nVent Electric plc (NYSE:NVT) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Sara Zawoyski: Yes. So our initial Phase 1 of this is we opened a new manufacturing facility in Mexico and really some of our — expanded some of our core Enclosures products there so that we could optimize our Anoka facility which is here just outside of Minneapolis, so that we could expand our liquid cooling capacity, some of our lab capability, engineering capability. There’s other facilities across the U.S. that were also expanding for some of those core product offerings. So the CapEx is really helping us invest to further scale and support the testing requirements, the addition of new customers so we can really accelerate as the market accelerates.

Operator: The next question will come from Joe Ritchie with Goldman Sachs.

Joseph Ritchie: I just wanted to maybe get a little bit more clarification on Julian’s question on the destocking. So I think, Beth, last quarter, you guys had mentioned that it was really broadly impacting your business. And then this quarter, it seems like it’s been a little bit more so on the commercial and resi side but I clearly don’t want to put words in your mouth. I’m just — maybe just talk about like where you’re seeing it across your businesses today and then like your confidence that you’ll get through most of it in the upcoming quarter.

Beth Wozniak: Well, I think as we said, distributors were adjusting their inventories for 2 reasons. One, you just take a look at lead times coming in and supply chain challenges. And second, I just want to emphasize again, our sell-through to the distributors has been positive. And so as we’ve seen where the supply chain has improved or where areas have been softer like commercial/resi, that’s where we saw some of that adjustments take place. But even now, as you start to see more so with industrial, we’re seeing some of those adjustments take place there as well. And I would say areas where their strength continues to be infrastructure. And we think this is going to play out as expected. And again, we’re very — we feel very confident because of the positive sell-through that we see at our distributors.

Joseph Ritchie: Got it. That makes a lot of sense. And then I know AI and liquid cooling is going to be a hot topic for a long period of time. I guess just 2 quick questions there. In terms of the R&D investments that you’re making, maybe I missed it but how much are you stepping up R&D for the remainder of the year? And then specifically, in what type of applications? And then my second question, is there a way to maybe parse out your — I don’t know, whether it’s your content for data center and whether — how that’s going to be changing over time given recent developments?

Beth Wozniak: Well, I guess I would say — first of all, the investments that we’re making in CapEx and OpEx, those investments are both in R&D, in operations and just across the board. I mean, we’re investing in that business across all functions, just as we see the growth and opportunity. So — and what we’re doing specifically when we think about R&D is we — I mentioned how we were building out a more standard portfolio that would allow us to scale some of the capability and scalable products through distribution. So that’s how we think about all of those investments, to support the current customers, new customers, the testing required for these solutions, sometimes it takes a year, as well as developing these standard products.

So it’s really all of that. And when — and again, as we mentioned, we think there’s various cooling solutions. So whether it’s greenfield or retrofit, whether it’s hyperscale or enterprise, there’s a suite of — there’s a suite of products that we’re working on developing.

Operator: The next question will come from Jeff Sprague with Vertical Research.