Proto Labs (PRLB) Q3 2026 Earnings Call: Record Revenue and Higher Full-Year Guidance

Proto Labs (NYSE: PRLB) reported record third-quarter 2026 revenue as strong demand in CNC Machining, 3D printing and Injection Molding supported another quarter of double-digit growth. Profitability improved despite near-term pressure on factory gross margin.

Key Takeaways

• Q3 2026 revenue reached a company record of $154.3 million, up 14.2% year over year in constant currencies and marking the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.
• Non-GAAP EPS increased 33.4% to $0.63, the highest adjusted EPS reported since Q3 2020. Adjusted EBITDA rose to $26.2 million, or 17.0% of revenue.
• Revenue per customer increased 17% year over year, while Proto Labs served almost 21,000 customers. Management attributed the increase to deeper relationships with strategic customers and expansion across the product life cycle.
• Factory CNC Machining revenue grew 22%, while global 3D printing revenue rose 12%. Management cited strong demand from aerospace, defense, space, drones, robotics and data centers.
• Proto Labs raised its full-year 2026 revenue growth outlook to 10%-11%, from 8%-10%. Management expects this to be its first year of double-digit organic revenue growth since 2018.
• Q4 revenue is expected to range from $143 million to $151 million, with non-GAAP EPS of $0.46-$0.54. The outlook incorporates normal holiday seasonality and lower factory utilization.

Key Financial Data

For the first nine months of 2026, revenue increased 12%, adjusted operating margin expanded 300 basis points and adjusted EPS rose 46%. Adjusted EBITDA increased 27.2% year over year.

Business and Operating Performance

CNC Machining revenue increased 16.7% year over year in constant currencies. Factory CNC Machining grew 22%, supported by demand from space exploration, satellites, drones and robotics. Management said U.S. factory CNC revenue has grown more than 20% for six consecutive quarters.

Injection Molding revenue rose 12.6% in constant currencies, driven by electronics, aerospace and defense, and telecommunications. Revenue from 3D printing increased 11.5%, led by strong U.S. demand for direct metal laser sintering and HP Multi Jet Fusion. Year-to-date MJF revenue in the U.S. factory operation increased more than 40%, prompting additional capacity investment.

Sheet Metal revenue declined 4.6% in constant currencies. Broad weakness across end markets was partly offset by aerospace and defense demand.

Factory revenue increased 17.5%, compared with 3% growth for the Proto Labs Network. Network momentum was strong in Europe but softer in the U.S., where more customers selected the faster factory offering.

Proto Labs served almost 21,000 customers during the quarter, increasing sequentially for the third consecutive quarter. Revenue per customer rose 17% as larger strategic customers expanded their use of the company’s manufacturing services.

Europe delivered double-digit revenue growth following go-to-market changes initiated in late 2025. Management said the region’s transformation remains a longer-term effort, with the objective of making Europe a contributor to both growth and profitability.

The company also expanded ProDesk with new metal 3D printing heat treatments, FDM capabilities and additional CNC surface finishes. Proto Labs is developing AI-assisted order checks and implementing Amazon Quick across the enterprise, initially targeting go-to-market workflows and order-to-quote processing. Implementation is expected to continue into 2027.

Management Guidance

Proto Labs expects Q4 2026 revenue of $143 million to $151 million. The midpoint implies approximately 8% year-over-year growth. Foreign currency is expected to have a negligible impact compared with Q4 2025.

The company raised its full-year 2026 revenue growth outlook to 10%-11%, from its previous range of 8%-10%.

Q4 non-GAAP EPS is expected to be $0.46-$0.54. The guidance assumes approximately $4.1 million of stock-based compensation, $900,000 of amortization expense and a non-GAAP effective tax rate of 19%-21%.

Management expects Q4 gross margin to be flat to slightly lower sequentially. Machine-upgrade costs should moderate, but lower revenue, holiday-related factory inefficiencies, contractor labor and overtime are expected to offset part of that benefit. SG&A expenses as a percentage of revenue are expected to resemble Q1 and Q2 levels rather than the lower Q3 level.

For 2027, management said operating expense growth is expected to be closer to revenue growth as Proto Labs increases investment in capacity and strategic initiatives. The company currently expects to maintain its gross margin percentage, although the outcome will depend on product and service mix.

Risks and Watch Items

• Non-GAAP gross margin declined as higher raw-material costs, machine upgrades and temporary labor investments affected factory operations.
• Q4 seasonality is expected to reduce revenue and create factory inefficiencies as employees take holiday leave, potentially requiring contractors and overtime.
• U.S. Proto Labs Network demand was softer, even as factory demand remained strong.
• Europe returned to double-digit growth, but management cautioned that its profitability transformation remains a work in progress.
• Sheet Metal continued to face broad weakness across end markets.
• Analysts raised uncertainty around future defense budgets. Management responded that demand is diversified across space, satellites, drones, robotics and data centers, and maintained its goal of double-digit growth for the foreseeable future.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

Management attributed the 17% increase in revenue per customer to enterprise sales coverage, deeper relationships with selected high-value customers and greater participation from prototype through production. The company has shifted from broad-based innovation toward solutions tailored to priority customers and industries.

On the sequential gross-margin decline, management estimated that machine upgrades accounted for about 100 basis points and contract labor for roughly 90 basis points, with the balance related to material costs. The company acquired more than 40 new machines over the past year and incurred certain upgrade costs directly in Q3.

Management said machine-upgrade and contractor costs are variable and can decline over time. However, Q4’s lower expected volume and holiday-related labor requirements are likely to limit near-term margin recovery.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

Operator

Greetings. Welcome to the Proto Labs Q3 Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Ryan Johnsrud, Investor Relations. Thank you, Ryan. You may begin.

Ryan Johnsrud

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Proto Labs' Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. I'm joined today by Suresh Krishna, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Dan Schumacher, Chief Financial Officer. This morning, Proto Labs issued a press release announcing its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2026. The release is available on the company's website. In addition, a prepared slide presentation is available online at the web address provided in our press release.

Our discussion today will include statements relating to future performance and expectations that are or may be considered forward-looking statements and subject to many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Please refer to our earnings press release and recent SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K for information on certain risks that could cause actual outcomes to differ materially and adversely from any forward-looking statements made today.

The results and guidance we will discuss include non-GAAP financial measures, consistent with our past practice. Please refer to our press release and the accompanying slide presentation at the Investor Relations section of our company website for a complete reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results. Now I will turn the call over to Suresh Krishna. Suresh?

Suresh Krishna

Thank you, Ryan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our earnings call. I am very pleased with our third quarter performance, which provides further evidence that the execution of our strategy is translating into strong and consistent financial results. Third quarter revenue grew 14%, resulting in another record revenue quarter. This is the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. We also delivered double-digit non-GAAP EPS growth for the fourth consecutive quarter with EPS growth outpacing revenue growth in each of these quarters.

In the first 9 months of 2026, year-over-year revenue grew 12%, adjusted operating margin expanded 300 basis points and adjusted EPS grew 46%, underscoring the consistency of our execution and the strength of our momentum. These results are driven by the tremendous work of our Proto Labs team and their continued commitment to serving our customers. I want to thank them all for everything they do every day. The trends that drove strong performance in the first half of the year continued in the third quarter.

Larger strategic customers continue to broaden their relationships with Proto Labs and turn to us for more of their manufacturing needs across the entire product life cycle. This is reflected in a 17% year-over-year increase in revenue per customer. In addition, we served almost 21,000 customers in the quarter, up sequentially for the third straight quarter. We continue to see strong demand in high-growth industries, including aerospace, defense, drones, robotics and data centers. We work with most innovative companies in these markets, including Blue Origin, Relativity Space, Raytheon, AeroVironment, Shield AI, Agility Robotics and many others. These customers need to rapidly move from ideas to prototypes and into production, making Proto Labs' speed, quality and reliability increasingly critical. We saw broad-based strength across our business in the third quarter with each of our 3 largest service lines growing double digits year-over-year.

Factory CNC Machining was particularly strong, growing 22% as our world-class speed continues to resonate with customers. Global 3D printing revenues grew 12%, led by strong demand from metals and HP's Multi Jet Fusion technology, or MJF. Year-to-date, MJF revenue in our U.S. factory operation is up more than 40%, and we are investing in additional capacity to support that growth. Proto Labs is at the center of a major shift taking place in manufacturing driven by 4 powerful macro trends.

First, reindustrialization. Companies are bringing manufacturing closer to their customers and building more resilient regional and sovereign supply chains. Second, a wave of hardware innovation moving at the speed of software. Investment is accelerating across critical and emerging industries like space, drones, robotics, data centers and other highly engineered hardware that ultimately needs to be designed, tested and manufactured from prototype to production at faster speeds than ever before.

Third, physical AI. AI is moving beyond software and into the physical world, driving a new generation of robotics, autonomous systems, intelligent machines and other advanced products that require manufacturing to leverage physical AI. And fourth, supply chain agility and scalability. As innovation accelerates, companies need manufacturing partners that can invest and scale with them without the manpower and capital constraints of traditional supply chains.

This is exactly the environment Proto Labs is built for. We help customers move quickly from idea to prototype to production while delivering the quality, reliability and scalable capacity they need. And we have an important structural advantage, our true digital thread. Proto Labs' software-native digital manufacturing model enables speed and automation today while creating a foundation to leverage AI and scale efficiently over time. And with millions of CAD files and decades of manufacturing data in our library, we have a powerful foundation to apply AI, advance our manufacturing capabilities and create more valuable solutions for our customers.

We are already seeing the benefits of these trends in our business, and we believe they create a significant opportunity for Proto Labs over the next several years. We continue to invest in capabilities to capture the opportunity ahead. We are advancing our 4 strategic pillars: elevating the customer experience, accelerating innovation, expanding into production and driving operational efficiency. I'd like to share several important business and product updates with you now.

On ProDesk, we launched new metal 3D printing heat treatments, FDM printing capabilities and additional CNC Machining surface finishes, giving customers more control over part performance, surface quality and finishing requirements. Next, we continue to enhance the Proto Labs Network with improvements designed to accelerate order acceptance, improve partner communication and strengthen quality. We are also developing AI-assisted order checks to identify specification discrepancies earlier and further automate the customer and partner experience.

With respect to improving efficiency across the organization, last week, we announced an enterprise implementation of Amazon Quick as part of our broader AI road map. Our initial focus is on go-to-market workflows where we believe AI can improve productivity, reduce response times and streamline order-to-quote processing. To accelerate implementation, we created forward deployed AI engineer roles to identify high-impact use cases and design AI-enabled workflows across the organization. Enterprise-wide implementation will continue into 2027, led by Marc Kermisch, our Chief Technology and AI Officer.

Technology is an important enabler of our strategy, and operational execution is the other. In August, Sam Ramahi was named Chief Operations Officer. Sam brings over 25 years of executive operational leadership across global companies like nVent, Eaton, Honeywell and more. Sam will help advance our strategic pillars while focusing on driving operational excellence across safety, quality, delivery and cost. We are also expanding the talent and capabilities needed to execute our strategy.

We have officially inaugurated our new global capability center in India. Engineers are on site and are working directly on our manufacturing and AI road map. The talent and capabilities we are building in India will help accelerate progress across all 4 strategic pillars. The strength (sic) [ capability ] center strengthens our investments in technologies that will meaningfully improve productivity, including AI, automation and advanced manufacturing capabilities that support our broader digital manufacturing strategy.

Turning to Europe. Revenue grew double digits in the third quarter, in part due to the go-to-market changes we initiated late last year. We are very pleased with this performance, and I want to thank our team in Europe, led by Pjotr Horowitz, for their continued execution and commitment. We continue to advance the initiatives needed to return Europe to profitability, addressing the drivers of underperformance while putting the right organizational structure, operating model, talent and capabilities in place to execute more effectively.

These efforts are designed to complement the go-to-market changes already underway and support further operational improvements. As I shared last quarter, the transformation in Europe remains a work in progress, and it's a longer-term effort. While we are encouraged by double-digit revenue growth, our objective remains unchanged, transform Europe into a contributor to both future growth and profitability.

Before I turn the call over to Dan, I want to highlight 2 recent recognitions of our commitment to manufacturing innovation. In August, we announced a partnership with MIT and a grant supporting U.S. manufacturing innovation research at MIT Industrial Performance Center. And in September, Proto Labs was one of the only 500 U.S. companies named to Business Insider's America's Most Innovative Businesses 2027 list. We are proud of both recognitions and believe they reinforce Proto Labs' position at the center of manufacturing innovation.

In closing, I am very pleased with our results through the first 9 months of the year and the progress we are making on our transformation. At the same time, I believe we are still in the early innings of what this business can achieve. We are executing our strategy at a time when some of the world's most innovative industries are moving faster, manufacturing supply chains are being reconfigured, and speed and digital manufacturing capabilities have never been more important. We believe Proto Labs is uniquely positioned for this environment and the opportunity ahead. We remain focused on building on recent momentum and delivering sustained profitable growth and long-term value for our customers and shareholders.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Dan to walk through the financials and outlook.

Dan Schumacher

Thanks, Suresh, and good morning. I'll start with an overview of our third quarter results, followed by our outlook for the fourth quarter. Third quarter revenue was a company record $154.3 million, up 14.2% year-over-year in constant currencies. U.S. revenue grew 14.7%, while Europe grew 12.2% in constant currencies. Third quarter CNC Machining revenue grew 16.7% year-over-year in constant currencies. Our largest service continues to see very strong demand in aerospace and defense, most notably space exploration, satellites and drones, as well as in robotics.

Injection Molding grew 12.6% in constant currencies, driven by strength in electronics, aerospace and defense and telecommunications. 3D printing revenue increased 11.5% year-over-year in constant currencies. As we saw in the first half of 2026, demand in DMLS and MJF remained very strong in the U.S. We continue to invest capital to expand capacity in those areas. Sheet Metal revenue declined 4.6% year-over-year in constant currencies with broad weakness across end markets, partially offset by strength in aerospace and defense.

On to profitability. Non-GAAP gross margin was 44.5% in the third quarter, down 230 basis points sequentially and 140 basis points year-over-year. The lower gross margin was driven by our factory operations, primarily reflecting higher raw material costs, machine upgrades and targeted near-term investments in labor and contractor support. These were made to accommodate the significant increase in volume over the course of the year while maintaining our standards for speed, quality and reliability. Third quarter non-GAAP operating expenses were $50.3 million, up $1.7 million compared to the prior year, primarily reflecting increased investment in demand generation, along with higher contractor, professional services and software license costs as we continue to fund our strategic priorities.

Importantly, we continue to generate significant operating leverage. Adjusted operating expenses were 32.6% of revenue, down from 34.8% of revenue in the second quarter and 35.9% in the third quarter of 2025. This operating leverage reflects both strong revenue growth and the targeted actions we have taken to improve our cost structure and reallocate resources towards our highest priority growth initiatives. We continue to invest and add resources behind our strategic initiatives while identifying additional efficiencies that can help fund future growth.

Adjusted EBITDA was $26.2 million, or 17% of revenue, up from $21.1 million or 15.6% of revenue in the third quarter of 2025. Year-to-date, adjusted EBITDA is up 27.2% year-over-year. Third quarter non-GAAP earnings per share were $0.63, up 33.4% year-over-year, driven by revenue growth, mix shift and significant leverage on our SG&A expenses. $0.63 is the highest adjusted EPS figure we've reported since the third quarter of 2020. Adjusted EPS is up 45.5% year-over-year year-to-date. We generated $22.8 million in cash from operations during the third quarter, and we repurchased $5 million of common stock. On September 30, we had $175 million of cash and investments on our balance sheet and 0 debt.

Our outlook for the fourth quarter of 2026 is outlined on Slide 14. For the fourth quarter, we expect revenue between $143 million and $151 million. At the midpoint, this implies 8% revenue growth year-over-year. As a result, we are raising our full year 2026 revenue growth outlook from a prior range of 8% to 10% to a new range of 10% to 11%. We anticipate 2026 will be our first year of double-digit organic revenue growth since 2018. We expect foreign currency to have a negligible impact on revenue compared to the fourth quarter of 2025.

Our fourth quarter earnings guidance incorporates the following assumptions: Non-GAAP add-backs will include stock-based compensation expense of approximately $4.1 million and amortization expense of $900,000, a non-GAAP effective tax rate between 19% and 21%. In summary, we expect fourth quarter 2026 non-GAAP earnings per share between $0.46 and $0.54. That concludes our prepared remarks. Nicole, please open the line for questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Brian Drab with William Blair.

Question-and-Answer Session

Brian Drab

Congrats on a great quarter. Could you just start by talking about -- it looks like revenue per customer is up about 17%. And maybe add some granularity to that in terms of -- is it driven by volume? Or is it also the breadth of services now that you're increasingly offering that's allowing for that -- that's just a very impressive result and where are you seeing the most success?

Suresh Krishna

Brian, this is Suresh. Thanks for your question. As we've talked before, we are absolutely focused on our 4 key strategic pillars, the first of them, which is elevating customer experience. And the second of them, which is accelerating innovation on behalf of the customers. And the third, which is expanding into production, are all contributing to this particular growth that we are seeing in wallet share with our core customer base. Some of the changes we've made to be able to do this well beyond the strategy, is the way we are executing.

We have an enterprise sales team. We are focused on a handful of industries that are high value for us. And those sales teams are building deep customer relationships and listening and turning it around to provide innovation that is specific to these customers. In the past, we may have innovated for the general customer base, which for us is tens of thousands of customers, to now being very focused on the customers where we see high value. So that is where we are able to drive wallet share and increase revenue per customer.

Brian Drab

And then I mean I'm seeing the stock, I'm surprised a little bit to see that the stock is indicating slightly down before the open here. I guess it could be just the guidance for -- midpoint of guidance is $0.50 for the fourth quarter after you just put up $0.63. But is there -- what is there beyond just typical seasonality for the fourth quarter that you're looking at as you guide for that fourth quarter?

Dan Schumacher

Yes. I mean, one, it is typical -- I assume the seasonality that we've seen for the prior 7 years for last quarter. So it is built in there that we expect to see some softness around the holiday time, which, as you know, impacts that EPS number. Second, gross margin, I'm assuming to be flat to slightly down quarter-over-quarter. We don't expect to see the same -- we talked about machine upgrade costs and so forth. We don't expect to see it at that high of a level.

But as we have lower revenue and we have some inefficiency in our factories around the holiday time as we bring in contractors and overtime as employees are taking time off. And then I would expect SG&A expenses as a percent of revenue to look more like the first and second quarter of the year rather than what we saw in the third quarter. So there is a pickup in SG&A expenses as well.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Austin Bohlig with Needham.

Austin Bohlig

Congrats on the great results. I was just hoping to get a little bit more color on, kind of, the growth you're seeing in the factory versus the network. I didn't see what the revenue for the network was, if you could provide that.

Dan Schumacher

Yes. So network revenue was up 3% year-over-year. So that meant that factory growth was up 17.5%. So again, we had higher growth in the factory than we had in the network. From a network side, we are seeing really strong momentum in the network in Europe, but things are a bit softer in the U.S. Our customers, as we come to them, they have a choice in this time in terms of do they need the speed that we're offering through the factory or do they need the breadth of services and maybe longer lead time of the network. And we are just seeing more of our customers in the U.S. take advantage of that speed, and you're seeing that in the tremendous growth.

Austin Bohlig

Got it. And then just one follow-up. So with all the defense or A&D success more broadly, like, with your conversations with your customers, how are you guys feeling this with, like, some uncertainty around the fiscal '27 budget continuing resolution continuing through 2027? Do you guys think that, like, this momentum can continue even with some kind of lingering uncertainty around future budgets?

Suresh Krishna

Yes. Austin, thanks for bringing that up. We are very, very broad-based in terms of the industry we serve, and A&D for us is very broad as well. While there might be some uncertainty around defense budget, we see tremendous opportunity in space exploration, in satellites, in drones, neoprimes, along with the primes. And then beyond that, we absolutely see non-A&D sectors like robotics and data centers also growing. So we are very confident that when you look out into the future that we would continue to be able to drive our goal of double-digit growth for the foreseeable future.

Operator

Our next question is from Brian Drab with William Blair.

Brian Drab

I was just wondering if you could talk maybe for Dan, a little bit further out in terms of how you're thinking about the trajectory of gross margin and expense dollars as we think about 2027, maybe just directionally or at high level, like, different projects that -- and different expenses to think about as we're modeling?

Dan Schumacher

Yes. So we're in the middle of establishing our 2027 budget and plans as we speak. But what I would tell you is we're going to continue to accelerate our investment in several areas. One is expanding our capacity. And the second is investing in our strategic pillars. So that's elevating our customer experience, accelerating innovation, expanding into production, and driving operational efficiency. So with the last one, our objective from a spending perspective is really to focus on how do we continue to increase our efficiencies as we invest.

I would expect next year from an operating expense perspective that the growth in operating expenses would be much closer to the revenue growth next year than what we saw this year as we start to make these investments. From a gross margin perspective, it really is going to depend on the mix that we're seeing and the different types of products that we have and how that plays out as we go through the year. But I would expect that we would be able to hold our gross margin percentage as we go into 2027.

Brian Drab

Okay. I'll follow up more later on that, but that's really clear.

Operator

Our next question comes from Greg Palm with Craig-Hallum.

Greg Palm

Sorry if this got, I guess, maybe explained or specified. I've been juggling a handful of calls this morning. But in terms of the -- maybe the sequential gross margin bridge from Q3 to Q2, a couple of hundred basis points, give or take. Dan, I know you listed a bunch of reasons, but just can you break that out between them? And then just in terms of sustainability or confidence in getting that gross margin level back up from here, maybe just a little bit more color on that, please.

Dan Schumacher

Just to be clear, Greg, you're talking about Q2 to Q3 gross margin?

Greg Palm

Correct.

Dan Schumacher

All right.

Suresh Krishna

Yes. So Greg, as we noted in our prepared remarks, demand has been exceptionally strong in our U.S. factory CNC. Revenues have grown over 20% for 6 quarters in a row. So while our automated model is designed to scale efficiently with this kind of volume increase, we, in this particular quarter, had to do some machine upgrades. We found opportunistically a window where we could do that. And some of our older machines were upgraded so that they could start to perform at the same rate as some of the newer machines that we have acquired more recently.

We've acquired over 40 new machines this past year. So that -- those expenses were incurred within the quarter and not capitalized. And then there were some some contract labor we had to bring in for our support services because we were chasing this growth and make sure that we could deliver everything we needed for our customers within the time frames that we provide them. Beyond that, there was raw material increases that we saw. So those are the pressures that we got in Q3 versus our Q2 performance.

Dan Schumacher

Greg, just to provide more specifics, I would say there's about 100 basis points in those machine upgrades. There's probably about 90 basis points in that contract labor and the remaining in the material cost. I just want to reemphasize that the contract upgrades and obviously, the contract labor, those are all variable costs that we can choose to move over time. And it's really focused on making sure that we have the speed, the quality and the reliability for our customers.

Greg Palm

Okay. So just to be clear, though, so does some of that -- I mean, you incur that completely in Q3 and then it goes away completely for, sort of, Q4 or go forward or...

Dan Schumacher

Yes. Well, one thing I would say is we're always using contract labor, right, to vary depending on the volume that's coming in. But yes, there is some assumption in the guide that, that cost comes down as we're in fourth quarter. But what is, kind of, counteracting that, right, is the lower volume that is in the middle of the guide as well as seasonality. So we may have to use some of that contract labor and some of that overtime as our employees take off for the holidays.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] It looks like we have no more questions in the queue. This now concludes our question-and-answer session. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This concludes today's teleconference. Please disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.