Telehandler sales skyrocket at JLG

JLG’s first quarter results showed large increases in both telehandler and access equipment sales, with telehandlers experiencing extremely high demand. For the three months ending March 31, telehandler sales were up 49% to $341.4 million while access equipment saw an increase of 37% to $602 million.

To meet the demand, JLG said it will transition 500,000 square feet of its manufacturing facility in Jefferson City, TN to produce additional telehandlers, which will also open up additional manufacturing capacities at the OEM’s McConnellsburg, PA plant.

A JLG 670SJ boom. (Image: JLG)

Speaking to the increase in telehandler manufacturing capacity, Oshkosh Corp. President and CEO John Pfeifer said positive metrics alongside mega projects and infrastructure work are having a significant, positive impact on demand for telehandlers and access equipment.

“What’s happening is there’s a lot of new use cases being discovered for telehandlers, which is one of the reasons that we’re seeing all that growth,” Pfeifer said during the company’s Q1 investors call.

“And we see this as one of the opportunities for us to continue to drive growth in our business. It’s really the entire market that we see continuing to do really well over multiple years ahead.”

Aging fleets help JLG performance

Looking at JLG as a whole, the company put $1.2 billion in orders on the books for Q1, noting aging fleets alongside high equipment utilization rates are impacting sales positively.

“The team at [JLG] built on their strong finish to 2022 with an excellent first quarter in 2023,” Pfeifer said. “We benefited from better-than-expected shipments due to modestly improved supply chain conditions.

“While supply chain challenges remain, we are seeing progress with supplier on-time delivery metrics, as well as the many actions we have taken to improve throughput.”

Pfeifer said the company does not expect significant supply chain improvements in 2023, but noted that they are “well positioned to deliver stronger results in the event supply chain improves faster than current expectations.”

‘Resilient’ supply chain

Regarding the supply chain, Mike Pack, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Oshkosh, said the environments are improving, though modestly.

“I think if you look specifically at the first quarter, typically what we see even in a normal supply chain environment is with holiday shutdowns of suppliers as well as weather, we tend to see some interruptions,” Pack noted. “So, we really view that the first quarter was going to be impacted from a volume perspective really more timing more so than anything.

“The good news is we didn’t see that. So, supply chain was quite resilient better than we expected in the quarter, again still well off of norms. So, what we’re seeing from a cadence perspective is that we would expect that revenue – that run rate in Q1 will really carry the next couple of quarters.”

Updated outlook for full year

Looking ahead, JLG is estimating its segment sales and operating margin to be in the range of $4.4 billion and 11.5% ,respectively, both up from its prior estimates of sales and operating margin of $4.2 billion and 11% respectively. The improvement is driven largely by stronger first quarter volume than expected.

“We’re confident in the long-term outlook of the market,” Pfeifer added. “We continue to see healthy market conditions, and that will drive growth and be good for our customers.”