ITT Inc. (NYSE:ITT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Joe Giordano : I just wanted to start on the cost side for expectations into ’23. So the cost inflation, I know it’s less than — you’re guiding to less inflation than what you had in ’22, but it’s incremental inflation off a high number. And Emmanuel, I think you called out chemicals, you called out energy. I’m sure there’s some labor in there. But I just want to understand the lags here because if it’s like chemicals and energy and things levered to oil prices and gas prices, I mean, in the U.S., they’re down and in Europe, gas prices are down like 85% versus the peak and they’re down — they’re at late ’21 levels now. So just curious as to like how — what those exposures are and what — it seems like there has to be some give back on the energy side pretty soon.

Emmanuel Caprais: No, no, we agree, Joe. I think that for the moment, there’s — we’re still in a period where we have high cost. And one thing that we have to keep in mind is that even if the markets show a significant decline, whether it is in energy or for the price of steel or those type of things, there’s still a lag before we can experience it. And I think that what you’re seeing here is that Q1 is really very much in line with what we’ve seen in the second half of 2022. And we’re going to start seeing progressive benefits in Q2 and later in the year. So I think that a lot of the incremental inflation that you’re seeing is on the chemical, the other raw materials. We buy aromatic fiber, for instance, and that has shot up through the roof, 10 is not easing up either. But on the commodities that are going to go down, we’re going to experience that decline later in the year.

Joe Giordano : Okay. And then if I could just follow-up on MT, specifically on the margins. Obviously, there’s a lot of upside to where you used to be there. How much of this is like specific COVID-related costs in China, just for like having to keep people on site and all the extra stuff you had to do during shutdowns? And if that — if we get back to China, just living with the virus like we do here now — how much does that give you back like almost immediately if you can take some of those precautions away?

Luca Savi: So I would say when it comes to — that is a known issue, Joe. As I think that China has been able to go through all of that performance, those costs have been fully compensated by productivity and the volume. And so not at all. That’s the short answer.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Vlad Bystricky from Citigroup.

Vlad Bystricky: Maybe just following up on Joe’s question there and I’ll ask them in a different way. So I think about the progression of MT profitability going forward. Can you talk about the path back to high teens margins in that business? And sort of given what you know today, how you’re thinking about the time line to get back to those prior peak-ish ranges?

Luca Savi: Okay. So when we think about MT, the long-term target that we shared at Investor Day have not changed. Within, MT can reach the operating margin long term. That’s for sure. And when we think in terms of time line, just because of what has happened probably, they’re going to get there a little bit later than CCT and NIP. But that 20% is there can be achieved. We just have to get a little bit of this since they go through this make out of this NIC. But we have a clear visibility to get there.