Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:LECO) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Gabe Bruno: Mig, we’re very pleased with how our Harris team has developed improvements within our model. And you’re right, even despite the softness in volumes, we have held up towards the low end of the range, but you’ve seen us pushing the high end throughout 2023. So our team is focused on exceeding those ranges. And we’re bullish that as we continue to shape our model that, yes, we’ll be moving that range in the long-term strategic discussions we’re having.

Mig Dobre: I mean, have you had some structural cost takeout? I mean, what happened here to essentially offset the volume compression, that’s what I was really kind of trying to get at.

Steve Hedlund: Yes, Mig, the team in Harris has made a number of operational improvements in the business to make us more efficient. I would also point to you that there’s different segments within the Harris business and the retail and consumable HVAC portions of the business that were down, tend to be the lower margin drag in that business. So the part that was performing gas equipment tends to be higher margin. So there’s some favorable mix in there as well.

Mig Dobre: Okay, helpful. Thank you.

Operator: And we’ll take our final question today from Angel Castillo, Morgan Stanley.

Grace Chen: Hi, this is Grace Chen on for Angel. Thank you for the question. So what drove the sequential increase in acquisition contribution for the international volume business? I think you mentioned is from – for international, but could you provide more color here? And was it just a one-time thing? And if so, will margins equally come off from the 4Q levels for 2024? Thank you.

Gabe Bruno: Grace, I want to make sure I understood your question. It seemed to focus on international acquisitions performance. That is driven by our Fori acquisition, as you know, and just very strong execution on projects within the backlog as we ended the year. So those are not one-time types of projects, but they’re progressively the execution of outstanding customer projects. So that’s just an ongoing development of our international business. When you think about the acquisitions, and we expect that Fori will continue to perform well. We did have, as I mentioned in my comments, the one-month lag we caught up in the fourth quarter, and as I mentioned, $15 million of one-month lag that we caught up. And I would estimate about 50/50 between international and in the Americas business, but that’s a strong performance driven by level of business activity.

Grace Chen: Got it. Thank you so much.

Operator: And at this time, there are no further questions. I would like to turn the call back to Gabe Bruno for closing remarks.

Gabe Bruno: I’d like to thank everyone for joining us on the call today and for your continued interest in Lincoln Electric. We look forward to discussing the progression of our strategic initiatives in the future. Thank you very much.

Operator: Again, that does conclude today’s conference. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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