Brady Corporation (BRC) Q3 2021 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Third Quarter 2021 Brady Corporation Earnings Conference Call [Operator Instructions]. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ann Thornton, Chief Accounting Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the Brady Corporation Fiscal 2021 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. The slides for this morning's call are located on our Web site at www.bradycorp.com/investors. We will begin our prepared remarks on Slide number 3. Please note that during this call, we may make comments about forward-looking information. Words such as expect, will, may, believe, forecast and anticipate are just a few examples of words identifying a forward-looking statement. It's important to note that forward-looking information are subject to various risk factors and uncertainties, which could significantly impact expected results. Risk factors were noted in our news release this morning and in Brady's fiscal 2020 Form 10-K, which was filed with the SEC in September of 2020. Also, please note that this teleconference is copyrighted by Brady Corporation and may not be rebroadcast without the consent of Brady. We will be recording this call and broadcasting it on the Internet. As such, your participation in the Q&A session will constitute your consent to being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to Brady's President and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Nauman.

Thank you, Ann. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us today. This morning, we released our fiscal 2021 third quarter financial results, which was a very strong quarter in a challenging but improving economic environment. The Brady team is executing well, innovating for our customers and providing many of the products that are needed to help fight this pandemic. I'm proud of the accomplishments of the entire Brady team. Although this pandemic isn't yet quite behind us, as COVID cases are still high in many countries around the globe and businesses continue to have many people working remotely, demand has increased. Our salespeople are starting to travel again and there are pockets where our business is growing beyond 2019. The cost side of this recovery has definitely been swift and has absolutely resulted in inflation in areas such as resin, freight, paper, base materials and wages. As you can see, we continue to maintain a healthy gross profit margin of around 50% as we've never slowed down or pushed to automate our facility and drive sustainable efficiency gains, which when combined with target price increases, are offsetting input cost increases. Driving efficiencies is a never ending focus for us at Brady. However, what's more important at this juncture is ensuring that we're taking aggressive actions to accelerate sales growth. We're upgrading our Web site. We're improving our marketing capabilities. We're developing new products and we're investing in capacity enhancing machinery. We're making the investments necessary to grow our top line now and into the future. Profitable sales growth is our number one financial priority. For instance, in our ID Solutions business, we've been increasing our R&D spend, and we're seeing the positive results as we launch new products at an increasing rate, and we're continuing to distance ourselves from our competitors who don't have the scale to invest as heavily in R&D. We're also expanding our sales force and expanding geographically into underserved markets with strong future growth potential, including India as well as certain other markets in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. We're also improving our online presence by upgrading our Web site and investing more in digital marketing talent. Our strong new product lineup, combined with our investments in sales, marketing and online presence gives us confidence that our ID Solutions business will continue to accelerate in growth as we progress through the rest of the fiscal year and into fiscal 2022. In our Workplace Safety business, we're also investing in accelerated sales growth. Throughout the pandemic, we ratcheted up our online marketing campaigns, which helped us reach many new customers and expand our customer base. We're capitalizing on our common web platform by using a much stronger market intelligence to quickly adapt to changing market dynamics. We're increasing our investments in new product development. And we're increasing the pace of new product launches in an effort to increase the percentage of proprietary high value products sold to our customers. And we're adding new salespeople around the globe to accelerate our sales even further. Our focus on serving our customers extremely well and aggressively working to increase our customer base throughout the pandemic is paying off as we returned to healthy organic sales growth this quarter. We also believe that we'll eventually see another leg in this organic growth as some of our other end markets improve. For instance, in our IDS business, we sell in the many small niche identification markets aimed at identifying people in the workplace and at entertainment venues. These markets have remained depressed and have not yet recovered quite like our core industrial markets have. In addition, our product offering focused on micro businesses have remained depressed as these businesses have been impacted the most. So when these markets bounce back, which we believe they will, we should see another level of acceleration in organic sales growth. In addition to our focus on driving organic sales growth, we're also in the process of working through the acquisition of Nordic ID, which is summarized on Slide number 4. Nordic ID is a small publicly traded company in Finland that specializes in RFID readers, scanners and associated software to help power, track and trace applications. Brady is firmly positioned as a leader in high performance niche application industrial printers and materials, and Brady also has a leading position in aerospace RFID tags. Until now, we use off the shelf RFID readers, which can sometimes compromise the performance of the RFID tag. With the addition of Nordic ID's technology, we will create a portfolio of industrial readers that are fully integrated with our printers and our software. Driven by the adoption of Industry 4.0, the RFID market is growing quickly as a result of emerging use cases to provide better workflow visibility. The acquisition of Nordic ID when completed will cement Brady as a full service provider in these niche applications where we can marry our strong printer and material expertise with Nordic ID's scanners and software, thus, giving us the ability to expand in this faster-growing segment of our ID Solutions business. At the core of Brady, we're an identification company focused on industrial markets. Our vision is to expand and diversify our presence in RFID into attractive new markets with faster organic growth rates. Nordic ID fits squarely within this vision by filling a known gap in our product portfolio. We are approaching Nordic ID as a strategic growth area for Brady. We're not trying to extract every last cost synergy. In fact, the only significant cost synergies are removing the cost of being a publicly traded company in Finland and some minor back office synergies. The value of Nordic ID comes from its strong technology and complementary products that will help us to expand and track and trace applications within industrial settings. We intend to increase the R&D efforts at Nordic ID to help accelerate new product introductions and help us expand this product offering outside of Europe. The vast majority of Nordic ID sales are currently in Europe. So there are natural synergistic opportunities when we combine them with Brady's global footprint. We're very excited about how the acquisition, combined with additional R&D efforts, will help us to develop a complete global solution in the industrial track and trace space. As we've not yet closed the Nordic ID transaction, we have not included this in our fiscal 2021 earnings guidance. However, if we would close this acquisition in May, we would expect it to be dilutive for the remainder of the fiscal 2021 primarily as a result of the normal purchase accounting items, such as grossing up inventory values to fair value, the transaction and legal costs to close the acquisition and the amortization of intangible assets. We expect dilution to our EPS of approximately $0.02 to $0.04 in our fourth quarter, and we expect Nordic ID to be slightly dilutive in fiscal 2022 as well. As I mentioned, we're not buying Nordic ID with a short term goal of immediately extracting as much value as we can. Our goal is to further invest in this technology and to help expand our product offering in industrial track and trace applications. It's a combination of technology acquisitions such as Nordic ID, the investments we've made throughout the pandemic in R&D, sales and marketing and our recently expanded customer base that results in a strong future for both our ID Solutions and our Workplace Safety businesses. I'm confident we will see strong revenue growth in future quarters as a result of our focus on growing organic sales. Plus our rock solid balance sheet and strong cash flow give us significant dry powder to accelerate growth further through R&D efforts and additional business acquisitions. Brady is well positioned as we close our fiscal 2021 and look forward to next year. And today, we increased our guidance for the rest of this fiscal year as a result of this increased optimism. Overall, I'm confident in our ability to deliver results for our customers, our employees and, of course, our shareholders. I'll now turn the call over to Aaron to give you a bit more detail on our financial results, and then I'll return to provide specific commentary about our Identification Solutions and Workplace Safety businesses. Aaron?

Thank you, Michael. Good morning, everyone. I'll start the financial review on Slide number 4. Sales in the third quarter were $295.5 million, which was an increase of 11.1% compared to the same quarter last year. And pretax income was $47.8 million, which was an increase of 116% compared to Q3 of last year. Diluted EPS finished at $0.71 this quarter compared to last year's third quarter EPS of $0.26. We also had another very strong quarter of cash generation. Cash provided by operating activities was $56 million, which is more than 30% higher than the $42.8 million of operating cash flow generated in the third quarter of last year. So financially, Q3 was a very strong quarter. Moving to Slide number 5, you'll find our quarterly sales trends. Our double digit sales growth consisted of organic growth of 6.5% and an increase from foreign currency translation of 4.6%. Organic sales continued to improve sequentially in our ID Solutions business and finished Q3 up a robust 9.8%. Our Workplace Safety business benefited from strong COVID related product sales in last year's third quarter. As a result of these tough comparables, we saw a decline in WPS organic sales of 2.2% this quarter. However, we remain optimistic about the future of our WPS business and we've increased our customer base, improved our digital presence and we have many new proprietary products, all of which bode well for the future. Turning to Slide number 6, you'll see our gross profit margin trending. Our gross profit margin increased by 170 basis points this quarter, finishing at a healthy 50.4% compared to 48.7% in the third quarter of last year. This improvement was a direct result of the increased sales volumes and the many efficiency activities that we've been driving throughout our manufacturing facilities. We're seeing inflationary pressures in raw materials, freight and certain services. We're also seeing wage inflation and we're finding it difficult to fill open manufacturing roles. However, even with these upward cost pressures, we were still able to improve our gross profit margins due to some targeted price increases combined with our never ending efficiency and automation focus. On Slide number 7, you'll find our SG&A expense trending. SG&A was $90.8 million this quarter compared to $83.2 million in the third quarter of last year. And as a percent of sales, SG&A ticked down to 30.7% from 31.3% in the same period of last year. The absolute dollar value of SG&A was negatively impacted by foreign currency due to the depreciation of the US dollar, additional personnel costs and increased incentive based compensation. In Q3 of this year, we had a higher than normal level of incentive based compensation, whereas in the third quarter of last year, incentive based comp was effectively nonexistent as commissions and bonuses were significantly reduced due to the pandemic. And as Michael mentioned, we are absolutely investing in sales and marketing to drive sales and take share as the world opens back up. Moving to Slide number 8. You'll find the trending of our investments in research and development. This quarter, we invested $11.3 million in R&D. We continue to have opportunities to invest in new product development, and we're committed to increasing these investments while, at the same time, ensuring that we get the most out of every dollar spent. These investments in R&D are critical to help propel Brady's long term sales growth and protect our gross profit margins. Slide number 9 illustrates our pretax income trends. Pretax income more than doubled from $22.2 million last year to $47.8 million this quarter. In Q3 of last year, pretax income was negatively impacted by $13.8 million of noncash impairment charges. Even after excluding these nonrecurring items from the prior year, this quarter's pretax income increased by 32.8% over the same period last year. The significant increase in earnings was due to our strong sales growth combined with our ongoing focus on expense management, thus dropping more of every dollar of sales to pretax income. Slide number 10 illustrates our after-tax income and EPS trends. As I mentioned, diluted EPS was $0.71 this quarter compared to $0.26 in last year's third quarter, an increase of 173%. If you adjust our prior year EPS for the impairment that I just mentioned, our EPS growth would have been a very strong 51% this quarter. On Slide number 11, you'll find a summary of our cash generation, which continues to be quite strong. We generated $56 million of cash flow from operating activities and free cash flow was $49.1 million this quarter. When compared to last year's third quarter, this represents a 31% increase in cash flow from operating activities and a 43% increase in free cash flow. Looking at cash flow from operating activities as a percent of earnings, operating cash flow was equal to 150% of net income this quarter, continuing to illustrate the strong quality of our earnings. Now if you'll turn to Slide number 12, you can see the impact that the strong cash generation is having on our balance sheet. On April 30th, we had $321.8 million of cash and no outstanding debt. This quarter our cash balance increased by approximately $44 million even after returning $11.5 million to our shareholders in the form of dividends and investing $6.9 million in capital expenditures. As of today, we have not yet closed the acquisition of Nordic ID. However, this acquisition, when closed, will barely put a dent in our cash balance and we will still be in a net cash position of over $300 million. Our strong balance sheet puts us in a fantastic position to execute additional shareholder value enhancing activities, including investing in R&D and completing additional acquisitions. Our approach to capital allocation is consistent. First, we use our cash to fully fund organic sales and efficiency opportunities throughout the economic cycle. We're funding investments in new product development, sales generating resources, IT improvements, capability enhancing capital expenditures and CapEx to further automate our facilities. We will absolutely keep funding these investments where it makes sense and where the investments are long term ROI positive. And second, we focus on returning cash to our shareholders in the form of dividends. Fiscal '21 marks our 35th consecutive year of annual dividend increases. After funding organic investments and dividends, we then deploy our cash in a disciplined manner for either buybacks or acquisitions where we believe that we have strong synergistic opportunities. Let's move along to our outlook for the rest of fiscal 2021, which is articulated on Slide number 13. Our Q3 results were a bit stronger than we had anticipated and these stronger results are factoring into our incrementally more positive view on the remainder of this fiscal year. In addition, we're also seeing improving economic conditions in most of our end markets, but the improvements have not been steady and they haven't impacted all of our end markets evenly. We're increasing our guidance range for the fiscal year ending July 31, 2021, from the previously announced range of $2.48 to $2.58 per share to our new guidance range of $2.58 to $2.68 per share, which equates to a range of $0.64 to $0.74 in the fourth quarter. This implies that we expect the EPS to improve somewhere in the range of 20% to 40% in the fourth quarter of this year when compared to the fourth quarter of last year. We also anticipate that organic revenues will increase somewhere in the low teen percentages in Q4. This guidance is, of course, contingent upon continued macroeconomic improvements. We'll continue to make the investments necessary to drive organic sales growth. We'll continue to search for acquisitions that advance our strategies, and we'll continue to drive sustainable efficiency gains while being tight on non revenue generating expenses. We're confident that we've taken, and will continue to take right actions today to deliver strong revenue and earnings growth as we exit fiscal 2021 and enter our fiscal year 2022. I'll now turn the call back over to Michael to cover our divisional results and to provide some closing comments before the Q&A session. Michael?

Thank you, Aaron. Slide number 14 outlines the third quarter financial results for our Identification Solutions business. Our ID Solutions business continues to steadily improve by the initial shock from the pandemic, which was over a year ago now. In fact, this quarter we accelerated our way out of the decline. IDS sales increased 12.9%, finishing at $218.1 million with an organic sales increase of 9.8%, an increase of 3.1% from foreign currency translation. Organic sales in our IDS division were very strong not only versus the third quarter of last year but also against the previous sequential quarters. And on the cost side, our strong focus on efficiencies led to a 300 basis point increase in segment profit as a percentage of sales when compared to the third quarter of last year. Regionally, organic sales in Asia were strong this quarter with growth of just over 10% compared to the third quarter of last year. This is the second quarter in a row of Asian organic sales growth in excess of 10%. In Europe, organic sales were up nearly 12% despite several lockdowns occurring throughout the third quarter. Our European team did an outstanding job driving sales growth while handling the periodic interruptions of lockdown. We also had strong high single digit organic sales growth in the Americas. We saw growth in all product lines and geographies throughout the quarter. Demand in our health care business has improved and we exited Q3 near pre-pandemic levels. Sales in our healthcare product lines grew in the low single digits this quarter, which is a solid improvement from the 6% decline we saw in the second quarter of this year. In general, our sales trends in IDS are very positive. However, we do have a number of small end markets that have not yet recovered. Clearly, aerospace would be one end market that continues to struggle but we have a number of other niche markets that are struggling to recover, including workplace identification, which has not fully returned to pre pandemic levels. We continue to focus on driving efficiency activities and keeping our cost structure lean while never sacrificing sales generating investments. We've been investing in sales and marketing personnel, research and development activities and selected geographic expansion. These investments combined with improving market conditions are absolutely starting to pay off with stronger sales growth. IDS segment profit was $47.5 million compared to $36.4 million in last year's third quarter. Segment profit as a percentage of sales increased from 18.8% of sales last year to 21.8% of sales this quarter. This increase illustrates how our team was able to quickly adjust our cost structure last year during the peak of the pandemic and keep many of the costs out today when nearly returned to pre pandemic operating levels. This continued improvement in profitability is a testament to the hard work of the entire ID Solutions team as they constantly work to become a more efficient and profitable organization. As a result, our incremental margin was a strong 45% as segment profit increased $11.1 million on sales growth of $24.9 million. Our commitment to R&D remains a top priority to drive future growth. Two weeks ago, we launched the A6200 Wraptor printer applicator, which is a printer I'm really excited to talk about today. The A6200 is a more compact version of our innovative Wraptor applicator. This new printer has the ability to print and automatically wrap our labels around wires. It eliminates the manual wrapping process and results in an evenly wrapped label with no creases every time. This printer is a large, easy-to-use touchscreen and can print on a variety of our high performance labels using Brady software. We're really proud of this print launch and we're looking forward to showing our customers a substantial amount of time and effort it will save for them. This quarter, we also launched the quick flag label, which is a unique label with a tape design and adhesive on only one half of the label. That makes it much easier and faster to apply in cabling. It's ideal for data centers and other applications where more data is needed on a flag label design while being extremely easy to apply to cabling and wire in tight spaces. Like all of our labels, the quick flag can be run through multiple different Brady printers and is extremely easy to format and use. These products demonstrate Brady's ability to engineer high performance printers and materials for a wide range of applications. Our R&D pipeline is strong and we continue to launch innovative new solutions that help our customers solve problems and be more efficient and effective. I'm excited about what we're doing in our ID Solutions business and how our planned acquisition of Nordic ID will further accelerate our growth. We're improving our customer service, investing in our future and are streamlining the rest of our cost structure. These positive revenue trends, combined with our strong cost discipline, definitely bode well for the future of our ID Solutions business. Moving to Slide number 15, you'll find a summary of Workplace Safety financial performance. WPS sales increased 6.4%, which consisted of an organic sales decline of 2.2% and foreign currency growth of 8.6%. This decline was driven by our Australian business, which declined in the high teens this quarter as the sale of COVID related products was well below the prior year. Our sales quarter this quarter last year was over 30% growth in Australia, which was driven by the sale of COVID related products, so the business has a tough comparable. Over the last several quarters, however, we've substantially increased our Australian customer base, and we continue to find opportunities to enhance our digital marketing approach to ensure that we retain our new customers and turn them into long term repeat customers. Our North American business declined slightly this quarter. The sale of COVID related products has declined in North America as well, which was not fully replaced by sales of our non COVID product offering. Organic sales improved this quarter compared to the second quarter. So we're beginning to see a sequential improvement, and we believe we're moving in the right direction. Despite periodic shutdowns in the UK, France, Germany and other countries in Western Europe throughout most of the third quarter, our European business was still able to grow sales in the low single digits this quarter. Our team has done an outstanding job of increasing our customer base. And for those customers who initially came to Brady for COVID related products, our team has done a nice job providing these same customers our core safety and identification products as well. Overall, we're quite pleased with how these newly acquired customers are performing as we're supplying the initial products that many companies needed during this critical period. Our Workplace Safety team continues to focus on new product offerings. And this quarter, we launched a variety of new custom signage and for marketing that we believe will continue to be in demand even after the COVID-19 pandemic recedes. We've also launched a number of new products aimed at our core industrial space. We believe there is still a bit of pent up demand in certain areas. For instance, there is only so long that companies can go without replacing safety signage without risking the well being of their employees. We believe there is some level of deferred maintenance that once addressed, will further help drive our revenues forward. WPS segment profit was $5.7 million this quarter compared to $4.4 million in last year's third quarter. This increase in segment profit was primarily driven by the increased sales levels this year, along with additional costs incurred in the prior year to address our cost structure. Our WPS team is listening to their customers to identify what they need. They're modifying their marketing campaigns to reach entirely new customers in entirely new industries and they're working hard to address underperforming businesses within the portfolio. Although we have some very difficult comparables ahead of us for the next several quarters due to the strong COVID related product sales last year, we're well positioned for long-term profitable growth and our core business is healthy. I am proud of the role that Brady played and continues to play in the fight against COVID-19. Our products help companies with social distancing. Our products help schools reopen safely. Our products help people away from areas where there is high likelihood of virus spread. And our safety and identification products were used by frontline workers all over the globe. The pandemic is not over but the economy is improving and people in certain countries are getting back to some semblance of normal. Throughout the pandemic, we continued to invest in growth and efficiencies. And it's this continued level of investment that will enable us to keep this strong positive momentum as we accelerate during the recovery. Brady is in an enviable financial position. Our cash flow is up, our earnings are up, and our balance sheet is incredibly strong. We will continue to invest in R&D, sales generating resources and capacity enhancing CapEx, all while being tight on non revenue generating expenses. And we intend to further put our balance sheet to work by returning funds to our shareholders and growing inorganically through strategic acquisitions. Again, I'm very proud of how our team has performed throughout this challenging period. Their ability to deal with uncertainty, think on their feet and solve problems quickly, all while never compromising the long term, has really set a solid foundation for Brady's future. With that, I'd like to now start the Q&A. Operator, would you please provide instructions for our listeners?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Michael McGinn with Wells Fargo.

Nice quarter. I just wanted to start with the comments on Nordic ID and the dilution, just want to confirm that was an IDS segment comment. Also regarding the strong operating margin performance you put up in that segment, and it's going to be -- you mentioned the cost out synergies are going to be somewhat muted and you're going to grow into this business it seems like. Does that mean Q3 is going to be the high watermark for IDS profitability for the next couple of quarters?

I can address this. Nordic ID will absolutely be in the ID Solutions segment. I would not anticipate that Q3 would be the high watermark. If you look at the size of Nordic ID compared to the ID Solutions segment, it's very small. Now it's very small. It doesn't mean it's not important to us, it absolutely is. We think it's a very well run organization with great technology, and we're very excited to have them in the Brady portfolio. But to be quite candid, it's not big enough to significantly move the needle outside of this Q4 period where we have these acquisition related costs.

And so switching gears to the gross margin, good number there. If you were -- you mentioned a couple of highlights there. automation investments, some recovery in some important markets and then pricing. If you were to bucket the big items within your gross margin inflection, how would you rank order those? Any color there would be great.

One thing I want to mention, let's start with automation. I believe that's had the largest impact on Brady being able to really enhance our margins and maintain our margins. And this is a journey we've been on for approximately four years. We saw ahead of the curve that labor around the world was going to become more and more expensive but more important than the expense is the difficulty to procure labor. Now to be honest I didn't anticipate the global pandemic that has accelerated that labor shortage but the fact that we were ahead of the curve in my mind of really driving in that area has made a significant difference. And I want to be clear, often, we have the question, how far along in this process are you, it's never ending. In fact, I've not only challenged our teams to double down on automation efforts because we're working on some very large ones right now, but I've asked them to work to accelerate to a next generation of automation as we go forward. So really, you're going to see a one-two punch going forward in that projects we're working on, challenging a parallel approach versus a serial approach. And I'm asking our teams to think even larger and bigger as we go forward. The good news in that area is we're already thinking that way as a company. We're philosophically aligned with that. So as many of our competitors are literally just looking at different ways to automate, not just manufacturing but to start to the finish of the process, we're already well along the intellectual curve and, in many ways, the physical curve of getting there. So that was a big determinant. The second factor is we have done a very good job of taking a look at our price opportunities where we have them and taking advantage of them in a way that is positive to us long term. We always want to look at the value we add. We always want to look at the pressures that we have with different material sets. You know anything related to oil is up significantly right now as an example. So we've been able to marry that one as well and do a very, very good job of that. But we take a look at that and realize that we have to marry them together. We have good price control and that we provide great value to our customers, but we also never try to take advantage of our customers during difficult times. The other thing that I would highlight is our ability to reduce material usage. And I think that's another area that not only our automation is helped with but our focus on becoming a more efficient and effective and environmentally sustainable organization. I'm a big believer of you need to put in programs that drive real sustainable change. And one of the best ways we can help our cost structure and help the world is by driving our material usage down. And that's really the third area that I would actually highlight in answering that question to you.

And If I could sneak one more in on the capital allocation strategy, understanding you have the cash to self fund a lot of goals if it need be. It seems like this is more of an evolution versus a revolution. That said, when we look towards inorganic growth, are you also looking and mirroring that with divestitures or do you feel comfortable with the portfolio of the two segments you have in place right now?

We have definitely looked at divesting parts of our business in the past. We got out of the furniture business, which I think was a wise move on our part, particularly at the time we've got great value for those businesses and hopefully, those businesses have add value to their new owners. But we are always looking at that. And I think that's an area that we need to continue to look at, making sure that we're really focused on the businesses that will be strongest for Brady in the future. So although there is -- I'm not signaling anything. By saying that, I am telling you that, that is definitely an active part of our mentality. We want to be focusing on the best businesses to synergistically work together. I'm not a big believer in conglomerates in that if we don't find reasons to be together to help each other then there's probably a better owner for that business.

Our next question comes from Keith Housum with Northcoast Research.

And I want to echo that. Good job on the quarter. It's great to see those gross margins. If I can go along with similar lines of expanding on the gross margins a little bit more. You obviously had a lot of puts and takes this quarter and especially with the WPS micro business being down, it was nice to see your gross margins. And I understand the automation and your prior comments leading up to that. But really, I guess the question is, do we have the capability going forward to see gross margin expansion or is it really more just [letting off] (ph) all the price pressures you have from wage cost, freight, raw materials and elsewhere?

Keith, as I think I've said in the past, we are very proud of our margins. They show solid, in fact, excellent differentiation in industrial space, showing that our customers see real value in the Brady products. That said, we are seeing cost pressures. I listed a lot of the areas. But the cost pressures are definitely real. The inflation we're seeing is definitely real, and we believe it will be sustained. The good news about that is we're also projecting that we'll be able to maintain our margins plus or minus a hair going forward. We think that we maintain those because of our excellent position with our customers and also our ability to continue to be more efficient and effective in how we approach our business. So we are not projecting a margin expansion but we are projecting despite inflationary pressures to be able to maintain those as we grow revenue, therefore, hitting our total dollar margin as an increase.

And then turning over to Nordic ID, I apologize if I missed this. Did you cover how much revenue you expect Nordic ID to bring in for you guys?

We didn't. We expect to have a little over two months of revenue. And to put it in perspective, their calendar 2020 sales were EUR6.7 million. So take a sixth of the EUR6.7 million, so not that significant.

And is that business growing for them or is it stagnant?

Yes, the business is growing. But more importantly, the combination of Brady in that business is an excellent growth opportunity. By creating umbrella, tying in software between the two groups, creating a synergistic sale, we are very confident in twofold. One, we'll expand the customer base, period. But two, we have the North American marketplace where we see an awful lot of opportunity to grow their product set. But remember, the reason we're excited is that technology, combined with our technology, i.e., the total product offering to our customers, is one that we are confident we will do very, very well with that our customers will really appreciate.

And if I could squeeze one more in here. Does Nordic ID manufacture their own goods? And if they don't, will you plan on in sourcing that or are you going to maintain the same manufacturing process?

We're not making any public comments at this time on their manufacturing. To say Brady always looks at the best way to manufacture our products, you know that if we believe we can add more value to our customer by doing that, we are a manufacturing company. But at the same time, we know there are things that we do very, very well and things that other people do very, very well. So I can't speak specifically to what we'll do with Nordic ID, but I can tell you the biggest opportunity by far is taking this very talented team, marrying them with our very talented team, their great products with ours. putting an umbrella of software over the two and really creating a strong growth driver. That's where I'd focus on Nordic ID is that this is an engine for growth.

Our next question comes from Steve Ferazani with Sidoti.

So you talked a little bit about the end markets we know aren't really recovered yet, the workplace ID I'm guessing hospital and healthcare ID deviation, oil and gas and just got back. So a lot of these end markets haven't recovered and you can expect those to grow over the next few quarters, yet your revenue is above pre COVID levels on a quarterly basis. So I'm just trying to get a better indication of where the strength is coming from that's offsetting all those areas that are going to be in the quarter…

You hit very well -- Steve, I didn't mean interrupt. You hit the areas very well that haven't recovered. I would say the best markets are in general industrials, extremely strong. But the other thing, Steve, that I think is important, we really know we've grown because we brought out the products they really need right now. Particularly, let's talk about some of our wrapping products, again, that we've brought out. These products literally eliminate labor. It's not, once again, just an equation of saving them money. One of the things that our people go in and say is can you get the people to do this work. No. Well, then is it an issue of saving money or an issue of getting your products out that you need to get out. So the fact that we have really created some great industrial products during this time when a lot of people were pulling back that are exciting to our end markets has made a big, big difference to us. But specifically, again, biggest change is in industrial markets.

And did you mention how -- where do you see the hospital and health care segment area right now versus where it's been? Do you see some improvement…

So I think I mentioned in my comments, the areas where we really aren't seeing as much is the areas where people are getting together. Hospitals, we are seeing basically a recovery to be back where we were or close pre pandemic. People have put off surgeries as much as they can. People literally weren't probably going in to get surgeries they desperately needed are going in. The hospitals are -- to come back and are feeling comfortable coming back and their focus on COVID, as you look at the numbers go down dramatically, has been able to pull away. We're thankful for that as a society. But we're grateful for that as a company, obviously, because our products are definitely more geared. Although we did tremendously well with COVID products, I would far rather sell products to help the world be a healthier place in general. So we are -- to clearly answer your question, yes, we're seeing that market coming back to pre pandemic levels.

And then just on the last quarter, obviously, 2Q, you had the issues in product mix on the Workplace Safety and that bounced right back in terms of margin back to more normalized level, which I think you were expecting. Can you just talk a little bit about the dynamics there on the mix on Workplace Safety…

I mean the COVID products were at lower margins, period. But you know as a human being that doesn't bother me at all because we got out products people really needed when nobody -- in many cases, we are the only person able to provide them. So I feel very, very good about what those products did to help the Brady employees get through this, help our customers get through this, help the world get through this. But the margins on our core products are superior. And as we convert, even though we're not right now able to convert total revenue to the extent of the decline, I feel very good that the margins that we'll end up with this customer base are in line with the margins that we've historically gotten off our core products. So that switch will be good for margin and the customer base that we brought in would be very good for Brady. And they do appear to be as solid or even more solid as far as being recurring customers as our historical base has been.

Just one more, given how quickly you had the recovery on the ID side, you talked about labor shortages. Did you have to push off any work in the quarter? And Is that a risk going forward if activity continues to pick up?

You know what? Super proud of what Brady has been able to do in regards to getting our products out in a timely manner. Our numbers, although, we don't publish them, are excellent on delivery and have not deteriorated. There are some areas that are particularly oil based that have been somewhat super challenged, but we've been able to keep making everything work on a very tight schedule. So although labor in particular is the area that drives the most concern, so far, we've been able to use a combination of efficiency, great employees and new hires to meet the needs. There is no question that as the whole world heats up, the economy heats up, that will become more and more of a challenge.

Our next question comes from [Kashi Keeler] with Bank of America.

This is [Kashin Keeler] on behalf of George Staphos. So first off, you're raising guidance, but you're obviously seeing some more inflation. So I guess is it possible to quantify or break out what benefit you expect to get from volumes versus some price actions with customers?

I would like to say yes/no. We have such a good mix. We do have good control over our costs, as you know. We do have good control over our pricing. But it would be very hard to break that out as an indicator for you for a model, particularly for others. But I can tell you this and I will repeat it. For us, I'm not speaking anybody else, inflation is real. There is no doubt that inflation is here and I don't see it as a very temporary blip.

And then I guess going back to Nordic ID, you noted that you intend to increase R&D efforts there. I guess can you just talk about that a little bit more and I guess what specifically you expect to spend on?

If you take their scanners with our printers, we need to create an ecosphere between the two. So there's a lot of software involved with that. But also we want to make sure that they have the products that fit our industrial mindset and mentality, North American market, et cetera. So you will see a hardware but the biggest lift is going to be in the software area.

And I'm showing no further questions in the queue, I'd like to turn the call back to Mr. Michael Nauman for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much. I'd like to leave you with a few concluding comments this morning. We're certainly living in interesting times. While we're still on the back half of the global pandemic, the economy appears to be accelerating. At the same time, there is significant geographic and end market dispersion and we're seeing inflationary pressures all around us. Regardless of the macroeconomic changes ahead of us, I am very confident that Brady will continue to thrive as a result of our strong team and the actions we've taken to ensure that we have a strong foundation. We've committed to come out of any downturn stronger than our competition and we are doing that. This quarter, we experienced excellent sales and profitability growth. In fact, this was a record EPS quarter for Brady. Our ID Solutions business returned to strong organic sales growth and once again increased its profit as a percentage of sales. Our Workplace Safety business continued to enhance its digital presence and serve its customers extremely well, further strengthening its already strong foundation for future growth. And we had another great quarter of tremendous cash generation with free cash flow up more than 40%. We're in a net cash position, which gives us tremendous flexibility to add incremental shareholder value. We're prioritizing investments in growth. And we're confident that Brady is well positioned to capitalize on global market trends. We will finish our fiscal 2021 with strong momentum, thus setting ourselves up for an even stronger fiscal 2022. We are very well positioned to generate significant value for both our customers and our shareholders. Please stay safe, and thank you for your time this morning. Have a great day. Operator, you may disconnect the call.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.