Can you just calibrate us on that lifecycle?
Thanks.
Jerry Revich
Rafael Santana
Yeah. Jerry, I think we've been quite clear in terms of the benefit we've seen from the flow business, which is tied to this volume growth in North America and on parking of locomotives.
That's a positive. It's kind of early to comment on 2027 at this point, but what I'll tell you, as we look at the balance of the year, the things we're watching are, if you think about upside, where it could come from, it could come from customers continuing to unpark units and sustaining that unparked fleet.
I think that's something to watch. It could also come from as we continue to advance Integration 3.0 and simplification, if the productivity that we get from these initiatives materialize faster.
We got to take into consideration the risk side, which we continue to be mindful of, well, I guess inflation pressures, especially on the container side. We mentioned chip shortages with electronics.
We're closely watching here the North America railcar build in this context and manage through tariff-related changes. Execution remains always a key variable to watch, but it's been a positive so far.
Rafael Santana
Jerry Revich
Okay, super. Can I ask on transit, really nice margin performance.
Can you just talk about out of the legacy business, excluding the acquisition, where are we in terms of the proportion of backlog that's at your target margin levels? Is it fair to think about the margins in backlog as higher than what's flowing through margins through sales this year?
Jerry Revich
Rafael Santana
I'll start. When we think about transit, it's great progress.
Our teams are continuing to drive a lot of the actions around productivity and simplifying the operating footprints. I think we see here a clear path towards the high-teen margin performance that we've described before.
Mix was a positive for the quarter, and I think the other positive point here is the acquisitions. The Dellner acquisition, still early days, but it's going very well.
In fact, when we think about the acquisitions overall, they're on track to deliver on the synergies. When we think about overall dynamics, it's positive.
They're ahead of plan.
Rafael Santana
Jerry Revich
Yep. Thanks.
Jerry Revich
Operator
Our next question comes from Tami Zakaria with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Operator
Tami Zakaria
Hey, good morning, congrats on very impressive results. I wanted to double-click on a prior question on freight traffic, North America freight traffic accelerated quite notably in the quarter.
What are some of the factors you believe drove that? Was it driven by any specific industry, or was it broad-based?
Do you believe this is sustainable going forward? It's probably great news for your flow business then.
Any color would be helpful.
Tami Zakaria
Rafael Santana
Tami, I think we're certainly seeing movement into rail, I think there's a combination of factors there which tie to the dynamics on the truck market, fuel prices being up, some still driver shortages there, I think some of those dynamics are connected with better service in rail and I think are kind of well, driving some positive results so far. That's certainly very visible in the Q2.
As I mentioned, I think we'll continue to watch that. That's where I'd say upside could come from.
It's customers continue to unpark units and continue to sustain that level of unparked units in that context. That's something that you need more than a couple of quarters, and that has not yet translated into any shift in terms of demand for mods or new units in North America.
The demand there continues, to be very consistent with how we've described before.
Rafael Santana
Tami Zakaria
Understood. Thank you.
That's all I had for today.
Tami Zakaria
Rafael Santana
Thank you.
Rafael Santana
John Olin
Thank you.
John Olin
Operator
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to Kyra Yates for any closing remarks.
Operator
Kyra Yates
Thank you, Bailey, and thank you everyone for your participation today. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.
Kyra Yates
Operator
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation.
You may now disconnect.