Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE:BW) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Lou Salamone: No, that’s consistent with what we’re experiencing at this point in time. So we expect the thermal business to continue to perform as well as it has. It just hasn’t been hit by any decreases as much as people sometimes predicted the thermal business will be hit.

Rob Brown: Great. Thank you. I will turn it over.

Kenny Young: Thanks, Rob.

Lou Salamone: Thanks, Rob.

Operator: The next question comes from Brent Thielman with D.A. Davidson. Brent, please go ahead.

Brent Thielman: Hey, thanks. Good morning. Ken, I think, you guys have taken a lot of internally to address some of these supply chain issues, which should be out this year. But can you help us sort of better understand this kind of $30 million plus bridge on guidance from 2022-23. Is that sort of assume no further degradation in margins or delays related to supply chain. And then the remainder is essentially a ramp up on new work booked and kind of normalization your short-cycle business, just kind of wanted to parse that bridge out?

Kenny Young: Yeah. No, it’s a great question. So what we did was we took basically the current state of the supply chain, which was impactful, obviously, in our objectives in ’22. But we just normalize that out in our forecast. So when we look at the business, we just assume that the supply chain, timing and processes and everything that we faced or just booked into our normal aspects. So again, as I mentioned before, I mean there’s certain things that take 30 to 45 days to get it from a part standpoint and how they take longer, that — we just incorporated that in our planning processes. So now is where we’re looking at the parts and services business and we are booking the revenues and when those revenues would be realized from a margin perspective.

There is some added time to that, but it’s baked into our forecast and calculations. So the best way I can describe is, we’ve just — we’ve normalized that meaning — we just incorporated that level of supply chain aspects and said, that’s just normal course. And now our forecasts are based on that going forward and again if it improves, if things go back to where it was. I don’t have any — we don’t have any signs here that says, hey, it’s going to go back to where it was. But if it does start to improve and that would only bring improvements to our bottom line and top line as well. But right now we just kind of baked in that and say, hey, this is just the way it’s going to be, let’s build the — let’s make sure we manage the business accordingly, forecast the business quarterly.

And so, that’s all baked into those numbers.

Brent Thielman: Okay. I mean it’s seemingly — it does, I mean, seemingly should have pretty good top-line growth, all the new work you booked. Are you assuming that you can see some margin expansion, as well this year at this point or is it too early to say, given all those supply chain factors?

Kenny Young: I would say, this way, I think there’s potential out there across the board for margin expansion and it’s too early to say that to give any guidance as we say, we see specific ways that could happen. Clearly, there is potential for that and we’ll see how it shakes out as we go forward, but those opportunities are there. So we’ll keep an eye on it, but I wouldn’t say anything right now that we can give any concrete guidance to.