Paul Lundstrom
Analyst · Fox Advisors. Please go ahead
Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Revathi, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll begin on Slide 6 with a review of our first quarter results. Please note, all results provided will be non-GAAP, and all growth metrics will be on a year-over-year basis unless stated otherwise. The GAAP reconciliations can be found in the appendix of the earnings presentation. Our first quarter revenue came in at $7.3 billion, up 16% with solid growth on strong execution. Gross profit totaled $542 million and gross margin was 7.4%. We saw a nice operating profit dollar growth in the quarter, up 14% at $330 million, with a little pressure on operating margin rate at 4.5% due to the pass-through of abnormal inflation costs. As a reminder, we have protections in our contracts that allow us to recover inflationary costs, which are often passed through dollar for dollar. So that creates some natural pressure on operating margin percentage but not dollars. Lastly, earnings per share came in at $0.54 for the quarter, an increase of 17%. Turning to our first quarter results, segment results on the next slide. Reliability revenue was $3 billion, an increase of 15% year-over-year. And throughout the quarter, demand remained strong across the segment. Operating income was $147 million, up 2%. Although demand remained robust, output was constrained by continued component shortages, which pressured operating margins at 5%. In Agility, revenue was up $4 billion, up 16%, driven by strong continued growth in CEC and in Lifestyle. Operating income was $171 million, up 25%, with operating margin up 30 basis points to 4.3%. The solid margin expansion was driven by our team's ability to execute exceptionally well against new project ramps, while overcoming challenges brought on by supply constraints. Finally, NEXTracker revenue was about $400 million, up 16% year-over-year, and adjusted operating income was $30 million. Operating margin increased to 7.6%, and that strong sequential margin improvement was nice to see after a difficult fiscal 2022. Moving to Slide 8. Net CapEx for the quarter totaled $91 million or 1.2% of revenue. Free cash flow was an outflow of $53 million for the quarter, driven by continued pressure on inventory. We anticipate free cash flow for the year to be back-end loaded as inventory begins to slowly unwind. We repurchased over 11 million shares in the quarter, totaling $181 million of spend and representing approximately 2.5% of the shares outstanding. Over the last 12 months, we have taken share count down by 8%. Inventory levels remain elevated, and we closed the quarter with inventory of $7.2 billion. This is a function of high demand, coupled with continued supply constraints in key components. I think you all are well aware of the golden screw phenomenon. And as Revathi mentioned, we continue to closely monitor demand indicators, but our focus right now is on delivering our customer backlogs. Please turn to Slide 9 for our segment outlook for the fiscal second quarter and our year-over-year growth expectations. For reliability solutions, we have good line of sight to meaningful revenue growth this quarter, potentially as high as 20%, driven by healthy demand across several key markets. We expect broad-based strength to support significant organic growth in industrial, particularly within renewables and grid-edge. And in auto, we're seeing our next-gen mobility products such as EV and scalable compute continue to gain tremendous interest from our customers. Turning to Agility Solutions. Revenue is expected to be up high single digits to mid-teens, predominantly driven by overall cloud and communication strength within CEC. Lifestyle should trend flat and consumer devices will be down consistent with our expectations. Flex's regionalization capabilities continue to provide growth opportunities, and we expect the softening pockets of demand in some of the consumer markets will be more than offset by considerable growth in CEC. On to Slide 10 for our quarterly guidance, we expect revenue in the range of $7 billion to $7.4 billion with adjusted operating income between $315 million and $345 million. Interest and other is estimated to be around $52 million, and the tax rate should be in the 13% to 15% range. We expect adjusted EPS between $0.48 and $0.54 based on approximately 468 million weighted average shares outstanding. On the following slide, we have updated our fiscal year 2023 guidance. We increased revenue expectations to $28.4 billion to $29.4 billion based on inflation recoveries and continued strong end market demand, while also anticipating some softening in consumer end markets. We now expect adjusted operating margins to be around 4.6% to 4.8% and continue to expect adjusted EPS between $2.09 and $2.24 a share. And just to wrap up with a couple of comments before we start the Q&A session. Despite the very dynamic macro backdrop over the last few years, you've seen a very resilient Flex. Our goal has been to deliver consistency, and we have. Adjusted EPS is up 28% in fiscal '21, 25% in 2022, and we continue to expect double-digit EPS growth in 2023. We've enhanced our portfolio and the mix continues to improve with better geographic diversity, more balanced end market exposure and with a greater emphasis on high-growth industries. Overall, Flex is operating from a stronger position today than we ever have. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to the operator to begin Q&A. Michelle?