Avnet, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVT) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Phil Gallagher: Yeah, thanks, Matt. I’ll let Ken jump in as well. I appreciate the compliment. Yeah, just to reiterate, Europe just remained — continues strong. I mean, December, March, June, it’s back to Ruplu’s first question, it’s been pretty phenomenal. We’re just as company and industry, we’re well positioned there with the industrial home transportation play. And then the Americas has been terrific under Dana’s leadership and the team doing a nice job. As far as seasonality, beyond, we don’t typically guide as you know, into December or March because it is tough to call. There’s a lot of mixed signals, Matt, out there. Been using that term, no pun intended, but there’s so many mixed signals. As I said in the script, I haven’t seen this much complexity in our industry in a long time because there’s still a lot of really good things happening in transportation, even still in charging, in battery, in industrial that’s offsetting some of the other markets.

But again, I want to stick to what I said last quarter. I think it’s a two to three quarter more of an inventory correction. And I think as we get into 2024, we’re going to start seeing some additional growth. December quarter is tough one to call because the East, what’s going to happen in Asia with — starting September, as you know, in October, remember, we start to see an uptick there. And we do think that will happen, that I can say. We do think we’ll see an uptick, a modest uptick, but an uptick in Asia Pac in the — this quarter as well in December.

Matt Sheerin: In December to next — yeah, go ahead.

Ken Jacobson: I’ll just add, we feel pretty good about the $6.3 billion, down 4%. And the good news is there’s still seasonal growth in Asia. We talked about that. And in Europe, it’s a really big holiday period here in the summertime. So when you get into the December quarter, there’s also the Christmas holiday time, and those are maybe going to be more normal than they have been. But still pretty good, pretty healthy about having an outlook of $6 billion per quarter kind of sales levels. We don’t see ourselves dipping below there still is kind of what we commented on last quarter.

Phil Gallagher: Yes. Matt, I think let me just jump — but I think we are going to start seeing some more normal seasonality. Define normal, Matt, in the last three years, right? But I do think we’re going to start to see more of a typical summer quarter in Europe, where we hadn’t seen that in the last several years due to COVID and whatnot. And I think we’ll start seeing more of a typical seasonality coming out of Asia as well.

Matt Sheerin: Got it. Okay. That’s helpful. And then just on the margins, backing into — based on your guide, it looks like gross margin and operating margin will be down sequentially, and it looks like operating margin will be down year-over-year in like the low 4%, 4.1%. And that you talked about some of the headwinds with Farnell and EMEA and North America down. Is there anything else to read into that?

Ken Jacobson: Yeah, Matt, I guess, I’d say that you’ve captured the things, but I’ll kind of frame it for you a little bit more. Think about half of it coming from just the sales decline, right? It’s going to create less gross profit dollars, and we’re not necessarily doing anything different on the cost side. And then you’ve got, let’s say, another 25% of that approximately is coming from just the normal seasonal shift in mix, higher Asia, lower EMEA and then the other 25% is probably coming from the pressure on Farnell. So that’s kind of the right way to size it. There’s always puts and takes on the overall gross margin on EC. But the comment I will make is, we still see year-over-year operating margin expansion in EC with the guidance.