Sara Zawoyski
Analyst · Joe Ritchie
Thank you, Beth. I am pleased to share with you another quarter of great performance with sales and adjusted EPS exceeding our expectations and strong free cash flows. Let's turn to slide 5 to review second quarter performance. Sales of $601 million were up 34% relative to last year or 29% organically. Volume was a big contributor to this growth adding 23 points, while price added almost six points. Price played a significant role in offsetting inflation during the quarter. Given our strong volume and price realization we were able to expand margins 300 basis points year-over-year to 18.3%. Adjusted EPS of $0.50 increased 72% and was above our guidance range of $0.36 to $0.40. Free cash flow of $85 million was 11% above prior year even with working capital investments that come with growth. Turning to our segment performance on slide 6. I am pleased to report that all segments were above 2019 sales levels and expanded margins in the quarter. Enclosures had sales of $300 million an increase of 31% organically. This growth was broad-based with a significant acceleration in the industrial vertical. Eldon continues to be a standout helping drive global growth with our expanded IEC portfolio. Orders were particularly strong in this segment. Enclosures segment income increased 90% with return on sales expanding 500 basis points to 17.9%. Price and productivity more than offset inflation during the quarter with strong contribution from higher sales volume. Within Electrical & Fastening, sales of $169 million increased 24% organically, demonstrating the continued strength and resiliency of this portfolio. Its largest vertical commercial was up approximately 30% in the quarter. Both power utilities and data centers and networking solutions contributed strong double-digit growth. Global sales continued to perform well across all regions, especially, Europe. Electrical & Fastening segment income was up 41% and return on sales of 28.9% was up 260 basis points relative to last year. Price added seven points to growth and helped offset higher year-over-year inflation. Thermal Management grew 30% organically with sales of $132 million driven mainly by commercial and residential and industrial projects. Notably, industrial MRO returned to growth in the quarter and continues to trend positively. Thermal Management segment income was up 73% and return on sales expanded 390 basis points, driven by higher sales volume and we are starting to see a positive mix impact with the return of industrial MRO. On slide 7, you'll see we ended the quarter with a cash balance of $102 million. On our revolver, we drew $200 million to fund the CIS Global acquisition, leaving $400 million available. I continue to be pleased with the progress we are making on our working capital goals. Slide 8 gives an update on our capital allocation. We ended the second quarter with a net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio at 2.3 times in line with our target range of two to 2.5 times. We continue to execute on our capital allocation strategy and prioritizing growth. We believe the two acquisitions completed in the quarter can generate solid returns as have Eldon and WBT, both of which are trending well above nVent growth rates this year and tracking nicely above 10% returns in year two. Over the past eight quarters, we have added over $200 million of annualized revenue via acquisitions, centered around the electrification of everything and we are excited about scaling these businesses and generating strong returns. We believe our strong balance sheet and cash generation puts us in a good position to continue to invest in growth and execute on our M&A strategy. You'll see our 2021 outlook on slide 9. We are raising full year guidance for the following reasons: First, is our terrific second quarter performance; second, our order book and backlog give us confidence in our continued growth. Orders outpaced sales in the quarter up 38%. Third, we believe our strong operational performance and ability to serve increased demand is a competitive advantage in this environment. And last, this updated guidance reflects the added benefit of acquisitions, which is approximately two points in sales for the full year. Our updated guidance also includes higher inflation along with increasing costs and investments related to the surgeon demand and stronger recovery. As a reminder we took a number of temporary cost actions last year totaling roughly $30 million and we expect these to feather back in at a higher rate in the second half of 2021 versus first half. Additionally, our guidance takes into account some of the supply chain inefficiencies that come with rapid growth. And lastly, we are making additional investments in our workforce, digital and supply chain capacity all, of which we believe will help future growth. Let me take a moment to discuss inflation, in specifically how we are managing price cost. We are expecting another meaningful uptick in inflation in the back half, including raw materials, labor and logistics. Specifically, we are modeling approximately $40 million of inflation in both the third and fourth quarters, which compares to roughly $30 million in the second quarter. We expect pricing to largely offset inflation with an updated outlook of over five points of price this year. We managed through these headwinds in the second quarter and believe our pricing actions, strong volume and operational execution had helped deliver solid margins in the second half of the year. All in, our margins in the second half are expected to be slightly less than the first half margins of roughly 18%. To summarize, our full year outlook we now expect sales growth of 15% to 18%. Organically, this translates into sales growth of 10% to 13% versus our prior guidance of 5% to 8%. We are raising and tightening our adjusted EPS guidance, which is now expected to be in the range of $1.84 to $1.90 versus our prior guide of $1.67 to $1.75. This new guidance reflects 25% earnings growth versus 2020 at the midpoint. From a segment perspective, we expect a stronger recovery in the industrial vertical to benefit our Enclosures segment the most. Strength in industrial and infrastructure are expected to drive sales in our Electrical & Fastening segment with continued growth in commercial. For Thermal Management, industrial MRO continues to improve and should be a bigger contributor in the back half of the year along with continued strength in commercial and residential. On free cash flow, we are at $126 million for the first half of the year, which is $50 million ahead of last year. We anticipate another year of strong cash flow with cash conversion of adjustment net income at/or above 100%. This translates to roughly $315 million in free cash flow, a 9% increase versus our previous outlook. And lastly, we expect corporate costs to increase relative to our previous guidance by approximately $5 million mainly due to higher compensation accruals related to our strong results. This updated guidance reflects double-digit sales, earnings and cash flow growth and all above 2019 levels. Looking at our third quarter outlook on slide 10, we expect reported sales to increase 16% to 20% and organic sales to be up 10% to 13%. This represents a continuation of the broad based growth we saw in the second quarter as well as strong orders and backlog. We expect acquisitions to add approximately four points to sales growth and we expect adjusted EPS in the third quarter to be between $0.45 and $0.48. Wrapping up I am pleased with our performance at the halfway point and we are well-positioned for a strong year. We are executing at a high level, demonstrating the strength of our team and our portfolio and deploying capital to growth with great returns. It is certainly an exciting time at nVent. Now I will turn the call back over to Beth.