It’s been a tough year for Cummins Inc., as previously forecast slowdowns in demand have proven to be true for much of 2025.

What does 2026 look like? It’s too soon to tell.

Mark Smith, Cummins chief financial officers, said during a recent conference call with investor analysts that the fourth quarter isn’t expected to be any better. Engine shipments to on-highway markets are expected to decrease 15% in the fourth quarter compared to third-quarter levels.

“At the risk of sounding cautiously optimistic, I hope that demand in North American on-highway markets is close to bottoming in the fourth quarter in what has been a protracted and difficult slowdown,” Smith said.

Engine Segment sales, which would include the engines made at the Jamestown Engine Plant, decreased 11% to $2.6 billion in the third quarter,while the segment’s EBITDA came in at $261 million, or 10% of sales, compared to $427 million, or 14.7% of sales, for the third quarter of 2024. Revenues decreased 12% in North America and 5% in international markets due to lower medium-duty and heavy-duty truck demand in the United States and Mexico.

Earlier this year Cummins officials stopped providing revenue or profit projections for 2025. While it’s too early to tell if demand for trucks and heavy-duty engines is going to rebound, the fact that profit and revenue outlooks may return is positive.

“We are hopeful of reinstating our guidance in February as we hope to have more clarity on trade and regulatory policies that hopefully will provide stability for the North American truck industry and the broader industrial economy,” Smith said. “As these markets recover, we are confident in our ability to build on this year’s strong performance and continue delivering value to shareholders.”

Cummins has announced several new engines over the past few years – a new 2025 6.7-liter Turbo Diesel Pickup engine system for Ram Heavy Duty to be offered in the 2025 Ram 2500, 3500 Heavy Duty Pickups and Ram 3500, 4500 and 5500 Chassis Cab trucks; the the X10, which will be introduced in North America in 2026; and the HELM platform. Changing over to new engine products further muddles the financial picture, Smith said. In addition to lower demand, there are also higher engineering budgets until the products formally launch along with other additional costs.

“Hopefully, we’re getting towards the low point,” Smith said. “I wouldn’t expect, with what I know right now, to see a dramatically different performance from the Engine business, albeit on lower volumes, in the fourth quarter. Clearly, volume is a temporary downward pressure given short quarters and inflated ramp-up, which we’re excited about on the Ram pickup, which will kind of ease a bit. But overall, I think, well, hopefully, we’re moving towards the bottom in terms of the pressures on the Engine business and Components.”

Tariffs and the global economy are also muddying the financial picture for Cummins. Jennifer Rumsey, Cummins president and CEO, told investor analysts recently that geopolitical tensions could risk semiconductor supplies that use rare earth minerals – though there have not been any major disruptions to production so far in 2025. Rumsey also said tariff costs increased again in the third quarter of 2025, though Cummins is doing a better job recovering tariff costs from customers. Cummins is also assessing the mid-October announcement that Section 232 tariffs will be assessed on medium- and heavy-duty trucks and engines.

“There’s a lot of moving parts between IEPA and 232 tariffs and uncertainty around that,” Rumsey said. “So really, we want to understand the details on that before we provide any color on what that looks like. The great news is we make our engines and our gensets for the U.S.here in the U.S., and the team has done an outstanding job of navigating a lot of change and challenge and working to recover the cost of those tariffs. So really proud of what they’ve done given the environment that we’ve been navigating this year.”

Amid the uncertainty, Smith noted this isn’t the first time Cummins has been through a demand slowdown.

“So hopefully, we get this coming together of strong demand across the company at some point here in the not-too-distant future,” Smith said. “It’s a little elusive right now on trucks. But we feel, given how long it’s been and how far it’s been down, that it is a question of time in acyclical business. But it’s not imminent that it’s going to turn up.”