ATLANTA – Governor Brian P. Kemp today announced that Blue Bird Corporation (Blue Bird), a technology leader and innovator of school buses, is expanding its existing footprint in Peach County. The company plans to invest an estimated $300 million in a new manufacturing facility in Fort Valley, creating 375 new jobs over the next three years.
“For nearly 100 years, Blue Bird has been an incredible part of Georgia’s story, and now that story will continue to be written for years to come,” said Governor Brian Kemp. “We are proud when our long-time partners can grow and adapt to changing markets right here in the Peach State, and this expansion is the latest example that our pro-business environment is fostering sustained success for our business partners. I want to congratulate Blue Bird, Fort Valley, and Peach County on this announcement and their continued prosperity.”
Blue Bird school buses are available in a wide range of options and configurations to meet the diverse needs of school districts worldwide. The company has set industry standards through innovative design, engineering excellence, and advanced manufacturing capabilities, and currently supports more than 1,900 employees in Georgia.
“Georgia is where Blue Bird was born, and it has been our home for nearly 100 years. Every bus that rolls out of our plant carries the pride of the people across Middle Georgia who build it,” said John Wyskiel, President and CEO of Blue Bird Corporation. “Our new facility in Fort Valley is our way of investing back into the community where we will continue to build more of the safe, dependable buses that school districts rely on, so we can keep getting children to school safely for the next hundred years.”
Blue Bird will convert a former manufacturing site for diesel-powered motorhomes at 401 Wanderlodge Way in Fort Valley into a new facility to build buses of all powertrains. The new, 1-million-square-foot manufacturing facility will produce Type C school buses, including diesel, gasoline, propane, and electric-powered models. Construction is expected to begin in Q1 2027. The company will be hiring for manufacturing, operations, and technician roles. To learn more about Blue Bird, including where interested individuals can apply for jobs, visit www.blue-bird.com/careers.
“For generations, Fort Valley has helped Blue Bird move America forward. Today, Blue Bird is helping Fort Valley move toward a new century of possibilities,” said Fort Valley Mayor Shakeena B. Reeves. “May the next 100 years be defined not only by the buses we manufacture, but by the families we strengthen, the opportunities we create, and the future we build together.”
“Peach County is proud to be home to Blue Bird, and this massive $300 million expansion and creation of 375 new jobs is a monumental win for our entire community,” said Commissioner Roy Lewis, Peach County Board of Commissioners. “This investment underscores the strength of our local workforce and our collaborative partnership with state and local leaders. We look forward to seeing Blue Bird continue to thrive right here in Fort Valley.”
Regional Project Manager Candice Scott represented the Georgia Department of Economic Development’s (GDEcD) Global Commerce team on this competitive project in partnership with the Development Authority of Peach County and Georgia Quick Start.
“Since 1927, Blue Bird has been one of Georgia’s longest-standing automotive manufacturers, evolving with the industry while continuing to grow in Fort Valley and Middle Georgia,” said GDEcD Commissioner Pat Wilson. “For nearly 100 years, families across America have placed their trust in Blue Bird every school day, entrusting these buses to safely carry their children to and from school. It’s remarkable to see that legacy continuing to create jobs and opportunity in a rural Georgia community, and to see Blue Bird continuing to invest and grow in the place it has called home for generations. Congratulations to Blue Bird on its upcoming centennial and to our local partners in Fort Valley and Peach County who have helped make this remarkable legacy possible.”
About Blue Bird Corporation
Blue Bird is recognized as a technology leader and innovator of school buses since its founding in 1927. Their dedicated team members design, engineer, and manufacture school buses with a singular focus on safety, reliability, and durability. School buses carry the most precious cargo in the world – 25 million children twice a day – making them the most trusted mode of student transportation. The company is a proven leader in low-and-zero-emission school buses with more than 25,000 propane, natural gas, and electric-powered buses sold. Blue Bird is transforming the student transportation industry through cleaner energy solutions. For more information on Blue Bird’s complete product and service portfolio, visit www.blue-bird.com.
Long before GPS, onboard cameras and electric drivetrains, students climbed aboard horse-drawn wagons, wood-bodied buses and heavy-duty coaches built for routes that could be as demanding as the communities they served. Today, a small number of those vehicles survive in museums, company collections and private hands, offering a tangible record of how student transportation evolved.
The familiar yellow school bus did not arrive fully formed. In rural North America, getting children to school was once a local problem solved with whatever transportation was available. In the U.S., horse-drawn “kid hacks,” short for hackney carriages, and school wagons carried students before purpose-built motorized buses became common. Wayne Works developed a horse-drawn School Car in 1892 and a motorized version by 1914. By 1932, 63,000 school buses were operating in the U.S., according to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
Those buses were also changing education itself. Transportation made it possible for rural districts to close small one-room schools and move students to larger consolidated schools.
A similar transition occurred across Canada, and surviving vehicles at the Western Development Museum in Saskatchewan help tell that story.
Kaiti Hannah, curatorial associate for the Western Development Museum, told School Transportation News that the museum’s Saskatoon location includes a small display about the shift during the 1950s from one-room schoolhouses to busing students to larger urban schools.
Among the museum’s most evocative artifacts is the Conquest school bus, a horse-drawn vehicle displayed near a one-room schoolhouse. The museum also has an archival image of the bus dating to 1926. Hannah said the museum does not have extensive information about the vehicle’s early history, but it entered the collection in 1961.
Another early Saskatchewan bus, displayed at the museum’s North Battleford location, has a more detailed provenance. It was one of eight school buses purchased by the Viscount School Board in 1923 from William Landa’s Landa Carriage Works in Saskatoon. Each cost $350, and the buses served in the school district for about 20 years. The surviving example entered the Western Development Museum collection in 1949.
Hannah said she is not aware of any preserved early Canadian motorized school buses or private Canadian collectors specializing in historic pupil transportation vehicles, though she noted examples may exist elsewhere. That uncertainty is part of the preservation challenge. Unlike locomotives, automobiles or aircraft, school buses were working vehicles that often stayed in service until they were worn out, repurposed or disposed of.
Vehicles like those are reminders that “school bus” once described a much broader range of equipment than the standardized vehicles familiar today.
In the U.S., that standardization took a major step forward in 1939, when rural education specialist Frank W. Cyr organized a national conference at Teachers College, Columbia University. Delegates developed 44 standards covering such details as body dimensions, aisle widths and doors. They also selected the yellow-orange color that became the enduring visual identity of the American school bus.
Before 1939, buses could appear in a variety of colors and configurations. Cyr’s conference brought representatives together to establish greater consistency, with visibility and safety among the considerations. Yellow was gradually adopted across the country. What began as a standardization decision became one of the most recognizable symbols of public education.
Before that standardization, manufacturers were already experimenting with stronger bodies and purpose-built designs.
One of the most significant survivors is Blue Bird No. 1, completed by Albert L. Luce in 1927. Luce had previously mounted a purchased wood bus body on a Ford truck frame for a customer, only to see the body begin to shake apart on rough Georgia roads. He responded by reinforcing a later body with a steel framework beneath the wood. The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, Michigan, now identifies that 1927 vehicle as the oldest surviving school bus in America.
Julianne Barclay, a Blue Bird spokesperson, said the original bus was sold to a customer and placed into school bus service. Only later did it become known retroactively as Blue Bird “No. 1.”
The Luce family reacquired the bus in 1946 and restored it, placing the body on a Ford Model TT chassis, Barclay said. It was restored again in the 1970s and donated to The Henry Ford Museum in 2008. A replica is displayed at Blue Bird’s Fort Valley, Georgia, facility.
The preservation story is continuing as Blue Bird approaches its 100th anniversary in 2027. Barclay said the Luce family traditionally kept a bus approximately every 10 years, and a couple of those historic vehicles are being restored by Blue Bird dealers as part of the centennial. Blue Bird also plans to develop a more formal archive as the company looks toward its next century.
The 1927 bus captures an era when school bus construction was still evolving rapidly. Its wood and steel body seems far removed from a modern Type C or Type D bus, but the engineering problem behind it remains recognizable: Build a vehicle durable enough to carry students safely over the roads it will encounter every day.
A preserved 1940 Chevrolet school bus at the North Carolina Transportation Museum illustrates another important step in that evolution. The bus was built by the company then known as Perley A. Thomas Car Works. Perley A. Thomas had worked as chief engineer for Southern Car Company before establishing his own business in 1916 after the company closed. His operation initially focused on streetcars before moving into school bus manufacturing as automobiles and road transportation expanded. Thomas Built Buses began building school buses in 1936.
Matt Abbott, collections manager for the North Carolina Transportation Museum, said the museum’s 1940 Chevrolet Thomas Built Bus was used by Iredell County until it was retired around 1960. The county continued using it in parades after its regular service life ended.
Thomas Built Buses regained possession of the bus in 1995. It was restored in 2003 and donated to the museum in February 2007, Abbott said.
The bus is an especially striking contrast with today’s interiors. According to Thomas Built Buses, the all-steel vehicle has a six-cylinder gasoline engine and four long benches on which children sat facing each other rather than facing forward.
Meanwhile, International’s IC Bus traces its origins to a similar time, in 1936 with predecessor Ward Body Works’ first all-steel school bus.
That difference is more than cosmetic. School bus design increasingly became shaped by formal safety requirements. Federal school bus standards that took effect April 1, 1977, addressed rollover protection, body joint strength and passenger seating and crash protection. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 222 established the compartmentalization concept used in large school buses, including higher, stronger seat backs, additional padding and controlled seat spacing.
Preserved buses make those changes visible in a way a written timeline cannot. Walk from an early side-bench interior to a later high-back school bus seat, and decades of safety engineering are immediately apparent.
Keeping History on the Road
Not every preserved bus spends its retirement standing still.
At the Templeton Historical Museum in Templeton, California, a restored 1933 school bus remains licensed, insured and roadworthy. The bus was purchased new by the Templeton School District in 1933 and remained in student transportation service until 1949, according to the district’s history. Museum volunteers later spent five years restoring it.
This 1933 school bus sits in the Templeton Historical Museum located near Paso Robles, California. It is a regular entry in the local July 4 parade.
Steve Vize of the Templeton Historical Museum said the vehicle continued serving the district even after its days of transporting students ended.
“It was later used as a truck within the school district for various tasks,” Vice said, adding that auto shop students drove it during the 1970s.
The bus also developed a second life as a community fixture. Vice said it appeared in Templeton’s Fourth of July Parade in the 1970s. Restoration reporting from 2014 said the bus had not had a running engine since its last parade appearance in 1985, before volunteers returned it to operating conditions.
Today, history is moving again.
“It is licensed and insured, and we drive it in the July 4 parade every year,” Vice added. “It is always on display when we have community events.”
The bus offers a particularly literal example of living history. It does not simply show visitors what school transportation once looked like. It returns to the same community streets where generations have seen it work, parade and reappear.
Even darker periods in school bus history are preserved. The Brights Pioneer Museum near LeGrand, California houses the actual International Loadstar Chowchilla school bus that three armed men kidnapped with its school bus driver and 26 children on board on July 15, 1976. The museum is housed about 16 miles to the northwest of Chowchilla, California.
Ryan Hahn, a consultant who has worked in student transportation for 25 years, takes a similar approach with vintage Gillig buses that he still puts to work at industry-related events.
“One of the things that we do to preserve history and also to make it a point when we advertise is we use vintage school buses like this one,” Hahn said of his 1969 Gillig.
He purchased the bus from a church that had owned it for 35 years and kept it in a garage. As a result, Hahn said, the vehicle remains in “really, really excellent condition.”
Rather than treating the Gillig only as a display piece, Hahn uses it to carry people to local events, trade shows, dinners and functions for school business officials and superintendents. Industry professionals can experience the vehicle as a bus, not simply view it behind a barrier.
Gillig itself has roots reaching back to the 19th century and moved into school bus manufacturing in the 1930s. The manufacturer later became known on the West Coast for rugged school bus designs and introduced diesel power to its school bus line in the 1950s.
Hahn’s second vintage Gillig, a 1970 model, demonstrates just how specialized some of those buses became. The vehicle was owned by Shasta College in Redding, California, and transported college students to sporting events. Hahn said the college also operated routes that picked up students at hub locations during the 1960s and 1970s.
The bus uses a midship engine mounted on its side, commonly described as a “pancake” engine, rather than a rear-engine layout. It is also a tandem-axle vehicle with both rear axles driven.
“A lot of districts and school systems would buy these for heavy loads,” Hahn explained.
His bus seats 97 students and operated in snow country, where the driven tandem rear axles and locking differential could provide additional traction. The layout placed the engine beneath the floor near the center of the bus, creating a mechanical configuration that would look unusual to many technicians and drivers accustomed to current conventional or rear-engine school buses.
The capacity itself speaks to a particular chapter of school transportation history, when manufacturers developed extremely large buses to accommodate growing student populations and demanding routes.
Across the surviving buses, the details differ: Wood bodies, steel reinforcements, side-facing benches, midship diesels, tandem axles and capacities that would raise eyebrows today. But together they document the same long-running challenge: Finding dependable ways to connect students with education.
They also show how much of student transportation history can disappear when vehicles are scrapped after their useful service life. Museums can preserve examples, manufacturers can maintain corporate artifacts and private owners can restore buses. But the number of surviving vehicles becomes smaller with each generation.
That makes the preservation work taking place now especially valuable. Blue Bird’s approaching centennial celebration is prompting new attention to company archives and restorations. Museums in Saskatchewan, North Carolina and California are maintaining vehicles tied to local education and manufacturing history. And collectors such as Hahn are keeping old buses operational enough to let a new generation step aboard.
For an industry built around moving forward, these buses provide a reason to look back.
Long before telematics, alternative fuels and advanced driver-assistance systems, there were school wagons crossing rural communities, early bodies rattling over rough roads, all-steel buses replacing wood construction and massive diesel coaches engineered to move nearly 100 students at a time.
The technology has changed dramatically. The mission has not.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The National Association of Pupil Transportation announced several winners and its latest inductee to the NAPT Hall of Fame during its annual conference this weekend.
The event in Louisville, Kentucky recognized Keith Henry, a longtime student transportation leader whose career has been marked by service, mentorship and advocacy for the profession, as this year’s solo inductee into the NAPT Hall of Fame. Henry is a past president of NAPT and currently serves as president of the NAPT Foundation. He is also the executive director of the Missouri Association for Pupil Transportation.
Henry started in the student transportation industry in 1994 as director transportation for Windsor School District in Imperial, Missouri following six years of service as an aviation electrician in the U.S. Coast Guard. He moved to Mehlville School District in 1997 as director of transportation and support services and then to Independence School District as director of transportation in 2010. He joined Lee’s Summit R-7 School District as director of transportation in July 2016 and four months later began his two-year term as NAPT president. He retired from Lee’s Summit at the end of June 2021.
NAPT describes its Hall of Fame as the association’s highest individual honor, recognizing professionals whose contributions, influence and leadership have had a lasting impact on both NAPT and the school transportation industry.
“I’m not up here, I don’t think, by accident but by design. And it wasn’t not my design, it was all your design,” Henry said during his acceptance speech Oct. 4. “You all have put so much into me and that’s the why. And my why is simple. I like to help others. I like to serve others. .. I went into the Coast Guard because I wanted to help others. When I got out of the Coast Guard in 1994, I took a temporary job in a transportation department that I didn’t seem to be able to kick. Here I am.”
The 2026 NAPT Distinguished Service Award was presented to Sue Shutrump, recognizing her exemplary leadership, service and “unwavering desire to make things safer for all children on the school bus” over the past 41 years, said nominator, NAPT past-president and NAPT Foundation board member Alexandra Robinson. A retired occupational and physical therapy supervisor for Trumbull County ESC in Ohio, Shutrump is the owner of Sue Shutrump Consulting and serves as co-chair of NAPT’s Special Needs Advisory Committee alongside Robinson. She is a member of the Transporting Students with Disabilities and Special Needs Tenured Faculty and long-time supporter of those who transport students with disabilities and preschoolers.
Shutrump recounted how she first became involved in school transportation in 1991, after her supervisor at the time received a phone call from a parent who expressed concern that her son was being transported unsafely to school in his wheelchair.
“I learned that she was right and I have never stopped learning since then,” Shutrump said during her acceptance speech. “And that is thanks to this incredible transportation community, full of people who are so willing to share their expertise in support of getting kids to school safer.”
Meanwhile, Jeff Hall, a school bus driver for Dickson County Schools in Tennessee, was posthumously awarded the NAPT Heroism Award sponsored by Blue Bird, for his selfless and decisive actions while evacuating students during a December 2025 school bus fire emergency, despite only being a school bus driver for four months. He died unexpectedly Feb. 10. Melissa Garton, director of transportation for Dickson County Schools, accepted the award on Hall’s behalf Sunday.
The School Bus Driver Training & Safety Award, sponsored by IC Bus, was presented to Dennis Murphy, training and safety officer for Greenville County Schools in South Carolina. Murphy was recognized for his commitment to school bus driver training and for helping advance student transportation safety. He was ill and unable to attend NAPT, so his colleague Shane Mitchell accepted the award on his behalf. IC Bus created the award to recognize school districts, companies and transportation professionals with exemplary driver-training programs and includes a $500 grant to further enhance driver training within the recipient’s operation.
The Continuing Education Award, sponsored by Thomas Built Buses, was presented to Angela Renz, the Northeast and Southeast Quadrant Manager for Metro Nashville Public Schools in Tennessee. The award recognizes Renz’s commitment to continued learning and to advancing the student transportation profession through education.
The NAPT Special Needs Transportation Award, sponsored by Q’Straint/Sure-Lok, was presented to Pamela Kelley, transportation administrative assistant at Spartanburg School District Six in South Carolina. Kelley was honored for her dedication to providing safe, compassionate and exceptional transportation for students with disabilities and special needs.
MACON, Ga. — Blue Bird Corporation (“Blue Bird”) (Nasdaq: BLBD), the leader in electric and low-emission school buses, announced today its fiscal 2026 third quarter financial results.
“I am incredibly proud of our team in delivering another outstanding quarterly result,” said John Wyskiel, President & CEO of Blue Bird Corporation. “The Blue Bird team continued to exceed expectations, improving operations, navigating tariffs, and expanding our leadership in alternative-powered buses. We delivered an exceptional Adj. EBITDA of $71M for the third fiscal quarter of 2026, including consolidated results from our recent Micro Bird acquisition.
“In our push to expand our leadership in alternative-powered school buses, we delivered 355 electric-powered buses this quarter. As of the end of the quarter, we had more than 770 EV buses in our firm order backlog, which supports our EV sales target for 2026.
“Additionally, we just announced a major collaboration agreement with Ford Motor Company to design, manufacture and sell the next generation F53/59 commercial stripped chassis. Blue Bird will integrate Ford’s next generation medium-duty gas powertrain into this new stripped chassis. As part of this arrangement, Blue Bird will also purchase the assets of Detroit Chassis LLC’s Detroit Plant. Detroit Chassis is the assembler of the current F53/59 stripped chassis. This transaction is anticipated to close early 2027, shortly after the current chassis ends production. Production of the next generation stripped chassis is planned to begin early 2028. This move is a significant component of our Long-Term Strategy, and will position us to be a growing player in the specialty vehicle/chassis market.”
FY2026 Guidance and Long-Term Outlook
“We are very pleased with our third quarter results, driven by excellent Blue Bird results as well as the integration of Micro Bird,” said Razvan Radulescu, CFO of Blue Bird Corporation. “Our business is in a very strong position and we continue to deliver ahead of the plan we have been messaging. With the record first nine months we have delivered, we are raising our full-year 2026 Adj. EBITDA guidance.
“The updated 2026 Guidance is Net Revenue at ~$1.75 Billion and Adj. EBITDA to ~$247 million. Additionally, we are raising our long-term profit outlook to include the recent announcement of our expanded Ford collaboration and purchase of Detroit Assembly Plant’s assets, towards a 2030+ long-term Adjusted EBITDA of $500+ million, or 15%+, on $3.3 billion in revenue. We are confident in our profitable growth plans.”
Fiscal 2026 Third Quarter Results
Net Sales
Net sales were $517.2 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2026, an increase of $119.1 million, or 29.9%, compared to $398.0 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2025. Micro Bird contributed $122.9 million of net sales during the third quarter of fiscal 2026. The $3.8 million, or 1.0%, decrease in net sales for the legacy Blue Bird operations is primarily due to a 7.2% decrease in units sold resulting from timing due to a customer mix change as we produced a large number of units for certain customers that we will recognize as revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 when the units are delivered to coincide with school resuming. Many of these units contributed to the significant increase in finished goods inventory at June 27, 2026. However, the decrease resulting from selling fewer units was partially offset by Bus customer and product mix changes and cumulative Bus price increases, including increases that were intended to mitigate the impact of increased procurement costs for certain of our imported inventory as a result of the imposition of tariffs beginning during the second half of fiscal 2025 and continuing into the first three quarters of fiscal 2026.
Bus sales increased $119.5 million, or 32.1%, for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2025, which included the $122.9 million of net sales that Micro Bird contributed during the third quarter of fiscal 2026. Bus sales for the legacy Blue Bird operations decreased $3.5 million, or 0.9%, reflecting a 7.2% decrease in unit bookings that was partially offset by a 6.7% increase in average sales price per unit. In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, 2,290 legacy Blue Bird units booked compared to 2,467 units that booked during the same period in fiscal 2025. The increase in legacy Blue Bird unit price for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 compared to the same period in fiscal 2025 was primarily due to customer and product mix changes as well as price increases implemented to offset increases in inventory costs.
Parts sales decreased $0.3 million, or 1.2%, for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2025. This small decrease is primarily attributed to slight variations due to product and channel mix that slightly exceeded price increases that were implemented to offset increases in inventory costs.
Gross Profit
Third quarter gross profit of $103.4 million represented an increase of $17.4 million from the third quarter of last year. The increase is primarily attributed to the acquisition of Micro Bird, which contributed $17.3 million of gross profit during the third quarter of fiscal 2026.
Net Income
Net income was $185.3 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2026, an increase of $148.8 million from the third quarter of last year. Micro Bird contributed $7.4 million of net income during the third quarter of fiscal 2026. Among other smaller fluctuations, the increase in net income for legacy Blue Bird operations was largely driven by an increase of $136.8 million in other income (expense), net, which primarily consists of $4.5 million of pretax costs relating to the acquisition of the remaining 50% of the outstanding voting common stock of Micro Bird effective April 1, 2026 and a $160.5 million gain during the third quarter of fiscal 2026 resulting from remeasuring the value of the previously held 50% equity investment to its acquisition date fair value in connection with the Micro Bird acquisition, which was partially offset by a $19.6 million loss resulting from the settlement of the pension benefits earned by the majority of pension plan participants. Neither of these had corresponding gains/losses during the third quarter of fiscal 2025.
Adjusted Net Income
Adjusted net income of $45.0 million represented an increase of $6.3 million from the third quarter of last year. The increase was primarily driven by $148.8 million increase in Net Income, discussed above, when adjusting for the impact of certain expenses and gains that are excluded in calculating Adjusted Net Income, including share-based compensation, Micro Bird acquisition costs, gain from Micro Bird Acquisition, and pension plan settlement loss, discussed above.
Adjusted EBITDA
Adjusted EBITDA was $71.4 million, which was an increase of $12.9 million compared with the third quarter of fiscal 2025. Micro Bird contributed $16.5 million of Adjusted EBITDA during the third quarter of fiscal 2026. The $3.6 million decrease in Adjusted EBITDA for the legacy Blue Bird operations primarily relates to the (i) $1.2 million increase in equity in net loss of non-consolidated affiliates and (ii) $3.0 million decrease in Micro Bird total interest expense, net; income tax expense or benefit; depreciation expense and amortization expense that is included in calculating Adjusted EBITDA, both during the third quarter of fiscal 2026 when compared with corresponding period in fiscal 2025.
Year-to-Date Fiscal 2026 Results
Net Sales
Net sales were $1,202.9 million for the nine months ended June 27, 2026, an increase of $132.1 million, or 12.3%, compared to $1,070.7 million for the nine months ended June 28, 2025. Micro Bird contributed $122.9 million of net sales during the nine months ended June 27, 2026. The $9.2 million, or 0.9%, increase in net sales for the legacy Blue Bird operations is primarily due to Bus customer and product mix changes and cumulative Bus price increases, including increases that were intended to mitigate the impact of increased procurement costs for certain of our imported inventory as a result of the imposition of tariffs beginning during the second half of fiscal 2025 and continuing into the first three quarters of fiscal 2026. The legacy Blue Bird Bus increases described above were partially offset by a decrease in Bus units sold resulting from timing due to a customer mix change as we produced a large number of units for certain customers that we will recognize as revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026 when the units are delivered to coincide with school resuming. Many of these units contributed to the significant increase in finished goods inventory at June 27, 2026.
Bus sales increased $131.3 million, or 13.2%, for the nine months ended June 27, 2026 compared to the nine months ended June 28, 2025, which included the $122.9 million of net sales that Micro Bird contributed during the nine months ended June 27, 2026. Bus sales for the legacy Blue Bird operations increased $8.4 million, or 0.8%, reflecting a 5.7% increase in average sales price per unit that was partially offset by a 4.6% decrease in units booked. The increase in unit price for the first nine months of fiscal 2026 compared to the same period in fiscal 2025 was primarily due to customer and product mix changes as well as price increases implemented to offset increases in inventory costs. This increase was partially offset by the impact of booking 6,573 units in the nine months ended June 27, 2026 compared with 6,892 units during the same period in fiscal 2025.
Parts sales increased $0.8 million, or 1.0%, for the nine months ended June 27, 2026 compared to the nine months ended June 28, 2025. This increase is primarily attributed to price increases that were implemented to offset increases in inventory costs as well as higher fulfillment volumes and slight variations due to product and channel mix.
Gross Profit
Gross profit for the nine months ended June 27, 2026 was $245.3 million, an increase of $28.2 million compared with the same period in the prior year. Micro Bird contributed $17.3 million of gross profit during the nine months ended June 27, 2026. Gross profit for legacy Blue Bird operations was primarily driven by the $9.2 million increase in net sales.
Net Income
Net income was $245.3 million for the nine months ended June 27, 2026, which was a $154.1 million increase from the same period in the prior year. Micro Bird contributed $7.4 million of net income during the nine months ended June 27, 2026. Among other smaller fluctuations, the increase in net income for legacy Blue Bird operations was largely driven by an increase of $130.4 million in other income (expense), net, which primarily consists of $7.2 million of pretax costs relating to the acquisition of the remaining 50% of the outstanding voting common stock of Micro Bird effective April 1, 2026 and a $160.5 million gain during the third quarter of fiscal 2026 resulting from remeasuring the value of the previously held 50% equity investment to its acquisition date fair value in connection with the Micro Bird acquisition, which was partially offset by a $19.6 million loss resulting from the settlement of the pension benefits earned by the majority of pension plan participants. Neither of these had corresponding gains/losses during the nine months ended June 28, 2025.
Adjusted Net Income
Adjusted net income for the nine months ended June 27, 2026 was $110.0 million, an increase of $9.2 million compared with the same period last year, primarily due to the $154.1 million increase in net income, discussed above, when adjusting for the impact of certain expenses and gains that are excluded in calculating Adjusted Net Income, including share-based compensation, Micro Bird acquisition costs, gain from Micro Bird Acquisition, and pension plan settlement loss, discussed above.
Adjusted EBITDA
Adjusted EBITDA was $172.3 million for the nine months ended June 27, 2026, an increase of $18.8 million compared with the same period in the prior year. Micro Bird contributed $16.5 million of Adjusted EBITDA during the nine months ended June 27, 2026. The $2.3 million increase in Adjusted EBITDA for the legacy Blue Bird operations primarily relates to the $11.7 million increase in gross profit, when adjusted for the impact of expenses that are excluded in calculating Adjusted EBITDA, as outlined in the revenue and cost of goods sold discussions above, that was partially offset by the (i) $6.4 million increase in selling, general and administrative expenses, when adjusting for the impact of expenses that are excluded in calculating Adjusted EBITDA, and (ii) $3.4 million decrease in other income, net, when adjusted for the impact of income and expense amounts that are excluded in calculating Adjusted EBITDA as discussed above, all during the nine months ended June 27, 2026 compared to the nine months ended June 28, 2025.
About Blue Bird Corporation
Blue Bird (NASDAQ: BLBD) is recognized as a technology leader and innovator of school buses since its founding in 1927. Our dedicated team members design, engineer and manufacture school buses with a singular focus on safety, reliability, and durability. School buses carry the most precious cargo in the world – 25 million children twice a day – making them the most trusted mode of student transportation. The company is the proven leader in low- and zero-emission school buses with more than 25,000 propane, natural gas, and electric powered buses sold. Blue Bird is transforming the student transportation industry through cleaner energy solutions. For more information on Blue Bird’s complete product and service portfolio, visit www.blue-bird.com.
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