Itron (NASDAQ: ITRI) reported Q2 EPS of $0.03, $0.24 better than the analyst estimate of ($0.21). Revenue for the quarter came in at $510 million versus the consensus estimate of $486.56 million.

• Revenue of $510 million, compared with $635 million;
• Gross margin of 27.2%; compared with 30.1%;
• GAAP net loss of $(63) million, compared with net income of $19 million;
• GAAP loss per share of $(1.56), compared with GAAP diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.49;
• Non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.03, compared with $0.87;
• Adjusted EBITDA of $31 million, compared with $73 million; and
• Total backlog of $2.9 billion, compared with $3.1 billion.

"In balance, I am pleased with our team's focus and execution this quarter during these unprecedented and challenging times," said Tom Deitrich, Itron's president and chief executive officer.

"In the second quarter, our continued commitment to our customers and aggressive actions to safely ensure our business continuity yielded results that were better than our expectations," continued Deitrich. "We remain confident in our ability to work through the near-term challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic as we make strides in our strategy and the long-term opportunities it can deliver."

COVID-19 Operational Update
We currently have all factories up and running with aggressive measures to drive safety across our entire operation. Our supply chain and logistics situation has stabilized. And while there have been intermittent shortages, none has been at sustained levels. We continue investments necessary for our long-term strategy and will continue to position ourselves to capture the growing need for technology and outcomes in our industry. Our teams have begun to re-enter some customer sites and help our customers plan for and in some cases resume deployments. To date there have been no order cancellations or issues with collections from our customers.

We are observing that utilities and municipalities are recovering at varying rates across the globe. Our customers' priority is supplying essential services to their communities and recovering from the impact of COVID-19. We see this impacting our business with reduced near-term demand and the delay of planned 2020 deployments into future quarters. We are aggressively managing our response in these unprecedented times by working closely with our customers to ensure alignment on their shipments, deployment schedules and ongoing operational activities. We will continue to keep tight controls on operating and capital expenditures and drive actions focused on improving margins as we continue our path toward our targeted “asset light” operating model. Our services remain essential to our customers and the need for our solutions will increase as they begin to get back to normal operations.

Insight for Second Half 2020
Due to the uncertainty of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we suspended our full year 2020 guidance on May 4, 2020.

With this unique situation, we will provide some insight into the second half of 2020 based on the best information we have today.

Our current view of the second half of 2020 is consistent with comments made on our last earnings call. While we are seeing operating improvements in the second half of the year; we anticipate revenue and non-GAAP earnings per share to be on par with the first half of 2020, with neither quarter being larger than our first quarter performance. This also considers a higher non-GAAP, full year, effective tax rate of approximately 36% driven by an expected shift in the mix of income by jurisdiction. We anticipate the full year 2020 free cash flow to be positive, although at approximately half of our prior year’s performance.

For earnings history and earnings-related data on Itron (ITRI) click here.