Gene Lowe
Analyst · UBS. Your line is open
Thanks Mark. Now I’ll touch on some of the highlights from the quarter and provide some perspective on our 2023 guidance. Our Q4 results exceeded our expectations with strong performances in both HVAC and Detection & Measurement. Both segments drove revenue and margin growth, and we continue to experience solid demand across our end markets. During the quarter, we made further progress on a number of our key initiatives, including the establishment of ESG commitments, additional progress in our digital and continuous improvement initiatives and a significant reduction in legacy liability exposure. Looking ahead, we are starting 2023 with a historically high level of backlog. We are also seeing some easing of supply chain and labor constraints, which along our continuous improvement, along with our continuous improvement initiatives, is benefiting our operational execution. Today, we are providing 2023 guidance for adjusted EPS in the range of $3.30 to $3.55, which reflects approximately 10% growth at the midpoint. Turning to our high level results, for the quarter, both segments helped drive strong organic revenue growth of more than 18% and our recent acquisitions performed well. Adjusted operating income grew 48% year-on-year with 290 basis points of margin expansion. On a full year basis, adjusted operating income grew 39%. I am very pleased with our Q4 and full year performance as well as our momentum entering 2023. Despite mixed macroeconomic data, we believe our diverse portfolio remains resilient with significant capital availability and active acquisition pipeline and multiple organic growth and margin enhancement initiatives, I am confident in our ability to deliver on our SPX 2025 plan. As always, I’d like to touch on our progress in our value creation framework. As you look back over 2022, our teams worked hard to mitigate supply chain and labor constraints, leveraging our business system to meet strong levels of customer demand. We introduced multiple new products, made progress on our key initiatives and reduced complexity and risk by divesting our legacy asbestos liabilities. I am also very proud of our momentum on our ESG initiative. SPX is well positioned to thrive in a Paris accord world where long-term targets on carbon emissions are realized. From our highly efficient cooling towers to our inspection equipment that helps tech and remediate leaks and underground water and gas pipes, SPX offers a wide array of innovative products that enable a safer, more efficient and sustainable future. In 2022, we more formally incorporated ESG as a key element of our strategic planning process for each business unit, significantly expanded our disclosures, adopted a human rights policy and saw considerable increases in our scores among key ESG rating entities. Recently, we adopted company-wide sustainability commitments, including a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions intensity by 2030. We’re also named by Newsweek as one of America’s most responsible companies. We are honored to be recognized and pleased with the hard work of our team is being acknowledged. Another area where we have strong momentum is in our digital initiative. As the new name of our company reflects, it is more important than ever to leverage technology solutions to help our customers continue to be successful. Each of our platforms is focused on providing innovative designs, products and tools to enable our customers to be more efficient, productive, safer and more sustainable. A few examples of where we continue to see customer traction include our Pro Tools tech app within our HVAC heating business, which helps field technicians become hydronics experts by putting our boiler product information at their fingertips in a mobile platform. In 2022, we took market share in boilers, and we believe that our digital initiatives were a key reason for this success. In our cooling business, our CoolSpec software is enabling customers to compare, select and configure highly engineered cooling solutions faster and easier than ever before. In Detection & Measurement, we’re seeing strong adoption of Genfare Link, our modular cloud-hosted fare processing platform, which provides valuable data and analytics and efficient management of transportation networks. With Genfare Link transportation authorities can now offer account-based rider management, website and portal support and customer service functions all in one place. At this point, we have won more than 50 accounts on Genfare Link, and our CS branded net software platform continues to develop new ways to drive efficient management of critical infrastructure, in municipal water authorities, including the use of AI to prescreen potential areas of concern and the ability to geotag maintenance priorities with LiDAR-enabled robotics. I will now turn the call to Mark to review our financial performance.