Knowles Corporation (NYSE:KN) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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John Anderson: Tristan, just to add a little bit on the accretion. We expect it to be neutral again in Q1. We expect it to be accretive to earnings kind of beginning in the back half of 2024. And I think one thing to point out is in the calculation of accretion, we do include both the cash interest, and then I mentioned this in the script, there’s what we call imputed interest. We had a $123 million interest-free loan in connection with that acquisition. So, we calculate using a market rate of about 7.25% on impute interest. So that’s included in that.

Jeffrey Niew: I mean, I guess what I’d say, Tristan, overall, we feel pretty good about where we are three months into this — three, four months into this, that this acquisition is really a nice fit for us, and has the opportunity to be a nice grower on the margin side and the EBITDA side, starting really in the back half of the year.

Tristan Gerra: Great. And then for my follow-up, within the Precision Device business, if you could give us some details on how the various segments are moving. I’m guessing telecom, industrial, obviously going to be the weakest, given the inventory deleveraging that’s going on, but any commentary as well on automotive, defense? And also how is the pricing looking like for the capacitor, which is most of that business? And also if you can remind us whether you have pricing agreements, LTA type of agreements, or is it all spot?

Jeffrey Niew: Yes. So first, on the pricing, and I think we talked about pricing in the Cornell portion of the acquisition. I think we’ve gone through a lot of the pricing work, obviously, in the traditional PD business over the years. But we expect modest price increases in 2024 over 2023. I think the biggest thing that we see in terms of the markets is still this industrial/distribution business still is very, very weak at this moment. And I — and we kind of see it in the Cornell, but we see this in the Cornell business as well. But that was factored in kind of what we said by the November 1 time line when we announced the closure or the closing on the business. So, it’s really about industrial and telecom. There are a few, I would say, large OEMs, which shall remain nameless, that you have some inventory of their own.

But I think that should clear up relatively quickly. It’s still really about this industrial/distribution business and when we believe that, that’s going to recover. But in the meantime, we are really working hard in the factories to optimize capacity utilization, get value creation in the factories, and control OpEx. That’s what we’re focused on right now in this interim period probably through the first half.

Operator: And there are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference over to Sarah Cook for closing remarks.

Sarah Cook: Thank you for joining us today. As always, we appreciate your interest in Knowles and look forward to speaking with you on our next earnings call. Thank you, and goodbye.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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