Standex International Corporation (NYSE:SXI) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Ross Sparenblek: Okay. That’s helpful. And then, maybe transferring over to the 2028 targets, thanks for providing those, very helpful. High-single digit organic growth, I mean, it seems to imply well over $1 billion. And I know that — I think you guys have previously spoken to like 2025, you’re looking at double-digit growth from new product initiations and you’re going to double R&D over the next five years. So, maybe what are some of the assumptions as we think about kind of a base case, spare case, and how we get above that $1 billion by 2028? I mean, what do you guys kind of bake it in there?

David Dunbar: Well, just think of it — the last few years as we’ve given this kind of longer — this rolling longer-term outlook, we complete our strategic reviews with all the businesses, we kind of risk assess them, roll them up and then update our longer-term outlook. Two years ago, we came out and said we’ll have mid-single digit growth, we get to EBITDA 20%, and five to five years ROIC 12%. We’re basically at those margin targets now in less than the three years. And last year, we took up the growth rate based on this fast growth market impact. So, now, here we are a year later, we’ve again updated the strategy review and are updating these numbers. And since we basically — we’re at the ROIC number now and within the next 12 months we’ll hit that EBITDA number.

So, it’s time to update them. Rather than the top three to five, we just said five years, but look at our past performance, there’s opportunity to deliver that a little earlier with some — depending on what’s going on in the general economy and maybe faster growth in some of the fast growth — faster growth markets and opportunities. So that basically — we follow the same process we have in the last few years. And we’re very confident that our businesses are — continue to position themselves better in these stronger markets. And so, you mentioned the double-digit growth. We’ve always — we started mid-single digit. We said we could get to upper single digit. I think there was a question a few, I don’t know, years or so ago, when would we be in a position to announce that we could hit double digit growth?

And I think my answer was, in a year or two as we see our R&D grow and our effectiveness at rolling out these new products and our foothold in fast growth vector, we would then be in a position to pronounce on that. But for now, we’re confident with the upper single digit and the outlook we provided.

Ross Sparenblek: Okay. And then maybe just looking at the margin target there, I mean, 19% couple of years ago. How should I think like the buckets of productivity savings that are going to get us there versus overall operating leverage? And where is maybe the biggest deltas across the businesses? I mean, is there more upside in Electronics? I vaguely remember a note here that in Scientific it kind of tapped out in the low 20%. So, what kind of the engines that are going to drive this on the earnings side?

David Dunbar: Well, I’ll just say a couple of things and turn it over to Ademir here. I mean, the growth — we’re preparing an update in our investor presentation and that will step back and talk a little differently about growth. And so, as we look in the next few years, we’ve broken down our growth in our core business and the new applications and new products. And new applications and new products come out at margins that are accretive to our margins. So, there’s — some of the margin growth comes from introducing new products with better value propositions and more in a stronger competitive advantage, mixing us up in volume. There is an expectation, every one of our businesses every year that productivity plans will drive 3% of COGS to the bottom-line. And those things help fund the R&D increase that you mentioned.