Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc. (NYSE:HY) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Rajiv Prasad: No. We’ve got to think about Bolzoni as a sum ratio of Lift Trucks. And because it’s an attachment that goes on Lift Truck and typically they’re involved in new truck sales, because it’s a new attachment that goes with a new truck. And as our shipments rise and our competitor’s shipment rise, that will be good for Bolzoni, because typically, their lead times are shorter than Lift Truck lead times. So customers and dealers typically order those later than they order Lift Trucks. Once they have a solid delivery date for the Lift Truck, they’ll go back eight or 10 weeks from that and order the attachment. So we do expect their attachment to very much correlate with Lift Truck sales, especially Class 5 and in North America Class 4 and 5 trucks, and increasingly now Class 1.

But counterbalance trucks in the €“ I would say, in the two to five ton range. So that’d be a good in a correlation. The other thing I would say, the America €“ Bolzoni Americas team is doing very, very well beyond our expectation. They’re starting to gain traction and we are booking very well.

Al Rankin: I just add that you should note the numbers that Scott went through in some detail on the fourth quarter, because Bolzoni performed on an underlying basis really very quite well in the fourth quarter. And there was just a one-time sale that resulted in write-off of goodwill that was allocated to that particular small distribution entity at the time of the acquisition. So it’s a very non-operating and rather artificial write-off that just happens to come from the way a goodwill was allocated at the time of the acquisition. So there’s momentum behind Bolzoni, not just in the future, but also in the fourth quarter.

Steve Ferazani: Thanks for the responses everyone. Appreciate it.

Alfred Rankin: Thanks, Steve.

Scott Minder: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question is from Brett Kearney from Gabelli & Company. Brett, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Brett Kearney: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question and congratulations on the demonstrate progress after all the hard work last couple of years.

Alfred Rankin: Thanks, Brett.

Brett Kearney: We’ve seen the opportunity to kind of accelerate momentum on investing behind the strategic initiatives this year. Curious if you could help us think about kind of the major buckets of capital €“ CapEx investments the company will be making this year. And Al you talked about increasingly solving for productivity challenges that customers are facing, obviously, the modular scalable program is an important piece of that. Can you also touch on out some of Hyster’s advanced operator assist systems and telematics offerings kind of tie into the challenges you’re solving for your customer base?

Alfred Rankin: Yes. Let me ask Rajiv to address that, but with a preface from me. It’s still early in the year, we want to be darn sure that everything we think is sustainable €“ is sustainable. But there are some things that we would very much like to do in which we certainly hope to do as we move through the year, assuming it continues to move in the direction that we expect. And indeed, in our own thinking, we’ve baked those in and see the kinds of progressions that we described to you even with those things taken into account. But I think you’ll see the initiatives start to play out in the second half more than in the first half, because we’re going to watch to make sure that all the pieces of the equation continue to hold together. But against that backdrop let me ask Rajiv to expand on some of the momentum, I think is the best word to describe it that we feel we have going on our technology projects.