Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE:OSK) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

John Pfeifer: Well, I mean, I will kind of give you some general ideas. We’re essentially at full capacity in a lot of our facilities, and so that’s why you see us announcing manufacturing capacity expansion, and we’ve got a few of them going on. We’ve done a lot of work in existing factories. We had JLG event with many of our – of you in August where we showcased Shippensburg “Factory of the Future”. You saw a lot of investments we’re doing to improve our throughput. But in addition to that, we’ve got a new facility or a repurposed facility in Tennessee to increase output for JLG. We’ve got a new facility in Murphysboro, Tennessee to do fire truck cabs and our new ERCV refuse collection vehicle product. And of course, we’ve got the big Spartanburg plant, And of course, we’ve got the big Spartanburg plant, which is getting ready – is producing postal vehicles today and getting ready to go into production vehicles over the next several months.

So, we are adding capacity because we see long-term growth trends in these markets. When we look at JLG we look at a lot of events that are coming together. It’s a very unique thing that’s happening where you have huge infrastructure bills that have been passed by the government. You have technology transformation happening with regard to EVs and battery plants, chip plants because of the digital revolution that we continue to be in. Energy transformation, we have geopolitical concerns causing onshoring to continue. We’ve got also an aged fleet. So all of these things come together, and it’s a very unique thing for all of these big macro things to be coming together. And what it tells us is that there is a lot of long-term demand that is underway.

And that’s why we’re putting more manufacturing capacity in because we know we have to meet that demand long term.

Christian Zyla: Great. And then as a quick follow-up, your backlog coverage has held up really well. With all that said, do you think this level of backlog relative to your revenues is sustainable? Or do you think you’ll be able to monetize some of that backlog at a quicker pace next year and in given those capacity expansions and everything you just said. Thank you so much.

Mike Pack: Yes. I think ultimately, what we’d expect is, is that over time, as productions normalize, that you will have backlog trends and order trends normalize a bit more. I think where you’ll see a decrease over time is in vocational because that’s where we see pent-up demand. And as John said earlier, we see some more – they’re a little bit later working through the supply chain challenges given the complexity of the product. So I would expect to see some normalization over time as we go through next year there.

John Pfeifer: Yes, I mean a little bit more color on that. So you see the big backlog that we have today, it’s $16 billion. As I talked about earlier, as we continue to increase capacity, we’re increasing capacity not because we have a big backlog, we’re increasing capacity because we see strong order rates continuing into the long-term future. Now that will also help us to bring those backlogs into a more realistic level from a lead time perspective. So we want to provide lead times that are a little lower than we have right now with our JLG business. We want to bring our fire and emergency lead times to under a year, they are well over a year today. So that will happen as we go. But we’re putting that capacity in place because we see the demand continuing long term, not just because we have a big backlog.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Jerry Revich with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your questions.

Jerry Revich: Yes, hi. Good morning everyone.

John Pfeifer: Good morning, Jerry.

Jerry Revich: John I am wondering if you could just share what you’re seeing in the telematics data that you track aerials versus telehandlers, we’re hearing about a different range please?