Symbotic turns a profit as revenue rises 23% and systems in deployment jump to 70

Symbotic, the Massachusetts warehouse automation company whose largest customer is Walmart, reported revenue of $676.48 million for its fiscal second quarter ended March 28, 2026, up 23% from $549.65 million a year earlier, according to results furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 6, 2026. The company swung to net income of $9.43 million from a net loss of $9.85 million.

Adjusted EBITDA rose to $77.75 million from $34.72 million, more than doubling, which puts the adjusted EBITDA margin at about 11.5% of revenue. Gross margin widened to 22.2% from 20.2%, and adjusted gross margin to 24.5% from 22.2%. Over the first six months of the fiscal year Symbotic booked $1,306.47 million in revenue against $1,036.34 million a year earlier, net income of $22.79 million against a loss of $26.71 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $144.66 million against $52.62 million.

The revenue mix shows how much of the business is still hardware delivery. Systems revenue was $634.50 million, about 93.8% of the total. Software maintenance and support brought in $12.92 million and operation services $29.06 million. Cash and cash equivalents stood at $2.01 billion on March 28, up from $1.24 billion on September 27, 2025.

The operating figure investors watched most closely was deployment. Symbotic's investor presentation, filed as an exhibit to the same 8-K, shows 70 systems in deployment at the end of the quarter, against 52 at the end of the first quarter, 50 at the end of fiscal 2025 and 46 a year earlier. The presentation puts total backlog at $22.7 billion and lists a six-year contract worth about $11 billion with GreenBox, the warehouse-as-a-service joint venture Symbotic formed with SoftBank and in which it holds 35%.

For the third quarter, which ends in late June, Symbotic guided revenue of $700 million to $720 million and adjusted EBITDA of $80 million to $85 million. Chief Executive Rick Cohen said customers across industries were getting tangible value from the systems, and Chief Financial Officer Izzy Martins pointed to growth, margin expansion and the rise in deployments as the basis for a solid growth path.

Symbotic's named customers include Walmart, C&S, Albertsons, Southern Glazer's, Medline and GreenBox. The presentation cites more than 650 issued patents, more than $1 billion in cumulative research and development spending and an annual R&D budget above $125 million.

The technology automates the case-handling end of a distribution center. Autonomous vehicles run at high speed through a dense multi-level storage structure, robotic arms build mixed pallets for each store, and software sequences the cases so that pallets arrive aisle-ready. This differs from goods-to-person systems such as AutoStore's cube, which fetch bins of individual items for picking, and from mobile robot fleets that work in existing aisles.

The comparison with listed peers is instructive. AutoStore reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $165.8 million on April 23, up 92.9%, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 44.0% because it sells hardware through integrators. Teradyne's robotics segment, home to Universal Robots and MiR, reported $91 million in first-quarter revenue on April 28. Symbotic is several times larger than either, but its margin reflects the cost of building and commissioning entire systems itself.

The risks are concentration and execution. Walmart and GreenBox account for most of the backlog, so a change in Walmart's capital plans would hit Symbotic directly. Moving from 52 to 70 systems in deployment in one quarter also raises the commissioning load, and in November 2024 Symbotic said its interim statements for the first three quarters of fiscal 2024 had to be restated after costs tied to project milestones were expensed too early.

The next checkpoints are the third-quarter report in early August, where investors will test the $700 million to $720 million guide, the pace at which systems move from deployment to completed, and any new customer outside the Walmart orbit.