ESAB Corporation (NYSE:ESAB) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

The other aspect, Mig, that I’d say to you is we’ve been very positively surprised by how resilient the markets have been, and in reality what we find–you know, I was in the Middle East and I can tell you, never before have I seen the kind of infrastructure and investment projects on the way. I was in India and I can tell you, from the times that I came to college here and have been going back, I’ve never seen the kind of development that’s happening in that particular region, and we all know about the opportunity that’s going to happen in the U.S., Canada and Mexico over the next decade with whether you call it re-industrialization or an industrial renaissance or re-shoring. There truly is significant opportunity for companies like us, and ESAB in particular, to be able to drive volume growth.

We’re also looking forward to sharing a lot more detail on all of these topics during our investor day in December.

Mig Dobre: Sure, and thank you for that color, but maybe just to put a finer point here, when we’re looking at what your peers reported, for instance, what we have seen there, for lack of a better term, is just deceleration in activity. That’s not really apparent in your–in what you reported today, which is why I’m asking the question. Is it that the penetration of new product and all your initiatives are leading to the kind of outgrowth in the market that you deem to be sustainable, even as maybe broader demand conditions potentially shift going forward? Thank you.

Shyam Kambeyanda: Yes, so twofold. The first one is just a simpler answer – yes, we believe that we’ve got good processes in play that allow us to continue to do what we’re doing and get better from there. The other piece that I would also say, that the markets actually are showing reasonable resilience as we see it and where we are playing. We’ve talked about this before – we’re seeing ag continue to show some strength, we’re seeing renewable energy show some strength and we continue to gain customers in that particular place. We see downstream oil and gas and investment in the Middle East and infrastructure doing well, and the emerging markets exposure that we have, really we’ve always talked about having sort of a 2x impact on ESAB’s growth, and we’re seeing that play out.

Mig Dobre: Okay, thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Chris Dankert from Loop Capital. Your line is open.

Chris Dankert: Hey, good morning everyone. This might be a question more for December here, but I’ll give it a shot anyhow. Kevin, I think you touched on manufacturing consolidation, maybe just any kind of update on what the actions were in the quarter and kind of what needs to happen yet on that front.

Kevin Johnson: Yes, so we’ve been working hard on the manufacturing consolidation. We had a couple of large projects this year with a focus on our European business this year in terms of some work that we’re doing, and there is an impact in the fourth quarter, probably a few million dollars as a result of those actions, that’s benefiting our margins. We’ve got a funnel of opportunities that we’re excited about for the future.

Shyam Kambeyanda: Yes Chris, I think we have talked about this before, where we think we’re in the middle innings in terms of where we think our [indiscernible] and efficiency can go, but we’ve done of lot heavy lifting in the past, so. But the point still is there’s plenty to do in terms of footprint rationalization, in terms of the things that Kevin spoke about also related to AI and data mining, that sort of fundamentally drives our opex to a different position, so we’re looking forward to executing those as we go into the budget cycle. Kevin and I actually looked at several of those initiatives for us and we’re putting plans in play, depending on what the end markets do for us to either accelerate or run them through the course.