Thank you for standing by. My name is Bailey and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Plexis Fiscal Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator instructions] and one I would now like to turn the call over to Shawn Harrison, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Good morning and thank you for joining us today. Some of the statements made and information provided during our call today will be forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, those regarding revenue, gross margin, selling and administrative expense, operating margin, other income and expense, taxes, cash cycle, capital allocation and future business outlook. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees since there are inherent difficulties in predicting future results, and actual results could differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. For a list of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed, please refer to the company's periodic SEC filings, particularly the risk factors in our Form 10-K filing for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2023, is supplemented by our Form 10-Q filings and the Safe Harbor and Fair Disclosure Statement in our press release. We encourage participants on the call this morning to access the live webcasts and supporting materials at Plexus's website at www.plexus.com, clicking on investors at the top of that page. Joining me today are Todd Kelsey, President and Chief Executive Officer, Oliver Mihm, Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and Patrick Jermain, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. With today's earnings call, Todd will provide summary comments before turning the call over to Oliver and Pat for further details. Before I turn the call over to Todd, please note that during our fiscal first quarter, Plexus will participate in Stifel's Midwest one on one conference in Chicago on November 7 and Raymond James 2024 TMT and Consumer Conference in New York City on December 10. With that, let me now turn the call over to Todd Kelsey. Todd?

Thank you, Shawn. Good morning, everyone. Please advance to Slide 3. Plexus exited fiscal 2024 with exceptional performance, a testament to the dedication and focus of our more than 20,000 team members globally. Our team's commitment to delivering customer service excellence resulted in Plexus gaining market share throughout fiscal 2024, positioning us for a solid fiscal 2025 and capturing pull in data late in the fiscal fourth quarter, leading to the exceptional quarterly results. In addition, our team's ongoing focus on driving efficiency and increasing operating margin resulted in Plexus achieving our 6-plus percent non-GAAP operating margin goal one year earlier than anticipated, producing robust quarterly EPS. We also generated record free cash flow of $194 million in the quarter. This stellar free cash flow performance pushed our fiscal 2024 free cash flow generation to $341 million, representing more than two times our previous record annual free cash flow. We continue to anticipate revenue growth for fiscal 2025 while noting trends within our market sectors remain mixed. We anticipate another strong year for our aerospace and defense market sector, aided by ongoing share gains and new program ramps. While we expect modest growth from healthcare, life sciences and industrial market sectors, supported by demand recovery in certain subsectors, new program ramps and share gains. We remain focused on maintaining our strong operating margin performance of recent quarters, producing meaningful growth in EPS and generating free cash flow that will continue to be deployed toward creating additional shareholder value. Please advance to Slide 4. We delivered tremendous fiscal fourth quarter financial results. Revenue of $1.05 billion exceeded our guidance range. As the quarter progressed, we experienced stronger demand and a pulling of activity with customers across multiple market sectors that more than offset ongoing demand weakness in the industrial market sector…

Thank you Todd good morning. I will begin with a review of the fiscal fourth quarter performance of each of our market sectors, our expectations for each sector for the fiscal first quarter, and some directional sector commentary for fiscal 2025. I will also review the annualized revenue contribution of our wins performance for each market sector and region and then provide an overview of our funnel of qualified manufacturing opportunities, starting with our aerospace and defense sector on Slide 8, revenue increased 3% sequentially in the fiscal fourth quarter above our expectation for flat revenue. Multiple customers drove the revenue upside, reflecting increased demand inside the quarter and stronger than anticipated demand for our engineering solutions, which more than offset cautiousness stemming from uncertainty in the commercial aerospace subsector. Consistent with prior guidance, fiscal 2024 represented a very strong growth year for the aerospace and defense sector with revenue up 21%, exceeding the robust growth we saw in fiscal 2023 of 17%. We expect revenue for the aerospace and defense sector to decline high single digits in the fiscal first quarter with the pooling of activity into Q4 and customer conservatism in the commercial aerospace subsector more than offsetting strength in our space subsector. Our wins for the fiscal fourth quarter for the aerospace and defense sector were strong at $45 million and included a complex product assembly for our Boise, Idaho facility. This program win further solidifies our relationship with one of the largest defense prime contractors. We also won our first manufacturing award from a defense customer where we have maintained a longstanding engineering solutions engagement. This program will be built in our Neenah, Wisconsin facility. Finally, engineering solutions wins for the aerospace and defense sector hit a record high in fiscal 2024, reflecting continued progress and…

Thank you Oliver and good morning everyone. Our fiscal fourth quarter results are summarized on Slide 13. Gross margin at 10.3% exceeded our guidance and was sequentially higher by 50 basis points. We recognized significant fixed cost leverage as revenue sequentially increased 9% while fixed manufacturing expenses decreased slightly from last quarter. Efficiency gains and productivity improvements across all three of our manufacturing regions led to the better than anticipated results. Selling an administrative expense of $54 million was above our guidance, primarily due to additional incentive compensation expense linked to improved operating and cash flow performance. Non-GAAP operating margin of 6.2% exceeded our guidance due to the strong gross margin performance and delivered on our target margin one year earlier than expected. Now, an operating expense of $8.4 million met expectations. While we experienced a substantial reduction in interest expense due to our robust cash flow performance, we did see higher levels of foreign exchange losses this quarter. Non-GAAP diluted EPS of $1.85 exceeded the top end of our guidance due to the factors mentioned along with a benefit from a favorable tax rate. Turning to our cash flow and balance sheet on Slide 14, we were extremely pleased with our free cash flow performance. As we wrapped up the fiscal year, we delivered $220 million in cash from operations and spent $26 million on capital expenditures, resulting in free cash flow of $194 million. This result was well above our expectations. As Todd mentioned, this was the highest performance in company history. For fiscal 2024, we generated record free cash flow of $341 million, an outcome representing more than double our previous record and three times our fiscal 2024 net income. With the strong performance, we reduced our total debt during the quarter by $102 million. While continuing…

[Operator instructions] Your first question comes from the line of David Williams with the Benchmark Company. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, everyone, and congrats on the really solid results here. So I guess the first question for me is really around the aerospace and defense, and you talked a bit about this in your script, but just kind of curious how you're thinking about that for the year. Obviously, Boeing, without the contract being renewed or resolved as we had hoped, and maybe some of the conversation yesterday from their print, just about the timing of that production coming back. How are you thinking about that? And maybe how do you avoid the risk that could be associated with that as we think about the full year in aerospace and defense?

Yeah, I'll start, and maybe Oliver will want to add as we go through the discussion here. But certainly disappointing that the Boeing strike wasn't resolved yesterday, as I think a lot of people were anticipating. But one of the things in our projections, or as we went through our preparation for the call, we have been conservative in the way we've looked at Boeing. So when we talk about strong growth anticipated in aerospace and defense, that takes a relatively conservative look at how the Boeing situation plays out. So I think if we get some resolution in that, that could provide some potential upside opportunity for us. We think at this point we're reasonably derisked for what the situation is today. So with that said, when we think about the aerospace and defense sector for fiscal '25, looks like another strong growth year, not at the 21% level of '24, but certainly has the potential to be into the double digits. And a lot of that is driven through strength in new program ramps within our defense subsector.

Okay. Very good. The great color there. I certainly appreciate it. And then maybe secondly, here is just on the semi cap equipment space, there's been a lot of, I think, variable discussion around the demand trends there, some up, some down. It sounds like you're - you've got several new program wins this quarter, and it's been an area of opportunity for you. So maybe just as you think about the semi-cap equipment space, is there anything that you're concerned with and how do you view that generally? Have you derisked that, do you think, for the trends? And just, I guess maybe anything that goes into that estimation of demand for the year on SemiCap ?

Thank you. Yeah, I think in general, we're at a relatively conservative look at SemiCap as well, too. Now we would expect to, and as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we'd expect to outgrow the market and outgrow market forecast because of share gains. So I think you can take any projections that you see out there for WFE or SemiCap in general and expect that we're going to outperform that as we have for the past decade or so. So I think that's the way to think about SemiCap. So we would expect it to bewell into the double digits from growth year this year, even taking a conservative view.

Your next question comes from the line of Melissa Fairbanks with Raymond James & Associates. Your line is open.

Hey, guys, thanks very much. I'll echo the congrats on the great quarter. I've got one for Oliver. Wondering if we could dig into the non-SemiCap business in industrial. On the last call you had guided to some recovery in the broadband communication sector. It had been pretty weak for quite some time. Just wondering if you could give us an update on that business and what the expectations are going forward?

Yeah, thanks, Melissa. Sure. Happy to answer that. Yeah, our outlook for communications and what we build in here is a much more flat look. Certainly recognize the macro tailwind that exists and we talked about that in prior quarter. Certainly, our growth is tied to certain projects coming to fruition, but we also recognize that those projects and the path to fruition is not always linear.

No kidding. A lot of experience with that over the years. So for my follow-up, maybe for Pat on the cash cycle outlook, obviously, really great reduction in 4Q. I know it's been a focus of the whole team. You've guided to the bump higher in 1Q. Can you remind us what the longer-term target is? How should we view peak-to-trough levels of investment? What the cash cycle days look like, especially with that $50 million to $100 million free cash flow target for the year?

Yeah, sure can. I mean, going back to the first quarter of fiscal '24, we were at 95 days. So to have a midpoint now for Q1 to '25 is 73 days, a 22-day improvement, really pleased with. And to go to your question of a year ago, what would we have been pleased with? We were kind of signaling mid-70s for cash cycle as a target and obviously hitting 64 at the end of this year, kind of resets our expectation. So as I look to '25. Melissa, yeah. 73 days in Q1. We'll see an investment of cash in Q1. And just to correct maybe something I said in the script, that's something we have typically seen every first quarter, the last several years, not several quarters. Last several years we've seen an investment of cash in the fiscal first quarter. I expect us to continue our inventory improvement efforts going through fiscal '25. We will see some return of advance payments, along with that inventory reduction. So my expectation is 73 will be a high point for Q1 for '25, and then we'll start to steadily bring that down. Expectation would be to get back into the 60s. Whether we get back to the 64 level, we'll see, but it has kind of reset my expectations that I'd like to see us more in the high-60s.

Wow, that's fantastic. That's great. Maybe if I could just squeak in one quick follow up. You did mention the return of advance payments. Are your customers now that we're in kind of like a more normalized supply environment? Are your customers still eager to give you some of those advance payments? So, like, if we see inventory going up, do you expect that to still be a balance of some customer commitments along with your own working capital investment?

Yeah, I think where we see those typically is when inventory starts to age and get to a point of excess and obsolete is where we're pursuing those type of advanced payments. So I think that can still happen, but obviously, with supply chain improving, we're seeing less of that excess inventory.

Okay, great.

Your next question comes from the line of Jim Ricchiuti with Needham and Company. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. This is Chris. Chris Grenga on for Jim. Congrats on the results. Is there any one thing that you could point to or that you could describe the pull in during the quarter? You mentioned, there's a broad, I guess, broad pull in, and that drove the stronger than expected results. Is there anything in particular that you'd call out as a driver of that?

Yeah, the interesting thing was it impacted every sector and there were different reasons for the pull ins that we saw. Some were successive new program ramps, others were demand - just demand uptick that people saw with their end customers where they were looking for this. So what we saw was quite broad based to the tune of close to $40 million. So one of the things, I mean, we're certainly cognizant that our revenue is sequentially down in Q1, but I think that $40 million impact, or near $40 million impact is really what's causing that fact.

Got it. And do you have a sense for how much longer the inventory imbalance or correction is expected to persist in healthcare? Do you, in conversations with customers or do you have any visibility into how much longer you expect that dynamic to persist?

Yeah, I'll take that. This is Oliver. Certainly difficult to predict exactly when that's going to come out. I think last time, last quarter, we already talked about the fact that as we look at our portfolio as a whole, we thought that the inventory correction dynamic, we had worked through 85% to 90% of that. I'll also note that we talked about engineering solutions, revenue momentum here in this last quarter. And we view that as generally a good leading indicator of decision making and outlook for that sector. And so I think that gives us optimism here as we look to fiscal '25 for continued revenue growth. A little additional color that I'd add here, Chris, is we're seeing the corrections flow through faster in healthcare than in life sciences overall. And there are a couple, but within healthcare there's a couple of one off situations where the, the corrections are still fairly significant.

Your next question comes from the line of Steven Fox with Fox Advisors. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning. Just following up on the, on the poll ins that you mentioned, can you draw any conclusions? I know you said it was broad based, but is there any conclusions to draw from a macro standpoint or you just think it was all, you know, customers program specific and along those lines, does it. I know, I understand why the poll ins would sort of, you know, reduce your growth in FQ1, but what does it preclude you from growing, say 10%?

For fiscal 25. For fiscal 25, yeah. So maybe, Steve, I'll start by answering the '25 question and I'm going to pass it over to Oliver to provide some additional detail on the pull ins. When we look at fiscal '25, I think with the, call it slower start from a revenue standpoint with the pull ins impacting the comparable of 24 as well as the revenue in 25, I think double digits looks difficult. I would say we're projecting mid singles, maybe a little higher as we look to fiscal 25. So we think we can make good progress and we expect some pretty strong sequential revenue growth on a quarterly basis once we hit Q2 and move through the balance of the fiscal year.

Then adding onto that, I think as we reflect on the pool ins, there were certainly a number of just customer specific situations. Todd mentioned earlier, a specific program launched that had pulled in more aggressively from the customer. Taking a step back and looking for some macro themes we mentioned earlier in our remarks. Space subsectors showed strength, showing strength in Q1. We also talked about the semi cap subsector. So that grew sequentially in Q four and continues to show underlying demand pickups. That would be, I think, our other macro reflections on the overall trend and we look at all of that and we think, again, I say well positioned would be the term that comes to mind as we contemplate the macro F '25 outlook.

It's Shawn. One more thing. I want to go back to the statement made about aerospace and defense. We added some conservatism in there as well. And so trying to adjust for the unknown related to the Boeing supply chain. Got it.

That's helpful. And then, just curious, on the program volatility, you called out with two customers. Can you give us any further details on what that was about and whether that's an ongoing issue beyond the last quarter? Thanks.

Yeah. I'll just note that for both of those, they're one off situations. We are working with our customer to help them resolve that dynamic.And I also note that from my perspective, the demand for both of those programs is not perishable.

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Badger with KeyBank Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning.This is Jacob Moore. I'm for Steve Barger. Thanks for taking the questions. My first question here is on operating margin, really accelerating achievement of that 6% target by a full year. I'm sure that there was some benefit from the pull forward in the quarter, but my question here is, what are the structural actions do you think that margin performance reflects the most, and really, how much more work is there to be done on those or other actions?

Yeah, I'll start and open up to my colleagues if they have any additional comments they want to add. This is Oliver. Certainly we have a continued focus on manufacturing efficiency. I'll note that we hit that from two different angles, both in terms of profitability and capital equipment intensity. I also note that generally focusing on continued investments and automation, would it continue to help us there? By way of example, we deployed a significant warehouse automation project in our Penang campus in fiscal 24 and expect that to propagate more broadly through the organization. And we see both pick rate efficiency improvements as well as space utilization improvements as a result of that. And then lastly, I would say organizationally, we've aligned around a technology and innovation organization, as well as driving both pieces of the innovation and the optimization and continuous improvement. And we think all of those things will continue to bear fruit as we drive margin enhancement or margin performance through the fiscal year.

Yeah. And Jacob, as I look at kind of the quarterly performance we expect in fiscal '25, you're right for Q1, I'm guiding a midpoint of 5.9. So we are losing some fixed cost leverage on the lower revenue. The March quarter is burdened by merit increases, so we will see margins coming down at that point before we start improving margins on the back half of this year with productivity improvements Oliver pointed to. But I think what this tells us is we can achieve the target of five two. I'm sorry, six two just may not be hitting that every quarter.

Thanks, that's helpful. So maybe just to follow on, to clarify there, do you think you can hit 6% non-GAAP for the full year, and is there a threshold level of sales growth you need to get there?

I think the sequential revenue growth that we're going to see starting the second quarter is going to benefit us. Whether we get to 6% for the full year, we'll see could be slightly below that, but exiting the fiscal '25 is what we want to be hitting that. Six two.

Okay. I got it there. And maybe the last one for me, this was actually my first question was on the sustainability of the past two monster free cash flow quarters, which you mostly addressed. I think that's going to come down some, but maybe to expand a bit here, could you touch on near term capital allocation priorities? What do you see as your highest return opportunities to use that cash going forward?

Yeah, I think, well, I think we've done a great job bringing down debt. So we've only got $50 million outstanding under, under the revolving credit facility. So we do have the new share repurchase authorization of $50 million that we're executing upon. And next month we're going to be visiting with our board about other opportunities to deploy the significant free cash flow we've generated over the last two quarters. So from a priority standpoint, I'd say share repurchase program, maybe some further debt reduction. But again, as we get later in the year with growth, we will see some investment in working capital. And as I mentioned, we do have the footprint expansion in Malaysia.

Yeah, I'd just add to that, too. I mean, when we think about capital allocation, obviously one of the first things that comes to mind is supporting growth, and we're expecting a good growth year this year. So that's going to have an impact certainly on our free cash flow as compared to fiscal '24.

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Sheerin with stifel. Your line is open.

Yes, thanks. Good morning, everyone. Just to follow up on the last question regarding margins and particularly the strength you're seeing in gross margin. You're guiding voice margin down just a little bit on what, a 6% or 7% sequential drop. And I'm just wondering if in addition to the things you talked about, factory automation, more efficient processes, are you also benefiting from mix? You talked about a higher percentage of engineering services. The defense, aerospace sector has been a higher percentage of revenue. So could you talk about maybe margin profile within the different segments and what's going to drive that as we go forward?

Yeah, I can start. Matt, you're right. I mean, we're probably losing about 50 basis points of fixed cost leverage in the first quarter. We're covering that with higher contribution margin. Some of that's coming from mix of services and customer mix along with, again, as Oliver touched on further automation and productivity improvements. From a sector perspective, it's not much of a difference between the sectors. So I wouldn't say any additional weighting to a certain sector is necessarily driving better profitability. It almost comes to within customers.

And then I'll add on to that in terms of mix, rather than hitting that from a sector's perspective, we expect our engineering solutions revenue to pick up as the fiscal year progresses. And that certainly hits a higher margin number than our, than the rest of our operations.

Could you remind us how big that business is?

It's greater than $100 million is kind of the way we framed it. We don't do a lot of specifics.

With very high margins relative to your business. Right?

Your next question comes from the line of Anja solderstorm with Sidoti. Your line is open.

Can you hear me better now? Okay. I'm sorry. In terms of the Malaysia expansion, to what magnitude do you expect to. Are expanding it and what kind of products do you support there and when do you expect the expansion to be completed?

Yeah, so we support all of our market sectors in Malaysia. We have a quite large campus there that currently consists of five different facilities. So this would be our 6 in the Malaysia area. When we think about the new facility, some of the growth we're targeting is around semi-cap and around healthcare, life sciences in particular. But that's not, again within Malaysia. In our Penang campus, we support all of our sectors. So regarding completion is we expect to be able to hit some first customer shipments late in the fiscal year.

Okay, thank you. And in terms of the nuclear energy compliance, what led you to get there to attain that and what's involved in getting that? And what can we expect from you having that?

Yeah. So that was driven by our customers. So we had an award that involves some products that's part of the nuclear energy supply chain. And so the customer came out and audited us to that standard. Thank you. It's a fairly rigorous standard that supports the, again, the nuclear energy subsector. And we've already had additional customers that have an interest in the fact that we have this ability.

There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back over to Todd Kelsey, Plexus's president and chief executive officer, for closing remarks.

Yeah, thank you, Bailey. Just like to summarize a bit of our call and the key themes of our call. So, first of all, I want to thank our shareholders, investors, analysts, and our Plexus team members who joined the call this morning. We appreciate your support, as always, reiterating the key themes of today's call. We're positioned for a solid fiscal 2025, creating additional shareholder value through delivering revenue growth, robust operating margin, and sustained free cash flow generation. As we look to fiscal 2025, we anticipate strong aerospace and defense revenue growth, given robust end markets and new program ramps, as well as moderate healthcare, life sciences and industrial revenue growth, aided by share gains in new programs. We've displayed our ability to leverage our focus on increased operational efficiency by achieving our target non-GAAP operating margin goal of greater than 6%, one year earlier than projected. This positions us to continue the strong operational performance of recent quarters in fiscal 2025. Finally, we delivered record free cash flow in fiscal 2024, allowing us to reduce debt and generate additional shareholder value. The combination of these factors position Plexus to deliver strong EPS growth in fiscal 2025. Thank you again, and have a nice day.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.