Teledyne Technologies Incorporated (NYSE:TDY) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Robert Mehrabian: I’m going to say approximately $10 million, not a whole lot. But when we have the opportunity and I hope we will have in the future we’re going to try and do that. The flip side of that, Jim, is that a lot of our customers have also ordered a lot of inventory anticipating shortages. So — resistent about letting us ship all the stock that they have ordered before but we’re balancing that because, again, our balanced portfolio help us along in all of those directions.

Operator: Our next question will come from the line of Joe Giordano, representing TD Cowen.

Joe Giordano: I want to continue first on DI. I guess I’d say 90-plus percent of the questions I get from investors are about the margins there. So I mean, I think they — over the last couple of quarters, they probably come in and the outlook has come in a little bit below what you thought. I know there’s some elements, high-margin machine vision, probably market declines there. But can you talk about what’s been slightly different than you thought on the margin side? And how should we really think about that business kind of into 2024, like what’s realistic for like a baseline margin assumption is?

Robert Mehrabian: Let me start with second quarter margin. Actually, second quarter Digital Imaging margin is up about 28 basis points. That’s a 30 basis points year-over-year. And we think for the year, it might — it will be probably flat, maybe down about 10 or 15 basis points but relatively flat. I think what — what’s going to happen is that the flare margins are going to increase somewhat and the historic or legacy digital imaging, they’re going to decline a little bit. Basically, we think year-over-year, it’s going to be flat. We’ve had, as I mentioned before, we’ve had a slower revenue and lower revenue in Defense in the first half of the year. But as I mentioned earlier, that’s turning around now. So I think that’s going to help us for the rest of the year.

That’s about really all I can say about the margins. I think second quarter year-over-year, we saw an improvement of about 28 to 30 basis points. For the whole year, it might be flat or down maybe 15 basis points but not much. And again, the balanced portfolio is really going to help us. The flip side of it is, if you look at our Aerospace and Defense segment, there second quarter margins increased 247 basis points. And for the year, we’re projecting 80 basis points expansion. So sometimes, when we look at Defense, yes, we differentiate Defense — that’s in digital imaging, what I’ve talked about before. And then — but we have a whole bunch of Defense programs in our Aerospace and Defense portfolio, which are doing really well. So overall, I think we’re, okay.

Joe Giordano: Just one quick clarification. I know the DI margins were up year-on-year but sequentially, they were down on higher revenue. So was there like a mix change going on there? And then I have a quick question on Test & Measurement.

Robert Mehrabian: I don’t know. They were down sequentially what, about 20 basis points. I’m not so concerned about that. There’s so many moving parts in there that it just balances itself out. That’s not something that worries me. That’s all I’ll say about that. Go ahead with your other area, please.