James Harris
Analyst · UBS. Your line is open
Thank you, Gene. As Gene noted, our adjusted EPS of $0.40 exceeded our internal model and previously communicated expectations. As discussed last quarter, our Q1 results were constrained by the timing of project orders in contact and the impact of a rate case in our ULC business. In addition to the segment income drivers, which I will review later, some below the line items had a modest impact on our year-on-year earnings, including lower corporate and interest costs and a higher tax rate. Overall, we are pleased with our performance for the quarter and believe we are well positioned for the full year 2022. A review of our adjusted segment results reflect stronger-than-anticipated performance, but as expected, with an overall decline in segment income and margin when compared to the prior year. Revenues increased 6.9%. Revenues from the acquisition of Sealite, ECS and Cincinnati Fan accounted for 9.9%, while our organic revenues decreased 2.5%. As anticipated, organic revenue decreased due to lower Detection & Measurement revenue, although it was better than expected. This was partially offset by price increases. Price cost was a modest margin headwind for the quarter. For the full year, we currently anticipate price cost to be a modest tailwind. The lower organic revenue, combined with production constraints in HVAC, drove a decline of $7.4 million in segment income and a 350 basis point decline in margins. Segment revenue, income and margins reflect the blended impact of acquisitions and lower overall organic revenue. Let's now review the details of our segment results. In our HVAC segment for the quarter, revenues increased 10%, driven largely by our acquisition of Cincinnati Fan and a modest organic increase. While overall demand was strong across our end markets, the impact on our results is moderated by supply chain challenges, primarily in heating and labor in both heating and cooling. Organically, cooling revenue declined modestly with stronger pricing offset by moderate decline in volume. Heat revenue grew solidly with strong revenue and strong growth in revenue largely due to pricing, partially offset by lower electrical heating volume and revenue. Adjusted segment income and margin decreased by $2.4 million and 240 basis points. As mentioned, while managing these constraints remains a critical factor in our full year performance, we have seen and continue to see some improvement in both areas. In Detection & Measurement, revenues were up 2.2% year-over-year. The acquisitions of Sealite and ECS drove a 10.3% increase, while organic revenues declined 7%. We also experienced a higher-than-typical currency impact due to the strengthening U.S. dollar, a 1% translation headwind. As we indicated would be the case, the decline in organic revenue was due to the timing of Comtech project shipments and lower ULC revenues. Even so, the performance for Q1 exceeded our expectations due to strong locator sales and early delivery of transportation projects initially anticipated for midyear. Adjusted segment income decreased $5 million, while margins decreased 480 basis points due to the lower revenue, particularly the timing of contact projects, which carry high incremental margins. For the remaining quarters of the year, we continue to expect higher year-on-year segment income. Overall, we continue to see significant demand in both our run rate and project businesses. We see the primary driver of full year results for the Detection & Measurement segment being the timing of project orders and shipments. Turning now to our financial position at the end of the quarter. Our balance sheet remains strong, and we continue to have more cash than debt. Notable cash uses this quarter included a $42 million acquisition of ITL, strategic investments in inventory associated with managing supply chain constraints and various other items associated with discontinued operations and reducing our exposure to legacy liabilities. For the full year, we continue to anticipate a solid free cash flow performance with the bulk of cash generated in the second half of the year. Overall, our balance sheet and available liquidity place us in a strong position to continue our organic and inorganic growth initiatives. As a reminder, we have a $100 million share repurchase authorization. We have in place a program under which we may engage when appropriate and opportunistic share repurchases included on the open market as part of our capital allocation policy. Moving on to guidance. We have updated our full year 2022 guidance to reflect the ITL acquisition, which we anticipate will add approximately $0.05 per share to EPS based on nine months ownership. While our prior guidance included a modest amount of direct roughly trained revenue exposure, we have removed this from our current guidance, offset by better operational execution trends. We now estimate adjusted earnings per share in the range of $2.55 to $2.85. This represents an increase of about 16% at the midpoint, $2.70 compared with 2021 adjusted EPS of $2.33. As a reminder, we have approximately $270 million of cash on the balance sheet. If we use our cash to repay debt, our midpoint EPS would be approximately $0.11 per share higher. As always, you can find modeling considerations in the appendix of our presentation. We have made some modest adjustments to interest costs, tax rate and other factors. Together, these have no material effect on our net results. I will now turn the call back to Gene for a review of our end markets and his closing comments.