Donaldson Company, Inc. (NYSE:DCI) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Donaldson Company, Inc. (NYSE:DCI) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript November 29, 2023

Donaldson Company, Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.75, expectations were $0.72.

Operator: Good morning, and welcome to the Donaldson Fiscal First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. Please note that this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Sarika Dhadwal, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Sarika Dhadwal: Good morning. Thank you for joining Donaldson’s first quarter fiscal 2024 earnings conference call. With me today are Tod Carpenter, Chairman, CEO and President; and Scott Robinson, Chief Financial Officer. This morning, Tod and Scott will provide a summary of our first quarter performance and details on our outlook for fiscal 2024. During today’s call, we will discuss non-GAAP or adjusted results. In the prior year period, first quarter fiscal 2023 non-GAAP results exclude restructuring and other charges of $7.6 million. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP metrics is provided within the schedules attached to this morning’s press release. Additionally, please keep in mind that any forward-looking statements made during this call are subject to risks and uncertainties, which are described in our press release and SEC filings. With that, I’ll now turn the call over to Tod Carpenter.

Tod Carpenter: Thanks, Sarika. Good morning, everyone. I am pleased to report our first quarter earnings results, which demonstrate our continued ability to deliver to our customers and shareholders despite overhanging macro uncertainty. This quarter, we reported consolidated gross margin at nearly a decade high, driven by our team’s efforts on strategic pricing, deflation in select input costs, mix benefits and plant productivity. We focused on executing in and growing each of our three operating segments and laid the groundwork for a record fiscal 2024. In Mobile Solutions, despite volume weakness from softer end market conditions, we delivered strong profit margins driven by strategic pricing, select input cost deflation, mix benefits and strong plant performance.

Our Industrial Solutions business continues to outperform from a top and bottom line perspective. Our create, connect, replace service business model has allowed us to first create high-quality, first-fit solutions through innovation and the addition of connected features; second, connect solutions through next-generation gateways and controllers. In fiscal 2023, aftermarket sales growth from connected customers outpaced that of nonconnected industrial customers, and we launched the connected model in India, Thailand and China. While we’re in the early innings, as of the first quarter, we have seen strong growth in the new connections as compared to prior year. Lastly, we are replacing and servicing equipment through our one-stop shop approach and service capabilities across the full range of Industrial Solutions businesses.

Overall, we are gaining market share in industrial as we penetrate key end markets and expand geographically. For example, our power generation business drove results this quarter as we benefited from recent customer wins, including large urban projects in Asia and the Middle East. Aerospace and defense also had a strong quarter, and we’ve increased our outlook for the year, which Scott will discuss later as wins in cabin air filtration, including a major OEM win positively impact results. In Life Sciences, as expected, we saw sequential improvement in our operating performance. We continue to invest and build the foundation needed to gain share in these highly attractive, high-margin markets by leveraging our competitive strengths and global reach and our pipeline of opportunities is growing.

Now I’ll cover some consolidated highlights. Sales of $846 million were flat year-over-year as volume declines were offset by pricing benefits. Currency was also a slight tailwind. Volumes were negatively impacted by OEM aftermarket destocking, off-road end market weakness and continued pressure in disk drive. Conversely, pricing remained a benefit as we added value for our customers and strategically offset ongoing inflationary pressures such as labor rates and energy costs. EPS in the quarter was $0.75, flat to prior year as gross margin gains and favorability in other income were offset by investments in strategically important growth areas, including our life science business. One of the highlights this quarter was the strength and resiliency of our best-in-class operations one of Donaldson’s key competitive advantages.

As always, our focus remains on working down our backlog and improving our fill rates and on-time delivery rates. As supply chain conditions have improved, we have been able to return to the company’s long-standing focus on operational excellence and effective cost management. While we execute today, we continue to invest for the future through our CapEx and R&D investments. With respect to CapEx, while capacity investments continue to be the largest portion as we prepare for future profitable growth, we are also focused on cost reduction initiatives and the further commercialization of our life sciences acquisitions. Our strong cash flow generation combined with the strength of our balance sheet allows us to continue these exciting investments and drive towards our long-term strategic objectives.

Now I’ll provide some detail on first quarter sales. Total company sales were $846 million, essentially flat to prior year. Pricing was an approximate 3% benefit. In Mobile Solutions, total sales were $540 million, a 3% decline versus 2023, pricing added 3%. Within the mobile segment, performance continued to be mixed. Off-Road sales of $95 million were down 9% due to weakening end market conditions, including in China and the agriculture markets within the Americas and India. Aftermarket sales of $408 million were down 2% year-over-year, driven entirely by the OEM channel. As anticipated, destocking from OEM customers continued in response to normalizing global supply chain conditions. That said, we are now starting to see a stabilization in order patterns and believe the destocking is largely behind us.

In our independent aftermarket channel, sales increased 3% year-over-year. Sales in our On-Road first-fit business of $38 million grew 5% driven by elevated levels of on-highway equipment production, particularly in China. Now I will touch on China as a whole within Mobile Solutions as it continues to be an important market for us. Sales declined 14% versus 2023 and declined 11% in constant currency. Conditions within the country continue to be very challenging given the weak broader market conditions, particularly with respect to Off-Road. Despite this, our long-term view remains positive given the market size and our opportunities to gain share. Turning to the Industrial Solutions segment. The Industrial segment had another robust quarter as sales increased 7% to $246 million, pricing added 2%.

Industrial Filtration Solutions, or IFS, sales grew 7% to $211 million, driven by strong best collection and power generation sales. Aerospace and defense sales rose 6% due to another quarter of defense sales strength. On the Life Sciences segment, Life Sciences sales were $60 million, a 4% year-over-year decrease driven primarily by anticipated ongoing disk-drive market weakness. We are seeing early signs of a slow demand recovery and expect a sequential improvement in disk drive sales through fiscal 2024 as data center and cloud computing demand recovers. Along with growing our legacy Life Sciences businesses, including food and beverage, we are focused on scaling our acquisitions and look forward to detailing how these are contributing to our growth in the quarters to come.

As we close the first quarter of the year, I am proud of our hard-working Donaldson employees around the globe. I’m continually impressed with their dedication to our customers, their fellow employees and to our mission of advancing filtration for a cleaner world. Through our ongoing efforts, we are well poised to deliver value to all of our stakeholders in fiscal 2024. As such, for the full year, our outlook is unchanged as we forecast total sales, operating margin and earnings at all-time high levels. Now I’ll turn it over to Scott, who will provide more details on the financials and our outlook for fiscal ’24. Scott?

Scott Robinson: Thanks, Tod. Good morning, everyone. Our first quarter results serve as a solid foundation for us to build upon throughout fiscal 2024 and beyond. I would like to thank our outstanding global teams. I am so impressed by and proud of the way they once again came together, executed and delivered solid results. Donaldson has the right people and strategy in place to drive the company towards our fiscal 2026 financial and strategic targets. I will provide color on our outlook for fiscal 2024 in a few minutes. But first will give additional details on the results for the first quarter. In summary, sales were flat versus 2023. Operating income decreased 2% from the prior year, largely driven by ongoing investments in the Life Sciences segment and EPS of $0.75 was flat year-over-year on a comparable basis.

Gross margin was 35.6%, a 170 basis point improvement versus the prior year. Pricing was the largest driver of the improvement, followed by benefits of deflation of freight and select material costs and mix. Operating expenses as a percent of sales were 20.8% compared with 18.9% a year ago. The deleveraging of operating expense in the quarter was due to increased hire-related expenses and notably, nearly half of deleveraging continues to be from incremental expenses related to the scaling of our life sciences acquisitions. Operating margin was 14.7%, down 30 basis points versus 2023 as operating expense deleveraging more than offset the year-over-year increase in gross margin. Now I’ll discuss segment profitability. Mobile Solutions pretax profit margin was 17.1%, up 260 basis points year-over-year, driven by gross margin expansion, resulting in large part by pricing and deflation of select input costs.

Also, as Tod mentioned earlier, mix and strong plant productivity contributed. Industrial Solutions pretax profit margin was 17.6%, up 120 basis points as a result of leverage on higher sales. Life Sciences pretax loss was approximately $4 million, including a headwind from acquisitions of roughly $11 million. Pretax profit margin was minus 7% versus minus 12.4% in the fourth quarter and compared to 17.2% a year ago. Incremental investments in our acquisitions continue to negatively impact results. However, through our commitment to long-term profitable growth, we are investing for the future and look forward to seeing these businesses scale. Turning to a few balance sheet and cash flow statement highlights. First quarter capital expenditures were approximately $23 million Cash conversion in the quarter was 125% versus 97% in 2023.

Conversion was above average driven by operating performance and focused working capital management. In terms of other capital deployment, we returned approximately $84 million to shareholders inclusive of $30 million in the form of dividends and $54 million in share repurchases. Importantly, earlier this month, Donaldson’s [ph] Board of Directors authorized a new share repurchase program, which replaces the previous plan. The new plan allows for the repurchase of up to 12 million shares of common stock or approximately 10% of shares outstanding. Our strong cash flow generation and disciplined capital deployment allows us to maintain a healthy balance sheet. Our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio was 0.7 times at the end of the quarter. Now moving to our fiscal ’24 outlook.

First on sales. We continue to expect full year total sales to increase between 3% and 7%, which includes pricing of approximately 2% and currency translation benefit of about 1%. For mobile solutions, we are forecasting a sales increase of between 1% to 5%, consistent with our previous expectations. Within mobile, we now expect off-road sales to be down mid-single digits versus our previous expectation of up low single digits as end market conditions, particularly in China and the agriculture markets within the Americas and India have softened. On-Road sales are forecast to be flat versus up low single digits previously due to weaker-than-expected on-highway vehicle production. Our outlook for the aftermarket is unchanged. Strategic pricing benefits and market share gains are expected to drive mid-single-digit growth over prior year.

For Industrial Solutions, sales are expected to increase between 3% and 7%, in line with our previous guidance. IFS sales are forecasted to grow mid-single digits as strong overall demand and market share to gains industrial [ph] action and power generation drive results. Aerospace and defense sales are projected to increase mid-single digits, an improvement from the previous negative low single digits expectation due to robust end market conditions and market share gains. In Life Sciences, our sales and profitability expectations for the year are unchanged. We are forecasting sales growth of approximately 20%, driven by geographic expansion in food and beverage, the scaling and maturation of our bioprocessing equipment and consumables businesses and a return to growth in the diskdrive business.

We expect full year fiscal 2024 Life Sciences pretax profit margin to be positive and are committed to our longer-term Life Sciences Investor Day targets. Consistent with our previous guidance, total company operating margin is expected to be within a range of between 14.7% and 15.3%, which at the midpoint is a 40 basis point year-over-year improvement from adjusted operating margin of 14.6% in fiscal 2023. Year-over-year gross margin expansion is expected to be the driver of the improvement. Touching on gross margin cadence for the balance of the year, our first quarter performance was very strong. As we look to the remaining quarters, we expect year-over-year gross margin expansion, however, will likely see a sequential step down, particularly in the second quarter due to typical seasonality and a slight moderation in pricing benefits versus the prior year.

For the full year, higher operating expenses as a rate of sales are forecast to partially offset gross margin strength. It is worth highlighting once again that our operating margin guidance represents a record for Donaldson, and we are particularly proud of this given our ongoing commitment to investing for the future, including in our Life Sciences segment. In terms of EPS, we are reaffirming our guidance of a range between $3.14 and $3.30, up from $3.04 in fiscal 2023. In summary, we are committed to delivering higher levels of profitability and higher levels of sales to our shareholders in fiscal 2024 and beyond. Now on to our balance sheet and cash flow outlook. Cash conversion is expected to be in the range of 95% to 105% above our historical averages.

Our capital expenditures forecast of $95 million to $115 million is heavily weighted towards growth initiatives in all three segments. In terms of other capital deployment priorities, our strategy has not changed. We continue to focus on reinvesting back into the company through strategic acquisitions and are committed to returning value to our shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. Now I’ll turn the call back to Tod.

Tod Carpenter: Thanks, Scott. As we look to the remainder of the year and beyond, we are focused on continuing to invest and execute on our long-term strategic initiatives all aimed at building upon our position as the leader in technology-led filtration. We are confident in our balanced growth strategy and in the fiscal 2026 financial targets we laid out at Investor Day. Our organic growth continues to be fueled by our R&D investments, which we expect to increase more than 20% this year. With respect to our inorganic growth, we are integrating and working to scale our life sciences and services acquisitions and our healthy balance sheet continues to afford us significant flexibility in pursuing additional strategic M&A in those areas.

Our purpose of advancing filtration for a cleaner world is at the forefront of our growth and everything we do. Importantly, this purpose serves as the foundation for our sustainability strategy and through our company principles, we continue to work towards delivering on our 2030 ESG ambitions. These principles include: one, operate sustainably. We’re working every day to do our part to help mitigate impacts from climate change; two, operate safely. We aim to provide safe and healthy workplaces for our global employees; three, engage and empower employees, we are dedicated to advancing opportunity and equity at Donaldson and four enrich our communities. We continue to prioritize our commitments to positively impacting our communities with charitable giving through the Donaldson Foundation.

In closing, I would like to thank the entire Donaldson team through their demonstrated agility, ability to operate in any environment and dedication we have and will continue to return value to all our stakeholders. With that, I will now turn the call back to the operator to open the line for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Bryan Blair with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Bryan Blair: Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Tod Carpenter: Good morning, Bryan.

Bryan Blair: I was hoping you’d offer a little more color on how you see mobile aftermarket phasing through the year. So some pressure to start it was expected given the OE channel dynamics, but you noted stabilization there. So that’s certainly positive. Comps obviously ease going forward. Should we see aftermarket return to solid growth in fiscal 2Q? Or is it more of a back half inflection that’s gone quit?

Tod Carpenter: Yes. So as we talked about before, on the OEM channel relative to aftermarket, we’ve been going through an extended period of destocking driven really on a customer-by-customer basis, which prolonged it over time. We believe that we are largely through that piece at this point. And as we as we look now forward sequentially, we would suggest that it’s going to go up driven by the overall share gains on the independent channel and the stabilization of the OE channel.

Bryan Blair: I appreciate the color. Gross margin was obviously excellent in the quarter. Scott, you said that we should expect there to be some moderation from these levels. Could you offer a little more detail there? And the reason that I ask, just very simplistically looking forward, volume should be stronger, certainly going into the back half for your typical seasonality, and I assume there will be more favorable mix. So I’m just looking for a little more quantification if you’re willing to offer that.

Scott Robinson: Yes, sure. I can try to help you out a bit. So obviously, 35.6% is a really good number for Donaldson. We kind of had all things heading in the right direction this quarter, which is great. We had a good cost picture, really good plant performance. We had a good mix. So things really all came together for us this quarter. Longer term, we obviously see opportunities to mix our company’s gross margin up, and that’s something that we’re going to – we’ve been talking about for a long time, and we continue to work on, and you’re seeing some green shoots of that. I don’t think 35.6% is necessarily sustainable in the very short term. So we said we expect it to sequentially step down but we’ll still have year-over-year margin improvement throughout the year. So we feel good about where the margin landed for the quarter. We’ll have year-over-year gross margin improvement this year. And just sequentially, we’re going to step down a little bit from this quarter.

Bryan Blair: Okay. Understood. And I guess sticking with margin. Can you offer some finer points on what you’re anticipating by segment for the year? You did specify that Life Sciences is expected to get to a positive level, started out rather strong the legacy segments. Just curious how the segment outlook shakes out for you?

Scott Robinson: Yes. I mean, like you said, the first thing we said is we expect the Life Sciences business to get to abroad breakeven this year. So they’re sequentially improving. They sequentially improved from Q4 to Q1, and we expect continued sequential improvement as they scale. We want to continue to invest there. We feel really good about where we’re headed and some great opportunities that the team is working very hard on. And our other 2 businesses had a strong quarter, good solid performance. And it’d be a lot to expect a 35.6% gross margin going forward. So like I said, we don’t expect that. But we do expect a 40 basis point improvement driven by all those factors through the year. That will get us to a good point for the company and about a third of our way towards our investor year targets after year 1. So I would say both Mobile Solutions and Industrial will contribute to that improvement. Keeping in mind, we want to continue to invest in future growth.

Bryan Blair: Understood. Thanks, again.

Scott Robinson: Thanks, Bryan.

Operator: Your next question comes from Nathan Jones with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Nathan Jones: Good morning, everyone.

Scott Robinson: Good morning, Nathan.

Nathan Jones: I’m going to push a little more on the gross margin piece of the business. I know you guys had some initial trouble with pricing with your OEM customers on the mobile side, which is not unusual for them. And obviously, realizing some of that price now seeing some deflation. I think part of the strategy there has been to hold on to that pricing if you saw some deflation. So I’m looking for a little bit of commentary on your ability to hold pricing in a deflationary environment. I would also imagine that as Life Sciences ramps up as we go through the year, that would be a tailwind to mix. So I’m just looking for a little bit more color on outside of the seasonality in the second quarter, what are the headwinds to gross margin that maybe make that 35.6 not sustainable for the full year?

Scott Robinson: Yes. So I mean, I think you’ve kind of covered it relatively well in your question. We certainly expect a slow and steady mix improvement in our gross margin. So we want to continue to execute on that plan. Like you said, we’ve worked very hard on pricing. And in some cases, it’s taken us a while to get pricing where it needs to be. We’ve only included in our guidance, a 2% price increase this year. So certainly, price increases are leveling off as kind of the world comes back into balance. We see some of our larger customers are still increasing their prices at a pretty good rate. And we want to have a reasonable commercial discussion with all of our customers on pricing. And certainly, we’ve never taken advantage of any situation to really push pricing.