Andrea Funk
Analyst · Oppenheimer and Company
Thanks, Dave. Please turn to Slide 10. Second quarter net sales of $901 million were slightly up from prior year, driven primarily by a 6% increase in price mix and a 1% positive impact from currency, offset by a 7% decrease in organic volume due primarily to slower sales into our network communications end markets that Dave discussed, as well as the very robust prior year comp. Any demand softness in the quarter was largely limited to our telecom and broadband markets, as evidenced by our book-to-bill, which was approximately one for the rest of our businesses. As expected, total volumes were flat sequentially with Motive Power up despite Q2 being our traditionally lowest seasonal quarter. During the quarter, we booked an IRA benefit of $22 million as a reduction of cost of goods sold. This benefited our results from gross margins through net income. However, it is important to note that our results saw exceptional year-over-year improvement even before the IRA benefit. We achieved adjusted gross profit of $240 million and 26.6% of net sales in the quarter, in line with guidance. Excluding the IRA benefit, adjusted gross profit was $218 million and 24.2% of revenue, reflecting an improvement of 230 basis points over prior year, driven by strong price mix performance, which more than offset $27 million of higher quarterly costs versus prior year and understates our true operational improvement due to the impact of margin math. Our adjusted operating earnings were $103 million in the quarter, a $38 million improvement over prior year, resulting in an adjusted operating margin of 11.5%. Excluding the IRA benefits, we achieved adjusted operating earnings of $82 million, up $16 million versus prior year with an adjusted operating margin of 9.1%, improving 180 basis points year-on-year. Adjusted EBITDA was $116 million and adjusted EBITDA margin was 12.9%, an increase of $31 million and 340 basis points respectively versus prior year. Please turn to Slide 11. Coming in at the higher end of our guidance, adjusted EPS was $1.84 per share, an impressive increase of 66% over prior year including IRA benefits of $0.52 per share in the quarter. Adjusted EPS, excluding the IRA benefit was $1.31, even still an impressive 19% increase over prior years $1.11 adjusted EPS. Similar to margins, adjusted EPS benefited from favorable price mix actions which outpaced year-on-year cost increases in the quarter. In the second quarter, our effective tax rate was 11.2% and 18.3% on an as adjusted basis before the benefit of the IRA. On the right half of the page, you can see the detail of net sales and AOE by segment including our consolidated totals. Let me now provide details on demand and the performance for each of our segments. Please turn to Slide 12. In the second quarter, Energy Systems revenue declined 3% from prior year to $422 million, primarily driven by lower volumes, partly offset by improvements in price mix. Services within Energy Systems continue to grow nicely and achieved record revenue in the Americas in the second quarter. As previously discussed, Energy Systems volumes are pressured by several large telecom and broadband customers pushing out capital expenditures. Energy Systems' second quarter results were highlighted by strong margin improvement as a result of positive price mix cost recapture. Adjusted operating earnings of $26 million, improved $9 million from prior year, and adjusted operating margins of 6.1%, improved 230 basis points over prior year. While we remain very bullish on the mid and long-term megatrend opportunities in this line of business, we continue to work with our telecom and broadband customers as they digest inventory and prepare for their upcoming network build-outs. Based on our recent customer discussions on projects and network expansion plans, we view this slowdown as temporary. As such, we are taking advantage of the timing of this demand pause to invest in restructuring actions within our Energy Systems segment with additional plans to consolidate our footprint by closing our Spokane facility and exiting our resi renewables business, which represents the minimal share of our annual sales in significant bottom line contribution. These actions are more than a restructuring program to reduce costs. We are rightsizing our footprint, making strategic decisions to influence what is within our control, and prioritizing engineering resources to the highest growth opportunities with the best returns, while preparing for the next wave of network build-outs. We anticipate generating a combined annual savings of approximately $18 million per year on an ongoing basis from these initiatives, which we will fully realize next fiscal year with one-time costs in the range of $25 million to $35 million of which approximately $6 million represents cash outlay. Please turn to Slide 13. Motive Power turned in an impressive quarter, growing revenues 5% to $355 million as a result of ongoing exceptionally strong price mix. We continue to see a return to normalcy in ordering patterns and benefit from our customers' growing enthusiasm over our proprietary maintenance-free offerings. Motive Power reported its highest adjusted operating earnings in our company's history this quarter, contributing $53 million, which improved 34% over prior year. Adjusted operating margins were 15%, which advanced approximately 330 basis points over prior year. We are extremely confident in Motive Power's robust demand and profit growth opportunities that we called out at Investor Day, and our Motive Power customers have expressed their strong support over our pursuit of our own domestic lithium plant. Please turn to Slide 14. Specialty revenue declined 1% from prior year to $123 million as a 4% decrease in volume was partially offset by a 2% increase in price mix and a 1% positive FX impact. We are seeing robust and accelerating demand from both our transportation and our aerospace and defense customers. But this was muted by timing of TPPL capacity re-allocation and the temporary impact of our Sylmar plant closure this quarter. Adjusted operating earnings of $6 million declined $4 million from prior year and adjusted operating margin of 4.5% was down approximately 290 basis points. Earlier in the quarter, we experienced plant loading issues as we transitioned to energy storage capacity from telecom and broadband to transportation. By September and October, factory performance was back in line with expectations, but the underloading in July and August, as well as the production transfers out of our Sylmar plant put pressure on Specialty's operating earnings in the second quarter. We are laser-focused on optimizing the ongoing flexibility as well as the performance of our operations and returning to full productivity levels. We are extremely bullish on this segment due to our opportunities in the transportation aftermarket and significant A&D program win, combined with the enhanced capacity flexibility and expansion we anticipate benefiting from beginning in the second half of this fiscal year. Please turn to Slide 15. Our balance sheet remains extremely strong and positions us well to invest in growth and navigate the current economic environment. As of October 1 2023, we had $328 million of cash and cash equivalents on the balance sheet and our net debt position of $662 million represented a reduction of approximately $385 million from prior year. Our credit agreement leverage ratio was 1.4 times EBITDA, adding back our off-balance sheet asset securitization program, our leverage ratio was 1.7 times EBITDA, below our target range of 2 to 3 times, and an improvement of 0.1 times from the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2024, enabling us to mitigate higher interest rates and provide dry powder going forward In the quarter, we achieved an adjusted free cash flow conversion rate of approximately 120% on strong free cash flow of $91 million. Our capital expenditures were $20 million. Please turn to Slide 16. Our capital allocation strategy remains focused and disciplined around investing in organic growth, complemented by strategic M&A, maintaining a net leverage ratio at the lower end of our 2 to 3 times adjusted EBITDA target range in the current interest rate environment and returning capital to shareholders through dividend and share buybacks. During the second quarter, we paid $9 million in dividends and repurchased $47 million in shares. Please turn to Slide 17. We expect to continue to operate in a dynamic macro environment and anticipate some headwinds to persist for some time. While it is difficult to predict the exact timing, we expect to see the impact of U.S. telecom and broadband CapEx pushouts to continue, partially offset by continued growth in our maintenance-free solutions in Motive Power and Specialty demand. Based on this, we expect Q3 to represent a modest improvement in sequential volumes but a slight decrease versus prior year. These volume expectations coupled with continued price mix strength should result in top-line increasing sequentially, roughly in line with the prior year. Our fiscal third quarter 2024 guidance range of $1.80 to $1.90 adjusted diluted EPS inclusive of $0.50 to $0.60 per share from IRA benefits. Excluding the IRA credit, this is in line with a very strong prior year. I would like to remind everyone that the IRS has not yet issued additional clarification guidance related to Section 45X, which could materially increase or decrease the quantity of our U.S.-produced batteries that qualify for this credit. We will update you on additional guidance if provided, which is currently expected towards the end of the calendar year. We anticipate realizing gross margins of 25% to 27% including 150 bps to 250 bps from the IRA benefits. Our CapEx expectation for the full year fiscal 2024 will be in the range of $100 million to $120 million reflecting investments in new products including lithium production lines and continued expansion of flexibility of our TPPL capacity. I would like to highlight again that we are key participants in large and growing end markets supported by global megatrends. We continue to generate healthy cash flow and have clear capital allocation priorities. Our team is energized and focused on executing our strategic initiatives to achieve our long-term goals. With that, let's open it up for questions. Operator?