Stadler Rail

A company in a Swiss village of 2,600 people holds a nine-year order backlog and beats Siemens and Alstom at their own tenders

Aug 02, 2026

Stadler Rail is headquartered in Bussnang, a village in the Swiss canton of Thurgau with 2,592 residents. From there it has grown into one of the world’s five largest train manufacturers. At the end of 2025, its order backlog stood at CHF 32.3 billion, roughly nine years of revenue at current rates. It employs about 17,100 people. When Peter Spuhler bought the company in 1989, it had 18.

Stadler builds rolling stock: regional and commuter trains, trams, metros, locomotives, mountain railways and one high-speed train. Most of the company’s business revolves around a single product family, the FLIRT, a regional train launched in 2004. More than 3,000 have been sold across 24 countries, from the Arctic Circle to North Africa. In Norway, one in every two rail passengers travels on a Stadler train. In Germany, the country’s largest fleet outside Switzerland runs to around 500 vehicles.

The market Stadler competes in is dominated by companies many times its size. Alstom, which absorbed Bombardier’s train business in 2021, and Siemens Mobility are each far larger. China’s CRRC, backed by the state, is larger than both combined and is the world’s biggest rolling-stock manufacturer. Stadler does not try to beat them in high-speed rail, the most capital-intensive and standardised segment. Instead, it focuses on segments the larger manufacturers often treat as uneconomic: custom trains, small production series, narrow-gauge railways, rack railways and regional units built to a specific operator’s requirements. It is the world’s leading manufacturer of rack-and-pinion trains, the kind that climb steep gradients on a toothed rail, a niche most large manufacturers abandoned.

A manufacturer optimised for standardised platforms finds it difficult to make money designing trains in small numbers for a single customer. Stadler structures itself to do exactly that, quickly, and treats the willingness to build highly customised, low-volume orders as its competitive advantage. It has nevertheless won large standardised contracts when it chose to bid: in 2014 it beat Siemens, Alstom and Talgo to build 29 high-speed trains for the Gotthard route through the Alps, a CHF 980 million order.

The macroeconomic backdrop favours the industry. Transport accounts for roughly a quarter of European emissions, while rail contributes only a small fraction of that total. European policy is therefore pushing passengers and freight from road and air onto rail, funding fleet renewal and phasing out diesel rolling stock. Stadler’s FLIRT Akku, a battery-powered version, set a Guinness World Record in December 2021 by running 224 kilometres on battery power alone, against a design requirement of 80. Its hydrogen-powered FLIRT H2 covered 2,803 kilometres on a single tank during testing in Colorado in March 2024. Both are replacing diesel fleets in Germany, Austria, Italy and California.

Stadler has been listed on the Swiss stock exchange since April 2019, but Peter Spuhler still controls it. He holds around 42% of the shares, directly and indirectly, and is executive chairman. Spuhler joined the company in 1987 and bought it two years later from the family of the founder, Ernst Stadler, when it had 18 employees and CHF 4.5 million in sales. He ran it as chief executive until 2017 and again on an interim basis until 2020. Markus Bernsteiner became group CEO in 2023. Spuhler, a former member of the Swiss parliament, has said he intends to arrange his succession by around 2029.

Orders have been strong for years. Profitability has not kept pace. The backlog rose to CHF 32.3 billion in 2025 from CHF 29.2 billion a year earlier. Operating margin improved to 4.4% from 3.1%, but remains well below the company’s long-term target of 6% to 8%. Several factors have kept margins low: a strong Swiss franc that raises the cost of Swiss production and reduces foreign earnings when translated back into francs, weak demand and delayed tenders in Germany, supplier failures, and flooding at the Valencia plant in October 2024, which Stadler says prevented it from recognising CHF 350 million of revenue that year. Free cash flow was negative by CHF 588 million in 2025 as the company invested to increase production against its record backlog.

The share price reflects that gap. Stadler listed at CHF 38 in 2019 and traded around CHF 20 to CHF 25 in mid-2026, roughly half its IPO level.

For 2026, the company has guided to revenue above CHF 5 billion and an operating margin above 5%. The backlog already stretches roughly nine years. Profitability still has to catch up.

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