Graco Inc. (NYSE:GGG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

And electric prices are down about 30%. It’s — those are still at elevated levels, but a pretty dramatic change. And I guess, lastly, always an important market for Europe, automotive has had a couple of tough years there, along with America. But retail auto sales are improving as well.

Walter Liptak: Okay. Great. And similarly, China looks like it’s beginning to open up. ISMs were a little bit better. Can you talk to us about just your exposure there? And is it mostly supply chain? Or do you benefit from an improving economy?

Mark Sheahan: Yes, we should benefit in China from an improving economy. Hopefully, now that they’re opening things up. I think they’re still going through this COVID wave over there, but the people that — we talk to our team basically say things are getting better literally by the week. So as they open up more, it should be more activity for us. Big part of that business is industrial. All the factories that we serve and obviously all the alternative energy stuff that we talked about with batteries, solar, wind energy, all that, all those applications are important for Graco along with automotive. So hopefully — I always say this with a grain of salt, but hopefully, once we work our way through COVID in China, that should be some potential upside for the company.

Walter Liptak: Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. As there are no further questions, I will now turn the conference over to Mark Sheahan.

Mark Sheahan: Okay. Thank you, everyone. In closing, I’d like to thank our employees, our suppliers, our distributor partners around the world for their strong contributions and helping us post another record year at Graco. Yes, it’s been a challenging year, but in true Graco fashion, we’ve been able to overcome the hurdles and deliver significant shareholder and customer value. While there are many things that contribute to our strong performance, it’s really our loyal and hard-working employees that make this company great. That concludes today’s call. Thanks for participating, and have a good day.

Operator: This concludes our conference for today. Thank you all for participating, and have a nice day. All parties may now disconnect.