Integer Holdings Corporation (NYSE:ITGR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

I’ll also highlight we have been able to successfully pass through some of the labor and wage €“ some of the wage inflation and material inflation to our customers. We did that last year. Historically, we’ve been a 1% to 2% price down company. Last year, we were at the low-end of that range. In 2022, we were at the low end. In 2023, we expect to be slightly positive in price on a year-over-year basis, which captures the improvement in 2022, and that will continue into 2023. So that helps. But I can’t put a time frame like getting back to 2019, but if we continuously expand margins, I’m confident we will.

Matthew Mishan: Okay. And then just last question, and then I’ll jump out. As you think about your M&A strategy and your M&A plan, you introduced like 1.5 years or 2 years ago at this point, how does it change with the CapEx investments you’re making and the higher interest rates? Just how are you thinking about the dollar figure of potential M&A moving forward? I mean the $250 million, I think it is much greater than where, but free cash flow is coming in this year. I mean are you willing to go more on the variable rate debt side in a 7% interest rate environment if you do see the right type of acquisition?

Joe Dziedzic: Yes. So, it’s a great question. So, we closed Oscor in December of 2021. We closed Aran, USD 130-ish million in April of 2022. So, if you think about our cadence, the cadence would put it in the second half of the year, just thinking about a flow from a cadence standpoint. But your question about, well, how do we think about nominal dollars. We look at what our debt leverage is, and we remain very committed to 2.5x to 3.5x our debt leverage. The convertible bond issue we just did, I think, is a phenomenal example of how we continue to manage interest expense. We’re fixed right now and about 40% floating, and our weighted average interest cost, this year, we estimate it’s going to be a little over 4%, which matches where we were for the last 2 or 3 years.

So, even in this high-rate environment, we’ve got interest expense in the P&L that it’s at about the same weighted average interest rate. So, reflect on acquisitions, we’re balancing all of that, obviously, with the higher variable rates, you’re going to incur higher borrowing costs in the short-term, but there is a weighted average interest rate here that’s very consistent over the past three years and what we expect in 2023 and potentially coming down as depending on what interest rates do in 2024 and beyond. So, I’d say, think of it in the context of maintaining our commitment to 2.5x to 3.5x debt leverage. We did bump above 3.5x when we did the Aran acquisition. That was second quarter. But by the fourth quarter, a couple of quarters later, we’re right now at 3.5x, right, right at the top end of our 2.5x to 3.5x range.

So, we really think of it in the context of our debt leverage and maintaining our commitment to that range. Maybe it can bump up a little bit for a few quarters with a very clear path and near-term plan to get back within the range. There is a robust pipeline that might be one of your next questions, the pipeline remains robust. Valuations haven’t meaningfully materially changed for the high-value assets that we target when we think about what we’re looking for. We want a business with an accretive growth rate, ideally either accretive margins to Integer or something that we can make accretive to Integer in relative near term given our operational and commercial synergies, and we want differentiated capability or we want to compound the capability we already have and further grow in the faster-growing end markets that we’ve been targeting.