Barnes Group Inc. (NYSE:B) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Christopher Glynn: Okay, great. So I was just curious kind of continuing on the restructuring plans for Industrial. How do we anticipate foundational work transitioning to accelerating portfolio yield? I know you’ve kind of laid out a bit of the lead lag dynamics, but curious just a little bit more, when do you see — do you see kind of pretty full run rate savings exiting the year close to the $26 million?

Thomas Hook: Yes. I think there’s absolutely, first of all, confirmation, yes. Exit run rate savings from the year would be on that — from what we’ve announced thus far, Phase 1 and Phase 2 at that $26 million annualized run rate. Remember, there’s two sides of the initiatives we’re talking about. One is the restructuring or that cost rationalization consolidation. The other one we refer to is integration of the go-to-market strategies. That’s the question you’re asking, Chris. We have to, in our mind, consolidate and rationalize to be at a lower cost basis, but also the integration of our go-to-market strategy is away from kind of these brand strategies is to go to each zone with full-line selling through centralized full-line sales teams.

That’s what’s driving our order take rate. As you know, when we have the feet on the street now, we’re getting a good steep robustness in our sales funnels, that’s precipitating into higher orders, which are going into backlog. And obviously, as we go through the remittance process, they’ll move into the revenue stream. So that integrated go-to-market is already producing results. And we’re very eagerly looking forward to that, obviously, driving the P&L performance as it precipitates often to remittance in combination with the initiatives, savings that we’ve identified. We think those two things in combination are critically important for the value creation thesis going forward.

Christopher Glynn: Great. And I appreciate contextualization of the Molding Solutions orders ramp and the nice backlog overall Industrial stepping up. Just curious if that — the multi-solutions orders have kind of pivoted into an earnest continuity that you can apprehend if it’s started out a little better than you expected and relative to what you’re seeing in the pipeline, if there’s some hedge there in the Molding Solutions outlook at mid-single digits, just given that it’s still formative, as you said?

Thomas Hook: Yes, Chris that’s there. It’s you know, I’m pleased with our start, not satisfied. I’m a tough person to get satisfied and so is Julie. We have a lot of potential to unlock here before I’m going to really say I’m satisfied, but I’m pleased with the start. The other comment I’d make is, it’s asymmetric, Chris and a really nice job where we have the opportunity to focus, especially in multi-cavity bolts picking up. But if we look across the globe and we look at our hot-runner product lines and we look at our zones, our growth has not been seen in each of those areas. So there’s a lot of focus going on to be able to penetrate the market deeper. So kind of — so I’m pleased with the start, but not fully satisfied, we’ve unlocked all the potential.

There is as you can tell some nervousness within our prospective view. There’s a lot of dynamics that are occurring, both from a geopolitics as well as an economic standpoint and we don’t want to get over our ski tips, but we are trying to be very aggressive in our go-to-market approach and win that business and focused very heavily in our operating facilities we’re now taking that backlog and remitting it out into the customer base. We see a lot of strong demand, even with China coming back is so we’re optimistic, but we’re being very disciplined in our execution against it and not getting ahead of ourselves.

Christopher Glynn: Great. Nice granularity. I appreciate it.

Thomas Hook: Welcome, Chris. Thanks.

Julie Streich: Thanks, Chris.

Operator: Our final question comes from Myles Walton with Wolfe Research.

Myles Walton: Hey, good morning.

Thomas Hook: Good morning, Myles.

Julie Streich: Good morning, Myles.