ESAB Corporation (NYSE:ESAB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Shyam Kambeyanda: Yes. And as I mentioned earlier, our playbook on all of this is actually quite simple. We have a really strong process around our sales growth plan. We create really strong territory plans. We create regional plans off of it and then growth bridges within our business. And what we’ve seen over the last couple of years is our sales teams really inculcate that into the DNA and drive that as we move forward. So when you look at our EMEA and APAC business, we did see a lot of strength in India. The same things that we’ve spoken about in the past, Mig, we’ve seen investment in infrastructure. We’ve seen investment in ag. We’ve seen investment in renewables. And then also investment in LNG and oil and gas. And so what you’re seeing is that India is sort of benefiting in general for the general industry rising, especially ag and infrastructure, the Middle East on LNG, oil and gas and investments.

And what I call in the Middle East, more slightly so that gives us a lot of confidence is the fact that it’s a steady investment. It’s not been the sort of massive investment upfront. It’s been a steady state of investment within the Middle East region across all geographies there that’s driving for capacity improvement, especially as it relates to LNG and processing of crude oil. So we really like those 2 spaces. Europe, I mentioned it briefly in my commentary earlier, we’re seeing the auto market rebound. And then just the market being resilient and that’s probably the best word that I could use for Europe. It continues to be resilient with some auto business coming back, a strong focus into renewables. The other piece that I’m really proud of our team on is that we had a chance to visit with a couple of customers this past week and we’re looking at building partnerships where we’re providing digital, consumable and equipment solutions to our customers, creating a full workflow solution set, that’s gained traction, giving us confidence about the mix change that we’ve talked about creating within ESAB where today, we’re at about 70-30 and we’d like to continue to improve that over the next 3 to 5 years to get closer to 60-40.

And so we’re really pleased about our initial onset, how our sales teams have approached it and more importantly, how the customers have engaged with us in that sales process.

Mig Dobre: Okay. And if you’ll allow me one final one, maybe this one is for Kevin. How are you thinking about working capital in 2023? You hinted at additional room to work down inventory. And as you’re thinking about free cash flow, how would you frame your leverage and the way you’re kind of looking at deploying capital, if at all, for 2022?

Kevin Johnson: So firstly, I think Shyam already mentioned it as part of today’s presentation. We do still see opportunity on inventory. When we look at the DSI , we have certain parts of our business where we believe we are in a really good shape but we have other parts of the business where we believe we have opportunity to improve. So certainly, as part of our implant for this year, we have targeted to make further strides in further reducing our inventory levels. So you’ll see more to come on that part. In terms of capital deployment, we’re going to continue to be disciplined in our capital deployment. You’ve seen the acquisitions that we did in 2022. We funded that out of the free cash flow that we generated. We’ll continue to manage our leverage within the 2x to 3x range and we’ll be focused on bolt-on M&A to smaller acquisitions that will immediately be accretive and don’t require a great deal of cash to fund.