SPX Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:SPXC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Steve Ferazani: With a higher margin if you had some much more price backlog that was sitting in there.

Mark Carano: Yes. But we were pushing through a lot more volume, Steve. And I think that’s really the driver there. As you look at those €“ there is a certain amount of efficiency that you see as you have the labor on site and have all of the pies or most of the suppliers that you need to drive efficiencies. You are not having to switch people from different lines and things like that. So, that all plays to a much nicer drop through covering those fixed costs and being able to push up those margins in the fourth quarter.

Gene Lowe: Yes. I think we feel good about where our price-cost is. I mean we feel like where we are supposed to be. And we are getting the margins associated with that. And one thing, Steve, you asked about on debt repayment, it’s probably worth noting our term loan A is locked €“ it’s low-2s. We are not going to pay back our term loan and you are sitting at 2.2% or so, though that gives us some nice again some further than it was today…

Steve Ferazani: Fair enough. Thanks. Thanks for the questions.

Gene Lowe: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. This question comes from the line of Damian Karas of UBS. Your line is open.

Damian Karas: Hey guys. Just a few follow-ups there. First, on HVAC, I was wondering if you could maybe parse out kind of the growth expectation for heating and cooling. Is it kind of the same or expecting one kind of stronger than the other?

Gene Lowe: So really, we would see more of the growth come from the cooling side. Heating, as you know, Damian, when we enter the year, we are typically more reliant on weather in the fourth quarter to determine what that fourth quarter heating throughput is going to look like or the fourth quarter volumes. That wasn’t the case in 2022. As you know, we were looking at a fairly high backlog going into the fourth quarter, and we are able to execute well on that. But as we go into this year, that’s a consideration we have to take into account in our guidance.

Mark Carano: And I think Paul, it sort of ties back to some of the comments Gene made earlier about some of the opportunities that we are seeing for our cooling product, right, that are being driven by some of this infrastructure spend, so.

Damian Karas: Okay. Great. And then 2022, I guess from a free cash flow perspective was a little bit of a messy. Obviously, you had the asbestos matters, but working capital, also a bit of a drag. So, how are you thinking about the cash flow outlook from here? Do you think you can get back to more like a 100% conversion number this year, or is it going to take a little bit more time?

Mark Carano: I think €“ Damian, I think we think there is a path back to a more normalized range of free cash flow conversion. My expectation is it would be somewhere in that 90% to 100% range as I think about 2023. I do think working capital will normalize, particularly around inventories over time. But that may be not a 12-month period that could be a 24-month period as that normalizes. What that’s really driven by though is not everything that we are out there sourcing for inventory, but there are pockets of the supply chain that still remain constrained, if you will, on availability. So strategically, we have decided to carry more inventory there to support the business.