Good morning, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Second Quarter 2023 Hubbell Incorporated Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session [Operator Instructions]. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Dan Innamorato, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thanks Michelle. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release announcing our results for the second quarter of 2023. The press release and slides are posted to the Investors section of our Web site at hubbell.com. I'm joined today by our Chairman, President and CEO, Gerben Bakker; and our Executive Vice President and CFO, Bill Sperry. Please note our comments this morning may include statements related to the expected future results of our company are forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Therefore please note the discussion of forward-looking statements in our press release considered and incorporated by reference to this call. Additionally comments may also include non-GAAP financial measures. These measures are reconciled to the comparable GAAP measures and are included in the press release and slides. Now, let me turn the call over to Gerben.

Great. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining us to discuss Hubbell's second quarter '23 results. Hubbell delivered another strong quarter of financial results. Our favorable position in attractive markets enabled us to achieve 6% organic growth, which combined with improved productivity and supply chain dynamics to drive significant -- and margin expansion in the quarter. Solid execution through the first half of 2023 and good visibility through continued strength in our businesses give us the confidence to raise our full year outlook again this morning. In addition to the strong finance results, we continue to improve our service levels to customers. Hubbell's investments in capacity, innovation and supply chain resiliency are enabling increased sequential output and improved lead times. Looking ahead, we expect grid modernization and electrification to continue to drive elevated demand for Hubbell's critical infrastructure solutions, both in front and behind the meter. We will continue to make the investments into our business to support this growth in the second half of '23 and beyond. Before I turn it over to Bill, to give you more insights on the performance in the quarter, I would like to introduce our two new segment presidents. You'll recall from our press release a few weeks ago that we announced Allan Connolly's retirement from Hubbell after 10 years of leading at Clara and in recent years our combined Utility Solutions segment. Allan's strategic vision and passion for innovation played a critical role in accelerating the segment’s organic growth profile, and I'd like to thank him for his many contributions to Hubbell as well as strong financial performance for our shareholders. I'm excited to share that we've appointed a very talented successor in Greg Gumbs to lead Hubbell Utility Solutions moving forward. Greg has a strong track record of leadership and…

Thanks very much, Gerben and good morning everybody. Thanks for joining us. Congratulations to Greg and Mark and on a personal note from me, very, very excited to partner with both of you as we drive to future success with Hubble. They're both off to excellent starts in their new responsibilities. I'm going to start my comments on Page 5 of the materials that you hopefully grabbed. It's really just a summary of a very strong financial performance in the second quarter. Most of the compares we'll show you in this deck are against the second quarter of prior year of 2022. We find it instructive also to look sequentially to the first quarter of '23. And I think that we see a lot of continuation of the positive trends that we experienced in Q1. And things played out quite similarly in the second quarter, it was 6% sequential top line growth and point and half or so of margin added. So a lot of the same themes that you'll remember from our first quarter call. You see sales at $1.37 billion, 9% growth with 3% coming from acquisition, 6% organic. The organic being driven primarily by price, which is a theme again you guys saw in the first quarter with us going back to last year. OP margin reaching the 22% level, a very attractive level, nearly 6 point improvement over last year, really result of the price cost being favorable as well as some productivity from the supply chain normalization of some of the efficiencies coming with that. Earnings per share above the $4 level, also very attractive 45% growth rate. That increase in earnings resulting being driven by the sales growth and the margin expansion of the OP level. Free cash flow of $192 million, really driven…

Great. Thank you, Bill. And moving to our outlook. Hubbell is raising our 2023 outlook to an adjusted earnings per share range of $14.75 to $15.25, representing approximately 40% adjusted earnings growth for the year at the midpoint. We continue to project total sales growth in the range of 8% to 10% with 7% to 9% organic growth. Our improved outlook is primarily driven by improved visibility to second half margin performance as we expect to sustain favorable price cost and continue to drive productivity across our businesses. We're also accelerating our investment levels in the second half to increase capacity for future demand in areas with visible longer term growth, drive higher productivity, accelerate innovation and enhance supply chain resiliency. These investments position us to execute effectively across each of our strategic pillars, which are to serve our customers, grow the enterprise, operate with discipline and develop our people. I'm confident that our strategy will continue to deliver strong results for our stakeholders in the second half of '23 and beyond. And with that, let me turn it over to Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Tommy Moll with Stephens.

Gerben, I wanted to start with a discussion of the utility outlook. Last quarter, you highlighted the transmission and distribution space is a mid single digit grower, maybe even higher next year with the stimulus contribution. Today, you highlighted a piece of the transmission market as a high singles grower, talked about needing to accelerate investment at Hubbell in preparation for next year. If you roll that all together, do you think that utility should be up mid or maybe even high single digits?

Yes, maybe I'll make a couple of comments, and Bill, I'm sure, will help me with this as well. You're right to point out the comments and of what Bill highlighted in transmission. It's an area that we've seen elevated investment of many years. It's probably one of the earliest areas where we really saw the Utility, started investing with renewables and the integration of the -- interconnection of the grid. We have visible signs of that continuing to grow, and it's the reason why we're so optimistic about this business. I still believe, if you add it all together, to count on mid single of this whole market is the right way to look at it. But certainly, we're optimistic. And that's why perhaps we make that comment is to say mid single digits and there may be times or pockets where we can grow that. But Bill, maybe you have something too.

I don't think I would add a lot. I'd say, Tommy, the mid single digit long term outlook is reflective of how we feel and we're getting really good ROIs on these projects. So we're going to continue to invest and grow with our customers.

Shifting to Electrical. Qualitatively, it feels like the commentary is about the same as last quarter, but I'm just curious if anything has gotten better or worse there. And Bill, you referenced the destocking is potentially shifting to a rearview mirror item by the back half of this year. But any additional detail you could provide there would be helpful, maybe any insight you have into the sell through would shine some light?

Yes, I think that you're right that it felt quite similar to the first quarter seasonal sequential growth. Even without volume, we're sort of happy that they're expanding margins. So some of that productivity work and the price/cost work is paying off. And I think as we spend -- Gerben and we spend time with CEOs and leaders of our top 10 customers throughout the year. I think when we were talking to them last year, they all use the word, we have too much inventory and we meet with them now, they sound like they're much closer to their target inventory levels. For the data that we do have point-of-sale add, it feels like what we're providing is getting sold. So it's just -- as we've gone through that adjustment, it does just feel like we're closer to that being in balance. And those are specifically comments to the Electrical segment. I think, on the distribution and telecom side on Utility, we're sort of maybe earlier to the middle of that side. So maybe they've been -- the two segments, Tommy, were maybe spread out a little bit on customer response.

The next question comes from Josh Pokrzywinski with Morgan Stanley.

Just want to dig in a little bit on commercial construction. It sounds like, I guess, the tone in the slides is moderating or moderate. Data seems like it's softening up perhaps a bit more. I'm just wondering how much of what you guys are seeing right now is more of a timing function or, I guess, prospectively, you're talking to distributors. Does this seem still more, I guess, steady as she goes here for maybe the next few months, few quarters?

Yes, I'm not sure exactly if you were making a statement or a question. I would say, for us, the commercial side, we reduced our exposure to commercial pretty dramatically as we sold our C&I lighting business. We have a balance that we would describe, Josh, as being more exposed to some of these specific verticals like renewables and data centers. The balance of commercial is where we were kind of going through this adjustment where our customers -- our lead times are now -- they were out at I'd say, Gerben, towards the 50 week range, and they're now down to two, three weeks range. And so that's had an impact, we think, Josh, ultimately on how our customers have been ordering for us for the past couple of quarters. And that's been affecting, as you see the unit volumes that we're shipping. But it does just feel like that adjustment period on Electrical, we're getting a little bit closer to the balance point.

And then just to maybe follow up on the M&A environment. You guys noted a kind of a typical Hubbell deal here. Are you seeing, I guess, the acquisition environment or multiples start to increase with kind of this broader appreciation for electrification? And then I guess maybe as a sub point to that, if there aren't really increasing, would you consider levering up a little bit more to just consolidate some of these assets with maybe a bit more value disconnect?

I think that's -- two parts to that question. The first is M&A market. And I do -- it is interesting, Josh, there are more assets coming to market than we typically see. And there's more assets kind of above this little average $60 million tuck-in that is quite typical for us. So yes, I maybe feel that is in response to owners figuring this is a good time to get a good valuation. And I think we see the competition in those processes. It's interesting, the acquisition finance market is a little bit different, right, you have higher interest rates and that's kind of affecting how some financial buyers approach the market. But we are seeing a little bit more assets kind of in the pipeline, which is interesting. I think your second question is around the balance sheet. And I think we do view that as a major strategic asset right now and we feel we can certainly invest aggressively. And PCX is an interesting one, I think because you were specifically asking about multiples. And so if we were buying PCX in the 12, 13 times range, we've had it for a year, it's both grown really impressively and the margins have done better because of what we do with it, and we find that we own it in the single digits. And so I think part of your question was a higher multiple, we think, can be justified given the growth and margin potential of some of the businesses that are put in. So I'm hoping not too many investment bankers are listening right now but I do think there's probably some upward drift in multiple as a result of what you're asking.

Maybe to add to it just a bit, maybe the resource capabilities to be able to go at a faster pace, I'll make some comments on. And as I look across the two segments, I would say the GMs of the businesses are more involved than ever in this process, partially helped by the operational discipline that we put in place over the last couple of years. We've added resources to both of the segments of individuals focused on M&A, and that's obviously complemented by the enterprise resources. So I'd say not only is the pipeline fuller but our resource capabilities to pull some of this off is better. So I would expect that to be a good contributor for us going forward.

The next question comes from Nigel Coe with Wolfe Research.

So a couple of questions from me. One is on the Electrical segment and you obviously talked about the inventory, it sounds like there's a bit more visibility on that. But are you seeing any differentiation between some of the smaller shippers out there and some of the larger national players, and are you seeing the bulk of the inventory coming out of the smaller players? And then within that, are you seeing any big difference between sort of core components and lighting? And I'm sorry if I missed that in your prepared remarks.

Maybe I'll start with the inventory on the distributors. It's actually -- it's maybe a little bit anecdotal, but also a little bit from inside, I would say, is the smaller distributors probably have felt less pressure to reduce inventory than the larger distributors, particularly the public companies that we saw that actually when the pandemic started that those may have actually been heavier on the inventory. They've kept those longer in place really to serve customers. I think the larger probably have been a little more disciplined in adjusting their inventories to the market when the pandemic started, and then now again adjusting after they've been loaded because of the supply chain constraints. So I would argue it may actually be the opposite, Nigel.

And then on lighting, any sort of differentiation there?

On lighting, Nigel?

Yes. I mean, lighting. I'm just wondering if that was disproportionately negative in that…

So the resi piece that we still have did have significantly negative volumes. And so they were impacted on the top line that way. But interestingly, the productivity like we described, some of the supply chain normalizing, one of the biggest drivers for that resi business has been the transportation cost. It's imported product from Asia and those container costs have really gone from a pandemic [capped] out container cost up in the mid-teens of thousands of dollars back down to $2,000, $3,000. And so that's really, despite the volume drop, allowed that resi business to earn a margin again. So they kind of have two big cross currents there between volume and cost structure.

And then just my follow-up is on the transmission capacity investments. We don't normally think of Hubbell as a transmission player. Can you just remind us where you play in transmission? I remember you said the high voltage test business, but maybe just remind us on where you play and how big that business could be?

So the product line is a traditional one. So if you're driving on a highway and you look up at one of those steel towers and you see the insulators up there and the hardware up there, that's the part where Hubbell plays. And right now, if you exclude the substation, which we usually kind of lump in, we're talking in the ballpark of $200 million of exposure for Hubbell. So in the kind of 10%-ish range of the segment, a larger percentage of the kind of components piece. But we see that could be an area of acquisition investment, certainly capacity investment. And again, I think we see organic growth there, Nigel, certainly in the high single digits for the foreseeable future for that and continues to be supply constrained environment versus demand just because of all the, I think, the drivers for hooking up to renewables and potential interconnects between FERC regions, et cetera.

The next question comes from Joe O'Dea with Wells Fargo.

I wanted to start on Utility and just -- I mean, you've talked about service levels being a differentiator for you. As we do see supply chain improving, just curious whether or not you're seeing some of those differentiation opportunities diminish a little bit, and maybe any sort of anecdotes as even when we get to sort of normalized supply chain environment where that service will remain a competitive opportunity for you?

Yes, it's certainly during the pandemic, based on what customers have told us, we have outperformed. And I would even go back to say service and quality have been absolutely core. When I ran that business, I would hammer that day in, day out, week in, week out because I always saw that as a differentiator, right. On price, you can make a decision overnight to compete on a different level. Quality and service, that's a lot harder. So that proof during hurricane event, ice storms and pandemic, and so we again outperformed. But you're right to point out, as the supply chains recover, you see others in the market improving and getting closer again to our levels. I would also say, when you -- during this period, we probably gained some share. And once you have that, that's hard to give up, you'd have to actually underperform again. So I'd say we're able to hold on. But to continue to outperform on that level requires then us to just raise the bar. And part of the investments that we're making, part of what Bill talked about, investing in capacity and transmission, that allows us when the demand is up to continue to service. So being ahead of that, and we feel we are ahead of that, continues to allow us to raise the bar on servicing and it's a differentiator.

And then I wanted to ask on the deflation comment where you're seeing it in both raws and components, specifically on the components side. Is that a function of efforts that you are making and going to market and any supplier consolidation is translating to some of it, or is it something that you're seeing broadly in the market on component deflation? And then related to that, I mean, historically, when you do see some of it, what would generally be the lag time before you would start to see that filter into the conversation around price?

So my comments were around the sum of raws and components were a tailwind. So I don't know, Dan, if there's a specific comment that components are behaving any differently. I wouldn't say it's the result of us doing something different. I think those are -- that's just kind of market pricing and reaction. And it's interesting how you're describing the relationship between material cost. And Dan had a page, I think, two quarters ago that did a nice job of showing our cost structure being about 50% driven by raws and material cost and the other half being labor and overhead and burden and other items. And usually, I would say our paradigm is to have price offset the material cost and our productivity initiatives to offset inflation in the nonmaterial areas. And so what you're asking usually, we would see -- if we were to see inflation in materials, if I'm going back three years ago and earlier, it would take a quarter or two for us to get the price kind of into the market to offset that. So that was kind of a lagged hedge, if you will. But I would say in the last two years, the pricing has been driven by lack of capacity rather than necessarily by cost. And connecting back to Joe, to the first question, service is kind of a relative question, right? You're trying to outcompete somebody else and it just feels to us like we're doing -- we're leaning in on the investment. I think we're finding this to be -- utility space to be really core part of Hubbell's identity and sort of leaning into that, maybe where maybe others might be a smaller division of a larger diversified company.

The next question comes from Steve Tusa with JPMorgan.

Congrats on another good quarter of execution. Can you just give us a little more -- I joined a little bit late, so if you already gave it then I can just go back to the transcript. But have you guys given the just price cost absolute numbers now, what you expect for the year and what that would be kind of in the fourth quarter? And then this Utility margin is obviously very strong. Any updates on kind of how you feel about exiting the year and into next year with this type of margin level that's now like comfortably into the mid-20s?

So let's start with price, Steve. And we talked about it being more than all of the organic for the quarter. So you're talking about 8 points roughly of price in the quarter. We're getting to the point where we're not pulling a lot of price in the last quarter. So we're sort of riding out and lapping the previous price increases. So one of the things that you'll see in our second half, as you squeeze the second half expectation that's embedded in the guide is the fact that, that price starts to moderate a little bit in the second half, and the cost is a little bit harder for us to predict. But it just looks like that dynamic will kind of on a year-over-year compare basis to start to narrow just a little bit. And so it gets to -- your utility question is related to that. And I think we're going to be doing some more investing, this incrementally in transmission in the second half. We're going to be investing in areas like supply chain resiliency. And innovation continues to be an area of focus. And so as we get, I think, to our third quarter call with you all in October, we'll maybe start to have a better view of what some of our expectations into '24 will be. But I think by the fact that you saw us raise our guide, right? If you go to our mindset in April when we raised our guide by a couple of dollars, we were describing having some second half conservatism because we just weren't sure what to expect. I think by our raise of $1.75 midpoint here to midpoint, you're hearing us say we actually see momentum that gives us better visibility in the second half and some of that caution has been taken away. I think maybe now you're extending that six months and saying, as you end the year with the momentum that you've got, ultimately, how will that appear in '24. And we'd really like to make those margins as durable as we can, Steve. And we're going to do a lot of work to try to do that and we'll be talking more about that, obviously, over the next call or so.

And any mix impact from the -- you're now kind of more bullish on transmission. I guess I view that as kind of like a bit more of a mid to late cycle dynamic as you come off the bottom in these T&D cycles. Distribution is a little bit smaller ticket projects maybe, perhaps. Is there any kind of mix impact from the handoff to transmission that we have to keep in mind?

No. I think I agree with you that the D is smaller projects, the T are bigger projects, but our margin profile is actually reasonably consistent across the two despite that difference. And we did see a mix benefit in the second quarter from Aclara comms kind of outperforming. And so that's sort of interesting to watch that trend. Just their gross margins are high as part of our -- relative to our portfolio. So if we can get some good momentum behind that, that could be an interesting mix contributor.

The next question comes from Chris Snyder with UBS.

I wanted to follow up to some of the commentary in the prepared remarks about customers on the utility side changing their order patterns. Should we take that to mean that orders for utility were down in the June quarter, and did the backlog come down alongside that? And did that have any impact on Q2 revenue or is this -- we won't hit revenue for a bit longer, just given backlog is still elevated?

The orders were down in utility. But as you noted, the backlog is there. And that gives us an enough backlog, not just to support the second quarter, but we view there's enough backlog to support the second half, which is really the underpinning of our guidance raise, is the confidence that comes from that. So I think it's just that adjustment period to us confusing our customers with really long lead times as the supply chain was impaired. And now that it's recovering in many places, they just really don't need to be ordering as far out and we're just going through that adjustment period right now.

And I think the really the important part because this for a period as they adjust it makes it harder year-over-year. So if you think back of last year, during the first half, our orders increased over 50% and within quarter, 70%. So even then, we said that's just not a sustainable level. That's not a reflection of real demand at the time that lead times going out. So those are the comps to which we now compare. So even when orders are down, it's still at a very elevated level. Our backlog in utility came down very modestly last quarter. It's still well above historical levels. And the other thing I would say, it's very much timed to us taking our lead times down. So it's in the areas where we're taking our lead times down that we see this adjustment. So it's all as we anticipated and, I would say, pretty predictable.

No, I really appreciate that. And then when we kind of look at the guide, and the company is guiding utility margins lower in the back half than the first half, but still obviously at really, really strong levels. When we think about that first half to second half decline, is that just a function of price being held and costs going higher on the raws and the components? Is it mix maybe from the Aclara installations coming back or is there some expectation that maybe price will have to be given back in some capacity just because as like supply chains are recovering and there's not the same urgency to procure that there was a year ago?

Chris, we're not anticipating giving price. But as we go year-over-year, we are anticipating that price cost to be a little narrower. And we did have some mix richness in the second quarter and we are anticipating increasing our investments on the OpEx side inside of the segment. So that all -- is contributing, as you say, a high level of margin, just kind of off of a nice comp there.

The next question is from Christopher Glynn with Oppenheimer.

So curious about Utility's kind of capacity to run fixes and upgrade and modernize on the distribution side. Is there anything in terms of plateauing and their ability to consume the products yourself? I know it's kind of a mixed sort of question against the dynamic of the lead time adjustments. But hopefully, I asked clearly enough.

I mean I think that -- I think what you're maybe getting at is are installers some form of constraints. And I think inside of utility, there is some degree of that you can't just add, but there are outsourced companies that are good at adding -- basically adding installer capacity. So I think the need from the infrastructure is there, Chris. And from being able to put mid single digit units hang more, I do think that ultimately that's what our expectation is.

And on the Aclara, you referenced the gross margin mix favorability and I think total margin favorability. At one point, we consistently thought of that as dilutive mix within the Utility segment. And then we haven't had a clean read through the pandemic and more extended semiconductor dynamics there. So just curious what changed there that we're talking about Aclara is mix favorable now?

Yes, because -- your first comments were as they were volume constrained with chip supply disruption, they were sitting there absorbing all the overhead, right, and it was kind of a lower margin profile. I'm now really speaking to the incrementals of the comms inside of Aclara, which I'm sort of cheating and using gross margin as a proxy for that being quite attractive on the incremental side. And so I think all we're doing is talking about at a constrained volume absorbing overhead, not as profitable. Now as we add in a high growth area, the incrementals are attractive that way, if that makes sense.

At this time, I show no further questions. I would now like to turn the call back to Dan for closing remarks.

Great. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. And I'll be around all day for questions. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.