Sensient Technologies Corporation (NYSE:SXT) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Sensient Technologies Corporation (NYSE:SXT) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 9, 2024

Sensient Technologies Corporation isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good morning. And welcome to the Sensient Technologies Corporation 2023 Fourth Quarter and Year-end Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Please also note today’s event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the floor over to Steve Rolfs. Please go ahead, sir.

Stephen Rolfs: Good morning. Welcome to Sensient’s earnings call for the fourth quarter and full year of 2023. I’m Steve Rolfs, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Sensient Technologies Corporation. I’m joined today by Paul Manning, Sensient’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. Earlier today, we have released our 2023 fourth quarter and full-year results. A copy of the release and our investor presentation is available on our website at sensient.com. During our call today, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which remove the impact of currency movements, cost of the company’s portfolio optimization plans, income related to earnout payment received in 2022 in connection with the divestiture of our yogurt fruit preparations business.

And other items as noted in the company’s filings. We believe the removal of these items provides investors with additional information to evaluate the company’s performance and improves the comparability of results between reporting periods. This also reflects how management reviews and evaluates the company’s operations and performance. Non-GAAP financial results should not be considered in isolation from, or as a substitute for financial information calculated in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is available in our press release. We encourage investors to review these reconciliations in connection with the comments we make today. I would also like to remind everyone that, comments made during this call, including responses to your questions, may include forward-looking statements.

Our actual results may differ materially from those that may be expressed or implied due to a wide range of factors, including those set forth in our SEC filings. We urge you to read Sensient’s previous SEC filings and our forthcoming 10-Ks for a description of additional factors that could potentially impact our financial results. Please keep these factors in mind when you analyze our comments today. Now we’ll hear from Paul Manning.

Paul Manning: Thanks, Steve. Good morning and good afternoon. Yesterday, we reported our fourth quarter and full-year results. As predicted, we continue to experience destocking throughout the fourth quarter as many of our customers continue their efforts to reduce their inventory and right-size their balance sheet by year-end. During the quarter, destocking was most pronounced in the Color Group, while the Flavors Group experienced sequential improvement. Now turn into our results. For the company, local currency revenue was down low single digits in the quarter and was about flat for the full year of 2023. Revenue in the Flavors and Extract group was flat in the fourth quarter, and the Color Group was down high single digits in local currency.

Local currency revenue in both Color and Flavors improved sequentially in the fourth quarter of ‘23 from the third quarter. Revenue in the age-specific group was down mid-single digits in the fourth quarter, primarily due to destocking. Overall, the impact of destocking in the Asia Pacific Group has not been as pronounced as the impact in the Flavors and Color Groups. As I mentioned previously, the impact quarter to quarter in Asia Pacific has been more volatile due to the order patterns of certain multinational customers. But the full-year of 2023 Asia Pacific reported mid-single digit local currency revenue growth. Our consolidated adjusted local currency EBITDA was down 5.9% for the full year of 2023. As mentioned throughout 2023, the volume declines due to destocking have had an outsized impact on our operating profit, especially when you compare our 2023 results to our outstanding results in 2022.

Both Color and Flavors reported local currency operating profit declines of about 16% in the fourth quarter of 2023. The Asia Pacific Group reported a local currency operating profit decline of 12%. 2023 has been a transitional year, and we expect 2024 to be a more normal year. During 2023, customers were focused on reducing their inventory positions and right-sizing their working capital. As we begin 2024, we are already seeing an improvement in customer order patterns. We expect sequential improvement in our volumes throughout 2024, and I expect a much-improved financial picture, including solid sales, volume growth, local currency, revenue growth, and local currency adjusted operating profit growth. Our focus remains on the things that we can control.

We continue to win new business across all three groups. Our sales win rate remains at a high level and we are generating incremental sales wins across most of our product lines and geographies. We continue to be focused on retaining our existing business and working with our customers on new development activities. Our focus on customer service and on-time delivery are a direct contributor to our high sales win rate. In the fourth quarter, we also initiated a portfolio optimization plan. This plan is designed to right-size our cost base and optimize our organizational structure with a focus on driving improved productivity in certain businesses and functions and delivering significant cost improvement. The plan will look to optimize our production operations in both Colors and Flavors, and to centralize and eliminate SG&A redundancies and activities in certain functional areas within both groups.

The objective of this plan is to deliver annual cost savings of approximately $8 million to $10 million once fully implemented by the end of 2025, including the cost incurred in the fourth quarter of 2023. We expect to incur pre-tax charges of approximately $40 million, of which approximately $30 million will be non-cash. We are carefully managing this process to ensure our ability to meet customer’s needs and to minimize the disruption to the business. We’re also beginning the consultation process with certain European employee groups in connection with our plan. We’re also announcing that we are increasing our Board of Directors from nine seats to 10. We are nominating Brett Bruggeman for election to the Board of Directors at our 2024 annual meeting in April.

Brett is the Chief Operating Officer at Land O’Lakes and brings over 30 years of food industry and agricultural experience. Brett’s insights will be invaluable as we continue our expansion in natural colors and flavors across many of our businesses. Now turning to 2024, I expect Sensient to return to sales volume growth, and I expect consolidated annual revenue to grow at a low to mid-single-digit rate on a local currency basis with low single-digit pricing. I expect good operating leverage and margin improvement across our groups as we experience improved fixed-cost coverage and a lower inflationary environment. Revenue and volume growth resume profit improvement will trail sales improvement by a quarter or so. On a consolidated basis, I expect Sensient to deliver low to mid-single-digit adjusted local currency EBITDA growth for the year.

Within our Flavors and Extracts group, our new sales win rate is robust. The group delivered a high level of new sales wins in 2023, and we expect strong new sales wins in 2024. Customer service remains at a high level and continues to be a top priority. The group has seen a reduction in certain raw material costs, however many raw material costs such as citrus and various agricultural inputs remain elevated. The impacts of destocking improved each quarter in 2023, and we believe our customers have substantially completed destocking. Therefore, I expect the flavor group to have a much improved 2024 with low to mid-single-digit local currency revenue growth. The color group also had an outstanding new sales win rate in 2023, particularly in natural colors, and we expect an equally robust new sales win rate in 2024.

Customers accelerated their destocking in the back half of last year, especially in the fourth quarter. Most of the impact of destocking is over. However, we do anticipate a modest amount in the first quarter of this year. Overall, I expect the color group to deliver low to mid-single-digit local currency revenue growth in 2024. Asia Pacific’s focus on sales execution, customer service, and broadening its product portfolio has positioned the group nicely for 2024. The group continued to deliver a high level of new sales wins throughout 2023. These new wins will continue to benefit 2024 and expect the group will deliver new sales wins at a high rate again in 2024. The group has been impacted by destocking at certain larger multinational companies.

As mentioned earlier, this has produced some volatile swings in the age-specific group order patterns and results. That will be the case again during the first quarter of this year. Overall, I expect the age-specific group to deliver mid-single-digit revenue growth in 2024. I’m optimistic about 2024. As I said earlier, we’re focused on the things we can control. Our focused-on sales execution, customer service, and our innovative technologies are contributing to the high level of new sales wins we are generating across the company. Our sales pipelines remain strong and we continue to work on new product applications with our customers. We expect this focus on new sales wins and an overall moderation in destocking to drive volume growth in 2024, compared to 2023.

Our portfolio optimization plan will improve our manufacturing footprint and improve our overall cost structure. We expect this plan will generate modest profit improvement in 2024. Once fully implemented by the end of 2025, we expect that it will generate annual savings of approximately $8 million to $10 million. We also continue to strategically manage our inventory positions and we expect our overall inventory levels to decline in 2024. We have seen strong improvement to our cash flow in 2023 and we expect continued improvement in 2024. In this elevated interest environment, we remain focused on reducing our debt and our interest expense. Our product portfolio is strong and we remain focused on our key customer markets of food, pharmaceutical and personal care.

Our strategy remains sound and we are well-positioned for future growth. Steve will now provide you with additional details on the fourth quarter results.

Stephen Rolfs: Thank you, Paul. In my comments this morning, I will be explaining the differences between our GAAP results and our adjusted results. The adjusted results for 2023, remove the cost of the portfolio optimization plan and the adjusted results for 2022 remove the income related to an earn-out payment received in connection with the divestiture of our yogurt fruit prep business. We believe that, the removal of these items provides a more clear picture to investors of the company’s performance. This also reflects how management reviews the company’s operations and performance. Sensient’s revenue was $349.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to $348.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. Sensient’s operating income was $8.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, compared to $41.2 million of income in the comparable period last year.

Operating income in the fourth quarter of 2023 includes $27.8 million approximately $0.65 per share of portfolio optimization costs, which are primarily non-cash. Operating income in the fourth quarter of 2022 included income of $2.5 million or approximately $0.04 per share, related to the post-closing earnout payment received from the sale of our yogurt fruit prep business in 2020. Excluding the items just mentioned, adjusted operating income was $35.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2023 compared to $38.7 million in the prior year period. Interest expense was $6.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, compared to $4.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. The company’s consolidated adjusted tax rate 26.5% in the fourth quarter of 2023, compared to 19.7% in the comparable period of 2022.

Adjusted local currency EBITDA was down 8.5% in the fourth quarter of 2023. Foreign currency increased revenue and adjusted operating income by approximately 2%. Cash flow from operations was $170 million in 2023, compared to $12 million in 2022. Capital expenditures were $88 million in 2023, compared to $79 million in 2022. Total debt was $658.5 million. As of December 31st, 2023, Sensient’s improving cash flow allowed us to reduce debt by $13 million in the fourth quarter, and by $43 million in the second half of 2023. Our net debt to credit adjusted EBITDA is 2.6 times as of December 31st, 2023. Overall, our balance sheet remains well-positioned to support our capital expenditures, sensible M&A and our longstanding dividend. And any excess cash will be used to pay down to pay down debt.

At this time, we expect 2024 capital expenditures to be around $65 million. Regarding our 2024 guidance, we expect our 2024 local currency revenue, local currency adjusted EBITDA, and our local currency adjusted EPS to be up low to mid-single digits in 2024. And considering our GAAP earnings per share in 2024, we expect approximately $0.15 of portfolio optimization costs in 2024. We expect our gap EPS in 2024 to be between $2.80 and $2.90 compared to our 2023 GAAP EPS of $2.21 in 2024. In 2024, our EPS will be impacted by continued higher interest expense based on current interest rates. We expect our interest expense to increase by approximately $3 million compared to our 2023 full-year interest expense of 25.2 million. Also, we expect our 2024 full-year adjusted tax rate to be in the range of 24% to 25% on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

Our tax rate will fluctuate and therefore we continue to believe our local currency adjusted EBITDA growth is an important measure of our performance. Thank you for participating in our call today. We will now open the call for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions]. And our first question will come from Ghansham Panjabi of Baird. Please go ahead.

Ghansham Panjabi : Good morning. Maybe just first off kind of thinking back to the fourth quarter, just give us a sense as to what surprised you from a volume standpoint in the quarter, kind of looking back and maybe you can give us a sense as to how the quarter progressed monthly and also what you’re seeing what you saw, I should say in January.

Stephen Rolfs : So, I would tell you the thing that surprised me the most was the acceleration of the destocking in Color. As we were going through 2023 Flavors really started destocking, you could say, in late 2022. And that continued pretty well throughout the year. Color lagged that though. You may recall last year, Q1 Color had a pretty good, I think it was something like about 9% or 10% top-line growth. So, the Color destocking really didn’t begin until about Q2 in earnest with our customers. And so all along we had kind of projected that Flavors would be done largely by the end of 2023 with Destocking. And I think we could say that that is the case. But we also felt Color would lag by really a full quarter, that destocking impact, I think with the acceleration and destocking that we saw in Q4.

I think, we could now say that to the extent there would be destocking in the color group in Q1 of ‘24, it would be rather modest. So that was probably the single biggest surprise. But I suppose in retrospect as customers are trying to kind of clear the decks, so to speak, on the balance sheet and working capital and just kind of right size things, they would’ve attempted to do that across each of their ingredients and other raw materials. So that would’ve really been the only one from a surprise standpoint on volume. As we looked at January, as you kind of got from my comments in the opening, we’re kind of cautiously optimistic. There’s a lot of positives that we’re seeing right now. I think January was a pretty good month for us. Let’s see though, right, there’s a lot of we’re coming off probably one of the most unusual markets in the last 50 years, which was what I would call 2023 as our customers transitioned out of COVID inventory positions, and they changed their focus with respect to developmental opportunities in some cases.

So, I think 2024, we’d like to all believe that it is a back-to-normal year. Early signs would suggest that is the case. But I think that, the plot will continue to unfold as the year progresses, but I would say we’re cautiously optimistic following the results we saw in January.

Ghansham Panjabi : That’s helpful. And then in terms of the new wins that you cited any specific segments, any new products that you want to highlight, as we sort of think about 2024, just from a customer appetite for new innovation and kind of kickstart velocity, if you will, at the end market retailer level?

Paul Manning : Yes, so the new win rate, I was very, very happy with that. In each of the groups throughout 2023. That is one of the key metrics that we measure in the business. The size of your sales pipeline, that could be a good metric, but really the reality is it’s points on the board. And that’s best represented by wins, which is to say a customer now gives you a purchase order for that project you’ve been working on. And so, we had record wins in 2022 across each of the groups. And we came — we exceeded that in some in ‘23, and we came very, very close in others. But overall, still very strong new win rate across each of the groups. Lots of new wins within the realm of natural colors. So as our strategy has been focused in the food color business on accelerating our innovation there, our supply chain and our production capacity, we were able to really leverage all three of those in developing some very, very unique applications and technologies for a number of customers, not only for new to the market launches, but actually some compelling and very interesting conversions from synthetic colors.

So those are some very exciting wins there. We have a number of very exciting wins on the flavor front. High quality flavor wins that not only would utilize a traditional flavor, but could also incorporate an extract. They could also incorporate some dimension of a taste modulation technology, whether this is sweetness enhancement or sodium reduction. And so, we had a number of very, very interesting winds across not only beverage and sweet, but in some of our savory segments as well. The pharmaceutical business. We continue to make very, very good progress there, not only with respect to natural colors and these over the counter nutraceutical applications, but also in flavors. And so, we have uncovered some very good opportunities there. Generate some very interesting wins on that front.

And then of course our S&I business, part of our Flavors Group, we had a series of very, very interesting and significant wins in our onion and our garlic business. Lots to be very, very excited about in ’24. These wins that we generated in ’23, many of them carry over into ’24. But the pace of our wins right out of the gate in January, I’m quite excited about. Yes, pretty broad-based set of wins, which speaks to the investments we made in our sales force, in our innovation platforms and in overall is customer service and responsiveness.