Mike Dastoor
Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Adam and thank you for joining us today and for your interest in Jabil. As Adam highlighted, our business model is fundamentally structured to deliver core margin expansion and strong predictable cash flows and our capital structure has been optimized to maximize our flexibility. This flexibility has enabled us to reshape our end market portfolio over the last several years and in the last 18 months, our strategy has been pressure tested and our diversified, well-balanced portfolio performed extremely well evidenced by our solid Q4 and exceptionally strong FY ‘21 results. In Q4, the teams in both segments successfully managed to navigate an incredibly dynamic supply chain environment. During the quarter, demand continued to be broad-based and robust, but revenue came in slightly lower than expected due to some incremental tightness in the supply chain, mainly in healthcare, industrial and cloud. This was partly offset by upsides in connected devices and networking and storage. Despite this, our core operating margin performance in the quarter was quite strong coming in at 4.2% and approximately 10 basis points higher than expected, a testament to our team’s execution in the quarter, solid cost optimization and our ever more resilient end market portfolio. In Q4, our interest and tax expense also came in better than expected, which when combined with the strong margin performance allowed us to deliver strong core diluted earnings per share in Q4, putting it all together on the next slide. Net revenue for the fourth quarter was $7.4 billion, up 1% over the prior year quarter. GAAP operating income was $265 million and our GAAP diluted earnings per share was $1.16. Core operating income during the quarter was $314 million, an increase of 23% year-over-year, representing a core operating margin of 4.2%, a 70 basis point improvement over the prior year. Net interest expense in Q4 was $36 million, and core tax rate came in at approximately 22.3%. Core diluted earnings per share was $1.44, a 47% improvement over the prior year quarter. Now turning to our fourth quarter segment results on the next slide, revenue for our DMS segment was $3.9 billion, an increase of 9.7% on a year-over-year basis. The strong year-over-year performance in our DMS segment was broad-based with strength across our healthcare, automotive and mobility businesses. Core margins for the segment came in at 4.1% 20 basis points higher than the previous year. Revenue for our EMS segment came in at $3.5 billion, down 6.4% and primarily driven by our previously announced transition to a consignment model. Core margin for the segment was 4.3%, up 120 basis points over the prior year reflecting solid execution by the team. For the year, our DMS segment revenue was $15.4 billion, an increase of 17% over the prior year, while core operating income for the segment was up an impressive 49% year-over-year. This resulted in core margins expanding 110 basis points to 4.8%, reflective of our improved mix. EMS for the year, core margins were also up strong, coming in at 3.7%, 100 basis points higher than the prior year on revenue of $13.9 billion. Turning now to our cash flows and balance sheet, net capital expenditures for the fourth quarter were $202 million and for the full fiscal year came in better than expected at $793 million or 2.7% of net revenue. We sometimes hear from investors seeking clarification on our net CapEx, so I’d like to take a moment to walk you through the components. As a reminder, our customers sometimes co-invest in plant, property and equipment with us as part of our ongoing business model. We often pay for these co-investments upfront, which are then subsequently reimbursed to us by customers. The line item acquisition of property, plant and equipment on our statement of cash flows includes the full upfront payment made by us. The reimbursements by our customers are reflected as a sale of assets in the line item proceeds and advances from sale of property, plant and equipment on our statement of cash flows. The net of these two items reflects our true spend and what we refer to as net capital expenditures. In Q4, inventory days came in higher than expected at 71 days, an increase of 3 days sequentially, driven by the previously mentioned incremental tightness in the supply chain. While these higher inventory days may continue in the short term, we expect it to normalize below 60% over the mid- to longer term. The management team continues to be fully focused on this metric, particularly in the current environment. In spite of this, our fourth quarter cash flows from operations were very strong, coming in at $762 million. As a result of the strong fourth quarter performance in cash flow generation, adjusted free cash flow for the fiscal year came in higher than expected at approximately $640 million. We exited the quarter with total debt to core EBITDA levels of approximately 1.4x and cash balances of $1.6 billion. During the fourth quarter, we repurchased 2.9 million shares, bringing total shares repurchased in FY ‘21 to 8.8 million shares or $477 million. This brings our cumulative shares repurchased since FY ‘13 to approximately 90 million shares at an average price under $27 a bringing our total returns to shareholders, including repurchases and dividends, to approximately $3 billion, reflective of our ongoing commitment to return capital to shareholders. In summary, I am extremely pleased with the resiliency of our portfolio and sustainable broad-based momentum underway across the business, which has allowed us to deliver exceptionally strong results in fiscal ‘21. Next, I’d like to take a few moments to highlight Jabil’s unique position across multiple end markets benefiting from long-term secular trends and the convergence of technology in our day-to-day lives. We believe these trends will continue to drive sustainable growth and margins across the enterprise in FY ‘22 and beyond. In healthcare today on the next slide, the industry is undergoing tremendous change due to rising costs, aging populations, the demand for better healthcare and emerging markets and the accelerated pace of change and innovation. Consequently, we’re witnessing healthcare companies shifting their core competencies away from manufacturing towards innovative and connected product solutions. We continue to be in the early days of outsourcing of manufacturing in the healthcare space. Our strategic collaboration, which we have highlighted in previous years has enhanced our credibility within the industry and has further enabled Jabil to benefit from this outsourcing trend. On top of this, we are also seeing the impact of connectivity, digitization and personalized care across healthcare. I expect these trends to accelerate over the next few years. Our deep domain expertise within the healthcare industry uniquely positions us to build technology-enabled products which help our customers excel in today’s evolution of healthcare, another end market experiencing a rapid shift in technologies as the automotive market. Climate change, fuel efficiency and emissions are ongoing concerns and regulatory policies worldwide are beginning to mandate more eco-friendly technologies. As a result, OEMs are making substantial investments into electrification efforts. The bulk of our automotive business is focused on electrification of cars, which we believe still has plenty of room to grow. Over the next 3 years, we expect the fastest-growing area of our auto business will be in what’s known as ACE: autonomous, connectivity and electrification. Today, electric vehicles account for a small fraction of total vehicles in the market, but the ED segment overall is growing rapidly and gaining a larger share of the total vehicle market. Jabil’s longstanding capabilities and over 10 years of experience and credibility in this space have positioned us extremely well to benefit from this ongoing trend. We are also extremely well positioned to build the infrastructure that will power tomorrow, be it cloud, semi cap, 5G infrastructure and the associated connected devices, all power generation and energy storage. 5G is expected to transform the way we live, work, play and educate. As the underlying infrastructure continues to roll out, 5G adoption is accelerating. Jabil is well positioned to benefit from both the worldwide infrastructure rollouts and with the devices, which will be needed to recognize the full potential of a robust 5G network. 5G is also accelerating secular expansion of cloud adoption and infrastructure growth. This, coupled with the value proposition, Jabil offers cloud hyperscalers is helping us gain market share in an expanding market, evidenced by the significant growth over the last 3 years. In power generation and energy storage, we offer differentiated solutions across the entire energy value chain from energy generation, power conversion, transmission, storage and metering to the management of power inside of homes and buildings. In this space, we serve a diversified set of customers across numerous markets, including oil and gas, wind, power inverters and converters, smart meters, smart grid communications, building automation, home automation and energy storage. As the convergence of technology in our day-to-day lives accelerates, demand for semiconductors has increased exponentially, which has generated a huge backlog in this industry. Jabil is well-positioned to help customers in the semi-cap space with end solutions spanning the front end with design and complex fabrication equipment along with the back end with validation and test solutions. So what do all these trends translate to in terms of Jabil? You can see our revenue growth expectations by end market in the coming fiscal year. In FY ‘22, in spite of supply chain headwinds, we expect incredibly strong growth in automotive and continued solid growth in healthcare and packaging, industrial, semi cap, 5G wireless and cloud. Today, both segments are in great shape. We’ve repositioned our business to serve critical and long life cycle products while also providing the foundation for predictable yet strong cash flows and margins. For FY ‘22, we expect both gross profit margins and core operating margins to improve 30 basis points over the prior year, mainly driven by our end market growth and improved mix of business. We also expect the investments to be made in areas such as IT, automation and factory digitization will drive improved optimization across our footprint, which will translate to higher margins. We expect these gains will be slightly offset by continued tightness in the supply chain, especially in the first half of our fiscal year. However, we are incredibly confident in our team’s ability to successfully execute in this market given our track record over the last several years. Key to executing amidst an incredibly dynamic environment is our expertise and the investments we made in our IT and supply chain. We’ve got the tools and technologies that allow us to progressively manage with analytics and data, some of the most complex supply chains in the world. This has certainly been evident over the last 2 years. Let’s hear from our supply chain leaders and how they’re executing for our customers. [Video Presentation]