John Stone
Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead
Thanks, Josh. Good morning everybody. Thanks for joining today. I can sum up this call and this quarter with four words; Stable markets, strong execution. And that strong execution was by the entire Allegion team and our distribution channel partners. That's the team that drove these record Q2 results. I'll briefly walk through some of the highlights for our quarter and updated full year outlook, and then we'll share more on each of these later in the presentation. Allegion Q2 revenue growth and margin expansion demonstrates the resilience of our business model. We see stability in demand given our broad end-market exposure and specification expertise. Our team continues to see strength in areas like institutional markets and data centers, further helped by our own investments in electronics and new product development. And as expected, we saw a return to volume growth and a seasonal bump in the quarter sequentially over Q1. We’re accelerating capital deployment, returning cash to shareholders and investing in accretive acquisitions. We've announced four acquisitions already this year with Krieger Specialty Products and Unicel Architectural in Q2. Overall heading into the second half, we're executing at a high level. We are raising our full year guidance for reported revenue and adjusted earnings per share, and we are affirming our available cash flow outlook. I am very proud of how the Allegion team is living our values, while driving results for our customers and our shareholders. Please go to Slide 4. Allegion continues to pursue balanced, consistent capital allocation for the benefit of shareholders and to take advantage of the strong cash generation this business drives. We are investing for organic growth. In April, we introduced three new lines of Schlage indication solutions, a best-in-class lock portfolio with trims that allow users to more easily see the status of a door. Developed specifically with K-12 schools and higher education security needs in mind, our new locks have some of the largest indication windows on the market and differentiated 180-degree views. They offer unparalleled functionality and durability for Grade 1 fire-rated applications, in addition to tamper resistance and color-blind friendly backgrounds. Combined, these features allow for quick confirmation that doors are secured, providing teachers and administrators peace of mind and time, their most valuable resource when it matters most when every second counts. Allegion continues to be a dividend-paying stock. For the quarter, this amounted to approximately $42 million in cash returned to shareholders. We closed two bolt-on acquisitions in our Americas region in Q2, Krieger Specialty Products and Unicel Architectural. Krieger is a leading specialty door manufacturer with expertise in highly engineered, acoustical, high-security, thermal and radio frequency applications. Krieger products complement our hollow metal portfolio and are used in a wide range of facilities, including government agencies, data centers, concert halls and health care. Unicel is a leading manufacturer of advanced glass wall systems that support privacy, safety, energy efficiency and sustainability across institutional markets. This business is a natural extension of our core door and window systems portfolio of TGP, AD Systems and Stanley Access Technologies. Both Krieger and Unicel expand our portfolio with fast growing niche products for key verticals that will benefit from the strength of our spec writing capability and nationwide sales footprint. On a combined basis these businesses are accretive to overall Allegion growth rates and carry Allegion-like EBITDA margins in the low 20s. Total purchase price represents a valuation of approximately 10 times 2024 EBITDA. We are very pleased with the recent acquisitions we've made, strong management teams that have come on board and a great cultural fit with the employees that they bring to Allegion. We are excited to the future. Lastly in the quarter, we made additional share repurchases amounting to approximately $40 million. I am happy with the balanced and shareholder-friendly capital allocation that you see here on the slide, and Allegion continues to invest in the core, grow the business and return cash to shareholders. Mike will now walk you through the second quarter financial results, and I will be back to provide an update on our outlook and some final thoughts.