Nordson Corporation (NASDAQ:NDSN) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Sundaram Nagarajan: What we’re seeing is, this is a set of businesses that we’ve gone through some pretty good work around setting the business up for taking advantage of the growth opportunities. Really the biggest growth opportunity that is out there that this team is pursuing really is the recycling. And what we find is given this whole issue around plastic usage reduction, I don’t know whether I go as far as to say plastic ban, but in certain parts of the world, those words get thrown around, but we do find incredible demand for recycling. And we have some unique technology in our BKG business in Germany that allows us to serve that particular market. And I would highlight that as an pretty strong secular trend that is going on. And that business has some pretty strong backlog going into next year, significant part of next year.

Joseph Kelley: Chris, I would add when you think about that polymer processing you go back in time and remember the divestiture of the Xaloy business. The divestiture of that product line, I would tell you, resulted in upgrading the quality and the degree of differentiation of the product lines that remained in that polymer processing division. And so, I think that’s what you see also fallen through some of these numbers.

Christopher Glynn: Makes sense. Thanks. And just going back to Jeff’s question on the D&A for ARAG, you referenced kind of rule of thumb metric informing the 4Q guide in terms of percentage of sales D&A. Just curious if that rule of thumb sort of correlates around 2.5%, 3% of purchase price, since you kind of put it in generic terms and also on ARAG, just the 40% through distribution, I know it’s viewed as recurring, but stocking comes into question, particularly on the heels of a couple year of global supply chain volatility. So just curious how you view the inventory levels the channel kind of balances and equanimity across that stock and flow sort of business.

Sundaram Nagarajan: So maybe help me. So you want to take the D&A question first, and then I can maybe make a comment around the inventory piece.

Joseph Kelley: Yeah. The answer to your question is, yes, that typical 2.5% of purchase price is our starting point in terms of the annual amortization.

Christopher Glynn: Thank you.

Sundaram Nagarajan: And in terms of inventory, remember, the recurring revenue here are parts. They’re not significant systems are big units that are sitting in our distributor shelves that takes a little bit longer time. These are small sprayers and that sort of component. We’re still — we still don’t own the business. Obviously, we don’t have a lot of detailed information around where they are at. But my expectation would be that, that is not a significant issue for us in that business.

Christopher Glynn: Great. Thanks for the extra color.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Mike Halloran of Baird. Your line is open.

Unidentified Participant: Hey. Good morning, everybody. This is [indiscernible] for Mike. Hoping you could provide a little bit more color on the order entry comment. It looks like orders were down sequentially. You talked about pressure in China in the Asia Pacific region. And then obviously, some of the — some of the businesses are bouncing along the bottom. Can you maybe talk about some of the puts and takes that kind of got you to study? It just sounded like maybe the commentary was skewed a little bit more on to the negative side. And if you could just provide a little bit of color around order entry so far through August, if you said, that would be great.

Sundaram Nagarajan: All right. Let me start with where we’re at in terms of the businesses, which is our electronics business and our fluid components biopharma business, both of those order entry has bottomed out is the best way to put it. So where they are currently performing, they have come to a place where we feel good about that it is not any further declines. We’ve seen as the quarter progressed, we could start to see that this is at the bottom. In terms of our businesses that are performing incredibly well and contributed to the growth, medical interventional business and our polymer solution business on the other end of the spectrum have done well and the order entry remains pretty robust. And then you have a group of businesses sort of in the middle, some a little bit high, some a little bit low.

In all of those cases, what we truly find is the order entry has sequentially improved. They have improved through the quarters, and that’s kind of where we would say. The order entry has not significantly picked up or significantly declined. And that’s really how we come to saying that it is about steady.

Unidentified Participant: Got it. That’s super helpful. And then following up on the question differentiating between T&I and the dispense side within the electronics business. Naga, you mentioned that the amplitude of the cycles is different between T&I. But can you maybe talk about the length? I know, for instance, we kind of refer to a typical four to five quarter slowdown in dispense. When the paper comes for the T&I business, is it typical to think of the length of the cycle and slowdown in similar terms, or should we be thinking about them differently as well?

Sundaram Nagarajan: No. From what we know and based on our experience, no, it’s about similar. Maybe — is there an offset? There could be a slight offset, but nothing significant. We don’t believe so.

Unidentified Participant: Understood. All right. Thank you. I’ll pass it on.

Operator: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Naga for closing remarks.

Sundaram Nagarajan: Our strong operating performance reflects the strength of our differentiated precision technology, customer-centric model and diversified end-markets. Again, I want to thank Nordson employees for their commitment, which makes these results possible. The continued deployment of Ascend strategy will position us well for long-term growth. Thank you for your time and attention on today’s call. Have a great day.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.

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