Hello, and welcome to the Astec Industries First Quarter Earnings Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. It is my pleasure to introduce your host, Steve Anderson, Senior Vice President of Administration and Investor Relations. Mr. Anderson, you may begin.

Thank you, and thank you, everyone, for being on our first quarter 2023 earnings call. Joining me on today's call are Jaco van der Merwe, Chief Executive Officer and Becky Weyenberg, our Chief Financial Officer. In just a moment, I'll turn the call over to Jaco to provide comments, and then Becky will summarize our financial results. Before we begin, I'll remind you that our discussion this morning may contain forward-looking statements that relate to the future performance of the company, and these statements are intended to qualify for the Safe Harbor liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Factors that could influence our results are highlighted in today's financial news release and others are contained in our SEC filings. As usual, we ask that you familiarize yourself with those factors. In an effort to provide investors with additional information regarding the company's results, the company refers to various U.S. GAAP, which are Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, and non-GAAP financial measures, which management believes provides useful information to investors. These non-GAAP financial measures have no standardized meaning prescribed by U.S. GAAP and therefore, are unlikely to be comparable to the calculation of similar measures for other companies. Management of the company does not intend these items to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for the related GAAP measures. Management of the company uses both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures to establish internal budgets and targets and to evaluate the company's financial performance against such budgets and targets. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results are included in our news release and in the appendix of our slide deck. All related earnings materials are posted on our website at www.astecindustries.com under the Investor Relations and Presentations tabs. And now, I will turn the call over to Jaco.

Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I would like to begin my comments with the key messages summarized on Slide 4. We had a great start to 2023 as the global Astec team delivered unique solutions and outstanding service to our customers, despite facing a challenging and dynamic environment. Demand remained favorable across our business and customers' engagement is positive. Tailwinds from highway funding, along with excitement about our new products and solutions are pushing revenues higher and keeping our backlog at elevated levels. As a result of the strong performance of the entire Astec team, we delivered year-over-year growth in net sales of 19.5% in the first quarter and expanded adjusted EBITDA margins 360 basis points. These are great accomplishments and I am proud of the contribution from everyone across our organization. Internally, we are elevating our performance and execution to achieve objectives as we unite with a sharpened focus on the OneASTEC operating model. As I traveled to meet employees, I'm encouraged by their embracement of our operating model to drive more consistent results, especially while facing volatile economic conditions. To further drive the performance culture into our operations, we are implementing a number of initiatives. One major project is hitting a significant milestone this month as we go live with the Oracle Cloud ERP at one of our manufacturing sites. Becky will say more in a few minutes. But I'm excited about how this will enable process efficiency, continuous improvement and driving performance excellence. Finally, our key messages conclude with execution against our Simplify, Focus and Grow strategy to drive sustainable shareholder value. We will say more about these key messages during the call today. Turning to Slide 5. I would like to share with you my early observations of after…

Thank you, Jaco, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin my review of first quarter results on Slide 16. Sales were $347.9 million, up 19.5%, with growth in both major sources of revenue, especially equipment sales that increased 25.2%. Parts sales also grew, improving 4.4%. By region, we achieved balanced growth across our markets with domestic sales growth of 20% and international sales increasing 17.5%. As a reminder, U.S. represents around 80% of our consolidated sales. Backlog decreased at the end of the first quarter, down 4.1% year-over-year and 12.3% sequentially. While off of peak levels, backlog remains elevated, up over 30% compared to our three-year average, giving us strong confidence in our 2023 expectations. By segment, Infrastructure Solutions backlog decreased 0.8% and Materials Solutions decreased 10.3%. Domestic backlog was down 3% and international down 10.3%. As Jaco mentioned earlier, we have continued to make investments and improvements in operations to increase output. We anticipate converting more backlog to sales as these improvements are implemented and as supply chain constraints continue to ease. Adjusted EBITDA increased 87.2% to $35.2 million, expanding adjusted EBITDA margin 360 basis points to 10.1%. This was primarily due to the net positive impact of volume, pricing and mix that outpaced inflation, higher manufacturing costs and increased operating expenses. We continue to face lingering inefficiencies in the supply chain, creating a headwind to gross margin. Despite this, we expanded gross margins by 340 basis points to 25.6%, as we achieved higher volumes with favorable mix and further price realization. SG&A increased due to costs related to ConExpo, higher personnel costs, and incremental costs from acquired businesses. We expect EBITDA margins to further improve as we overcome supply chain challenges and realize additional benefits from our transformation. Adjusted earnings per share more than doubled to $0.90, driven by…

Thank you, Becky. Turning to Slide 23. I would like to remind you of our key investment highlights. We have built a leadership position within attractive niche markets. These markets are benefiting from long-term secular trends, including population growth, urbanization and aging infrastructure. It gives us confidence in our outlook. These leadership positions have been built by delivering products and services with a reputation for innovation, enhanced by the integrated Astec Digital platform. This has helped us grow our installed base, setting up an environment for our aftermarket excellence initiative to grow this revenue stream that is more stable and higher quality. As revenue and earnings improve, we further strengthened our balance sheet to provide the liquidity needed to fund our growth initiatives. These actions combine to further our Simplify, Focus and Grow strategic evolution, driving sustainable profitable growth as we strive to achieve our long-term goals shown on Slide 24. In closing, we are performing well and optimistic about 2023. We are making progress on our transformation as we drive a culture of performance through execution. I am confident that our team is capable of meeting these expectations and excited about what we can achieve together. With that, operator, we are now ready to open the call for questions.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We'll go first to Mig Dobre at Baird.

Good morning everyone. Thank you for taking the question.

Good morning, Mig.

Good morning, Mig.

I guess, I'm curious to get a little more context from you guys in terms of where you see demand. I appreciate the fact that your shipments in the quarter to customers were good, increased. But at the same time, your order intake declined significantly both sequentially and year-over-year. So, in terms of where demand currently lies as it manifests itself through orders; something seems, at least to me, quite a bit different than what we've had, call it nine to 12 months ago. So perhaps you can comment on that to kind of get us started here.

Yes Mig, it's Jaco here. And maybe I can take that to start. I think you've heard from other companies in the market as well. There is a very positive environment supported by the long-term infrastructure bill. Over the last couple of months, I've had a good fortunes to meet many of our customers. And actually, yesterday, I had a meeting with all our top dealers and expectations from them is still strong. All our customers have very strong backlog and a lot of work. And we expect that trend to continue as the market gets ready to fulfill order, all the work that's there in the market. Obviously, as lead times come down, we do expect the moderation in backlog, and we are also very focused on driving backlog down, especially on parts. For us, that's really important that our customers have the necessary parts to support their operations, and we are really focused around that. The other thing that I see that will support strong order intake in the future at ConExpo, as you saw, we have multiple new products, and our customers are very excited about those. And as soon as we start launching those products, we'll see strong demand continue for these new products. But, once again, it's important to realize and also look at our backlog and see where it lies in comparison with our historical averages.

Well, I guess, I appreciate your comment on backlog. But look, I mean, there's basically two ways in which backlog comes down. You can increase your production, which you've done and you're talking about doing more of that. The other way the backlog comes down is by orders coming down materially. And this is exactly what we've seen last quarter, we're seeing it again this quarter. And orders are typically an indication of where true end market demand lies right now. Is there something that is somehow skewing orders currently that you're aware of or that we need to be aware of?

No. I mean, I'm not aware of any systemic issues or problems. And, once again, as I mentioned earlier, I feel that our customer base is very optimistic about the future, the amount of work that they have. As we are improving our capacity and driving lead times down, obviously, our customers are gaining more confidence in our ability to supply with shorter lead times. So from my side, no.

So, the decline in orders could have something to do with your improving lead times and maybe customer orders normalizing as it relates to that. I guess, I'm curious, as you look at the order intake that you have had over the past couple of years, which has resulted in this sizable backlog build. Is it possible that the demand associated with the infrastructure bill and all the projects that I think all of us have been anticipated for some time has actually been pulled forward, and this is sort of what creates this apparent hangover there that we're witnessing right now?

Yes. I mean, if you look at the significant slope of order intake here in the last year or two, obviously there were some buying from the market due to the uncertainty in supply chain. And as demand normalize, I think the backlog will normalize. One thing that came out very clear yesterday in the discussion with our dealers, our dealer inventory is still very low. And especially if you look at the mobile road construction equipment, lead times are well into next year. And the dealers -- the feedback we got from them is that they see a strong remainder of 2023 and that they expect 2024 to continue at least at the same level as this year. So I think we're just seeing a moderation with supply chain and lead times stabilizing.

Final question for me, how are you sort of thinking about managing capacity here? You're increasing this capacity in the near term, but clearly, the backlog is coming down. And as we already discussed, the orders have softened considerably. Do you sort of run the risk of having to curtail production into 2024, and how much flexibility you have to do that?

Yes. No, good question. And we are absolutely reviewing our capacity versus demand, Mig. The good thing is here over the last year or two, we've done a great job implementing structured sales and operations planning process, and that has given us very good visibility on where do we have a shortage of capacity and where we potentially have excess capacity and the teams are managing that. We have multiple levers that we can pull. Under normal circumstances, we run 20%, 25% over time in our facilities. So demand will have to pull back quite a bit before significant structural changes as needed. But our sales and operations process have really helped us to give us good visibility. The other thing also to remember is we've done some significant prior footprint rationalizations and those changes will come in and support if the market does pull back. So, I feel like that the teams have good visibility and we already have good plans in place if there's any moderation taking place.

Great, thank you.

We'll move next to Steve Ferazani at Sidoti.

Good morning everyone. Thanks for the detail on the call. I did want to ask about cash flow. Given the amount of backlog conversion this quarter, I would have expected there would have been completion of a lot of WIP and that would have brought down the inventory, but it actually grew again. Can you give us a sense of what's coming through right now? And is that not the case that you're completing a lot of WIP right now?

Yes, good morning, Steve. I can take that. We have several uses of cash. But certainly, on the inventory, we did see inventory, it did not come down as much as the backlog did, and it's largely isolated to a few locations, one of them being the location that we're also going live with our SFG program. So, they still have some WIP in play, but we had to freeze the system for cutover and now they're happy to report they're producing again. So we did see it come down where we expected it to come down, and then we had pockets where it went up. And like I said, largely due to the one site going live with Oracle.

One other comment there -- sorry, Steve, just to support what Becky said there. Also remember that sales doesn't always take place in the quarter that we produce equipment, especially for large asphalt plant and concrete plants. So there's always work for future quarters in the system as well. And then, just the last comment on that, the same as it takes a while to ramp up the whole supply chain for higher sales, if backlog comes down, you know bringing that inventory down will take a quarter or two. Our teams are really focused on that because we understand that that's potentially hazardous for us. But right now, we have really good visibility on it and the teams, I feel, have pretty good control over it.

So you mentioned the Oracle implementation. Any concerns as you move forward with this, given how much volume theoretically with supply chain constraints coming down that you want to get out the door over the next couple of quarters? Any thoughts on temporarily delaying further implementation this year?

No, we're staying the course. Everything is going quite well. We don't have any other rollouts planned for this year. We've already done quite a bit this year. And in the back half of the year, we'll finish working on the design for our engineer to order sites. And then the next sites will go live in February of 2024. There'll be two sites. So it will keep going at a pretty good cadence over the next two years; '24 and '25.

Yes. And Steve, I've been involved in many ERP implementations before and having the ability to ship parts on day one was a huge milestone for the team. And so we did that manufacturing ran as normal, which is great. So, now we are entering day three and the statistics of shipments and activity is just growing. So, I will say this was a great win for the Astec team and something like in the ERP implementation, this is a big success for the team so far.

Great, thanks of that. In terms of the EBITDA bridge, the Q1 EBITDA bridge, I'm surprised that's still negative from manufacturing efficiencies. Should we see that turning positive? And what was the reason for the negative this quarter given you obviously did get a lot more volume out the door?

Yes. Steve, it's Jaco here. I can take that one. Actually, the description there is maybe a little bit misleading. Most of that inefficiency there was related to warranty cost, inventory variances and some service variances. Actually, if you look at our manufacturing absorption, we were very close to breakeven. So, right now, I think we have really balanced our labor with the number of hours that we put out. So, I'm - I mean, that number in detail and those are not related to manufacturing as such. Of course, there's still some inefficiencies in the system. We still have supply chain constraints, especially on the mobile road construction equipment. So, I think that number will just continue to improve.

Perfect, great. Thanks Jaco. Thanks Becky.

[Operator Instructions] We'll go next to Brian Sponheimer at Gabelli Funds.

Hi good morning Jaco, Becky and Steve, how are you?

Good morning. Good.

You mentioned in the release and in your prepared comments that you're starting to see some of the infrastructure might flow through, can you maybe give some examples as to where you're seeing that and maybe just some evidence that this spigot has actually started?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, actually as I said, I spoke to our dealers yesterday and multiple of our sales leaders are actually here in Chattanooga this week. And it's all over, some significant lettings coming out of Texas, Arkansas have had programs that's stronger than what they've ever seen, Georgia, Tennessee, I mean, it's really all over. And I think most of our customers have seen strong backlog and the recent lettings has been very strong. So I will say it's in most states, to be honest.

Okay. And you mentioned price as a factor for some of the positive contribution in the quarter. What are we looking for as far as carryover pricing into this year? And what have you done in the four months as CEO that maybe has changed some of the way that you go to market from a price perspective?

Yes a good question. For me, always the first thing to focus on is, as you know, we need to get value for the product that we sell. And our teams are very focused on that, to get the right price for our products. We are very in tune with any price changes on components, and we are now updating pricing, especially on parts on a real-time basis. So, as soon as price increases came through from suppliers, we are adjusting those. So, much more reactive than what we were in the past. And then, of course, with long lead times, we have a lot of pricing in our backlog, and we feel pretty good about the pricing that we actually have in the backlog. And then the last thing is, obviously, with lead time going into 2024, we've been very proactive and have already started to adjust pricing on items that we know we will deliver into 2024. On pricing, there's always smaller competitors that reacts quickly. If prices change on the raw material, the teams are keeping a very close eye on that. And I think with the processes that we've put in place here in the last two years, we actually have ability to react very quickly, both up and down when needed.

Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you very much and best of luck for the rest of the year.

Thank you.

We'll take our next question from Larry De Maria at William Blair.

Hi, good morning and thank you. Just trying to understand some of the messaging on sales and orders, obviously, we're around this 350 level in sales here couple of quarters. Is this high as high as we can go in this environment and given where the backlog is and capacity, et cetera supply chain? In other words, should we -- is that kind of a run rate for the rest of the year? Could we go higher from there or is there going to be more seasonality? Can you just kind of help us think about the cadence and where we can go from here given that we've been at that level couple of quarters now?

Yes. So, if you look historically, typically, Q1 is one with stronger sales as a lot of our customers want to leverage the winter months, so that they can be operational during the quarter. So obviously Q1 is definitely one of our stronger quarters. From a capacity point of view, with operational excellence activity implemented and investments, I think we can go higher in terms of capacity -- from sales, from a capacity point of view. So we've definitely we have those levers to pull if demands pop higher than what we had in the last year or two. But I will say Q1 stronger quarter in the year and then typically Q4 a pretty strong quarter for us.

Okay. So still some normal seasonality, but obviously, we're turning out the year on a stronger note. Maybe we could do the same thing around either gross margins or EBITDA margins, obviously nice work, and you noted you're getting good pricing in the backlog. So, how do we think about margins as we progress through the year or two? Are we at a structurally higher level now in 2023 or follow same seasonal patterns but at higher levels or how do we think about this because, obviously, they've been volatile over time?

No, I think before we gave that target range of the 24% to 25% range, and we feel pretty comfortable that in those ranges this year. Obviously, in Q1 is a very strong part quarter for us. So that's typically the highest quarter of the year. And with the quality of earnings for parts that contributed to high margins for Q1.

So, I'm sorry, you broke up, you weren't saying 24% to 25% for this year, right or were you?

Yes. So I mean we said ranges for margins of 24% to 25%, we believe that we will be within those ranges.

Okay.

On the full year.

Yes.

Yes.

Larry, you're breaking up. Do you have any other questions?

Good luck.

Thank you. Thanks Larry.

Thanks Larry.

And there are no further questions in the queue at this time. I would like to hand the call back to Steve Anderson for closing remarks.

All right. Thank you, Audrey. We appreciate your participation on the conference call today. Thank you for your interest in Astec. As our news release indicates, today's conference call has been recorded. A replay of this conference call will be available through May 17, 2023. An archived webcast will be available for 90 days. The transcript will be available under the Investor Relations section of the Astec Industries website within the next seven days. This information is contained in the news release distributed earlier this morning. This concludes our call, but I'm happy to connect if any of you have additional questions. Thank you all.