Element Fleet Mgmt Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Element Fleet Mgmt (TSX:EFN) released second-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Thursday. Read the complete transcript below.

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Summary

Element Fleet Mgmt reported a strong Q2 2026 with a 10% increase in adjusted net revenue and a 12% increase in adjusted EPS, demonstrating resilience and strategic execution.

The company added 42 new clients and completed 247 additional service enrollments, emphasizing the value clients place on their service offerings.

Element Fleet Mgmt announced a strategic partnership with Waymo, marking its entry into the autonomous vehicle sector, expected to contribute to service revenue growth starting in 2027.

The company initiated organizational changes leading to an 8% workforce reduction, aiming for $20 million in annual savings, aligning with its digital transformation efforts.

Q2 2026 saw double-digit growth in net financing revenue and syndication revenue, with a debt-to-capital ratio maintained at 76.5% and significant share repurchases.

Future priorities include growing the core business, deepening client relationships, and investing in mobility opportunities while maintaining disciplined execution.

Full Transcript

Sumit Malhotra, SVP & Head of Financial Performance

Good morning and welcome to the Element Fleet Mgmt Q2 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. My name is Sumit Malhotra, Senior Vice President and Head of Financial Performance here at Element Fleet Mgmt. Presenting to you on our call this morning are Laura Dottori-Attanasio, President and Chief Executive Officer of Element Fleet Mgmt, and Heath Valkenburg, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following our remarks, we'll be pleased to take your questions.

Before we start, and on behalf of the executives speaking today, Element Fleet Mgmt wishes to caution listeners that today's information contains forward-looking statements. The assumptions on which they are based and the material risks and uncertainties that could cause them to differ are outlined in our company's most recent MD&A and Annual Information Form. Although management believes that the expectations expressed in the statements are reasonable, actual results could differ materially.

Element Fleet Mgmt also reminds listeners that today's call references certain non-GAAP and supplemental financial measures. Management measures performance on a reported and adjusted basis and considers both to be useful in providing readers with a better understanding of how it assesses results. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to IFRS measures can be found in the company's most recent MD&A, and with that I would now like to turn the call over to Laura.

Laura Dottori-Attanasio, President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Sumit. Good morning everyone and thanks for joining us. Element Fleet Mgmt delivered another solid quarter reflecting the resilience of our business model and the consistent execution of our strategy. Our adjusted net revenue increased 10%, our adjusted EPS grew 12% and our adjusted return on equity expanded to 19.6%, demonstrating both the quality of our earnings and the strength of our recurring revenue model. Our first half performance reinforces that we are executing against the priorities that matter most, delivering greater value for clients, operating more efficiently, and creating long term value for shareholders.

Three themes stand out. First, our core business continues to perform well. We delivered record first half revenue, our services revenue re-accelerated during the quarter and we advanced our capital light strategy through our inaugural equity residual transaction. Second, we continue to deepen client relationships by helping organizations lower fleet operating costs, improve vehicle uptime, and navigate an increasingly complex operating environment through data, technology and strategic advisory services.

And third, we're extending Element Fleet Mgmt's leadership in intelligent mobility by applying the capabilities we've built over the years to the next generation of fleet solutions. Turning to commercial performance, we added 42 new clients during the quarter, including 13 conversions from self-managed fleets to, and we completed 247 additional service enrollments with existing clients. These results demonstrate the growing value clients place on our broad service offering.

Our Strategic Advisory Services team remains a key differentiator. During the quarter, the team identified about 482 million in potential client savings with 41% already being actioned. Those are meaningful outcomes for clients and an important driver of long term client retention. We also announced a strategic partnership with Waymo, a powerful example of how our purpose to move the world through intelligent mobility is coming to life. And while autonomous mobility is an emerging market, the operational capabilities required to support it, including life cycle management, maintenance and operational execution at scale, align closely with Element Fleet Mgmt's core strengths. We are beginning our work with Waymo in San Diego and we expect to support future expansion as our partnership grows. And as you can appreciate, this is a measured and highly relevant extension of our core capabilities into an evolving mobility segment where Element Fleet Mgmt has a clear right to win and can create meaningful value for clients and shareholders over time. We also continue to advance our digital and automation transformation.

Digi Advisor, our AI-powered decisioning platform, combines connected vehicle data, service information and Element Fleet Mgmt's expertise to support faster, more consistent maintenance decisions. It's another example of how our technology advancements are improving the client experience while increasing our ability to scale efficiently. Now, over the past several quarters we've invested in digitizing workflows, automating manual activities, strengthening our data infrastructure and simplifying how work gets done across the organization.

During the quarter, those investments enabled us to initiate targeted organizational actions representing 8% of our workforce, positioning us to deliver approximately $20 million of annualized run rate savings in 20. This reflects our ongoing focus on building a simpler, more efficient and more scalable organization while continuing to invest in future growth. And as we look to the second half of 2026, our priorities remain unchanged. We will continue to grow our core business.

We will continue to deepen client relationships and invest selectively in capabilities and mobility opportunities and maintain disciplined execution to create long term shareholder value. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Heath to discuss our financial results in more detail.

Heath Valkenburg, EVP and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Laura, and good morning everyone. Element Fleet Mgmt delivered solid financial results in the second quarter, supported by the durability of our business model, disciplined execution and continued progress of our capital light strategy. We achieved double-digit year-over-year growth in adjusted net revenue and earnings per share, with return on equity expanding to 19.6%, demonstrating the capital efficiency in our business model. I will now walk through the components of our performance on an adjusted basis.

Net revenue was $318 million, up 10% year over year with solid contributions from each of our categories. Service revenue was $164 million, continuing the expected reacceleration and increasing 8% from the prior year. The year-over-year increase was supported by growth in vehicles under management and higher services revenue per VUM. Vehicles under management ended the quarter at 1.56 million, an increase of 3% year over year. Consistent growth in VUM remains a key attribute in driving our top line performance and we continue to target annual VUM growth of 2% to 4%.

We remain encouraged by this performance and continued growth in VUM and services further strengthens the recurring and capital light nature of our earnings profile. Net financing revenue was $136 million, up 7% from the prior year. The increase reflected growth in average net earning assets, benefits from our leasing initiative and the continued evolution of our funding platform. The solid NFR growth was achieved despite the provision for credit loss associated with the client-specific matter we discussed last quarter.

We are now fully provided for that exposure and due to the high quality of our lease portfolio, we expect annual credit losses will remain within our historical range of approximately 1 to 2 basis points. Over time. Core NFR yield increased 35 basis points to 5.12%, demonstrating continued expansion while absorbing higher PCL. Syndication revenue was $18 million, an increase of 58% year over year. The increase was supported by higher syndication volumes, continued investor demand, and the reinstatement of 100% bonus depreciation. Syndication remains an important balance sheet management tool and our new equity residual structure adds a complementary funding channel.

As the structure scales, Element can allocate volume across channels to enhance funding capacity, capital efficiency, and our return profile over time. I'll touch on that in more detail when I discuss Our balance sheet originations were $1.7 billion in the quarter, down 9% year over year and up 19% sequentially. The year-over-year decline primarily reflected the expected normalisation in activity from the originate-to-syndicate client we discussed last quarter.

Excluding the impact of this client, originations increased 4% during the first six months of 2026 compared to the prior-year period. As this client's activity peaked in the second quarter of 2025, the year-over-year comparison is expected to become more favorable through the balance of 2026. Sequentially, originations increased across all regions, reflecting continued commercial momentum and the conversion of our order pipeline into funded assets.

It is also important to view originations in the context of our broader business model. Approximately 60% of our vehicles under management are service-only and do not require Element to provide financing. In addition, quarterly originations can fluctuate based on the timing of client purchasing decisions, whereas our earnings are supported by a much broader set of drivers, including growth in our vehicles under management. While variability in originations can occur, we would note net financing revenue has continued to consistently increase year over year, benefiting from higher net earning assets and ongoing expansion in NFR yield.

Turning to expenses, the $141 million total in Q2 was slightly down quarter over quarter and up 10% from the prior year. The year-over-year change reflected continued investment in Car IQ, Waymo, and our digital capabilities, together with inflation and higher depreciation. As Laura noted, we initiated organizational actions in Q2 that were supported by prior investments in digitization, automation, and process simplification. Once fully implemented, these actions are expected to generate approximately $20 million in annual run-rate savings, helping moderate expense growth in 2027 while supporting a more scalable cost structure, enhancing service quality, and enabling continued investment in strategic growth priorities. Adjusted operating income was $177 million, an increase of 9% year over year, and adjusted operating margin was 55.6%. For the first six months of 2026, adjusted operating margin increased 60 basis points to 55.9%, reflecting positive operating leverage across the first half. Adjusted free cash flow per share was $0.39 in the quarter, down 3% year over year, reflecting higher cash tax payments.

In certain jurisdictions, cash tax payments can vary between quarters, as demonstrated by adjusted free cash flow per share increasing 11% year over year during the first six months of 2026. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with a debt-to-capital ratio of 76.5%, within our targeted range of 73% to 77%. This reflects continued discipline in managing leverage and ties back to the broader funding initiatives discussed earlier. Our inaugural equity residual transaction with CPP Investments and Blackstone represents an important evolution in our funding strategy.

It adds a complementary channel alongside traditional syndications and provides greater flexibility in how we deploy capital. Importantly, we're already seeing the benefits of this enhanced flexibility. In Q2 we returned $163 million to shareholders, including 120 million allocated towards the repurchase of 5.8 million common shares. In the first half of 2026, we repurchased 8.1 million common shares, representing 2% of shares outstanding and above the 5.4 million shares that we repurchased in all of 2025.

We will continue to deploy capital with discipline, using our enhanced flexibility to be opportunistic during periods of market dislocation. In summary, our first half results demonstrate the resilience and strength of the Element Fleet Mgmt business model. In the first six months of the year, revenue grew 13% on a year-over-year basis. EPS increased 18% and free cash flow per share rose 11%. Services revenue continues to reaccelerate and, as our partnership with Waymo launches in early 2027, we expect that our entry into the autonomous vehicle sector will add to our services growth.

At the same time, our investments in technology and growth initiatives are now providing us with the ability to further improve our organizational efficiency and support positive operating leverage as the business scales. Our new funding structure also provides us with greater balance sheet flexibility that we will utilize on behalf of our shareholders. With a solid first half behind us, continued momentum in the core business, and enhanced capital-light funding capabilities, we remain well positioned to deliver within our full-year 2026 guidance ranges.

Thank you, operator. We are now ready to take questions.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Analysts who wish to join the question queue, you may press star then 1-1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using the speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, press star one. Again, we ask that you please limit yourselves to two questions and then re-queue. We'll pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question is from Nick Brady.

Nick Brady, Analyst

Good morning, this is Nick Brady filling in for Basil. Just on servicing revenue, I know growth picked up to 8% this quarter. Can you maybe speak to your mid- to long-term target for that business? Can it return to a double-digit grower and, if so, is that mainly from loan growth accelerating or monetization of additional services? Thank you.

Heath Valkenburg, EVP and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, good morning, Nick. So as we think about medium-term growth, we've always guided the market to a 6% to 8% revenue growth and then the composition of that, the service revenue growth over the medium term will be higher, a higher contribution to that growth relative to financing income. In terms of where that growth comes from, number one, it's expanding our portfolio, so growing our vehicles under management, and we target 2% to 4% growth on an annual basis for VUM.

Additionally, we always see the impact of inflation coming through with a lot of our service revenue driven by pass-through items. And then we continually drive increased product penetration of our existing products into our portfolio. And that's a combination of our traditional products that we have, but also the new products that we have brought to market, whether it's route optimisation or the new Car IQ product that we acquired. And then the additional one that I would mention are other initiatives, and something like the Waymo autonomous vehicle space is another area that will drive stronger service revenue growth into the future.

Nick Brady, Analyst

Got it, thank you. And then just one quick follow-up question. You mentioned the core NFR yield continued to rise. How much higher can that yield get and maybe what are the biggest drivers there? Is it mainly just cost of funds improvement or some of the other moving pieces? Thank you.

Heath Valkenburg, EVP and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so we were pleased with another really solid yield in our NFR for the quarter, and really it reflects the continued benefit from our leasing initiatives. So we set up our leasing business a number of years ago and we're seeing the benefits of that coming through. Additionally, we are improving our funding costs, and just one example of that is during the quarter we completed a senior notes offering and the spread on that was 70 basis points over U.S. Treasuries, and that's actually our most efficient debt funding to date. So this enables us to refinance higher debt costs at more attractive terms. So, as I said, a strong yield in the quarter of 5.12% despite some higher credit loss provisions that we expect will normalise over time. In terms of the look-forward on that yield, we think that these improvement items are durable drivers and should continue into the future. Having said that, it's important for us to balance increased yield with growth and new client wins.

And the benefits of our lower funding costs can drive strong NFR yield, but also enables us the ability to pass some of that on to clients to drive growth into the future.

OPERATOR (Operator)

The next question is from Bart Dzarski with RBC Capital Markets.

Bart Dzarski, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Great, thanks and good morning everyone. Wanted to ask on the efficiencies identified by the Strategic Advisory Services group. So 480 million, I think that's one of the higher quarterly numbers we've seen. So could you maybe walk us through what are the additional savings being identified and how that's impacting the value prop of Element with its clients? Thanks.

Laura Dottori-Attanasio, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, thanks, Bart. Our Strategic Advisory Services team is, in fact, doing a fantastic job. The savings, again, come from, I'd say, a real broad review of how our clients operate, whether that's from acquisition of the vehicle, uptime of the vehicle, maintenance, et cetera. And so that is where a lot of this has come from. I would say with the investments we've made in our, not just our people, but really our technology and our AI-enabled tools—and on previous calls we've talked about our Nova Agent—I'd say we've been able to bring more great ideas or insights for cost savings to our clients, which has helped.

And the macro environment as well—when we look at the percentage of savings not just that we've identified that have been enacted—has been at a good percentage. And I think that represents a bit of the environment and how our clients are more interested in finding the savings that they can find.

Bart Dzarski, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Super. Thanks, Laura. And then just looking at slide 16 on the service penetration for top products—so thanks for providing that disclosure. There's about seven listed there and I think Element currently offers 22. So could you maybe, for the remaining 15, just—I know the blended penetration will be lower—but give us a sense of what that looks like and then how the discussions with clients are going in terms of increasing that penetration over time.

Heath Valkenburg, EVP and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, good morning, Bart. So the ones that we've presented on the slide there, I would say, are your more mature or longer-running products that exist in the fleet management industry, and therefore the other products that we have do have a lower penetration rate and therefore more opportunity to drive those across the platform. So there are items such as the Car IQ product that we're bringing to market and some of the newer technology products, and they would have a penetration rate that is more in the low single digits to 15% range.

So plenty of opportunity for us to drive that higher across the portfolio over time.

OPERATOR (Operator)

The next question is from Stephen Boland with Raymond James.

Stephen Boland, Analyst at Raymond James

You probably expect this question, but just on the equity residual structure that you put in place, can you just give us a little bit of the mechanics on that? Is that two separate transactions within getting rid of the residual as well as the upfront paper? And you also mentioned that the emergence of income comes over a longer period of time. Maybe just a little more description on that, please.

Heath Valkenburg, EVP and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, good morning, Stephen. Certainly glad to have the transaction done and our first transaction done. This is what we refer to as an equity residual transaction. It's under a multi-year committed program with CPP Investments and Blackstone. Firstly, I'd say that the partnership validates the quality and low-risk profile of Element Fleet Mgmt's assets and adds a complementary off-balance sheet funding channel alongside traditional syndication. So it will complement our syndications from a financial impact.

Although the transaction closed in June, from an accounting perspective it was effective the 1st of May. Ultimately what that does is approximately $700 million of receivables move off the balance sheet on the 1st of May, reducing the interest income for the final two months of the quarter. While it does impact the timing of revenue during Q2, the overall attractiveness of the economics and the structure are quite compelling for Element Fleet Mgmt.

Compared to traditional syndication, there is less revenue recognized upfront and a greater portion is earned over the life of the leases. We'll begin receiving distributions from the structure from July 1st and those revenues will flow into the income statement over the approximate four-year average life of the assets. In addition, we'll also be receiving the cash flows. We also retain a portion of the tax attributes, helping to manage cash taxes over time.

Ultimately, as with syndication, the program is primarily a balance sheet management tool, but has a number of strategic benefits for us. Number one, it diversifies our funding sources. This adds an off-balance sheet tool that complements syndications. It also extends our capacity. Many of the assets that were in this structure are not actually eligible for traditional syndications, so we can put them down this structure and ultimately that gives us flexibility to allocate assets across syndications or this structure or other channels based on what works best from an economic market conditions, capital efficiencies.

I'd also say that the economics are attractive. We retain the client relationship, we retain the management and servicing revenues, and we retain a 49% economic interest in the future lease cash flows and associated tax attributes. As we saw in Q2, the structure reduces the capital required to support asset growth and creates flexibility for us to invest in the business and return capital to shareholders. Ultimately, that enabled us to have a sizable share repurchase of 5.8 million shares in the quarter, $120 million, while maintaining our debt-to-capital ratio of 76.5% and taking advantage of what we believed was an attractive share price during the quarter. Overall, we're delighted to have the program stood up. It's another funding tool in our toolkit. It improves the capital efficiency, it supports the capital-light growth strategy. From a modeling perspective, the key points are that interest income impact begins the 1st of May and then we'll start to receive the distributions from the structure from July 1st.

Stephen Boland, Analyst at Raymond James

Appreciate that. Absolutely. I'm not sure who wants to take this one. I haven't gone back to my notes. In terms of Dublin operations, that operating income was supposed to have an impact in 2028. I know we're probably halfway through that. Maybe just a little bit of what's happening in Dublin and what have they taken over, or what's the operational update you can provide on that, please?

Laura Dottori-Attanasio, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, hey, Stephen, it's Laura. Maybe I'll take that one. Happy to report that that is progressing really well. Probably worth revisiting a bit why we launched it when we started, I guess two, almost two and a half years ago. The objective really was that we wanted to create this global leasing center of excellence. The concept was we wanted to bring consistency not just to how we structure transactions or price risk or manage the portfolio, but it was also about improving efficiency, allowing us to make faster decisions so that we can deliver a better experience for our clients and a better one for our commercial team in serving our client base.

I'm happy to report that everything is rolling out as expected. We talked about some of the improvements that we've seen in our net financing revenue and yield, and I think that reflects some of what we've done. We are on track to deliver the targets that we had laid out when we first started talking about our Dublin initiative. That relates to the revenue targets and adjusted operating income benefits that would have run-rate numbers as at 2028, and Heath, you know, feel free to share those numbers in the U.S. dollar equivalent. I think it's actually going really well. I'd even go as far as to say, when I think of the last quarter we spoke about our decision where we reduced exposure in that one originate-to-syndicate client, I do like to believe that the way we're set up now really just reflects the discipline in how we are deploying our balance sheet. So even if it does have a short-term impact on a metric like originations, we are set up in a way that we've got better portfolio management and a structure that allows for more consistent execution across the business.

Heath Valkenburg, EVP and Chief Financial Officer

And just to add to what Laura said in terms of the numbers that we called out: $30 to $45 million increase in net revenue, $22 to $37 million in adjusted operating income, both by 2028. And we're on track to deliver those numbers.

OPERATOR (Operator)

The next question is from Graham Ryding with TD Securities.

Graham Ryding, Analyst at TD Securities

I just wanted to touch on the Waymo mandate. Any context you can provide on the contribution to your vehicles under management and revenue from this mandate? Will we notice a contribution on the servicing side, and then what's your visibility or potential for this partnership to grow? Is that the intention here?

Laura Dottori-Attanasio, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, Graham, I'm more than happy to take that one, and I'm going to have to apologize in advance if I overtalk this one. Heath again can step in and provide more detailed numbers if required. Needless to say, we are extremely pleased with the strategic partnership that we announced with Waymo. It's something we've been working on for a good two and a half years and we believe it's a really strong validation of our capabilities and our long-term strategy.

We know AVs are a new technology, but we also know that a lot of that requires the same capabilities that Element Fleet Mgmt has built over the years. Everything we do—whether that's fleet operations, maintenance, lifecycle management, etc.—these are things that we do and we've done really well. So it does feel like a natural extension of what we already do really well. We're going to begin by supporting Waymo in San Diego and we do expect there to be additional markets that will come online.

As they do, the operating model will evolve by city, but ultimately we continue to do what we do best, enabling efficient fleet operations. Every time we go into a city, it does require some incremental investment from us, and that'll be things like charging infrastructure that needs to be set up, and localized operational support. For the first one that we've announced in San Diego, all of those investments that are required have already been contemplated in our 2026 guidance.

From an economic perspective, we expect that it will add to our services growth immediately starting in 2027. I'll hand it over to Heath when I'm done and he can maybe give a little bit of insight into the numbers, at least for the San Diego one—keeping in mind, all of these will be a bit different. I would just point out that while this will be great from a revenue generation perspective, the margin will be somewhat different from what our traditional fleet management business delivers, because there are some different operational services involved in this business.

But we still do expect to have some pretty attractive returns. Before I hand it over to Heath—I did say I would talk long on this one, so I apologize—I think it's worth pointing out that for us, this really is more than just this one single commercial agreement that we have with Waymo. For us, we really see this as an opportunity for Element Fleet Mgmt to be established as the fleet manager of choice for autonomous mobility. We think it validates our strategy and it should open up a long-term growth market for us.

Thank you for the question, and I'll hand it over to Heath if he wants to provide a little more insight into the numbers than I’ve done.

Heath Valkenburg, EVP and Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Laura. I think you summed it up beautifully and we're pleased to have this opportunity and partner with a company like Waymo. In terms of some of the financial elements, the first thing I'd say is this is going to be different than a traditional fleet. From a VUM perspective, while the contribution to VUM would be modest, the actual revenue per VUM is a lot higher than a traditional fleet. The complexity of the services performed, as well as the high utilization of these assets, means that on a per-vehicle basis the revenue is a lot higher.

We expect as we go live with our San Diego site in 2027 that that will add a few points of services revenue growth for the 2027 year, and then we'd be looking to scale it from there as we scale both the number of vehicles, market expansion, and operational scope.

Graham Ryding, Analyst at TD Securities

Okay, great. Appreciate the thorough replies there. If I could add one more: when you talk to investors and you get feedback on what's driving the shares and the valuation, what are the key pieces you think you need to execute on over the near to medium term in order to drive the multiple and your shares higher? And where does VUM growth rank in that priority list?

Heath Valkenburg, EVP and Chief Financial Officer

Our focus certainly is to drive growth across all of our revenue line items and to continue to drive our margins higher. No doubt that there's a focus on service revenue growth, so we're pleased to see the reacceleration of service revenue up 8% for the quarter. That is certainly a focus for us. In terms of how VUM plays into that, VUM is certainly a key metric for us. We target 2% to 4% growth on an annual basis, which will drive service revenue as well as financing revenue.

You then overlay the impacts of inflation, the impacts of increased product penetration, new products that we bring to market, and then an item such as autonomous vehicles and our partnership with Waymo—that's a real focus for us to drive service revenue higher. And then you overlay all of the work we're doing to create efficiencies in the business through digitization, which will drive higher margins over time.

OPERATOR (Operator)

The next question is from Munish Gar with CIBC.

Munish Gar, Analyst at CIBC

Hi, good morning. My first question is on originations. To reach the bottom end of the range of guidance for 2026, you would approximately need $3.3 billion of originations in H2. Can you discuss the visibility you have into that acceleration year over year?

Heath Valkenburg, EVP and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, absolutely. Good morning. So originations for the quarter were 1.7 billion, which was down 9% year over year, but up 19% sequentially as expected from a year-over-year comparison perspective. That was affected by the originate-to-syndicate client we've previously discussed, and that activity peaked in the second quarter of 2025. If I exclude the impact of that client, originations in the first half have increased approximately 4% versus the prior year.

Last quarter we also highlighted some timing shifts in client ordering, so certain clients were moving activity into later periods of the year, and so we did anticipate that that dynamic, together with the originate-to-syndicate client, would impact the second quarter orders and originations. Encouragingly though, we're now seeing that trend normalizing and we've got good visibility into our pipeline, and July orders and originations were very strong.

So based on the strength of our order pipeline and improving ordering activity, we expect the originations momentum to build through the second half of the year.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Yep, go ahead.

Heath Valkenburg, EVP and Chief Financial Officer

Sorry, I was just going to say I'd summarize that by saying we do need to increase growth in originations in the second half of the year. We've got good line of sight into doing that and expect a stronger second half, as you saw across all geographies in Q2.

Munish Gar, Analyst at CIBC

Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. And maybe one more on the expenses. So, on the 8% workforce reduction and approximately 20 million of annualized run rate savings in 2027, when do we expect the savings begin to appear and how much should be visible in the second half of 2026 and how much of these savings will be reinvested in other growth initiatives rather than flowing through the margins?

Laura Dottori-Attanasio, President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, thanks, Manish. What I'm going to do, maybe I'm going to start and give—I'm going to do a bit of my Waymo spiel here and then I'm going to hand it over to Heath once again to, maybe, really answer the question that you have. But I do think, just with the announcement that we made, it is worth talking a bit about because it really is part of the transformation that we've deliberately, I'd say, been executing on over the past two-plus years. As you know, we made a lot of important investments in our capabilities, and they're capabilities that we do believe will differentiate Element Fleet Mgmt over the long term. And so that's acquisitions that we made in Autofleet and Car IQ, and all of the continued investments in our digital platforms, automation and AI. I'd say—and this part is important—that, and we talked about this because, you know, everyone felt like, why aren't your expenses coming down with these investments?

And what we did say, and I want to highlight, is that we really didn't want to realize, I'm going to say, productivity gains until we were confident that the technologies that we were delivering could give our clients the experience that they needed, and we wouldn't put any of that at risk. So it was all about kind of proving our capabilities first, how we redesign the work. And so that's what you're seeing today. We've actually moved at a, I want to say, a faster pace than even we were expecting, and that's why we were able to announce the productivity benefits that you're seeing.

And so when we look ahead, I think you should think of this as an ongoing exercise. As we continue to digitize all these processes and responsibly deploy AI, we're going to continue to do that, and you'll see improved productivity over time. But it's just really important to note, because I know everyone wants this for tomorrow, but we do have to do this thoughtfully and at a pace that doesn't compromise the client experience, because ultimately that is what differentiates us.

So we have to make sure we're going at a pace. And so next year we talked about the $20 million of annualized savings. And the good news is that allows us to continue delivering as our clients expect and, I think, as the market would like to see. And maybe with that, I'll hand it over to Heath for more detail on that.

Heath Valkenburg, EVP and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Thank you, Laura. So, as per normal course, we'll provide 2026 guidance later in the year, but specifically for this objective, we will initiate these changes in the back half of the year. So there'll be some small impact for 2026, but the key benefit will be for 2027. So $20 million is a material part of our expense growth in any one year. And while there will be some investments such as the Waymo partnership, this program of work will ultimately moderate the expense growth for 2027.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Once again, analysts with any further questions may press star then one. The next question is from National Bank.

Jamie, Analyst at National Bank

Yeah, thanks. Good morning. I did want to just follow up on that OPEX savings into next year. Like the 20 million would be about 140 basis points based on sort of like just normal target net revenue growth, which is above the operating margin expansion that you're kind of guiding to this year. So is the expectation that you will take some of those savings and continue to reinvest in things like Waymo or building out more AV or more channels to sort of use those savings to further accelerate revenue growth?

Heath Valkenburg, EVP and Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Morning, Jamie. I'd say it'll be a balance across both. So the efficiencies that we're building into the business will drive margin expansion and we expect continued margin expansion into 2027. At the same time, we will be investing in key priorities to drive long-term growth, such as autonomous vehicles. Yeah. So in terms of the different buckets, the key driver will be—or is—our Omada relationship. You'll recall that that started off as financing and then shifted to service-only. So there's a migration of that client from funding to services as the original vehicles that were funded roll off. So that's really the key driver. There's some there from the originate-to-syndicate offering, but excluding those two impacts, we are seeing growth across both funded and service-only.

And then just to close up on the VUM, as discussed earlier, we target 2 to 4% VUM growth, which we believe gives us a good increase in our portfolio to drive the required top-line growth. And we're currently at 1.56 million units, up 3% year over year. And while that's down a very modest 4,000 units for the quarter, I'd say that's normal course activity in that you have across clients ins and outs during the period. But more importantly, we've got good line of sight to our pipeline of deals and we expect the VUM will continue to increase across the back half of the year.

OPERATOR (Operator)

This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Laura Dottori-Attanasio for closing remarks.

Laura Dottori-Attanasio, President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us today. Before we close, I do want to thank our Element team members around the world for their dedication, focus and hard work. The results that we discussed today are only possible because of the way our teams show up for our clients, for one another and for the business every day. And so thank you all and we look forward to speaking with you again in November for our third quarter earnings call.

OPERATOR (Operator)

This brings to a close today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.

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