Tennant Company (NYSE:TNC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Chris Moore: God it. And maybe just last one for me. Cash flow from operations, $25 million you went through the big drivers, receivables, inventory, some other things. Just big picture, kind of how are you looking at €˜23 versus €˜22?

Fay West: Yes, I think you’re going to see a reversion back to normal in 2023. I think we had some significant investments in working capital, primarily around inventory. And we anticipate that, that will revise that usage will revise in 2023. And so you’ll see a glide path down. as we go through 2023. So we think we will go back to normal. So certainly, the improved performance from an operations perspective will drop through to operating cash flow as will kind of more normalized working capital activity.

Dave Huml: Chris, it’s probably worth noting in 2022. These were really intentional investments that we made on the inventory side, given the situation we’re operating. And if you look at the year €“ the increase in exit inventory from Q4 €˜21 to Q4 €˜22 and just look at the components, what drove the increase, about third of it is inflation. About third of it is intentional investments either in constrained parts inventory or with and about third of it is supporting new product launches like lithium-ion batteries and our IMOP product we talked about on the on the call, as well as we allowed an increase in our service truck inventory to support our customers and keep their machines running up to the service levels that we committed to them. So I make the point because it’s important to dimensionalize the impact on cash flow in 2022 was intentional on our part given the environment we had to operate in.

Chris Moore: Got it. I appreciate it. I’ll get back in line. Thanks, guys.

Dave Huml: Thanks, Chris.

Operator: Our next question comes from Steve Ferazani with Sidoti.

Steve Ferazani: Good morning, Dave. Thanks for all the detail on the call. I did want to follow-up the last question in terms of if we have that glide path to more of a normalized working capital, it looks like the additional debt you took on through the year was to meet the working capital needs. I’m just trying to think about what you’re expecting on the debt side. And then in your guidance, what’s the interest expense?

Fay West: Yes. And so yes, you’re absolutely right. I think those investments in working capital were financed with our revolver. We are always looking at how we manage our leverage. Certainly, at the midpoint of our guidance next year, we don’t have to meaningfully reduce our leverage to get to 1.5x or below. And we do have some amortization on our term loan that we have to pay. But with any excess cash, we could potentially pay down debt further if we need to. And so I would say that in 2023, you saw kind of the increase in interest costs as we went through the year based on the increase in underlying rate on an average basis for 2023, net of hedging activities because we took some decisive actions in the fourth quarter to fix a portion of our floating rate debt, about $120 million or 40% of our debt to fix that out.