Powell Industries, Inc. (NASDAQ:POWL) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Brett Cope: Been pretty flat for a couple of quarters now. There’s always some opportunity there, but schedule still dictates overall, I’d say, on competition and where we’re at in the market. But pricing has become gradually more of a factor as not so much for Powell, but the engineered components [indiscernible] most of what we compete on and we’re out in the market, and it’s got — it’s improved. And so, with that, settled the pricing market a little bit. It’s not eroded, but I don’t think it’s going to be much more accretive.

Jon Braatz : Okay. Brett, most of the strength has been, from a geographical standpoint, in the U.S. Anything you’re seeing on the international front that suggests that we might see some stronger days ahead?

Brett Cope: Yes. We were just in the U.K. where we have the one factory we compete, IEC also doing very well, by the way. They’re having one of their best years in many years. But we were talking internationally. We’re seeing some resurgence potential in the Middle East. It’s been a little light there for a couple of years. So, we see some potential growing for international. And also, some work in Africa that’s pretty interesting to us. We have a pretty good base of installed base from the North of Africa around mostly to the west side of Africa, and we’re seeing some brownfield work research that has got our interest. So yes, I feel pretty good about that for next year.

Jon Braatz : Okay. And then last, Brett, you spoke a little bit about the data center market and getting inside the 4 walls of a data center as opposed to outside. And can you talk a little bit about the process of getting into the 4 walls, what this opportunity size might be, what the potential might be? And where you see it going from here?

Brett Cope: Sure. So, when you get inside the 4 walls, you’re stepping down on the electrical one line into lower voltages. And we today could compete, but we’re not optimized to compete in that. And it’s, of course, space that started pretty strongly by some very large multinational competitors. But as we’ve got a foothold now with a lot of these folks over the last three years or four years, we’re having very good substantive discussion about: What are the designs? Do they want a fixed-mount breaker or if it’s drawbell [ph] breaker? That dictates a little bit how we compete. But it also is giving us a lot of ideation and discussion about the R&D side and what can we do to our products to make them more competitive to provide optionality to our client to go with Powell on a wider scale of products and services.

So, it’s a little bit of a process on the AVL, the approved vendor list, but it’s bidirectional. So, we definitely have to do some things to improve the product. I think the service side of Powell is ready to go, and I’m hopeful that it’s just a matter of time that we’ll solve that equation with a few of the large folks out there and build some really sticky relationships for years to come.

Jon Braatz : Is that where some of your — a lot of your R&D spending is going, in that area?

Brett Cope: Some of the more recent R&D. We have some projects have been going on for years that are very targeted at the core Industrials and Utility. Utility has become a really important market segment for us. But more recently, there are some things that we’re learning. We think for the products we already have, we have some ideas that we’re running the ground right now that, if we can solve the technical problem, we think we’ll have a plus one differentiator.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Brett Cope for any closing remarks.

Brett Cope: Thank you, Alan. Overall, it was a very solid second quarter, and we are pleased with our performance across the organization. We have a great focus on productivity and efficiency across our operations, and our teams are delivering on schedule and on budget to our commitments. I would like to thank all of our employees for their energy and commitment as we have raised the bar with the incredible growth of our backlog. Also, of course, thank you to all our valued customers. We appreciate your continued trust in Powell. Thank you all for your participation today. We appreciate your interest in Powell, and look forward to speaking with you next quarter.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

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