Hello, and welcome to the Franklin Electric Reports Fourth Quarter 2023 and Full Year 2023 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations, Sandy Statzer.

Thank you, Andrew, and welcome, everyone, to Franklin Electric's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings call. With me today is Gregg Sengstack, our Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer; and Jeff Taylor, our Chief Financial Officer. On today's call, Gregg will review our fourth quarter and full year 2023 business results, along with guidance for 2024. Jeff will provide additional detail on our financial performance. We will then take questions. Before we begin, let me remind you that as we conduct this call, we will be making forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, many of which could cause actual results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements. A discussion of these factors may be found in the Company's annual report on Form 10-K and today's earnings release. All forward-looking statements made during this call are based on information currently available and except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. In addition, on today's call, non-GAAP financial measures will be used to help investors understand Franklin Electric's ongoing business performance. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures being discussed today to the comparable GAAP financial measures is included in the Company investor presentation, which is available on our website. With that, I will now turn the call over to Gregg.

Thank you, Sandy, and thank you all for joining us. We delivered a solid quarter and finished 2023. From Q3 to Q4, sequentially, we experienced more of the same market conditions with wetter weather and customer destocking continuing in the U.S. and to a lesser degree, Europe, and we experienced continued commodity pricing pressure in our Distribution business. Overall, reported sales were down $16 million or 3%, mainly driven by lower volume in Fueling Systems and a $13 million negative impact from foreign exchange, partially offset by favorable pricing. Even with soft demand, we delivered solid operating margins in water and fueling for the quarter. Our manufacturing margins remained healthy throughout 2023, driven by continued cost controls. For the full year of 2023, we delivered sales growth of 1%, driven by pricing, partially offset by negative foreign exchange and lower volumes in Fueling Systems. Operating income grew 2% due to the strong performance in Water Systems and cost management across the Company. Operating margins expanded in water and fueling with 140 basis points and 230 basis points improvements over 2022, respectively. Sales of our critical asset monitoring products within our fueling business also set a full year record. Our Distribution business was negatively impacted by commodity pricing pressure and destocking activity. Our continued focus on the management of working capital translated into strong cash flow generation in both the fourth quarter and the full year. Our operating cash flow improved by approximately $214 million as compared to 2022, resulting in free cash flow conversion of 142%. Free cash flow conversion was well above our five-year average of 106%. We use this cash to reduce our outstanding debt by over $115 million, completed several small acquisitions, and return cash to shareholders through increased dividends and stock repurchases. Our net debt is…

Thanks, Gregg, and good day, everyone. Fourth quarter 2023 consolidated sales were $473.0 million, a year-over-year decrease of 3%. Excluding the impact of foreign currency translation, sales were basically flat to last year. Our fully diluted earnings per share were $0.82 for the fourth quarter 2023 versus $0.84 for the fourth quarter 2022. While we don't report adjusted earnings, I do want to highlight the FX expense or foreign exchange expense below operating income related to foreign currency devaluation, primarily the Argentine Peso. The $1.1 million higher expense year-over-year would impact earnings per share by $0.02 in the quarter. Moving on Water Systems sales in the U.S. and Canada were down 6% compared to the fourth quarter 2022, primarily due to lower volumes. The sales decline in the U.S. and Canada was primarily due to lower groundwater sales. Wet weather across parts of the U.S. and some destocking in the U.S. Pro channel led to lower sales of groundwater pumping equipment. Water Systems sales in markets outside the U.S. and Canada were up 7%. Foreign currency translation decreased sales outside the U.S. and Canada 12%. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange, sales were led with double-digit increases in both Latin America and EMEA and a single-digit increase in the Asia Pacific market. Water Systems operating income was $44.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, down $0.5 million or 1% versus the fourth quarter of 2022. Operating income margin was 15.8%, down 10 basis points compared to last year. The decrease in operating income was primarily due to lower sales and higher operating expenses. Distribution's fourth quarter sales were $148.0 million versus fourth quarter 2022 sales of $148.9 million, a 1% decrease. The Distribution segment's operating income was $1 million for the fourth quarter, a year-over-year decrease of $1.9 million.…

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Matt Summerville with D.A. Davidson.

Thanks. Good morning. A couple of questions. Maybe can you talk across the three business segments about where you think your own inventories or comment on how you're feeling about your own inventory levels, and how much inventory still needs to kind of come out of the channel to be fully normalized? And then I have a follow-up.

Yes, Matt. I'll give some high-level comments in terms of inventory. And we don't disclose inventory by segment. But overall inventory reduction, we finished this year at about $509 million. We finished last year at $545 million. So we had a nice reduction year-over-year. That translates into about 2.5 turns for the business - for the Company for the full year. Our goal is to drive that closer to three turns. And so in terms of continued inventory reduction, that's, that's the direction we're driving and where we want to go. When we look across the three segments, I think all three segments made nice progress in terms of normalizing their inventory levels as - , as supply conditions have improved. And so, across all three businesses, and water has pulled their inventory levels down. Distribution has done a really nice job of pulling their inventories down on a year-over-year basis. They're a good indicator for us as to what would be happening in the channel. And we believe that what our team has done is reflective of others than we think that most of the channel inventory destocking has taken place to this point, and, and we look forward to seeing an uptick in demand and then that pull through in 2024. And then fueling has managed their inventory levels at as good as anybody in the business, certainly given how their business has slowed down in 2024. And so across the board, all three, all three businesses made meaningful improvement in terms of how they manage it without disclosing the hard numbers.

Got it. And then I think, Gregg, towards the end of your prepared remarks, you went through a number of factors impacting the business in the case as we move through the year. You referenced price pressure. I was wondering if you could put a little finer point on that? And then maybe, Jeff, if in the normal year, I kind of went back and looked. And on average, you guys do about 45% of your EPS in the first half, 55% in the back half. That's not every year, but I'm just kind of pointing to a general rule of thumb, given all the factors Gregg kind of talked about, how should we be thinking about that first half, second half cadence this year? Thank you, guys.

Yes. So Matt, I would say that the pricing is more behaving more like it was before the pandemic. And that is where you're, you're getting promotional activity in the market. Now I'm talking principally groundwater principally in North America or the U.S. and Canada. And so it's more kind of normal conditions with inflation on input costs slowing. Again, as Jeff pointed out, there's still some excess inventory in the channel at manufacturers and maybe the less degree of Distribution. So we're seeing more - I'll use hand-to-hand combat as a terminology for that in this case. And then on the, on the spread of earnings, yes, you're correct, and Jeff can get into more detail about that. With the Distribution business, we were getting more, I think, a 50-50 break because distribution - manufacturing does well in Q2. Distribution does better in Q3. But that's - but we're going to have a kind of a slower start to the year. So Jeff, do you want to give Matt your thoughts?

Sure. And I think that's a great lead-in, Gregg, is we expect the start of 2024 to really kind of move sideways where we ended. Obviously, Q1 seasonally is typically the lowest quarter for us in the Company. And now I went back and looked at the past three years for Q1, earnings as a percent of full year is averaging about 18% in Q1. The range is from about 16% to 19%. And so, I would say, certainly this year, we would expect to see a similar profile, and given that we expect to build as we go through the year, that first half, second half may be more heavily weighted towards the back half of the year.

Okay. Got it. Thank you.

Thanks, Matt.

Thank you. One moment, please, for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Bryan Blair with Oppenheimer.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Good morning, Bryan.

Action Manufacturing strikes us as strategically very important, expands into the Southeast for your water treatment platform. What is the revenue base there? You mentioned, approaching $200 million in total for the platform. And then off of that base, how is your team thinking about 2024 growth?

When you say what's the revenue, are you asking specifically for Action Manufacturing?

Yes. Just what does that contribute to the approaching $200 million?

Yes, that - it will be in the $15 million to $20 million range overall for Action Manufacturing. In terms of operating margins, we expect to get that business in line with the rest of the water treatment business in 2024.

Okay. And the, the water treatment revenue base, all in? How is your team thinking about '24 growth prospects?

Yes. I think we see that, we've always said that the Water Systems has kind of, GDP plus, 3% to 5% plus top-line growth. We see water treatment can be a little stronger than kind of the segment average there as we continue to grow that business and, and leverage it. And so I think top-line, that's, that's typically what we expect for growth in, in Water Systems.

Okay. Understood. And specific to water treatment staying there, how does your deal funnel look coming into '24 and given the assets that you have in place? How is your team thinking about or prioritizing new technologies, further geographic expansion or penetration, and perhaps more of a move into commercial applications?

You covered all three points well. Yes, there is certainly moving into Florida in a meaningful way. It's a key market. There are other key markets around - in the Southwest, which we've acquired into. We have privately held companies that people are reaching out to us, which is always good to see. And I think the opportunity to move up the complexity and size of the system into like commercial industrial, it would be a next logical extension for us as well.

Understood. If I can sneak in one, one last one, I think you mentioned, record revenue from critical asset monitoring. I understand that's off of a relatively small base. But if you could speak with the momentum there, what you're seeing going into '24, and how large that business maybe come, medium term, that would be helpful?

Right now, the business is approaching - it's about 10% of the fueling segment. When you look at the critical assets monitoring that relates to the grid, okay, what we call the grid business, it grew north of 20%. It's been growing at that rate now for several years, admittedly, again, off a small base. We're getting specked by more and more utilities. We're getting bigger orders from utilities. These are for monitoring devices that go on to high-voltage circuit breaker, medium-voltage circuit breakers, full-top transformers, also major transformers that are used to bring in power to, to communities. And then we're also into telco, into server farms, into railroad crossing, backup battery systems, and so on. So, we think that just as our name gets out there, as we get more brand recognition, more specification, and as the world moves more to electrification over time, that's going to take time - is that we're in a good place with that business. And we think it's kind of like where we started with fueling many, many years ago, is that we started with, one product and we added that product. We listened to our customers. We listened to their pain points, and we helped sell pain points for customers. And we're beginning to see where customers across not only the U.S., but across the globe, are talking with us about their pain points, and we hope to solve more problems and challenges for them on a go-forward basis. We like the space.

That's encouraging. Appreciate the color.

Thank you, Bryan.

Thank you. One moment, please, for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Ryan Connors with Northcoast Research Partners.

Good morning, gentlemen.

Morning, Ryan.

So I have a few questions. Most of them are actually follow-ups on things you've discussed here in the Q&A already. But the first was, you were talking with Mr. Blair there about the water treatment business. But in the press release, you do mention some softness, actually, in the quarter in that business. So, can you talk specifically about what was behind that? Any particular markets or products? Is that more volume or price? Curious, what was the weakness there in the quarter itself?

Yes. Ryan, a couple of factors. One is, just like in other product lines in the U.S., is that we do sell in wholesale. And again, seeing a lack of enthusiasm for taking additional inventory or people taking inventories down, that's a softer. The other thing is that, water treatment business is more housing start-related impact, as well as existing home sales. Because people often will make a decision to install or upgrade a water treatment system when they move. And so with existing home starts being at the lowest level in 30 years, where they move, rather than dramatic move in interest rates, as it's been well talked about, that certainly has put downward pressure on that business. We now think that we're kind of lapping that. You're seeing interest rates coming down a bit. You're seeing home starts beginning to come up a little bit. So, that's why we're a little more optimistic about '24. But I think it's going to, again, the comparables will be easier in the back half of '24, like many companies in this area than, than in the front half.

Okay. Good. And then, and then over to the fueling side and on this discussion of channel inventory destocking, we're trying to get comfortable with reconciling that with the comments you made regarding - Gregg, regarding the underlying demand growth still being intact. So you can just discuss for us, why would we be seeing destocking, persist this long there if the demand effect is still robust underneath it. Obviously, lead times have come down. But at some point, we expect that to run as course. Can you talk about the timing where in fueling specifically what your base case is for when that dynamic kind of levels out and that growth will start to shine through?

Yes. Ryan, I'd say that we were a little surprised at the lack of appetite in Q4. Like many others, we've been talking about destocking and figuring like, okay, now it's over, now it's over. It seems to kind of extend. So, we talked again with major marketers. A couple of them are public. And so, again, with the public major marketers, they're putting out their bid schedules - their build schedules, and they have a say-do commitment to the street like we do. And so you get that visibility. With some private firms, things kind of move to the right. And so with that and with the really, again, improved lead times, if you think about it, you're in Distribution in the fueling space. You've got to have that product available when that station starts to build because you have a relatively tight schedule and build schedule. So you're going to buy ahead. And now, with the lead times improving, they really - distributors had little appetite. We didn't see the normal kind of year-end activity that we would see many people to hit, rebate levels. There was very little incentive or very little interest in hitting rebate levels at the end of the year. So I think that's - they kind of, our customers kind of looked at the year and said, look, we're going to let this go by and we're going to, restart in '24, the refresh. Certainly, there were good station builds even through COVID with all the challenges, but I think that what we're looking at is station builds maybe being kind of more like, again, 2019, 2020 levels, which are down a little bit from the last couple years. But, again, the major marketers - because, again, two-thirds of the stations out there in the United States, for example, there are 150,000 stations. Call it 100,000 or people that operate 10 stores or less. And, and those number of operators are declining. They're being bought up or replaced by the major marketers. Those are the companies that we're focused on with spec. And that's why we're encouraged to say that with major marketers consolidating, with us gaining spec with them, is why we feel that we're going to have a reasonable '24. But, like you said, I think we were even a little surprised at the kind of lack of appetite in the fourth quarter. But the marketers are telling us that they're going to have a good schedule built in 2024, the best that we've seen.

Got it. That's very thorough. I appreciate the detail. And then - and I did have one last one, if I might.

Sure.

This issue of price and destocking and these commodity-oriented products, as you call them in the Distribution business, can you just unpack that for us a little bit? Some additional color on what proportion of the total line card for headwaters are we talking about here? Just kind of scale it for us. And then, you also mentioned that you expect that to abate as the year progresses. So any, any kind of additional sequencing color there would be helpful as well?

Sure, Ryan. So call it commodity-type product in the groundwater channels called around a half, 40% to maybe half of the products that are handled. And so what we were seeing in '23 in particular with pipe, which is a large portion of that, both plastic and steel, but certainly with plastic, is that capacity came online and the manufacturers really wanted to shift in big ways. So it began a bit of a price war. And so anything you had on hand became worth less and where we got the squeeze. The fourth quarter is disappointing as the results were on an absolute basis, on a relative basis, down about 120 basis points, I think, Jeff, from the fourth quarter of last year. And compared to a 300 basis point decline overall during the year, so it seems to be slowing and, and margins pressure seems to be - or pressure on margins seems to be abating a bit. And so I think that, again, Q1, always tough in the groundwater business. We're expecting normal weather. But as you know, it's been well-documented in January. We've got one of the wettest months again in the West, flooding in California, East Coast. We've got big snowstorms. These things will impact the start of the year. But I think as we go through the year again, as inventories have normalized, as supply has matched demand, we should see a more normal pricing environment. What I did mention to Matt earlier was that in the sale of pumps and pumping systems in the groundwater channel, we tend to see more kind of, as I said, one-offs, specials, promos, and you're responding to competitive threat there. Somebody is responding to our competitive threat. So you see kind of more - that's more normal or indicative of behavior before the pandemic.

Got it. I appreciate the time this morning.

Sure, Ryan.

Thank you. One moment, please, for our next question. One moment, please. And our next question comes from the line of Walter Liptak with Seaport Research.

Hi, thanks. Good morning, guys.

Good morning, Walter.

Good morning.

Just wanted to ask about pricing and, if it is a more normal year for pricing and inflation, what's the timing for any actions and maybe, what kind of magnitude are you looking at?

Yes. We, we certainly see pricing becoming more like it has been, several years ago in terms of the industry, certainly in the water business, but fueling to some extent as well. They had more annual price increases. And so, I think we see that returning to more normal versus really the environment in late '21 and '22 where we were doing monthly or quarterly price increases just to stay on top of inflation that was happening out there. So the frequency of it will, we think, return more than normal. Obviously, we'll manage that off. And if, inflation kicks up again, we'll manage our business and, and, work through them. Typically, price, we're going to get in that, 2% to 3% to 4% price, assuming that inflation is in check at a more normalized level. We certainly want to recover our costs and maintain our margins. And so - but it depends on where we are in the world. And we have a global business. And so outside of the U.S., the environment is much different than what we see inside the U.S. We tend to talk about the inflation numbers inside the U.S. much more frequently. But, there are parts of our business outside of, outside of North America, where, inflation and currency devaluation are, double digits and in some cases, high double digits. We're managing through those environments as well, and our teams do a really nice job of going out and recovering that lost sales or, or currency devaluation impact in terms of pricing. So hopefully, that answers your question.

Okay. Yes, that's great. And then maybe, on the cash flow looks great. Balance sheet is in great shape. I wonder if you could just talk about, the capital structure and anything that you're looking at that, to utilize your balance sheet? Are you going to try and increase the number of M&A deals? Is there something else that you can do?

Yes. So, first of all, capital structure, I, I really like our capital structure, Walt. We effectively have no leverage on the balance sheet. Net debt leverage is 0.1 times. And so, that, that gives us a lot of flexibility in the Company. And so we're pretty pleased with that. We're very happy with the strong cash flow generation that we saw in the year and certainly really excited that that free cash flow conversion at 142%, certainly was well north of what we say we target every year north of 100% free cash flow conversion. And I didn't mention it, but full-year EBITDA was over $300 million of EBITDA. I think it was $306 million to be exact. So great, great, performance from, from the balance sheet perspective and from a cash flow perspective for the Company. Gregg can comment here as well. But, obviously, we generated strong cash flow throughout our history. We expect to continue to do that. And that gives us a great, we're well positioned to take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. I think we would be excited to see more deals and be more active on the M&A front. And, certainly, we've got our attention and focus on those opportunities. And - but we're going to, we're going to maintain our discipline in terms of how we evaluate those and, and make sure that they make sense for us and it's a good deal for our shareholders overall. To the extent that we have excess cash flow, then, we've got a long history of paying a reasonable dividend. We've increased that dividend for 32 years. The board and the management team, I think, have, a lot of commitment to continue paying the dividend and hopefully increasing as we move forward. Obviously, the board makes that decision. And, to the extent that we can repurchase shares and it's accretive, it makes sense for our shareholders as we continue to grow the business, and that's, that's also an area where we can deploy some of that excess, excess cash, but we certainly want to continue to invest in growing the business through acquisition as well as organic growth opportunities that we have.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment, please, for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Michael Halloran with Baird.

Hi. Good morning, everyone. You have Pez on for Mike. So I wanted to take a look at fueling again. Can you perhaps size how much of a headwind the declines in destocking versus the pushouts were in the quarter? And then, is there any green shoots you're seeing that, there's light at the end of the tunnel on destocking within fueling specifically?

Yes. I think the, the short answer is probably no, but let me, let me take an attempt at here Pez. In terms of, in terms of fueling, if we, if we look at the business and the, and the, pullback that we've seen in volume there, we certainly believe that destocking is the largest factor that's, that's driving that decrease in volume. And, and that's based on, discussions that our team is having with, with our customers and who we sell to in terms of the distributors that sell through in this market as well as the major marketers that are out there. But we also know that, there have been delays. There have been pushouts, higher interest rates. Gregg talked earlier about the major marketers and as they continue to grow in size, they get more sophisticated. And so they understand that higher financing cost impacts their ability to, carry high levels of inventory and they've all pulled back on that. And, and as certainly as supply availability and lead times have improved, that certainly played a, played a big factor in it as well. So, I think those are the big factors we talk about. Demand in 2024 in fueling is, is normalizing and, and let me maybe unpack that just for a quick second because, if you replay the last several years, right, 2021 coming out of the pandemic, there was, there was certainly some recovery there. Because if you recall, fueling was most impacted during the pandemic and, capital got shut down at the major marketers. And so, when that came back, there was some level of recovery that came through in 2021 and obviously hindsight is always 2020. But in, in 2022, we know that the demand was solid and strong in the, in…

No, that's super helpful color and very robust answer. I appreciate it. Maybe on the margin side of fueling, obviously, an impressive margin despite the volume levels. Maybe thinking about margins in, in 2024, is there any, any, puts and takes that we should consider kind of as the demand normalizes? Is there any mix considerations we need to be mindful of? Or, do we feel like we can - do we feel like we can maybe increment at relatively normal levels from here?

Yes. I mean, we've historically said this business is 25% to 27% operating income margin. We've been way past that for several quarters now. And so, certainly as our grid solutions and our critical asset monitoring products, as they increase in the mix, that certainly helps our, helps our business from a margin perspective. I would say, as, some of the core fueling products, can I come back and that mix starts to shift down? It's going to keep us in the margin range. That is going to be at the high end of that range, if not higher. I expect that - I'm not predicting we're going to go back to 30% - , 32% operating margins, but we'll be in the high-20s and possibly touch over 30%, depending on how things play out.

Super helpful. Thank you. I'll pass it on.

Thank you. I will now hand the call back over to Chairperson and CEO, Gregg Sengstack, for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you all for joining us this morning for this call. Please have a safe week, and we'll look forward to speaking to you after the first quarter and with our first quarter results.

Thank you, and thank you for participating. This does conclude today's program, and you may now disconnect.