Helios Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:HLIO) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mircea Dobre: Okay. Final question for me on Hydraulics. And I know some of my peers already asked about end market trends, but when I’m sort of thinking about your OE exposure and I’m thinking about construction and agriculture specifically, I’m curious what you’re hearing from your OE customers in terms of their production plans and how that sort of gels with your revenue outlook. It would seem to me based on what I’ve heard from them that they’re contemplating pretty steep production costs in 2024. So, yes. Maybe talk us through that and how we get to your revenue guidance in an environment in which maybe these production cuts are accelerating through 2024. Thank you.

Josef Matosevic: Mig, looking at the end market chart here sitting right in front, all of us and going by geography, everything that you are seen in everything we have seen and heard from our customers has been baked into our guidance here for 2024. In particular, going to the product lines here, construction North America, ag North America looks pretty balanced as we don’t see that steep decline in our product offering. Europe in the ag market, that’s where we see steeper declines. But again, we baked this into our guidance. European construction, as we have a color quality in the yellowish. So very balanced. So overall, the industrial market, North America is kind of flattish to low growth, steeper decline in Europe, and we really don’t see any strong recovery coming out of the Asian market yet.

And that just confirms what Sean said earlier, as we bake in all of our investments that we have made in 2023 and improved our cost structure and reposition everything for growth as those markets recover, Mig, and not just the product lines, but also as Asia comes back, we should see those incremental margins go in our favor. Sean?

Sean Bagan: Yes. And I think all the things, Josef, just highlighted from that perspective, it just speaks to the overall diversification of our Hydraulics business. No one customer are we overly reliant upon. And from that perspective, within our guidance, we’ve been more aggressive in our CVT, Sun Hydraulics business that are Faster QRC business. So we would expect more of the growth to come from CVT and that goes back to some of the inventory levels we’re seeing at the distributor levels where that’s on Hydraulics business is more distribution based than OEM based. So more of that OEM direct weakness would come through that European Faster business. But overall, we feel good because of that overall diversification, not overly reliant on ag market. The construction and industrial are very important as well for us.

Mircea Dobre: Okay. Thank you.

Josef Matosevic: Thank you, Mig.

Tania Almond: Thanks, Mig.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to Tania Almond for closing comments.

Tania Almond: Great. Thank you so much, operator, and thanks, everybody on the line for joining us. Feel free to follow-up with me in the following days and weeks. So if you have any questions, we look forward to connecting with you, and we’ll talk with you next quarter. Take care.

Operator: This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

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