APi Group Corporation (NYSE:APG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Russell Becker: Well, I mean, obviously, we put forward guidance that we have confidence in being able to deliver based on the conditions that we see in both Western Europe as well as in Asia. Our actual presence in China is small. We have a nice business in Hong Kong that is really seeing robust opportunities in front of it. And the team there is performing very well. It’s a very good team. I actually had the good fortune of visiting them in mid-January. And was just super impressed with the quality of our team there and the level of activity that they’re seeing in the marketplace remains very strong. As it relates to Western Europe, we really have not seen a slowdown. And again, I just point to the end markets that we’re focused on.

I would say that if Andrew White was on the call, he — the one place that he would add color would be pharmaceutical, which is a good base for them and in addition to the other end markets that I talked about earlier. But I also mentioned that right now, we’re going through kind of a rightsizing and optimization project as it relates to the business in general. We have some integration activities going on with overlap between a previous acquisition we made with Western States Fire and Chubb, specifically related to the Benelux area. All of that provides great opportunity for us to get that business optimized and rightsized right now. And then the last thing that I would point you to is that Chubb right now over 60% of their revenue comes from inspection service and monitoring.

And so that business is really from a — when you think about it from a resiliency perspective, is in a really good place.

Unidentified Analyst: Very helpful. And following up on that, like you highlighted strong organic growth in 2022 for Chubb. Can you quantify what that was? And also what the business did in terms of margins? I mean you have like 3% to 5% long-term guidance for growth and around 15% plus for EBITDA margin. So as we think of 2023, should we expect growth in that range and margin to progress towards that 15%-plus target?

Russell Becker: Well, we don’t break out. We shared some information about Chubb at the November investor meeting, but we don’t break out their results separately. But you should — you can count on 3% to 5% organic growth in 2023 in the business and I just also want to point you to the fact that some of that is purposeful on our part in trying to hold that back we have some customer selection opportunities in front of us that we want to make sure that we are taking advantage of as we continue to optimize and right size the business. So you know we are confident that we are going to be sustain that level of organic growth in that business and achieve our margin expansion goals by 2025 I think we share different chubs specifically that margin expansion goal 15%. We have good path and good line of sight into that.

Unidentified Analyst: Got it. And one last one, you talked about FCF conversion improvement here. Can you elaborate on the different levels and the progress you have made there that helps you with the step up in 23 and eventually to get to that 80% target of yours?

Kevin Krumm: Yes, sure. Piyush this is Kevin. Good morning. So when we talked about free cash flow conversion, as we exited this year, started this year exited this year in 2022 and think about 2023 just as remainder we invested a significant amount and working capital rate in the first half of 2022 as we got out and trying to what was strong customer demand and choppy supply chain and so our focus in the back half of the year as we discussed was working that working capital rate investment now. We did, and you saw it in our results especially in the back half of the year they only have in Q4. Traditionally we are going to have a strong Q4 conversion so there is seasonality in our business because of the specialty business that we stepped down there.