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

Barnes Group Inc. (NYSE:B) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript February 17, 2023

Operator: Good morning. My name is Devin and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Barnes Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Thank you for your patience. I will now turn the call over to Vice President of Investor Relations, Mr. Bill Pitts. You may begin the conference sir.

Bill Pitts: Thank you, Devin. Good morning and thank you for joining us for our fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings call. With me are Barnes President and Chief Executive Officer, Thomas Hook, and Senior Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer, Julie Streich. If you have not received a copy of our earnings press release, you can find it on the Investor Relations section of our corporate website at onebarnes.com, that’s o-n-e-b-a-r-n-e-s.com. During our call, we will be referring to the earnings release supplement slides which are also posted to our website. Our discussion today includes certain non-GAAP financial measures, which provide additional information we believe that is helpful to investors. These measures have been reconciled to the related GAAP measures in accordance with SEC regulations.

You will find a reconciliation table on our website as part of our press release and in the Form 8-K submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Be advised that certain statements we make on today’s call, both during the opening remarks and during the question-and-answer session, maybe forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Please consider the risks and uncertainties that are mentioned in today’s call and are described in our periodic filings with the SEC. These filings are available through the Investor Relations section of our corporate website at onebarnes.com.

Let me now turn the call over to Tom for his opening remarks, then Julie will provide a review of our third quarter performance and our updated outlook for 2022. After that, we’ll open up the call for questions.

Thomas Hook: Thank you, Bill and good morning everyone. It’s been an enjoyable six months since moving into the CEO role at Barnes, I’m pleased with the depth and pace of our drive towards unlocking enterprise value through a focus on core business execution. Beneficial early signs of these efforts are already appearing in main areas across the company. For example, in Industrial, investments in commercial professionals have reinvigorated our sales funnels. This has precipitated early success in orders in certain targeted end markets. We are combining two of our strategic business units into one, and we are making solid progress on our Integrate, Consolidate, and Rationalize restructuring efforts. At Aerospace the active market remains robust and OEM orders were very good.

We will touch on the details of these points momentarily. For the fourth quarter, organic revenues increased 5%, though adjusted operating margin decreased slightly. Given ongoing labor productivity challenges, COVID related absenteeism in our China operations and gross inflation concerns, it reflects some progress, but not sufficient progress. Organic orders were good up 10% and book-to-bill was a solid 1.1 times. Cash performance was pressured, and Julie will touch on that in additional detail shortly. However, we believe the cash challenge in 2022 is passing, and we expect more typical performance in 2023. Before jumping into the financial results, let’s talk about what’s happening within our businesses beginning with Industrial. Industrial has a strong portfolio of brands, some of which have significant strength within their end markets.

Others are being refocused to unlock more value than has been delivered to date. Our Integrate, Consolidate, Rationalize initiative, will power some of that performance improvement. As an example, to begin in 2023, we have combined our engineered components and force motion control businesses into a single new strategic business unit called Motion Control Solutions or MCS. MCS will bring the combined brands together and be better positioned to leverage the entire portfolio, products, services, and solutions we offer to our global customers. This integration will allow MCS to better manage and mitigate global macroeconomic challenges and rationalize costs. A portion of those savings will be reinvested into enhancing our MCS sales force to drive top line growth.

Our restructuring efforts are well underway with ongoing execution of Phases 1 and 2 announced in July and October respectively. During the fourth quarter as part of our Phase 2 actions, we consolidated one of our molding solutions sensor facilities into other operations and more significantly transitioned our Innovation Hub activities. Of course, we remain focused on innovation and believe we are best served driving R&D from within the business in closer proximity to customer revenue generation. In addition, eliminating the central structure of the Innovation Hub is a demonstrateable step in our efforts to rationalize overhead. At this time, planning for additional actions is underway. With all this activity occurring simultaneously across Industrial, what early sign of traction can be seen in the organic orders of our Molding Solutions SBU.

You may recall in July, we spoke to the establishment of key regional markets in the Americas, Europe, China, and Asia. This was a deviation away from our brand-based commercial strategy with the intent to better leverage our full product portfolio with customers. This allows us to better tailor our extensive technology solutions for each customer application and generate growth for Molding Solutions. That change has resulted in a better fill of the commercial pipeline. In the fourth quarter, we saw 17% organic orders growth for Molding Solutions with mold systems demonstrating considerable strength. That performance could have been even stronger had we not seen our hot runner product line pressured by significant COVID disruption in China at the end of the year.

Molding Solutions book-to-bill was a solid 1.16 times, which is a good result for the largest growth engine within our industrial portfolio. Our Aerospace business continues to perform well despite challenges, especially as it relates to labor. We have successfully acquired the critical talent that was a constraint earlier in 2022. However, integrating the newly acquired talent into our production operations has negatively affected productivity and operating margin, primarily within the OEM business. Fortunately, this dynamic is changing for the better through enhance training and development efforts. We do not anticipate future quarters to be as impacted by these effects. OEM’s book-to-bill in the fourth quarter was 1.33 times. Looking forward 2023 provides significant opportunities for renewing and extending existing key contracts with GE and LEAP and other programs.

We are highly confident these will present upside prospects for our financial performance and provide a baseline of future work enabling cost optimization and production efficiencies in our Windsor, Connecticut, and Singapore locations. In the aftermarket overall activity remains robust, capping a significant year of recovery. As additional flight activity builds with China reopening, we expect this business to continue to grow through 2023. To conclude my prepared remarks, our unrelenting emphasis on core business execution will improve our competitiveness, provide revenue growth, drive operational efficiencies, and generate solid cash flow. Our top line, bottom line, pipeline philosophy will direct the actions we take across the company. While much work remains to improve our underlying performance, multiple actions are underway with the appropriate sense of urgency from the Barnes team.

Our collective efforts will unlock the Enterprise Value Potential we see in Barnes to the benefit of all stakeholders. Let me now pass the call over to Julie for a discussion on our fourth quarter and full year performance as well as some end market color.

Photo by John McArthur on Unsplash

Julie Streich: Good morning everyone, and thank you Tom. Let me begin with highlights of our fourth quarter results on Slide 4 of our supplement. Fourth quarter sales were $313 million, up 1% from the prior year period with organic sales increasing 5%. Foreign exchange, negatively impacted sales by 4%. Adjusted operating income was $35 million this year, down 1% from adjusted $35.4 million last year, and adjusted operating margin of 11.2% was down 20 basis points. Net income was $15.6 million or $0.30 per diluted share compared to $28.1 million or $0.55 per diluted share a year ago. On an adjusted basis, net income per share of $0.52 was down 5% from $0.55 last year. Adjusted net income per share in the fourth quarter of 2022 excludes $0.16 of restructuring related charges and $0.06 of tax related CEO transition cost.

Tax was a drag in the quarter as our effective tax rate was 18.6% compared to 4.9% a year ago. The increase in the effective tax rate was primarily driven by the non-recurrence of beneficial foreign tax items a year ago and the current quarter tax charges associated with the company’s CEO transition. Moving to our 2022 full year highlights, on Slide 5 of our supplement, sales were $1.26 billion, up slightly from the prior year. Organic sales were up 4% while FX had a negative impact of 4%. On an adjusted basis operating income was $145.9 million versus $151 million last year, a decline of 3%. Adjusted operating margin decreased 40 basis points to 11.6%. For the year interest expense was $14.6 million, a decrease of $1.6 million due to lower average borrowings.

Other expense was $4.3 million, down $1.7 million from last year, primarily because of reduction in non-operating pension expense. The company’s effective tax rate for 2022 was 64.7% compared with 21.9% last year. The increase in the 2022 effective tax rate was driven by this year’s goodwill impairment charge, which is not tax deductible, tax charges associated with Barnes CEO transition, and the non-recurring benefit — the non-recurring beneficial foreign tax items a year ago. These items were partially offset by a change in the mix of earnings between high and low tax jurisdictions. Excluding the tax impacts for the adjusted items of restructuring, goodwill impairment, and tax related CEO transition costs, the 2022 effective tax rate would be approximately 21%.

For 2022 net income was $13.5 million or $0.26 per share compared to $99.9 million or $1.96 per share a year ago. On an adjusted basis, 2022 net income per share was a $1.98, up 2% from last year. Adjusted EPS for 2022 excludes $0.33 of restructuring related charges, $0.6 of tax related CEO transition costs, and $1.33 from a goodwill impairment charge, which we recorded in the second quarter. Now I’ll turn to our segment performance beginning with Industrial. For the fourth quarter, sales were $205 million, down 3% from the prior year period. Organic sales increased 4% while unfavorable foreign exchange lowered sales by approximately 7%. Industrial’s operating profit was $6.1 million versus $19.1 million a year ago. Excluding $11.1 million of restructuring related charges in the current year, adjusted operating profit of $17.2 million was down 9% and adjusted operating margin of 8.4% was down 60 basis points.

Adjusted operating profit was impacted by lower productivity inclusive of COVID related effects in China. For the year, Industrial sales were $833 million, down 7% from $896 million a year ago with organic sales down 1%. Foreign exchange had a negative impact of 6%. On an adjusted basis, operating profit was $70 million, a decrease of 28% while adjusted operating margin was 8.4%, down 250 basis points. Moving to orders and sales for the quarter across our Industrial businesses. At molding solutions, organic orders we’re strong again this year, increasing 17%. As Tom mentioned, this is one of the leading indicators we have been looking for as evidence that our actions are on the right path. Organic sales increase 2%. For 2023 we expect Molding Solutions total sales to be up low-to-mid single digits with organic sales up mid-single digits.

At Force and Motion Control organic orders were down 3% in the quarter. China was particularly soft orders wise, as you’d expect given the COVID outbreak. Organic sales grew by 6%. Engineered Components saw strong orders, intake driven by transportation related end markets up 13% versus a year ago, and organic sales increased 3%. As Tom mentioned, we are combining our Engineered Components and Force and Motion Control businesses into a new strategic business unit called Motion Control Solutions, and we expect this business to see low single digit total organic sales growth in 2023. At Automation organic orders were up 4% while organic sales increased 13%. We expect high single digit total sales growth and low double digit organic sales growth in Automation for 2023.

For the overall segment, we anticipate low-to-mid single digit total sales growth and mid-single digit organic sales growth for 2023, with adjusted operating margin between 9.25% and 10.25%. At Aerospace sales were $109 million, up 8% from a year ago. OEM was down 2% due to the timing of customer acceptance of certain orders. Aftermarket strength continues to be favorable with sales growing 27%. Operating profit was $18 million, up 11% as compared to the prior year period. Excluding a favorable restructuring adjustment of 300,000, adjusted operating profit of $17.8 million was up 8% from last year. Contributing to the strong performance in adjusted operating profit is the benefit of higher aftermarket sales volumes offset in part by unfavorable labor productivity.

Adjusted operating margin of 16.4% was flat to last year. For the full year Aerospace sales were $429 million, up 18% from $362 million a year ago. On an adjusted basis, operating profit was $75.9 million, up 43%, and adjusted operating margin was 17.7%, up 300 basis points. Within our OEM business orders were solid in the quarter, up 7% and the book-to-bill ratio was 1.33 times. Our OEM backlog increased by 3% sequentially from last quarter and was 10% higher than a year ago. We expect to convert approximately 40% of this backlog to revenue over the next 12 months. Our OEM sales outlook for 2023 is up low double digits driven by the LEAP program on narrow body aircraft from both Airbus and Boeing. As has been the case throughout 2022, aftermarket sales growth remained healthy with MRO up 31% and spare parts up 20%.

For 2023 we continue to forecast good growth on top of 2022’s performance with MRO up low double digits and spare parts sales up high single digits. Aerospace adjusted operating margin is anticipated to be between 18% and 19%. With respect to cash, full year cash provided by operating activities was $76 million versus $168 million in the prior year period. The primary drivers of the lower cash generation in 2022 remain an increase in working capital and paid incentive compensation related to 2021. And as I mentioned in the last quarter, we’ll begin to wind down inventory as working capital performance is a focused priority for 2023. Free cash flow was $40 million versus $134 million last year. Capital expenditures were $35 million, up approximately $1 million from prior year.

With our balance sheet the debt-to-EBITDA ratio as defined by our credit agreement was 2.35 times at quarter end, up slightly from the end of the third quarter. When considering our cash position at year end on a net debt-to-EBITDA basis, we’d be approximately 2 times. Our fourth quarter average diluted shares outstanding were 51.1 million shares and period end shares outstanding were 50.6 million shares. During the quarter we did not repurchase any shares and approximately 3.4 million shares remain available under the Board’s 2019 stock repurchase authorization. Turning to Slide 7 of our supplement, let me provide details of our initial outlook for 2023. We expect organic sales to be up 6% to 8% for the year with an adjusted operating margin between 12.5% and 13.5%.

Adjusted EPS is expected to be in the range of $2.10 to $2.30, up 6% to 16% from 2022’s adjusted earnings of $1.98 per share. We currently forecast a $0.15 impact on EPS for previously announced restructuring charges, though we anticipate that number will increase as additional decisions are taken. Most of the known impact approximately $0.13 will be split evenly between the first and second quarters. We do see a higher weighting of adjusted EPS in the second half with an approximate 45% first half, 55% second half split. Similar to the last two years, we see the first quarter being the lowest point in the range of $0.36 to $0.40. A few other outlook items. Interest expense is anticipated to be approximately $24 million, driven by a higher interest rate environment.

Other income of $2.5 million driven by non-operating pension, an effective tax rate between 24.5% and 25.5%, CapEx of approximately $50 million, average diluted shares of approximately $51 million, and cash conversion of approximately 100%. I would like to note that like our adjusted earnings outlook, this cash forecast includes only previously announced restructuring actions. Actual cash performance could be negatively influenced by further investments to drive transformation. The full extent of 2023 cash outflows related to our transformation activities is still in the planning phase. In summary, 2022 was a year with a steadily recovering Aerospace business and a continually pressured Industrial business. As we work to lay a solid footing upon which to build profitable growth, we’ll continue to undertake restructuring actions to improve operational and financial performance.

Activities to Integrate, Consolidate, and Rationalize our operations are expected to show meaningful progress in 2023 that will raise margins and improve working capital efficiency. Operator, we will now open the call for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Our first question comes from Pete Osterland with Truist Securities.

Thomas Hook: Good morning, Pete.

Pete Osterland: Hey, good morning, Tom, Julie, thanks for taking our questions. Just wanted to start, I was wondering if you could give any additional color on what you’re seeing for demand for Commercial Aero aftermarket. It looks like your order activity was pretty strong during the fourth quarter, but the growth rate you’re guiding too for 2023 is slowing down a bit. So I’m just wondering what you’re seeing with shop visits and how you’re expecting that to trend over the next few quarters?

Thomas Hook: Certainly. I think when you look at Aero for the amount of recovery that we’ve already seen in the Americas and in Europe, we’re getting back to pre-pandemic levels, we’ve yet to really see a lot of the full recovery within Asia, both, you know, more I think so in the narrow body has occurred with China, but so the wide body in Asia is still coming back. It will be a longer trajectory of kind of MRO recovery there. So I think kind of the math with, you know, kind of fuller return to repairs and overhauls in the Americas and Europe, we still got Asia coming along particularly in wide body that will help drive our aftermarket business. But the math of it will slow down the growth rate, but still be a nice growth trajectory as more seats are flying around the world.

We’re not predicting any major disruptions on that recovery, but certainly there’s obviously a lot of things happening globally in geopolitics that could have an effect, but so we’re being postured conservatively for it, but we do feel that Asia is going to come back along that trajectory and you’ll see continued growth of air travel progressively in the Americas and Europe as well.

Pete Osterland: All right, that’s helpful, thanks. And then I also wanted to ask just on the OEM side, does your guidance for Aero OEM sales assume that there’s going to be any increase to the underlying production rates particularly for the narrow body aircraft platforms?

Thomas Hook: No, as I think we are being very realistic to normalize to this overall supply chain that is flowing to the major players, so we very actively interface with our key customers, normalize our rates to theirs. So our guidance really reflects that reality of what cannot be demand really driven, because we know the demand is higher, but really what the overall supply chain can actually provide. So we’ve done a nice job and we’ll continue doing a nice job in the OEM side of normalizing our output relative to what the supply chain can feed us and then onto the customers. So again, that is postured appropriately and calibrated to what the overall industry can actually achieve. And that’s an important synchronization that we’ve worked very hard on with our key customers and the OEM side to do.

Pete Osterland: All right, thanks. That’s good cover. Thanks a lot.

Thomas Hook: You’re welcome Pete.

Bill Pitts: Thanks Pete.

Operator: Our next question comes from Matt Summerville with D. A. Davidson.

Matt Summerville: Thanks. A couple of questions. Can you maybe provide a little bit more detail as to the impact from the labor productivity issues in Aero and then the COVID absenteeism in China in the quarter, what that may be, what the top and bottom line impact may have been? And maybe just a little more granularity on exactly what the issue was in Aerospace?

Thomas Hook:

Dawn: I think we have a pretty reasonable idea internally what the effect was, in terms of its drag and output and hence obviously higher costs that resulted. And I think as you could imagine, as we have those new people on board and they come up to speed, they’re trained by higher expertise staff that also has to divert their time to do training and development. You catch up with that learning curve, so to speak, and you get back more to the trajectory we were on before. So that kind of phase of hiring and training and development is well with underway. And I think that that really, we kind of feel that in a three to six month timeframe that new hires can be pretty effective at coming on board, either in the OEM side in particular, but also in the MRO side and being effective.

So we think there’s headwinds there. I don’t think we could end up giving a precise quantification other than that it’s a drag. And COVID absenteeism, very unique and situational. First of all, China opened virtually overnight, everybody started interface. There was a high COVID outbreak. It also coincided with the Chinese New Year, which was challenging timing. I think COVID went through our operational facilities extremely quickly within the course of a few weeks. Virtually almost every single employee we had, had experienced an interface with COVID, unfortunately. So it was a big disruption, combined with Chinese New Year, ends up being kind of a drag for us through the kind of the December period and of January. We think we’re well beyond that now if that effect as well in the past.

So I think it will be just kind of a onetime hit for us in terms of the business. But it would be tough really to give you kind of a quantification down to the bottom line of what that is. Julie, you may have other comments here that you may want to add to this as well.

Julie Streich: Sure, Matt. Just to add a little bit of color to the Aerospace performance. In the fourth quarter relative to the third quarter, if you’re looking at that, we also saw a slight dip in our aftermarket sales, which also would have contributed to performance in the fourth quarter. It was just a little bit of change in purchasing patterns as GE was going through some of their transitions. Nothing we’re concerned about at all, but from a mix perspective, that also had an impact on the margin performance in the fourth quarter.

Matt Summerville: And then as a follow-up, I just — I want to understand some of the pluses and minuses impacting Q1. If I look at the $0.36 to $0.40 that Julie mentioned, that’s really no better than what you did in the first quarter of 2022 or in the first quarter of 2021. So help me understand with the restructuring well underway in Industrial, why maybe we’re not seeing better year-on-year performance there, go through kind of the pluses and minuses? Thank you.

Thomas Hook: Sure. I can add, and Julie kind of walk through the macros there and I can chime in at the end on the big picture.

Julie Streich: So in terms of the year-over-year, like you said Matt, we are underway with the restructuring actions. But as we’ve been speaking to, we’re not expecting to see run rate benefits for quite some time. There’s an expense outflow and a delay between the activities getting kicked off, the facility is closing, the products transitioning. And when we see the results flow through to the bottom line, we’re also still in an inflationary environment where we are continuing to catch up with our pricing. There’s a lot of momentum around the pricing activities across the portfolio now, but we do not see from a labor perspective and a materials perspective a lot of dampening in inflationary environment. And we’re candidly being a bit cautious in what we are holding the business accountable to and what we think will be delivered as a result of some of the uncertainty, especially as we were developing the plan with the potential for recession that might be lightening now.

But we are still in a rebuilding mode and I’m sure it is frustrating to hear that, but we have the underpinnings that will drive the performance. It’s just going to take a little bit of time to get there.

Matt Summerville: Then — sorry, I’m just going to ask one more follow-up and then I’ll pass it on. So in that regard, Julie, and then Tom, if you have comments as well, how much cost savings should we expect to hit the P&L within Industrial in 2023? And then what’s the carryover in 2024, just based on the stuff you’ve announced? Thank you.

Julie Streich: Yes, sure. So consistent with what we announced last time, and I’m emphasizing that because our outlook really hasn’t changed, which is a good thing as we get further down the path. But $29 million of investment will generate $26 million in run rate savings, and the full run rate should be hit in 2024. For 2023, we would expect in the neighborhood now as we’re looking at things more specifically of $15 million to $17 million potentially flow through in this year.

Thomas Hook: I think Matt, the other thing I’d add there is, we are really focused on Phase 1 and Phase 2 implementation and completion to get those cost savings in 2023 per the timing that we had laid out that Julie just went through. We are purposely putting ourselves to finish up the scoping of additional phases, but we want to digest and complete and execute the phases we have before we go on to the next ones, which will follow that as we move forward, we’ll provide more information on those. But it’s very important we feel to kind of get — there’s a large learning curve that the organization has had to come up with regards to executing these types of programs. We’ve done a very good job of keeping them on schedule. And we do want to demonstrate that we control the benefits so that we announce future phases that there’s a belief from the investor community that we can continue to extract those benefits going forward.

And we do think there’s more opportunities out there.

Matt Summerville: Understood, thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Christopher Glynn with Oppenheimer.

Thomas Hook: Good morning, Chris.

Christopher Glynn: Hey, thanks. Good morning. I just wanted to start out with a housekeeping item. I didn’t catch the comments Julie, for the segment margin outlook, respectively.

Julie Streich: I’m sorry, say the question again? The margin outlooks for 2023…

Christopher Glynn: Yes, the two operating segments, I didn’t quite catch the margin outlooks.

Bill Pitts: Chris, for Aerospace, it’s 18% to 19% and for the Industrial, it’s 9.25% to 10.25%.

Julie Streich: That’s right.

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.

Myles Walton: So maybe I’m going to go around the horn a little bit. But I’ll just start in Aerospace, in the fourth quarter, the RSP versus MRO mix or growth rates; however, you want to provide it, what did that look like? It sounded, Julie, like the RSPs maybe took a step back. Is that correct?

Julie Streich: Yes. They were down relatively speaking a few million dollars between quarter with relatively flat OEM and MRO, so it was a temporary dip in RSP.

Myles Walton: Okay. So when I look at the margin profile sequentially, that sounds like it’s more of the determining factor than an incremental labor inefficiency or instability that’s occurred. Is that a fair characterization?

Julie Streich: They definitely both contributed, yes.

Myles Walton: Okay. And then on the margin outlook for 2023, obviously, versus the run rate you did in the fourth quarter, you’re looking for a couple of hundred basis points of expansion. So again, what is the underlying assumption on RSP in that high single-digit outlook you have for aftermarket?

Julie Streich: So as you think about 2023 and the margin blend, we saw a very nice ramp this year because the aftermarket sales were growing at an accelerated pace. And just as a reminder, RSP sales were up 59% and MRO was up 33% with OEM up 7%. As we get into 2023, we’re going to see the OEM side ramp like we said low double digits, but we’re going to see MRO and RSPs slow a bit. Therefore, there will be a bit of mix impact on overall margin, and that’s what’s built into our outlook. Did that answer your question?

Myles Walton: A little bit. But your €“ I guess, what you’re saying is there’s a mix impact, but I’m looking at the run rate from you did in the fourth quarter and what you’re looking for, for next year. And obviously, you’re assuming a 16.5 in the fourth quarter going to 18.5 in the 2023 time period?

Julie Streich: Yes.

Myles Walton: But the mix is against you, so OEM must be getting materially better in terms of performance.

Julie Streich: Absolutely. We would anticipate that OEM performance is going to improve. Q4 was a dip.

Myles Walton: Okay. All right. And then on the Industrial consolidation side, you’ve got now two SBUs of pretty material size, and you’ve got automation at 20%, 30% of the size of the other SBUs. Is that teeing it up for bolt-ons or any reason why you don’t view that as sort of subscale relative to the other two? And then that one has unique European exposure for 2023. Is that more of a risk to your outlook?

Thomas Hook: Myles, a very insightful question. I mean, I think there is scale differences. As you know, we’re looking at a lot of opportunities for how we Integrate, Consolidate and Rationalize the entire portfolio. So you’re right to point out there’s other opportunities for how we could manage the SBUs. We’re only communicating, obviously, the natural fit between Engineered Components and FMC into kind of a Motion Control business today. We actually feel pretty well positioned with our automation portfolio. One of the items that we referred to last quarter was bringing that automation portfolio to the Americas in a more purposeful way. So we’ve made investment with feet on the street in addition to our distributor EMI that’s in the Americas to be able to jointly sell and perfuse the market.

So we’re actually opening up more global markets for our automation business. And we do feel this is a line of business that’s got strong growth potential going forward, and we’re investing accordingly. But you’re right, is size-wise relative to the scale of what we’re doing in the Motion Control, it’s definitely a smaller business, but it has much higher growth potential so we’re treating it as a kind of a growth trajectory product line, and in particular, getting global distribution in sales of it. Our Force & Motion Control and our Engineered Components businesses, the outcome, MCS, or Motion Control Solutions are already globally based in global distribution for those, but automation is a catch up. But given the end customers are different for those product lines, we’re kind of bringing the go-to-market strategy through separate channels because it’s just more effective to pick up opportunities.

So we have seen some really nice pickup both in orders and sales there. As you know, that business has got tremendous potential given the pressure for automation that exists globally. We just have done a really good job of taking the product lines that we have acquired from the dramatic acquisition that forms that business. We have done a good job of commercializing them globally. And we’re doing a much better job since the third quarter of last year of putting those teams in place to leverage that. And we plan on doing that very aggressively going forward as a growth driver, which are right material because it size-wise won’t be as material to the overall picture.

Myles Walton: Okay. And then just a couple of cleanup ones if I could. I think, Julie, you said $24 million of interest expense. Is that right? And is there an idea you should maybe term out the revolver?

Julie Streich: So the $24 million is the right number. And we were quite fortunate in that Michael Kennedy, our Head of Tax and Treasury here, did some repositioning of the portfolio last year before interest rates started to pick up. So I think we’re — while we don’t appreciate the higher interest expense, I think we’re comfortable with the terms we have right now. And if an opportunity would present itself to reduce the overall interest burden for the company, we would certainly look at it. But I think we’re actually fairly well positioned in terms of the renegotiation we did last year and the repositioning of that revolver.

Myles Walton: Okay. And then last one, sorry. On the cash flow, I guess, I’m still a little unclear the $50 million miss in the fourth quarter free cash flow was the primary driver? And also the outlook for 2023, I think your D&A is $50 million above CapEx. So why would the conversion not be significantly better than 100%, given what happened in 2022 and that conversion?

Julie Streich: Sure. No, it’s a good question. So the Q4 performance was, I mean, was disappointing to me. We had intentions of driving down our inventory at a greater rate. This is all an inventory question that we’re dealing with right now. And for a variety of reasons, the inventory did not come down at the rate we expected. What I would say is that in the back half of the year, both the second, or excuse me, both the third and fourth quarter delivered well above 100% cash conversion. So that gives me confidence going into 2023 that we’ll be able to continue on that trajectory. We are laser focused on the inventory drawdown and managing that process now. And to your point around greater than 100% cash conversion, we have approximately, I would love to see us get back up to the levels we were at historically, which is above 100% cash conversion.

What we need to do is be thoughtful about the time line over which the inventories will come down. It’s not going to happen overnight. It will work down over the course of the year, and we’ll ultimately see what that delivers us from a free cash conversion.

Myles Walton: Okay, all right. Thank you.

Thomas Hook: Thank you, Myles.

Myles Walton: Thank you.

Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I’ll now turn the call over to Mr. Pitts for closing remarks.

Bill Pitts: Thank you, Devin. We’d like to thank all of you for joining us this morning, and we look forward to speaking with you next on April 28 with our first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Operator, we will now conclude today’s call.

Operator: Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.