Good morning all. My name is Lydia, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to Timken's First Quarter Earnings Release Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Ms. Elmblad, you may begin your conference.

Thanks, Lydia, and welcome, everyone, to our first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. This is Meghan Elmblad, Interim Manager of Investor Relations for The Timken Company. We appreciate you joining us today. Before we begin our remarks this morning, I want to point out that we have posted presentation materials on the company's website that we will reference as part of today's review of the quarterly results. You can also access this material through the download feature on the earnings call webcast link. With me today are The Timken Company's President and CEO, Rich Kyle; and Phil Fracassa, our Chief Financial Officer. We will have opening comments this morning from both Rich and Phil before we open up the call for your questions. During the Q&A, I would ask that you please limit your questions to one question and one follow-up at a time to allow everyone a chance to participate. During today's call, you may hear forward-looking statements related to our future financial results, plans and business operations. Our actual results may differ materially from those projected or implied due to a variety of factors, which we describe in greater detail in today's press release and in our reports filed with the SEC, which are available on the timken.com website. We have included reconciliations between non-GAAP financial information and its GAAP equivalent in the press release and presentation materials. Today's call is copyrighted by The Timken Company and without expressed written consent, we prohibit any use, recording or transmission of any portion of the call. With that, I would like to thank you for your interest in The Timken Company, and I will now turn the call over to Rich.

Thanks, Meghan. Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. Timken delivered a solid first quarter with organic revenue in line with the industrial market conditions and strong margin performance. Our results continue to demonstrate the strength and diversity of Timken's portfolio and the successful execution of our strategy. Revenue was down 9% organically from last year's record first quarter, driven by the significant decline in wind energy in China that began mid last year. To frame up the impact of wind, organic revenue would have been down less than 4%, excluding wind. I'll talk more about wind in a moment. While organic revenue increased around 8% sequentially from the fourth quarter. We attribute that to normal seasonality. In aggregate, we didn't see any significant strengthening of markets or orders to start the year. Across that 4%, most other markets were down as the softness that started in the second half of last year continued through the first quarter. Notable exceptions included aerospace, rail services in India, all of which were up from prior year. Including acquisitions and currency, revenue was down less than 6%. First quarter cash flow was seasonably weak, but this will increase through the year, and we remain confident in the cash generation of the business. EBITDA margins of 20.7% were down just 30 basis points from last year despite the organic revenue decline. There were several contributing factors to margins that I'd like to highlight. First, we have made significant progress over the last decade to diversify and steadily improve The Timken portfolio, which continues to result in greater performance in both the top and bottom lines. This includes the 6 acquisitions we completed last year, which contributed positively to the results in the quarter. Second, we are benefiting from our investments in operational…

Okay. Thanks, Rich, and good morning, everyone. For the financial review, I'm going to start on Slide 10 of the presentation materials, with a summary of our solid first quarter results, which further demonstrate the strength of Timken's business model and earnings power through dynamic environments. We posted revenue of just under $1.2 billion in the quarter, down 5.7% from last year. First quarter adjusted EBITDA margin came in at 20.7%, down only 30 basis points year-over-year. We delivered adjusted earnings per share of $1.77 in the quarter. Turning to Slide 11. Let's take a closer look at our first quarter sales performance. Organically, sales were down 9.2% from last year as continued positive pricing was more than offset by lower demand across multiple sectors, with wind energy experiencing the most significant decline in the quarter. If we exclude the decline in wind energy, our organic revenue would have been down less than 4%. Looking at the rest of the revenue walk. The impact from the 6 acquisitions we completed last year, net of the one divestiture contributed 4 percentage points of growth to the top line while foreign currency translation was a slight negative in the quarter. On the right-hand side of the slide, you can see organic growth by region, which excludes both currency and net acquisition impact. Let me comment briefly on each region. In the Americas, our largest region, we were down 4% against last year's strong first quarter. Most sectors were lower year-over-year, led by off-highway, while services and aerospace were both notably up. In Asia Pacific, we were down 21%, driven by China, which saw the significant decline in wind energy that Rich talked about earlier. This was partially offset by double-digit growth in India, on strong rail and industrial demand. And finally, we…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Bryan Blair of Oppenheimer.

Solid start to the year, certainly better than many feared. I'd like to start off, if we can, on industrial distribution trends and outlook, just given the needle moving influence of those exposures? And how did the orders stay through Q1 versus typical seasonality? What's the current view of channel inventory relative to demand? And how does that influence Q2 expectations and the potential range of outcomes in the back half.

Yes. I think, I would say, distribution in the markets that maybe played out slightly stronger than we would have expected, but pretty close to in line, a nice step-up from Q4 to Q1, which is pretty normal seasonality and down modestly year-on-year. Inventory in the channel where we have visibility, flattish to down a little bit. So doing what we would hope is generally much less cyclical than the OEM side of it and the MRO side stays stronger, although we do get hit with inventory. So I think played out modestly down would be the way to phrase it, and as you look forward, we're largely looking for that trend to continue through the course of the year.

Yes. Maybe just a couple of other comments, Bryan. So we did -- on the back of a modestly down performance in Q1, we did take up the outlook for distribution, as you'll note in the market share to relatively neutral for the full year now, and that's again off the back to Q1 and the order book as it exists today, as well as probably, as Rich said, still expecting a little bit of destock, but less than what we were anticipating back in February. So that was certainly a driver of the improved outlook as well.

Yes. And first quarter was the toughest comp and Q2 is also a fairly difficult comp and then the full year comps get easier in the second half.

Understood. Appreciate the color. And then 2023 was obviously an active year for your M&A strategy and clearly quite successful in the margin performance that was cited is impressive. I'm not going to ask for an update on all 6 deals, but it would be great to hear quick updates on integration and performance first deal model for your relatively larger bolt-ons of Nadella, Des-Case and Lagersmit, and as a natural follow-up, how is your team feeling about the current pipeline and the potential to sustain deal momentum this year?

Yes. Maybe I'll split them into 2 groups. There was the heavier integration, which would be ARB into the bearing business, Nadella and Rosa Sistemi into the linear business. So a lot of integration there. You look -- unless a year later, sales teams are fully integrated management teams, largely integrated, margins up significantly in ARB, some of the cost -- a lot of cost improvement with Nadella and a little less with [indiscernible] was later in the year, but -- there as well, but being more offset by the negative impact of volume within that space, but those that had a heavy cost element have gone very well, and I'd say probably ahead of the curve on cost. Those that have more of a revenue play, which will be Lagersmit, Des-Case and iMECH and a little lighter on the operational integration, some market headwinds, but again, diversification of markets, Lagersmit, very different market mix for us with marine OEM as well as aftermarket and had a really good first quarter and Des-Case as well on the revenue side held up. Again, I'll say better than where we serve the large capital equipment markets that tend to be shorter cycle. The second part of the question was outlook. And as I said in my comments, we have a bias to M&A. We certainly have the capacity to do it. We still are primarily focused on somewhere between bolt-ons and tuck-ins. And nothing to report, but an active pipeline. We've completed an acquisition every year, I think, for 14 or 15 years and no reason as we sit here in May that we would think that we wouldn't be able to extend that street, but nothing to commit to at this point.

Our next question comes from Steve Barger of KeyBanc.

Rich, congratulations. You'll finally have time to explore all that Northeast Ohio has to offer.

Thanks, Steve. I look forward to you hosting me.

Anytime. You talked about how the current diversification helped maintain margin despite revenue being down. If we end up in a low growth environment next year, what percentage of the portfolio is facing secular growth drivers like renewable, automation, reshoring or however you define secular? I'm just trying to get a sense of sustainability of revenue in a low growth environment.

Yes. I think I don't have the pie chart in front of me, but modest renewable as of last year was still our largest market, automation, pretty close behind. The infrastructure spend covers a lot of markets in off-highway. And I think I wouldn't say there's enough of a secular trend there to offset the cyclicality as we've seen from our large global off-highway customers. There are -- we are experiencing a down market in that space, but I think they're all very confident on the long-term trend there. And then the dispense side for us typically is not particularly high growth, but holds up really well. It was a really good contributor in 2020 during COVID when the market [indiscernible], I guess that one [ shot ] we had out on the newer markets was north of 30%, I believe, yes, do you have in front of you, Phil.

Yes, it's about 29%.

29%.

Yes, I was just going to add, Steve, just the work we've done to diversify the markets across renewable, automation, industrial services that we talked about marine, food and beverage, passenger rail, the infrastructure activity from a direct and indirect standpoint, quite frankly, the green energy, we feel really -- and not to mention aerospace, which isn't a newer market, but it's certainly a positive momentum market right now, and we think long term will be a really strong market for us. So we do feel like the diversification is improving probably with each deal we do, quite frankly, and is helping us this year and I think will help us next year as well.

So just to clarify, if we step back from China wind and just think about the portfolio going forward without trying to predict industrial production, you think you're in a position to outgrow IP.

Yes. It's certainly been our objective would be to outgrow at 100-plus basis points. And I think if you look over from 2016 forward and strip it out to organic, I think we've been pretty close to that.

And last one, sitting here basically in May, can you talk about your confidence level that 3Q is up year-over-year on an organic basis? I mean is that basically a lock in your mind given the easier comp and how you see end markets? Or is there a risk that we see flat or down growth in 3Q or the back half?

Yes. I would say the outlook, Steve, would really be for -- if you look at second quarter, we're likely to be down high single digits again from an organic perspective and then look for revenue to start to flatten out organically in the back half of the year, just given the easier comps in several sectors. So we're not going to probably sit here today and say we're going to be up or still down in Q3, but I think the general trend would be of our negative 5% organic for the full year, kind of very much first half weighted, down high single digits in the first half and then flattening out or maybe up a little bit overall in the second half. But I probably won't comment on Q3 specifically at this point, but that's kind of what we're planning on.

Our next question comes from Angel Castillo of Morgan Stanley.

This is [ Grace ] on for Angel. I think on Slide 6, you changed your outlook for a number of end markets. So heavy industries were down from high single digits to down mid-single digit and automation from neutral to down mid-single digits. So can you help us unpack that more like what are the underlying drivers that those things might be?

Sure. With respect -- thanks for the question. With respect to heavy industries, we were down just modestly in Q1. And we did continue to see pretty good project spending in Q1 in markets like metals and oil and gas. And so given the first quarter performance and probably a slightly improved outlook for the rest of the year, we did move it from down high to down mid. Keep in mind, heavy industries tend to be late cycle. So then as we stand right now, we do see backlog coming down there. So we're not anticipating an inflection there for the rest of the year. So we'd still expect it to be down for the full year, kind of more or less in line with what it was down in Q1. Relative to automation, I would say a very slight move there, just a couple of hundred basis points just enough for it to move from one column to the other, and that was mainly driven off of Western Europe. A big chunk of the business that we have in automation is serving Western European OEMs. And the situation in Western Europe remains pretty soft, pretty weak overall. So we took it down just slightly, but the main drivers to the 150 basis points of improvement were probably on the positive side, the industrial markets with distribution moving over, aerospace moving over, rail services and then probably the biggest negative would have been renewable energy. It was on the far left to begin with, but it moved even further left, if you will, just given the lower outlook we have for wind today versus back in February.

And then industrial distribution moved up a little bit, and we talked about that one earlier.

Yes. That's very helpful. And also on free cash flow, I think you raised the earnings outlook, but why free cash flow was kept unchanged?

Yes. I think it was just really a view on our part, let's hold the guide typically when we don't take -- we took the outlook up on slightly higher revenue. And as you know, slightly higher revenue carries with it a little bit higher working capital, you may have slightly higher receivables or may need to take out a little less inventory as a result. So it was really more of the puts and takes of the sales, working capital dynamic. And so while we talk about roughly $425 million, a range plus or minus and just felt very confident holding it, like I said, the first quarter was seasonally low, but would expect a meaningful step up Q1 to Q2, frankly, and then a nice improvement even in the back half of the year. And at that level, north of 100% of GAAP net income -- actually north of 110% of GAAP net income, which is what we would typically target at this type of market environment.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Chris Dankert of Loop Capital.

I guess, really nice start to the year here on the SG&A front. Maybe you could just kind of go into a little bit more detail what leverage you kind of pulled there, what is still available to you? And maybe just any kind of comments on what we should be expecting for SG&A as we go forward here on a quarterly basis?

Yes, I'd say certainly some self-help there from a year ago or so starting to capture some attrition, and we really outside of targeted things haven't done any significant reduction. But then on the targeted areas, again, I would say, acquisition integration, our multiyear digital campaign continues to yield benefits of us getting more efficient, taking out overhead, reducing complexity, reducing the number of systems that we have, et cetera. So I would say the combination of those 2 partially offset generally the Industrial Motion segment and most of the acquisitions we look at run a higher SG&A level structurally than the bearings business. So we've generally been mixing towards a higher SG&A, higher gross margin as well structure, but we've done a pretty good job the last year more than offsetting that.

Got it. And then again, similarly on gross margin, obviously, mix played a pretty huge driver from the outperformance perspective there. But just any comments on how to think about gross margin in 2Q, I assume, given that we're still seeing some volume declines that should be down year-over-year just given some of that mix fall off?

Yes. Certainly, from -- as I said, we're looking for revenue to be flattish Q1 to Q2, and we built a little bit of inventory in Q1, and we'd be looking to hold or lower inventory in Q2 and then lower inventory through -- certainly through the course of the year, it takes some inventory out. So from a pure volume standpoint, Q1 and our guide would have been the peak for the year. I think the other thing as you look at the gross margins, and I mentioned this in my comments, starting back in early '20 through at least the first part of '22, very difficult operating conditions from the early days of COVID to a lot of supply chain challenges and a lot of labor challenges, both from COVID and tight labor markets. We've been getting steadily better through all of last year and then into this quarter. The downside of that is our cost comps actually get tougher as the year goes on because we were better in the fourth quarter of last year than we were in the first quarter of last year, but we're still advancing. So I think the pace probably levels off a little bit, but we've got a really good focus on it. So we've got some of that built in. But most of it would be a volume story -- seasonality.

Yes. And the only other thing I'd mention on gross margins, Chris, would be, the acquisitions will tend to mix us up from a gross margin standpoint. So we'll have some nice acquisition benefit again in Q2, which typically mixes us up from a gross margin standpoint. Those businesses tend to be a little more fragmented. They may run a little higher SG&A because they're fragmented, but still accretive on the EBITDA line. But everything else, Rich said, I would agree with. And then as he said, relative to Q2, we would expect sales flattish sequentially. That would imply down all in mid- to high single digits. Organic would be down high single digits on the top line. And then margins and EPS would be expected to be down year-over-year just on the revenue decline and the other factors, Rich talked about, relative to inventory and other things.

There are no remaining questions at this time. So I'll turn the call back to Ms. Meghan Elmblad for any closing remarks.

Thanks, Lydia, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. If you have any further questions after today's call, please contact me. Thank you, and this concludes our call.

Thank you for participating in Timken's First Quarter Earnings Release Conference Call. You may now disconnect.