World Kinect (NYSE:WKC) reported first-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company’s first-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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View the webcast at https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/9md2tztn
Summary
World Kinect reported a strong start to 2026, driven by effective execution and benefits from their portfolio optimization strategy, despite volatile market conditions due to the Middle East conflict.
The company announced a rebranding initiative, using World Fuel as the unified brand for corporate and commercial purposes, reflecting strategic clarity and simplifying business operations.
Financially, the first quarter saw a 10% increase in gross profit year-over-year, with significant contributions from the Marine segment, which posted an 86% increase due to price volatility.
Aviation exceeded expectations with a 20% increase in gross profit, partially attributed to the Universal Trip Support acquisition, while Land saw expected declines due to ongoing portfolio exits.
World Kinect provided an updated EPS guidance range of $2.65 to $2.85 for 2026, reflecting strong Q1 performance but maintaining conservative estimates for the rest of the year amid market unpredictability.
Management highlighted their focus on disciplined risk management, capital allocation, and maintaining strong customer relationships, with a continued emphasis on core business growth and profitability.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Thank you for standing by and welcome to World Kinect Corporation’s first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, you may press star 11 again. I would now like to hand the call over to Braulio Medrano, Senior Director of FP&A and Investor Relations.
Braulio Medrano (Senior Director of FP&A and Investor Relations)
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to WorldConnect’s first quarter 2026 earnings conference call which will be presented alongside our live slide presentation. Today’s presentation is also available via webcast on our investor relations website. I’m Braulio Medrano, Senior Director of FP&A and Investor Relations. With me on the call today is Ira Burns, Chief Executive Officer, Mike Tejada, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and John Rao, President. And now I’d like to review our Safe Harbor Statement. Certain statements made today, including comments about our expectations regarding future plans and performance, are forward looking statements that are subject to a range of uncertainties and risks that could cause actual results to materially differ. Factors that could cause results to materially differ can be found in our Most recent Form 10K and other reports filed with the securities and Exchange Commission. We assume no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revisions to these forward looking statements in light of new information or future events. This presentation also includes certain non GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is included in our press release and can be found on our website. We will begin with several minutes of prepared remarks which will then be followed by a question and answer period. At this time I would like to introduce our Chief Executive Officer, Ira Burns.
Ira Burns (Chief Executive Officer)
Thank you very much Braulio and good afternoon everyone. I want to start by saying how proud I am of our team. Despite a far more volatile and unpredictable environment than anyone could have expected, we delivered a strong start to 2026, driven by strong execution and the continued benefits of our focused portfolio strategy. As conditions shifted rapidly following the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, driving sharp price movements and heightened uncertainty across global energy markets. Our teams remain focused, disciplined and deeply engaged with our customers and suppliers. They navigated real world complexity, managing rapid price changes, logistical challenges and tightening conditions while maintaining a clear and consistent focus on safely and efficiently serving our customers. That combination of execution, professionalism and focus is a defining strength of our organization and one that continues to set us apart. Importantly, what you’re seeing in these results is not just resilience in a volatile operating environment, but evidence of the successful execution of our portfolio optimization strategy. As we’ve discussed, our exits from non core and lower margin activities, particularly within land, have enhanced our financial flexibility and increased our ability to focus on investing in areas where we see more predictable, durable and attractive returns. We announced today that World Kinect will serve as our unified corporate and commercial brand for substantially all internal and external purposes. This is the logical next step in our repositioning efforts and reflects our strategic clarity and conviction in our approach to value creation. Our customers around the world already know us as World Kinect and this brand clearly reflects who we are today, a trusted provider of transportation, fuels and complementary services. Just as importantly, this return to our roots reflects the progress we’ve made simplifying the business and allowing our teams to fully focus on the core activities that benefit from scale, generate solid returns and offer meaningful opportunities for long term growth. As noted in our earnings release, WorldConnect will remain as our corporate legal name and our ticker symbol will remain as wkc. With that, I’d like to provide an overview of each of our core operating segments before passing things over to Mike to walk through the financials for the quarter. Marine results were consistent with what we have long communicated when prices rise materially and volatility increases, this business performs exceptionally well. It has happened before and well, it just happened again. It is important to note that this was not simply a quarter in which markets did the work for us. Performance was driven by teams executing under pressure, actively managing pricing, credit exposure and operational risk in real time while continuing to support customers despite challenging market conditions. We consider this a remarkable outcome and I want to recognize our entire Marine team for their accomplishments in the first quarter. Aviation also exceeded expectations this quarter as higher prices and increased volatility expanded opportunities in our core commercial business while also driving increased government related activity. The integration of the universal trip support services business is well underway and we are pleased with both its performance and and how effectively the teams are coming together. Land core activities performed largely in line with expectations with strong card lock and retail results offset by modest softness in our natural gas business. As I mentioned earlier, we have made significant progress with our portfolio exits and expect the vast majority of that work to be completed by the end of the second quarter. Excluding these exit activities, LAND delivered an operating margin significantly above the prior year, reflecting continued momentum and the benefits of our portfolio optimization efforts across the enterprise and more broadly across the markets we serve. Customers increasingly rely on trustworthy counterparties with scale, financial strength and execution capability. Our global platform, long standing supplier relationships and strong balance sheet position us to meet and exceed customers expectations and to continue delivering when reliability matters most. Together, this reflects a simpler, more focused business with a scale, measured execution and balance sheet to reform across a broad range of market conditions. From an earnings standpoint, we delivered incremental profitability in the first quarter with results supported by the high price, high volatility environment we saw across the market. And while more upside is possible given day to day unpredictability, our core expectations for the balance of the year have not changed and our full year assumptions have only been adjusted to reflect the profitability already generated during the first quarter. Mike will walk through our updated guidance in a moment. This quarter’s performance reinforces my confidence in our platform, the strength of our team and the durability of our customer and supplier relationships. Our strong results demonstrate the consistency of our model across a wide range of market conditions and the discipline with which we operate. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Mike to walk through the financial results in more detail.
Mike Tejada (Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Mike thank you Ira and good afternoon everyone. Before I discuss the results, I want to briefly address our use of non GAAP measures. As we have stated previously, our GAAP results can include items that do not reflect our ongoing operating performance such as restructuring and exit costs, impairments, operating results of non core divestitures and business exits, and other non recurring items. We provide reconciliations on our Investor Relations website and today’s webcast materials. Total non GAAP adjustments in the first quarter were approximately $16 million or $13 million at the time. Now on to our consolidated results which exclude these non GAAP adjustments. As Ira mentioned, we delivered a strong first quarter benefiting from a dynamic market environment. While our results were grounded in our core businesses performing in line with expectations we set last quarter, they were further enhanced by our team’s strong execution and ability to capture additional upside from pricing and volatility driven opportunities. Our first quarter results were impacted by the conflict in the Middle east and the related market dynamics. In environments like these, we have demonstrated a proven ability to balance our role as a critical partner to our customers while leveraging our scale, supplier relationships and the balance sheet to capture market driven opportunities. This is a key strength of the World Fuel platform and one that affords us the flexibility to generate incremental value when opportunities arise. While these opportunities are not always predictable, they can be meaningful contributors to Our overall performance as we saw this quarter on a consolidated …
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