Zebra Technologies reported net sales of $1,614 million for the quarter ended 3 October 2026, up 22.3% on the $1,320 million it took a year earlier and the largest quarterly figure in the company’s history when it reported on 3 November 2026. Underneath the record, the half of the business that carries RFID grew at less than half the rate of the other half.
Zebra, listed on NASDAQ as ZBRA and based in Lincolnshire, Illinois, builds barcode and RFID printers, handheld and fixed readers, mobile computers, scanners and machine vision systems, plus the supplies and services that go with them. It reports in two segments. Connected Frontline (CF) covers mobile computing and the software and services attached to it. Asset Visibility & Automation (AVA) covers printing, supplies, sensing and automation. A reportable segment is the level at which a listed company must publish revenue and operating income separately; anything finer is its own choice to disclose or withhold.
The segment split
| Segment | Q3 2026 net sales | Q3 2025 | Reported growth | Organic growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connected Frontline | $949m | $705m | 34.6% | 15.0% |
| Asset Visibility & Automation | $665m | $615m | 8.1% | 7.0% |
| Total | $1,614m | $1,320m | 22.3% | 11.3% |
Two measures sit side by side there and it matters which is being read. Reported growth is the raw year-on-year change in dollars. Organic growth strips out acquisitions and currency movements, so it approximates how fast the business the company already owned actually grew. On a reported basis CF grew 34.6%; organically it grew 15.0%. Nearly all the 19-point gap is Elo Touch, the interactive touchscreen and point of sale display maker acquired as Elo Holdings, Inc. on 30 September 2025 for $1,303 million, per the quarterly filing. A purchase is excluded from the organic figure for twelve months after it closes, so this was the last quarter in which Elo Touch distorted the comparison.
AVA’s two measures are much closer: 8.1% reported against 7.0% organic, the difference being currency plus a small net effect from buying Photoneo and selling the robotics automation business. At group level, 22.3% reported becomes 11.3% organic. That is still a good quarter. It is not the same quarter.
Where RFID sits, and what is not published
The segment note in the Form 10-Q for the quarter, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 3 November 2026, is explicit about what each segment contains. AVA “includes barcode and card printing and related supplies and sensors, RFID and RTLS offerings, data capture, machine vision offerings, and related services”. So RFID does sit in AVA, the slower-growing segment, next to the printing and machine vision lines. RTLS, real-time location systems, tracks the live position of tagged assets rather than reading them at a fixed point.
Neither the filing nor the release puts a revenue figure against RFID. The press release does not use the word once; the 10-Q names it only in that list of segment contents. AVA’s $665 million aggregates RFID printers, readers, antennas and labels with barcode printing, supplies, sensors, data capture and machine vision, and the filing’s own account credits growth “primarily due to higher sales of machine vision and printing products”, with no RFID line separated out.
That is the standing difficulty in reading the RFID market off the accounts of diversified hardware vendors: the number you want sits inside a number you can see, and nobody outside the company knows the ratio. Chip vendors are easier to read, which is why a record quarter for tag chip revenue in the same reporting season says more about tag volumes than $665 million of AVA does. As product context, the RFID printer, reader and antenna lines sold under this brand are UHF RAIN RFID, the passive ultra-high frequency technology standardised as ISO/IEC 18000-63. Deployments are public where revenue is not, such as a 50% picking efficiency gain reported at a Spex warehouse in October 2026.
Memory costs take a bite out of margin
Gross margin fell to 45.7% from 48.0% a year earlier, attributed in the release “primarily due to increased memory component costs and business mix partially offset by favorable foreign currency”. Adjusted gross margin was 46.0% against 48.2%. The squeeze shows in both segments: CF’s gross margin dropped 280 basis points to 43.2%, and AVA’s fell 80 basis points to 49.9%, which the 10-Q puts down to higher memory costs.
Memory pricing is a supply chain story rather than an RFID one, but it reaches everyone specifying this class of hardware: RFID printers, fixed readers, handheld readers and mobile computers all ship with DRAM and flash inside them. Chief Executive Bill Burns said that “our efforts to strengthen memory supply, implement pricing actions and capture operating leverage enabled us to support our growth while maintaining adjusted EBITDA margin year-over-year”. Pricing actions means price rises. Anyone costing an RFID rollout for 2027 delivery should budget on that basis, not on 2025 list prices.
Profit and the raised outlook
Net income was $164 million, or $3.43 per diluted share, against $101 million and $1.97 a year earlier. Non-GAAP diluted EPS was $4.95 against $3.88. Adjusted EBITDA was $349 million, or 21.6% of adjusted net sales, the same margin as the prior year.
Fourth-quarter guidance is sales growth of 10% to 14%, including roughly 150 basis points of favourable currency, adjusted EBITDA margin of about 22%, and non-GAAP diluted EPS of $5.00 to $5.40. The full-year outlook was raised, with free cash flow expected to be at least $1 billion. Burns tied that to what he called “trends in automation and Physical AI”, his framing rather than this site’s.
More results coverage is collected under Company & Financial, and reader and printer coverage under Hardware.
