Barnes Group Inc. (NYSE:B) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Thomas J. Hook: Certainly, I’ll give you the macro, Matt, and then Julie can chime in with some more specifics. As you know, post the Associated Spring and Hanggi, that we guided to the first quarter perspective, we have some integration stranded costs that we are [kicking] (ph) out of the business. We have the BTO initiatives that are coming in full force over the course of ’24. We also have the Barnes Aerospace transformation starting to kick in over the second half in particular for savings. That in combination with a very strong commercial portfolio that has really precipitated a lot of orders in the beginning of the year here at Aerospace and sequentially very strong orders trajectory for industrial we are projecting stronger results into the back half of the year, obviously reflecting the — all the benefits of those programs. I’ll let Julie give a little bit more color with regards to how she think that breaks down over the course on a quarterly basis for ’24.

Julie K. Streich: So without giving specific guides by the quarter, I would — we’re expecting that the second quarter will be slightly better than the first quarter, and we would ramp in the second half. And tying back to the question you asked earlier Matt, that’s largely driven by the fact that we are watching how macro-industry supply chain challenges play out in aerospace. The second quarter will allow us time to continue to address the productivity and throughput opportunities we have at specific facilities. And we will continue to see the commercial activities on the industrial side ramp. So as mentioned, if you are thinking about it from a modeling perspective, Q2 will be slightly favorable to Q1 and then we would ramp in the back-half.

Matt Summerville: Got it. And then maybe just digging into Industrial and Aero a little bit deeper. When you think about the organic outlook, mid-teens Aero, low single Industrial. How do the various SBUs kind of revolve around those midpoints, if you will. Can you kind of hit on OE versus the aftermarket categories in Aero and then the three remaining SBUs in Industrial relative to the segment average organic expected, please?

Thomas J. Hook: Certainly, I can give you some qualitative comments, Matt. On Industrial, you’re going to see all the businesses really be fairly close into that target range. We see the effectiveness not necessarily that it is market-driven. We see the effectiveness as the integration of the teams and the rejuvenated commercial market efforts to go to market. So despite some challenging conditions in some of the Industrial markets. We still feel we can grow the underlying businesses. We see the order flow of each of those businesses increasing sequentially in response to those initiatives that we put in place, both the BTO cost savings initiatives, as well as those commercial team initiatives to build the funnel. So I don’t think across industrial, you are going to see much variation across that midpoint of that trajectory.

Aero is a different story. We will see that the aftermarket will continue to be strong, tempered by some supply chain availability at a certain point. Our ability with additional capacity and engagement of the customer on the demand side, we will have some limitations on the supply chain to be able to deliver against that growth. But I do feel that there will be a shift as OEM may have some tempering against that growth the aftermarket will continue to be stronger. And we were expecting that provided we don’t have any limits against the supply chain that it will continue that transition. Of course, there’s a lot of dynamics as we look forward. We will end up having to see what happens with the production output rates in the new aircraft that it could affect that.

But in general, I’d say qualitatively, aftermarket stronger and OEM, just a touch under what our original projections were.

Matt Summerville: Got it. So I want to dig into Molding Solutions for a minute. Can you talk about what you saw from — on a sequential basis, incoming order activity with respect to both hot runners and molds? Can you talk about whether you’ve begun to alleviate some of the capacity constraints you’ve been facing in the Molding Solutions segment? And maybe comment on what lead times there are presently looking like?

Thomas J. Hook: Yes. So in Molding Solutions, there is geographic effect and product line effects. I’ll hit the product line effects first. We see continued strength globally in the multi-cavity molds. We are one of the world’s leader in this. We’ve put additional capacity in place within the Americas, Asia to be able to respond to customer demand. We’ve shortened the lead times down from 50-plus weeks of lead time for complex molds down into the range of 40 weeks, so a significant reduction over the last quarter, which we’re pretty happy with. That helps us believe inventory levels in backlog quite nicely and helps us win new business. Sequentially in the molds-side, we picked up again more business in the first quarter, and our deal funnel is extremely full, and our win rate is healthy.

So overall, across the globe, from a market standpoint, the multi-cavity molds is strong. Hot runners, asymmetric. We have done a really nice job of stabilizing that business and recovering the deal funnel — commercial deal funnel for sales in EMEA and also now in Asia, particularly China. The new commercial leadership teams in place in molding solutions have been very effective at stabilizing the business and winning in those markets. Those markets are not particularly strong in terms of the recovery. So this is more of an internal commercial market excellence initiative that is really driving these results to the integrated consolidate, rationalize initiative. But in the [MDA] (ph) in China, we definitely feel that the implementation of the initiatives has been positive traction.

We still have work to do in the Americas, as we move forward, where we see still kind of not great market conditions. We are not expecting anything — any uptick, but we still have changes to make in the Americas and we are implementing those changes actively already, and we’re expecting to be able to turn the Americas around by the mid-year point to be able to pick up momentum as well.