On August 4, Hyster-Yale (NYSE:HY) reported second-quarter results that read like two companies at once: bookings more than doubling from a year earlier and a bottom line still bleeding red. The lift truck maker booked $680 million in new orders, its fourth straight quarter of growth and its strongest showing in 3 years. Revenue and operating cash flow both improved from the first quarter. But a net loss of $31.6 million shows how far the turnaround still has to travel.
Demand Finally Turning A Corner
Bookings tell the clearest story. The $680 million total was up 17% from the first quarter and 106% higher than the same period in 2025, and backlog climbed to $1.58 billion, or roughly five months of production. Management says the downturn in the lift truck market already bottomed out in the first six months of 2026, and it expects full-year bookings to top last year’s total.
The financial picture followed the same sequential path. Revenue rose 2% from the first quarter to $812.9 million as stronger orders started turning into shipments, and the operating loss narrowed 34% to $18.4 million. Operating cash flow flipped from burning $33 million in the first quarter to generating $17 million in the second, a $50 million turnaround management tied to tighter inventory and working capital discipline.
Inventory itself fell by about $110 million from a year earlier once currency and tariffs are stripped out, cutting eight days off how long goods sit before selling. That cash discipline showed up on the balance sheet too, with debt easing to $500.0 million from $505.3 million in the first quarter. A 2025 restructuring program has already delivered roughly half of an expected $40 million to $45 million in annualized savings, and a separate manufacturing overhaul targets another $30 million to $40 million a year once fully phased in by 2028.
Losses Keep Piling Up
Stack Hyster-Yale against itself a year ago and the picture darkens. Revenue fell 15% from the second quarter of 2025, and the operating loss actually widened, from $8.5 million to $18.4 million, over that stretch. Net loss more than doubled to $31.6 million, or $1.76 a share, from $13.9 million a year earlier, and trailing twelve-month adjusted EBITDA flipped from a positive $169.8 million to negative $4.1 million. Income tax expense jumped to $8.1 million from just $0.2 million, partly on a $3.4 million non-cash charge tied to a valuation allowance in Brazil.
The underlying business shift is not fully resolved either. Customers keep trading down from higher-margin Class 1 and Class 4 trucks toward lighter, cheaper models, and competitors in South America and Europe are pricing aggressively enough that management expects margin recovery to stay slow. Tariffs added another $20 million in costs versus a year ago, and relief is not guaranteed: exclusions on Chinese-origin goods expire in November, and the company assumes no benefit if the current import surcharge is replaced by something else. Savings from the manufacturing footprint plan have already been pushed back, with 2027 benefits revised down for lower expected production, and Hyster-Yale still expects a moderate operating loss for all of 2026.
Wall Street Still Undecided
18 hedge funds held Hyster-Yale last quarter, up from 16 the quarter before, a modest but positive shift in institutional interest. Short sellers hold a real position too, with 5.13% of the float sold short, enough to reflect genuine skepticism without signaling a full-blown bear case. The stock trades at a forward P/E of just 9.80 as of September 4, cheap by almost any standard. That combination suggests that the market has not yet decided whether the sequential improvement is a turn or a pause.
Two Very Different Stories
Hyster-Yale’s second quarter is really a story about direction, not destination. Every sequential metric, bookings, revenue, cash flow, moved the right way, and management is betting that momentum builds through the back half of 2026. But the year-over-year numbers still show a business losing more money than it did twelve months ago, and the tariff and pricing pressures behind that gap have not gone away. For the recovery case to hold, bookings growth needs to keep outrunning tariff and mix headwinds on the way to shipments.
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