Earnings Labs

WESCO International, Inc. (WCC)

Q1 2022 Earnings Call· Thu, May 5, 2022

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Hello and welcome to today's WESCO's First Quarter earnings call. [Operator Instructions] I would now hand the conference call I about to Will [Indiscernible] Director of Investor Relations to begin, Will over to you

William Ruthrauff

Analyst

Thank you and good morning everyone. Before we get started I want to remind you that certain statements made on this call contain forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance and by their nature are subject to inherent uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Please see our webcast slides as well as the Company's SEC filings for additional risk factors and disclosures. Any forward-looking information relayed on this call speaks only as of this date, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update the information to reflect the changed circumstances. Additionally, today we will use certain non-GAAP financial measures. Required information about these non - non-GAAP measures is available on our webcast slides and in our press release, both of which are posted on our website @ wesco.com. On the call this morning, we have John Engel, that's the Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer and David Schulz, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Now, I'll turn the call over to John.

John Engel

Analyst

Well, thank you, Will. And good morning, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be with you. Our first quarter results speak volumes about WESCO's foundation for accelerating growth and profitability. After delivering exceptional performance in 2021, we're off to an either more impressive start in 2022. Once again, we have outperformed the market and we achieved new company records for sales, profitability, and Backlog. Each of our three global business units delivered double-digit sales and profit growth, with results that are now well above 2019 pre -pandemic levels. We also continued to our rapid de-levering, which now stands at 3.6 times adjusted EBITDA compared to 5.7 times when we closed the Anixter acquisition just seven quarters ago. This is by far the strongest quarter since the new WESCO was formed by the transformational combination of WESCO and Anixter in June of 2020. With each quarter the power of WESCO has increased scale, expanded portfolio, and industry-leading positions becomes more evident as we build momentum and deliver superior value to all of our customers. As a result of our expanding start to the year and the accelerating momentum across our business, we're substantially raising our outlook for 2022 as well as increasing our cumulative sales synergy target through the end of 2023. Importantly, we are continuing to invest in our digital transformation effort, which will raise WESCO to an even higher level of performance, operating efficiency, and customer loyalty. Overall, our results continue to prove the extraordinary value of the WESCO Anixter combination and point to a future of sustained growth and market out-performance. Dave will review our financial results and address our substantially higher full-year outlook in more detail shortly. But before I hand it off the Dave, I wanted to address three additional items. First, it's the WESCO results versus…

David Schulz

Analyst

Thanks, John. And good morning. I'll start on Slide 9 with a summary of our first quarter results compared to the prior year. As John mentioned, first quarter sales were a record and exceeded our expectations. We had anticipated sales would decline sequentially versus the fourth quarter consistent with our normal seasonal pattern. Sequentially, organic sales were essentially flat from Q4 and up 21% from the prior year, as we experienced an acceleration of sales in the second half of the quarter. The primary driver of this difference relative to our expectations were stronger demand, more cross-sell revenue was recorded in the quarter, and an increased benefit from price. On a reported basis, sales were up 22%. Currency in last year's required Canadian divestitures were a combined 80 basis points headwind to growth, offset by the benefit of an extra workday, which added 160 basis points to sales. We estimate pricing added approximately 8 points to sales growth in the quarter, which primarily benefited our EEF and UBS businesses. Pricing in the CSS business was a low single-digit benefit versus the prior year. Supply chain challenges have continued to impact certain pockets of our business. We believe our sales growth could have been 1% to 2% points higher if we were able to secure additional products from our suppliers to meet demand. We continue to strategically invest in our inventories in the quarter to address these challenges, as well as support our strong pipeline of sales growth opportunities. Backlog reached another record level this quarter and was up 25% sequentially from December, and up more than 9% from the prior year. Each business unit posted sequential Backlog increases of more than 20% from the fourth quarter and increases of at least 70% above the prior year. As we start the…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Please limit your questions to one question and one follow-up. Out first question comes from Deane Dray of RBC Capital Markets.

Deane Dray

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Operator

Operator

Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Deane Dray

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. And congrats on an exceptionally strong quarter.

John Engel

Analyst

Morning, Deane.

Deane Dray

Analyst

I got a couple, a near-term and medium-term question, if I could. So near-term, given the supply chain challenges that your manufacturing suppliers are feeling, and Dave commented about those uncertainties. And you could have shipped another one or two percentage points higher if it weren't for some of those disruptions, can you comment on product availability and fill rates in the quarter and how you are set up for a second quarter?

John Engel

Analyst

Yeah, being -- I couldn't be more pleased with our partnership with our suppliers. You get very strong partnerships. There are clearly supply chain challenges, but it’s our view that it's our job, that being WESCO as a leading B2B distributor, to manage then for -- manage the supply chain challenges on behalf of and to the benefit of our customers. With respect to our operating KPIs we're maintaining very high fill rates and high availability consistent with what we call normal business operation. That's the good news. Our stock inflow business is performing very well. We've strategically added to our inventory to support stock inflow as well as the project business, a large portion of which sits in backlog. In many cases were going to work kit ting, staging, storing different components, modules, and products, and subsystem for full solutions as suppliers ship various pieces to us. And then we put them together as a full solution for our customers. I would tell you, despite the challenges throughout the global supply chain, all our operational KPIs are tracking very well consistent with our historically high levels. And I think clearly we're seeing the benefits of how we've been managing the supply chain with our selective investment in inventory, as well as we're seeing the benefit fundamentally of a much stronger, broader set of relationships with our supplier partners. And that's a direct result of the combination of Anixter and WESCO.

Deane Dray

Analyst

That's really helpful. And more of a medium-term or just looking out for the balance of the year you've got to another record Backlog. How does it convert? And can you give us a sense of the implied margins in that Backlog?

John Engel

Analyst

Look, we're -- we're not throttling the Backlog in terms of, if you think about the equation, we have a record opportunity pipeline, our bid activity levels our record levels, and we're securing orders at a higher rate than our out-the-door sales rate. Backlog is growing at a higher rate. That I would characterize as the highest class challenge we can have as a business. It's exceptionally good thing. Eventually we'll reach the point where as supply chain challenges continue to improve, that will start executing at a higher shipping rates against what that built up Backlog is. But we -- it's not our intent and it's not our plan to have the input side of that equation slowed down. We're aggressively trying to continue to win new orders and drive execution of our bids, and we couldn't be more pleased with our cross-sell execution and the wins we're putting on the board. Relative to margins, we do track margin rate of the Backlog and those margin rates are increased. So we've -- they are up. I won't say by how much, but the good news is, the trend of the margins in the backlog has been increasing consistent with how we've been expanding and increasing our gross margins for the overall -- for our reported results.

Deane Dray

Analyst

That's great. And if I could just sneak one more question in, I really like Page 6 and all the multiple long-term drivers. And on the right-hand side, this is something you would not have seen in West Coast previously, but it's there now. can you expand on the point on unlocking the value of West Coast big data? I'm sure this is part of the digital transformation, but what color can you provide?

John Engel

Analyst

I have talked a little bit about this only briefly in our last few earnings calls. And it's something that could do adjust as we need to really spend a lot more quality time on it with all of you, our investors and learn to cover the company. That is our plan, Deane, in our Investor Day that we are going to conduct later this year. It'll be our first Investor Day since 2019. I'll be our first Investor Relations gathering -- getting together. But just to address your question directly, we're in the midst of very aggressive and comprehensive digital transformation effort. And it is our digital applications that are going to unlock the power of our big data. Our big data really is, if you think about it, we have significantly more data on our customers, their operations, their demand profiles, what products go with what in what sequence. The current state of their operations and what needs to be upgraded. What needs to be maintained, and at what cadence. We have significantly more data than our supplier partners have. Because the majority of our supplier partners’ sales go through distribution. It is one of our top assets of the corporation that doesn't show up as an asset on the balance sheet explicitly. So one of the things that was incredibly important to us, and we have been working on this for years, pre - Anixter, and Anixter was working on that. We're putting in place a new, refined and expansive master data management construct. Both companies have the working on that. When we put the two companies together, one of our top priorities is getting both respective companies big data and putting it into one world-class data lake. And we've done that. So we're at the point…

Deane Dray

Analyst

All sounds good, thank you.

John Engel

Analyst

Thanks, Deane.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Sam Darkatsh of Raymond James. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Sam Darkatsh

Analyst

Good morning, John. Good morning, Dave. How are you?

John Engel

Analyst

Good morning.

David Schulz

Analyst

Thanks.

Sam Darkatsh

Analyst

Fantastic start to the year, obviously. Dave, two questions for you, if I could. Within the 80% free cash flow conversion assumption, are you assuming that you've finally reached where you'd like to be for inventory by year end? I mean in other words; at what point do you imagine that you're going to be returning to a normal 100% conversion rate.

David Schulz

Analyst

We have assumed that we get back to a typical inventory levels to support the demand. And obviously, we are facing supply chain challenges. We talked about that, every company is dealing with it. We're aggressively going after inventory where and when we can. But right now our assumption is that as we see that typical seasonal quarterly pattern for sales, we would expect that our fourth quarter sales and requirement for inventory would also come down to those typical levels and return back to a typical inventory levels to support our customer requirements.

Sam Darkatsh

Analyst

Got you. And then my second question. Looking at the incremental guidance both in the guidance raise, the increase. It looks like you're raising guidance by roughly a $3 billion in sales and about $210 million in EBITDA. And that change is about a 16%, 17% incremental margin. And you're not changing your synergies. So what I guess I'm getting at is, is that what we should be looking at for the organization's incremental margin on a go-forward basis, organically, assuming high single low double-digit type growth rates? Is that the new normal for WESCO? Because I'm guessing that's quite a bit higher than many people have baked into their models.

David Schulz

Analyst

And that's what we've talked about in some of our previous earnings call. The simplest way to think about our incremental margin, particularly within a year, is take that as the gross margin. Lastly additional variable costs that is required to support those incremental sales so that's roughly four to five points. So again, within this current year, we believe that we can handle that incremental volume within our current fixed cost base. So that's one of the other key drivers of that the benefits that we're seeing with the increased guide that seeing that incremental margin in 2022. As we continue to grow the company, we are always focused on driving additional synergies from supply chain and our field of operations. Those are built into our out-year expectations. Again, we've not changed our cost synergies for the year, so net-net, our incremental margin from the guidance is the right way to think about it going forward.

Sam Darkatsh

Analyst

The reason why I'm bringing that up is there was already kind of high teens incremental assumed for the year inclusive of the synergies. That was the rationale for the question. So you're saying that even exclusive of the synergies going forward, we're still looking at a mid to high teens incremental?

David Schulz

Analyst

That's correct. In the near-term.

John Engel

Analyst

And Sam, you're also seeing the effect of the increased operating leverage, particularly with cross-sell, when you think about the think about the dynamics of cross-sell, the dynamics that could -- because there was much less overlap between your two respective customer basis bases of Anixter and WESCO. And the portfolios were more complimentary than we thought. When you think about the ability to execute well against cross-sell, it's not like we have to add anywhere near the normal rate of incremental resources. They get that incremental sales growth. So that's providing an additional seller to the margin pull-through.

Sam Darkatsh

Analyst

Got you. And if I can speak one more in. It looks like most of your synergies that you recognized in the quarter were in field Ops in G&A, a little bit of supply chain. It looks like most of them were field Ops and G&A. At what point -- for the incremental synergies for the rest of the year, at what point do we start to see them filter through cost of sales is as opposed to SG&A?

David Schulz

Analyst

We should begin seeing some of those supply chain benefit of our cost synergies in 2022. And again, some of that is negotiating into stock costs with our suppliers, it also includes our supplier volume rebates. So we would anticipate that as we continue to grow, that there would be incremental benefit and we would recognize some of those cost synergies here in the current year.

Sam Darkatsh

Analyst

Terrific stuff. I'll defer to others. Thanks again.

David Schulz

Analyst

Thanks, Sam.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from David Manthey from Baird. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

David Manthey

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

John Engel

Analyst

Good morning.

David Schulz

Analyst

Good morning.

David Manthey

Analyst

First question on pacing and seasonality. Hi, John. Seasonality and pacing tier of the EBITDA, usually your EBITDA margin percentage is lowest in the first quarter and then goes higher in the second and third. And based on the guidance, if you look, there's a little bit less seasonality there and I'm wondering if you could just talk about the -- that normal uptick from first to second quarter and what's different this year that's it's a little bit less than normal and it's still obviously good but based on your guidance it looks like it's not coming up a full percentage point or something that's coming up less than that. Could you just talk about the factors?

David Schulz

Analyst

Certainly, as we think about our sales profile by quarter, and we would anticipate that our Q2 and Q3 sales would be up sequentially versus Q1 and one of the things from an EBITDA margin profile, we anticipate that our SG&A on a dollar basis would also increase primarily because April 1 is when we pay out merit increases. So our salaries, wages, benefits will go up effective the beginning of the second quarter. But based on the expected top-line growth sequentially, we would anticipate that we would get adjusted EBITDA margin expansion sequentially, Q1 to Q2. And then given the seasonality when sales come down in the fourth quarter, we would give back some of that adjusted EBITDA margin, just given that we still have the same SG&A costs to support the sales.

Sam Darkatsh

Analyst

Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Second, if I heard you right, Dave, you mentioned that price in CSS is low single-digits. Does that imply that EEF and UBS are low double-digits or high single digit, I couldn't find your point on that? And then just the last part of this gross margin question, could you talk about the magnitude by which inventory gains or temporary timing of price increases over lower-cost inventory is helping gross margin to whatever extent to measure that.

David Schulz

Analyst

Certainly, so on the pricing question at the enterprise level, we noted that we have approximately eight points of benefit to our sales growth. As we said, that would imply that both EEF and UBS are low double-digit offsetting what we saw within our CSS business, low-single-digit, so you're absolutely right in the way that you're thinking about that. It is very clear that we are getting the benefit of inflation, but again its very, very difficult to call that out. What I would point to is, we are continuing to get the benefit of our gross margin improvement program. And that has continued to get traction across our combined company. And when you take a look back at some of the legacy reaped with Anixter's results pre -merger, in a relatively low pricing environment they were able to get significant gross margin expansion. As we've talked about in the past, we've deployed that now across our entire company, and we're still in the early stages of getting the benefit of that across the legacy WESCO businesses. And again one of the key components of that is ensuring that we are effectively passing through price increases to our customers and getting paid for the value. And so we do expect that we will continue to see the benefits of the gross margin improvement program. It’s very, very difficult for us to call out the differential between price to customer versus our average with inventory cost. It’s very difficult to calculate that and provide you any quantitative answer there.

David Manthey

Analyst

Yeah. Very good. Alright, thank you very much. Good luck.

John Engel

Analyst

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nigel Coe of Wolfe Research. Your line is open, please go ahead.

Nigel Coe

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning.

John Engel

Analyst

Good morning, Nigel.

Nigel Coe

Analyst

Good morning. Good morning, John. I've really liked the new logo. I didn't see the A in W so I'll let it point that out to me. So I want to come back to just very quickly the margin seasonality point because just going back in time, 1Q, margins and normally the weakest of the year, and normally below the full year. So are we just pointing to weaker seasonality than normal and how much of this conservatism we're one quarter into a pretty uncertain time. This is -- there is some known headwinds coming up. Maybe that's supply of price increases, etc. anymore color that'll be helpful.

John Engel

Analyst

I would -- we're not going to -- we're not going to guide the guide, Nigel, we won't do that. But with that said, if you look at supplier price increases, let me touch upon that point versus import. When you look at number, quantity, and magnitude advertise, we're not seeing them continue to increase sequentially. So I think we've reached the state where they're still high. Their larger number and are high reflecting the overall higher inflation environment but they're not spiking up. And the reality of this is that we've now posted three quarters in a row of results that are well, well above standard seasonality. We're also posted now seven quarters since we closed this transformational combination of transactions. We think we clearly are building a very strong track record of delivering exceptional results, rapidly de-levering. Still against the backdrop that's challenging. It's a supply constrained value chain. So I think what you see there, we were thrilled, literally thrilled with the strong results in Q1. It comes on the heels of the Q4 and a Q3. And the second half of last year that was well better than normal seasonality and capped off an exceptional year. And we've raised the guide much more than our deeds, and so I think it does represent very clear confidence in not only the demand environment that we can access and deliver against, but more importantly, and this is really important point. It's the confidence in our execution. So that's the message that you should take away. I mean, if I were to use one word to describe our execution and results, it's they're accelerating.

Nigel Coe

Analyst

No doubt about it. [Indiscernible] And then my quick follow-up is Canada. Can we talk about Canada quickly, [Indiscernible] region, high margin region, we're seeing, some steel point acceleration in Canada, maybe just talk about where we are, in the recovery there, that'd be helpful.

John Engel

Analyst

Yeah. Great question, we have let's go ahead of very strong maybe I'll start here to levels there because I think it's important to remind everyone, because not everyone may fully appreciate, what got a very strong, electrical base business in Canada with from some Utility position that we had built, a few selective acquisitions. But I would say just deep, strong, broad routes as the undisputed leader in electrical distribution and in Canada, pre -acquisition. If you look at what Anixter brought to the table, they brought exceptionally strong wiring cable where they clearly where the category leader in North America and that's their deeper. But they also brought a very strong Utility business that they have bought when they acquired power solutions from H.C. supply. I think if you all know, we went through the regulatory approvals, we had to do some divestitures and we divested the WESCO piece related to utility, as well as data-com. And obviously Anixter tremendous data-com and IP security capability being the global leader. The global leader and clearly as leader in North America as part of being a global leader. So we found that was the foundation. And if you look at what's happening with our Canadian results, they're exceptional. We have outstanding broad-based momentum across our Canadian business. And I would say it’s the complementary nature or the combination of the result of the two portfolios. Cross-sell is contributing to a very large degree. And the secular trends in particular are a positive driver to our results. Across-the-board, all the secular trends we've identified and in particular Broadband and 5G build-out. I mean we're benefiting greatly from everything we've talked about. It’s affecting us in the U.S. and globally. And I will also say this is with our businesses get been diversified significantly or beyond oil and gas since the last oil and gas cycle, and as oil and gas cycles that's only incremental. And we're not seeing that as a meaningful contributor yet, so we're not an oil and gas given whatsoever in terms of that being the driver to our results. Anything that happens in oil and gas in terms of increased capital spending and the like all will be positive incremental to accelerate through our growth. It’s a great question, Nigel. Hopefully I hope to provide the context, but the short answer is, I don't want to go through the context its important. The short answer is, strong and bulk Broadband results that are better above-market.

Nigel Coe

Analyst

Great detail. Thanks, John.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tommy Moll of Stephens. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Tommy Moll

Analyst

Morning, and thanks for taking my questions.

John Engel

Analyst

Good morning, Tom.

David Schulz

Analyst

Morning.

Tommy Moll

Analyst

I believe it was John, a minute ago who mentioned on the gross margin improvement program. You're still in the fairly early innings for realizing the full benefit across the legacy WESCO side of your business, which makes good sense. But I wonder if you could get deeper there. What does -- what is the work that still ahead to realize that full benefit? What does that timeline look like? And what does it involved in terms of any training or initiatives across the Salesforce they needed to deploy?

John Engel

Analyst

The program is developed. The various low-core levers in technique. Our well-defined and honed, and we have extensive training materials that have been deployed through the Salesforce. And again, that was building off of what Anixter had put in place as David mentioned a few minutes ago. And that -- all those training materials were developed internally, we've got a terrific training team that does that work. And one of the major I think drivers of the results too is the refined incentive compensation we put in place for the Salesforce, but we did that effect of two quarters into the merger close. We didn't do that the first of second quarter, but we did a two quarters into the merger close, so now we are basically five quarters into that. Here's the way I would address your point Tom, because I know why you're going there and it's important. How much legs are left on this? We think we have a lot of runway left. So I put a fine point on this. If you look at Anixter reported result before the acquisition close in June of 2020, they had delivered nine plus quarters in a row gross margin expansion. Go look at it. And -- against the distribution peer base, where all the other distributors had flat to declining gross margin. Since we come together as two companies and, I said we weren't going to talk about this much anymore, because we're combined but I will. We still measure Legacy and Legacy WESCO and margin. Every quarter since we've been together they still deliver gross margin expansion. To add those seven quarters to the prior nine, and now WESCO as well as delivered at every quarter. So I mean, that just gives you a little sense. Anixter's four-plus years of running now. And WESCO's essentially less than half of that running. I will tell you, we have a long -- a lot of runway in front of us. And the sales force is just getting better and better and better as doing two things simultaneously. Selling the value of the complete solution offering and our supplier's products with our services wrapped around that. Okay. In conjunction with the cross-sell. Because the cross-sell too, provides more of a one-stop shop. And in today's world, where supply chain integrity, supply chain resilience, it's become a C-suite issue. I can tell you now, the CEOs of our customers are worried about supply chain and never with a C-suite issue. So we provide that supply chain integrity and resilience. And that's valuable. That's incredibly valuable in terms of what it provides to our customers. And that's part of our value priced gross margin improvement program. And the incentive compensation absolutely helps because again, our sales force is getting paid for when they deliver the incremental margin.

Tommy Moll

Analyst

That's very helpful. Thank you. I wanted to follow-up on that cross-sell initiative. It’s a big raise in the target today from 600 to 850. And reflecting back it feels like the cost synergy raises that we saw soon after you closed the merger where every quarter you dug a little deeper and you found more savings opportunities. A similar question on the cross-sell, how far into that process are you into discerning what the odd or the possible is?

John Engel

Analyst

It's a really insightful question because when you think about the cost synergies, and I'm not saying that they're not difficult, but there's certain categories that we got right out of the gate starting day one, week one, month one post acquisition close, and still tough to do. But whereas cross-sell already prove to be the most elusive and most challenging synergy to get in any acquisition you can go look at any. All deals that are trying to cross all industry value change, it is the hardest thing to get. So we spent a substantial time and energy and including leveraging our integration and consulting partner in putting together the recipe in playbook for that. And they took a couple of quarters to really get that well developed and honed to be clear, and I know we've shared that progress along the way. It really didn't get launched in earnest until early cards at 2020. And look, we had a sales synergy. We put it out in our three-year financial targets when Dave and I went public back in March 2020, well before the deal closed. And the fact that we even had a sales synergy target we committed to we thought was a somewhat strong and aggressive step because these things proved to be the most elusive. And we were banking our most sale dis-synergies of which we've had none. So that's the good news. Looking at what we've done, we've raised it twice now. I will make this strong statement. First of all, there's tons of runway in front of us. Because in the continuum of learning how to really leverage cross-sell, this is a multiyear effort, and we're in the early stages. With that said, I will make a very strong point. It's proving to be probably the most single strongest value creation driver of the combination. Yes, we delivered the cost synergies and they are there. We basically fundamentally re-engineered our cost structure to a lower cost structure and where we've combined through Fortune 500 companies coming together. We have margin expansion, yes, we're getting across gross margin. It’s terrific, but I will tell you this is proving to be the biggest driver and these are very substantial numbers. And we're very disciplined with how we track it and count back. I couldn't feel -- actually of all the things we've done I feel the best about that. And we've got tremendous runway in front of us. This is what gives us the great confidence on. It's a big part of our beat and raises over the last five quarters, quite frankly, they're substantial around us shifting into a growth company.

Tommy Moll

Analyst

Thanks, John. I appreciate it, and I'll turn it back.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Ken Newman of KeyBanc. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Ken Newman

Analyst

Hey, good morning and thanks for squeezing me in here.

John Engel

Analyst

Yes. Good morning, Ken.

Ken Newman

Analyst

John, you said WESCO is transitioning to a growth company and I know you're more confident in some of the more secular demand trends that you're seeing today. But should we take that to suggest that you think the combined company can drive growth through cycles in ways that neither of the standalone companies could historically.

John Engel

Analyst

Absolutely, yes. I mean, I got big -- I want to take that and amplify three points. If you think about it, the combination of these two Fortune 500 companies, both leaders in their own rate and B2B distribution. So combined, absolutely undisputed leadership, which gives us scale benefits, number 1. Number 2, the portfolio, the combined portfolio was highly complementary and the amount of customer at overlap was minimal. You put those two together irrespective of the addressable market, which I'll come to as the third Point. And what we have is a much stronger enterprise that is able to drive fundamentally higher organic sales growth rates. And I've made this statement. It only gets proven out when we continue to post the point on the scoreboard. But this is seven quarters in a row. Okay. And I've made a statement that we have mix shifted the company up to a higher growth profile. We're more secular, not cyclical. I would argue those two factors together are driving an inherently higher organic growth structure and entitlement of the enterprise. And we're seeing that and the car sale is a big contributor I mentioned. Lay on top of that, the addressable markets and the secular trends that we don't control but the combined portfolio it helps position against those. We could not have put together a stronger portfolio that's lined up with these secular growth trends. And these are long-term secular, not cyclical. And I think that represents a major accelerate on top of the growth that I just thought talked about. So we had the confidence, but we had to show we could. But you look at the momentum is doing FYE said the one upward revert to describe this quarter to sell it to accelerate it.

Ken Newman

Analyst

Great now that makes sense. For my follow-up here and you'll obviously exchange, there is, some broader concerns about rising Interest rates here. I know you have one of your large turbines becoming callable at more attractive, price here starting in June but, just any commentary about how you're thinking or looking at the capital structure here over the near-term and just a potential upside from lower Interest expense, could drive here or the guidance for’22

David Schulz

Analyst

Yeah right now we've not contemplated any refinancing in our current outlook. We're obviously looking at, the availability of, how we can continue to make our capital structure more efficient. Again, we're monitoring the market, but at this point, we do have very large prepayment penalties if we were to call those notes early and we're balancing any of the arbitrage on the interest rate against those prepayment penalties. So, we're continuing to watch it. But again, at this point, not contemplated in our outlook.

Ken Newman

Analyst

Understood. Thanks for the time.

John Engel

Analyst

Ken, thanks. I'm going to bring the call to a close. We're a few minutes past the hour. I know we have a few more folks in the queue and we will absolutely follow up with you. I know we have a very robust scheduled calls today and through tomorrow as well. Thank you all for your support. It's very much appreciated. And we look forward to speaking with many of you in the coming days, as well as at our upcoming investor events. The next one is -- that we'll be participating in is the KeyBanc Industrials and Basic Materials Conference next month. Thank you. And have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. That now concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your line.