Iveco Group has released its results for the first quarter of 2026, showing broad pressure across the business, particularly in the heavy commercial vehicles segment. At consolidated level, the group showed some resilience on revenue: consolidated revenues stood at €2.828 billion, slightly up from €2.806 billion in the first quarter of 2025. Net revenues from industrial activities reached €2.766 billion, compared with €2.736 billion in the first quarter of 2025.
The picture changes, however, when margins are examined. In the first quarter, consolidated adjusted Ebit slipped into negative territory at €55 million, a sharp reversal from a profit of €117 million in the same period of 2025. As a result, the adjusted Ebit margin stood at -1.9%, compared with a positive 4.2% a year earlier. Looking only at industrial activities, the adjusted Ebit loss was €90 million, with a margin of -3.3%.
What caused this pressure on margins? Management said the group had "further strengthened its focus on quality" to ensure reliability and value for customers. This shift, together with reworking costs, particularly in the Bus division, and difficult conditions in the commercial vehicles sector in South America, had a direct impact on quarterly profitability. Despite the operational challenges, Iveco’s balance sheet benefits from strong liquidity, mainly thanks to the sale of the Defence division to Leonardo, completed on 18 March, which left Iveco with €5.498 billion in cash at 31 March. It should be noted, however, that this amount reflects non-recurring proceeds from the disposal, while adjusted Ebit excludes many of these extraordinary effects.
The real bad news comes from the Truck division, the core of the group’s activities, which had a two-speed quarter reflecting contrasting macroeconomic trends worldwide. Net revenues also fell in this division, stopping at €1.810 billion, down 7.8% from €1.964 billion in the same period of the previous year. This revenue contraction led to a marked decline in profitability: the division posted an adjusted Ebit loss of €71 million, compared with a €58 million profit in Q1 2025, taking the margin to -3.9% from 3% a year earlier.
There are several reasons for this slowdown, but South America appears to have played a key role. In the region, the commercial vehicles market contracted sharply, down 11% for light vehicles and 18% for medium and heavy vehicles. This translated into a 29% fall in Iveco deliveries in the region, with a negative peak of -42% for medium and heavy vehicles. Lower volumes and an unfavourable product mix were compounded by the negative impact of exchange rates and higher production costs linked to the quality focus already mentioned.
The European picture, however, is considerably more encouraging. In Europe, the truck market grew by 9% year on year, and Iveco was able to capture this momentum by increasing total deliveries by 11%, driven by a 17% rise in light vehicles, while medium and heavy vehicles remained down by 7%. The figure that offers most reassurance for the coming quarters is the strength of underlying demand in Europe: order intake rose by 31% for light vehicles and by 5% for medium and heavy vehicles. This pushed the global book-to-bill ratio to 1.24 at the end of the quarter, providing production coverage of seven weeks for light vehicles and nine to ten weeks for medium and heavy vehicles.
This is the context for the public tender offer launched by India’s Tata, which is expected to proceed after clearance from the relevant authorities, several of which are involved given the multinational scale of the two groups. Approval has already arrived from the European Union. Iveco said most of the other authorisations have been obtained, but some procedures still need to be completed. This appears to be the reason why the launch of the tender offer has been postponed from the second to the third quarter of 2026.
