CNH Industrial N.V. (NYSE:CNHI) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Scott Wine: I mean, obviously, we’re going to do everything we can to position ourselves for growth in the years ahead. But right now, it’s just being disciplined on price realization. And – like I said before, this is a – we were mostly covering costs before. But Derek and his team have really done a nice job. And it’s a region-by-region execution. It’s not a – we don’t have a universal policy. And I think what we’re striving to do is get price where we can, get price where it makes sense, but get market share and retail acceleration to the extent we can. And I think the team has done a really good job region-by-region, executing that strategy. And we’re comfortable that as we exit the year. And again, most proud of what Rafa and the team have done down in South America, just really having us in very, very good dealer inventory position.

So as soon as that market turns, we’ll be able to take full advantage of what happens. So I think it’s reasonable to assume that what we did in the first quarter with pricing will maintain throughout the year.

Michael Shlisky: Okay. Great. And then a follow-up on how you grow your tech stack. I guess, I’m curious with the Intelsat agreement, are there any onetime costs that will take place this year or next to get either the software or the hardware upgraded on current systems and any future systems that get sold to the farmers here? Or is it kind of baked in each individual sale or some other way to account for kind of layering in Intelsat capabilities here?

Scott Wine: No. I mean part of the reason that we went with Intelsat is because of the proven ruggedness of what they do, which lowers the amount of validation work. I wouldn’t – I mean, I’m reluctant to ever call anything plug-and-play anymore, but it’s about as close as we can get. And Mark Kermisch and his team have really done a good job of evaluating the opportunities and ensuring that this is something that we can run. The first market to benefit from this will be Brazil, and that will happen later in the year.

Michael Shlisky: Okay, super. Thank you so much.

Operator: Your next question comes from Kristen Owen with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Kristen Owen: Thank you so much for taking the question. And Scott also best wishes to you. I wanted to ask about the market share comments. This being obviously one of the two biggest drivers that you have going forward. You highlighted the outperformance relative to industry in the first quarter. Just wondering how much of the market share gains that you’re seeing are this recovery given last year, you mentioned you’re still comping some of the strike implications. What’s your regaining there? And how well positioned you are from a market share perspective? And do you anticipate that, that will be incremental market share versus just making up what you lost? And then I have a follow-up question on the tech stack.

Scott Wine: Well, we made up throughout the year last year, I was really proud of the work the team in Racine did to just accelerate our production throughout the year. And I think we’re there, again, about to making to demand. It’s a street fight out there. And I’d tell you that a lot of what we’ve done is just a driving customer-centric customer focused. And I think you’re seeing that play out with our dealers as we’re able to win more of those battles throughout the year. But I mean, don’t expect big – I mean it is a battle. And I’m not suggesting it’s easy, but I think what you saw in the first quarter is the team’s ability to execute that. And what we’ve guided is the expectation that, that will continue.

But it really is – the product portfolio is quite strong right now. And as you’ve seen with some of the announcements of late, it’s just getting better. So we feel like technology is getting better, the product portfolio is getting better, the team’s execution getting better. And if you do all of that, you can have to expect the market share gets better.

Kristen Owen: Right. So then a follow-up on the tech stack. I sort of talked a little bit about the Intelsat being as close to plug-and-play as it can get. I mean, is there an incremental modem? Or maybe help us understand like how you actually go about implementing that and how Intelsat fits in with the integration of Raven and Hemisphere GNSS, sort of what that unlocks for you on a go-forward basis? Thank you so much.

Scott Wine: It is, and kind of it goes on – that we have to do, and that’s the ruggedness we talked about. We’ve done – I mean, for a long time, we figured out how to integrate different cell phone signals and everything into our operating system. So Mark and his team are really comfortable about their ability to integrate this quite seamlessly into both AFS Connect and PLM Connect going forward.

Operator: Your next question comes from Tami Zakaria with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Tami Zakaria: Hi, good morning. Thank you so much. Scott, congrats on completing a very successful time leading, I’ll miss you but best of luck for the next chapter. My first question is – sure. So my first question is, can you comment by geography, what you expect total sales decline in the Ag segment to look like for this year, you’re guiding to down 11% to 15% ag sales. Can you give me some color like how should we think about North America versus South America versus Europe for the year?

Scott Wine: Well, South America is where we are seeing the highest declines in percentage terms. Europe as we commented, we also see industry down in the clients, in particular in the combined market. North America in percentage terms, declines are lower, but of course, the market is larger. So I would say, the clients are across the board, right. They’ve hurt most or they are more intense in South America right now. And we may recover at the end of the year. But that’s what we have. But I would say in every region, we have to find.

Tami Zakaria: Got it. Okay. That’s very helpful. And then on the Construction business, I think the first quarter margin was quite impressive. Can you elaborate what really drove that? And also since we are – I mean, the guide would imply Construction segment sales improving sequentially from here on. So I guess, why keep the full year guide unseen would margins not see improvement as well as total sales move up?