Atkore Q2 2026 earnings: legal settlement drives net loss despite sales growth
Atkore swung to a fiscal Q2 net loss after a $136.5M antitrust settlement and divestiture-related charges, even as underlying sales and volumes grew.
| Q2 2026 | Reported |
|---|---|
| EPS | -$3.65 |
| Revenue | $731.4M |
Figures as reported by the company to the SEC for the quarter ended March 27, 2026. Analyst estimates are not part of a filing, so no comparison to expectations is shown.
Key takeaways
- Atkore, a maker of electrical conduit and infrastructure products, posted a net loss for its fiscal second quarter (ended March 27, 2026) of about $124 million, or $3.65 per share, almost entirely because of one-time charges rather than a weaker underlying business.
- The single biggest driver was a $136.5 million charge to settle two of three plaintiff groups in a long-running antitrust lawsuit over PVC pipe pricing; the company expects to pay that settlement in the current quarter.
- A second, smaller hit came from a $19.2 million loss tied to businesses being sold as part of a broader shrink-to-grow strategy: Atkore completed the sale of its HDPE (plastic pipe) business, agreed to sell a Belgium-based surface-protection unit, and closed three U.S. manufacturing sites to concentrate on electrical infrastructure products.
- Aside from those one-time items, sales grew: net sales of $731.4 million were up about 4% from a year earlier and 11% from the prior quarter, with underlying (organic) volume up 5% year-over-year, which management attributed partly to demand tied to data-center construction.
- Gross profit was lower than a year earlier even though revenue rose, a sign that pricing and costs squeezed margins during the quarter; that shows up in the trailing-twelve-month gross margin of roughly 20%, well below the operating and net margins, which were negative (-6.3% and -5.6%) once the settlement and other charges are included.
- CEO Bill Waltz pointed to sequential improvement in sales and profit during the quarter and said the company remains confident in mid-single-digit organic volume growth for the full year as it continues shedding non-core businesses.
- Management kept its full-year adjusted profit outlook unchanged — adjusted EBITDA of $340-360 million and adjusted earnings per share of $5.05-$5.55 — but trimmed the full-year net sales range to $2.90-$2.95 billion to reflect roughly $75 million of lost second-half revenue from the businesses it sold or agreed to sell.
- The trailing-twelve-month return on equity of about -12% and the roughly 98% year-over-year drop in quarterly earnings per share both reflect this quarter’s litigation and divestiture-related charges rather than an ongoing decline in the core business.
Q2 2026 in context
| Metric | Mar 2026 | Mar 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $731M | $702M | +4.2% |
| Net income | -$124M | -$50M | -147.9% |
| Free cash flow | $14M | $64M | -78.5% |
| Diluted EPS | -$3.65 | -$1.46 | -150.0% |
| Gross margin | 18.6% | 26.4% | -7.8 pts |
| Operating margin | 1.4% | -7.4% | +8.8 pts |
| Net margin | -17.0% | -7.1% | -9.8 pts |
Figures for the quarter ended Mar 2026 and the quarter ended Mar 2025, as reported to the SEC.
How the stock took it
Atkore Inc closed at $76.39 on May 5, 2026, the last session before the report, and at $73.97 on May 7, 2026, the first session after it — -3.2% across the report.
| Earlier report | Close before | Close after | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 3, 2026 | $70.06 | $69.05 | -1.4% |
Closes from the market's daily record. Each figure spans the report date — from the last session that closed before it to the first that closed after — because a company may report before the open or after the close.
Sources: company report · TipRanks · Investing.com