Hubbell Incorporated (NYSE:HUBB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Brad Lindsey: Thanks for that, I guess just a follow up, I imagine there’s a lot of labor underutilization factory and efficiencies and so on in that business. Have you tried to size what that magnitude could be? And really, if you can uncork some of the backlog improve continuity of supply and so on what the earnings power could be as part of the clear recovery.

Gerben Bakker: Yes, I maybe thought more general into efficiency in the factories and certainly this business, it’s felt that although to this business, there’s also a component of contract manufacturing, that happens to a certain extent, and we’re shielded. But in our business in general, that’s absolutely a right common tomato with all the disruption it’s driven, more inefficient factory and I would say if €˜22 was all about pricing and managing price cost productivity. €˜23 will continue to be that but a high focus of us in returning to higher productivity in our footprint.

Operator: Next question comes from Nigel Coe with Wolfe Research.

Nigel Coe: Good morning, everyone. Hi, guys. So just want to go back to the commercialization of Clara, did I get that right, Bill came through with a price concession. So that impacted the headline price in utilities?

Bill Sperry : Yes.

Nigel Coe: Okay. That’s been, and I’m saying that about $20 million – $25 million. Is that in right zone?

Bill Sperry : No, that’s too high.

Nigel Coe: Too high. But that would have impacted EBITDA as well. So that was both revenue and EBITDA impact, correct?

Bill Sperry : Correct.

Nigel Coe: Okay, great. Okay, this is my clarification questions. And then moving on to my real questions. So on the inventory, did you see that hidden primarily within residential products? Or was it much more sort of generalized immunity clearance?

Bill Sperry : Yes, I would say much more generalized. So utility, which is — had very impressive growth, but we invested in utility inventory too right, so trying to, we’re still going to have our AA items on time delivery, performance levels where we want them, Nigel, so that inventory has been kind of across the board. It’s skews at this point, if you looked at our yearend balance sheet, it skews in a raw versus finished good or maybe that’s obvious, because if it was finished, we would have shipped it but so is that still has to work its way through the factories and get converted. And so that’s kind of part of what Gerben saying, we should be able to run the factories a little bit hotter and get some efficiencies as we burn through a lot of that raw material.

Nigel Coe: Right. Okay. And then just a quick one on below line item, I mean, pension in any kind of big swings on pension, and I think there’s some TFA income rolling off this year. So in any impact there would be helpful.

Bill Sperry : Yes. So both of those you saw when Gerben walks through the waterfall, we’ve got this red bar at the end. So the nonrecurrence of the PSA is part of it and the pension, while we’ve benefited from our liabilities going down with higher interest rates, the gap between return. expected return on assets and discount rates it has narrowed and so that creates a cost headwind for next year, that’s its pension that is not cash, but it does create an income statement headwind for us and that other.