Trimble Inc. (NASDAQ:TRMB) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Trimble Inc. (NASDAQ:TRMB) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 1, 2023

Trimble Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.68, expectations were $0.6.

Operator: Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Trimble Third Quarter 2023 Results Call. [Operator Instructions] And finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Thank you. I’d now like to welcome Rob Painter, Chief Executive Officer to begin the conference. Rob, over to you.

Rob Painter: Welcome, everyone. Before I get started, our presentation is available on our website and we ask that you refer to the Safe Harbor at the back. Our financial commentary today will reflect non-GAAP performance metrics, including organic growth comparisons, which refer to the corresponding period of last year unless otherwise noted. Simplification, focus and execution are the themes of today. I will start with a review of the third quarter, then put a Trimble lens in the current market environment we see, followed by an overview of how we are taking action to maintain our strategic and financial progression. Let’s begin on Slide 2 with a review of the third quarter. The clear highlights were continued ARR growth and gross margin progression, which translated into EBITDA progression.

A wide angle shot of a software software engineer working at a computer.

ARR stands at a record $1.94 billion, up 25% and up 13% organically. 50% of our revenue is now recurring. Gross margin finished at a record 65%, a reflection of our Connect and Scale strategy translating into a more durable and attractive business model. EBITDA at 28% is also a record. The big strategic news of the quarter was the announcement of our joint venture with AGCO in our agriculture business. Slide 3 reviews our key messages to shareholders. The venture positions us to simplify, focus and derisk our business while deleveraging and returning capital to shareholders. As we discussed on our announcement call, the impact on pro forma 2023 numbers moves Trimble to 72% software and 55% recurring revenue. We are proud to partner with Eric Hansotia and his team at AGCO to be a global leader in mixed fleet smart farming and autonomy solutions.

We expect the transaction to close in the first half of next year. And I’d like to say that we are really pleased thus far with the internal and external reaction to our partnership. In the quarter, we also divested our Landfolio business, which had approximately $10 million of revenue on a trailing 12-month basis. We have now divested 18 businesses over the last 3 years and pursued a simplification and better focus to execute our strategy. Looking at the business with a global macroeconomic lens, we see increasing signs of weakness and stress across many end markets and geographies, exacerbated by interest rates, war and geopolitical tensions. These factors contribute to our updated view on the fourth quarter, which have embedded bearish and bullish signals.

On the bearish side, we see the downturn in residential construction impacting our hardware businesses in both Buildings & Infrastructure and Geospatial. While we see strength in major projects, renewables and onshoring of manufacturing, we aren’t seeing enough earthmoving activity to overcome this dynamic, especially in Europe. In agriculture, within resources and utilities, we see emerging signs of weakness also notably in Europe. We also expect some choppiness in the numbers as we execute our new distribution strategy in preparation for our AGCO joint venture. In transportation, I think it’s safe to say that we are in a down freight market, and we’ve seen some trucking and technology companies either go out of business or cut back their ambitions significantly.

On the bullish side, let’s remember that we sell productivity, quality, safety, transparency and environmental sustainability. This is a secular value proposition. In Buildings and Infrastructure, software bookings were up more than 30%, demonstrable evidence that the strategy works and that the dollar volume of construction is healthy. Our Trimble Construction One business model framework is delivering results. We are releasing a series of customer persona-based targeted offerings and our systems enhancements are providing new levels of visibility and insight into our customers. Machine control as a service offering also exceeded bookings expectations in the quarter. In Geospatial, we continue to innovate to drive the replacement cycle and our new business models contribute to ARR growing at a double-digit rate within the surveying and mapping business.

Next week, we will hold our Annual Trimble Dimensions Engineering and Construction User Conference, where thousands of industry participants will come together to learn and engage in our latest innovations. In resources and utilities, our non-ag businesses collectively grew ARR double-digits. In transportation, the shakeout in the industry will, in time, have the appropriate effect of restoring the balance in capacity and demand and bringing more discipline to the competitive landscape. Against this backdrop, we are taking action to protect our financial model, starting with a greater than $40 million run-rate cost reduction initiative as we take action to simplify and better focus our company to operate efficiently and effectively. This is in addition to cost containment initiatives that we undertook in the third quarter.

We will simplify by reorganizing our operating businesses and bringing corporate resources closer to customers. For example, we have incubated our industry cloud platform work at a corporate level the last couple of years. It’s now time to embed that within the business and sharpen capital allocation. We will focus by getting the right leaders in the right seats and scaling back some of our initiatives to enable the core to better deliver short and mid-term outcomes. David, over to you.

David Barnes: Thank you, Rob. Let’s start on Slide 4 with a review of third quarter results. Third quarter revenue of $957 million was up 8% in total and up 2% organically. Changes in foreign exchange rates increased revenue by 1%, while acquisitions net of divestitures increased revenue by 5%. Subscription and recurring revenue continued to grow at a strong rate. As Rob mentioned a moment ago, the weakening macro environment adversely impacted customer sentiment and demand across all of our hardware end markets. Gross margin in the third quarter was a record 65%, up 410 basis points year-over-year, driven by an increasingly favorable business mix and the ongoing net impact of pricing and reduced input cost inflation. Adjusted EBITDA and operating margins also expanded year-over-year due to the progression in gross margins and the benefit of cost reduction actions we took early in the quarter.

Net income dollars increased by 4% and earnings per share grew year-over-year to $0.68, exceeding the high end of our prior guidance range. We are very pleased with our margin performance in the third quarter, delivering strong bottom line results even in the face of a tougher macroeconomic environment. Turning now to Slide 5, I’ll review in more detail our third quarter revenue trends. On this and the next few pages, I will focus on organic growth rates, excluding the impacts of acquisitions, divestitures and currency fluctuations. ARR was up 13%, driven in part by strong bookings across our construction software businesses. Our digital platform work is enabling cross-sell of bundled solutions. Our non-recurring revenue streams, including hardware and perpetual software, contracted by 8% year-over-year and came in below our expectations.

The macro environment worsened late in the quarter across many of our hardware end markets with weakening customer sentiment and propensity to invest. The impact was especially visible in Europe, where macro trends are the most difficult. From a geographic perspective, North American revenues were up 5%. In Europe, revenues were down 1%. Moving to Slide 6. Our cash flow from operations was $147 million with free cash flow of $134 million, both of which are up significantly versus prior year. Our cash flow in the quarter benefited from lower purchases of inventory, lower tax payments and higher profitability. The working capital dynamics of our business remains strong with negative net working capital. We entered the fourth quarter with $1.6 billion in backlog inclusive of ag committed backlog expected to ship before our ag JV transaction closes.

We project that $1.1 billion of our backlog will be recognized as revenue within the next 12 months. We ended the quarter with leverage measured as net debt to EBITDA of 2.9x, reflecting the repayment of $115 million of net debt during the quarter and repayment of $270 million since the closing of the Transporeon acquisition. Note that we are ahead of our time line to pay-down our Transporeon debt with leverage going below 3x one quarter ahead of the commitment we made when the deal was announced. Finally, I’ll repeat what Rob mentioned earlier. During the quarter, we reached an important milestone with half of our revenue now coming from recurring revenue streams. The formation of our ag JV will further accelerate our business in the direction of majority recurring revenue, making our business both more predictable and more resilient.

Let’s turn now to Slide 7 for additional detail on each of our reporting segments. Buildings and Infrastructure revenue was up 6%. Revenue growth was strong across our software businesses in the segment with double-digit year-over-year ARR and revenue increases at e-Builder, Viewpoint, SketchUp and Tekla. This broad-based growth reflects the success and momentum of our Connect and Scale strategy, evidenced by growing bookings, especially of larger and broader bundles. Our Civil Construction business was down year-over-year at a high single-digit rate as the demand environment weakened among dealers and end customers. Geospatial revenue was down 2%, reflecting lower demand across many survey end markets. One bright spot for our Geospatial business in the quarter was with our U.S. federal government customers, who continue to place orders well ahead of prior year levels and above our expectations earlier in the year.

Resources and Utilities revenue was down 4%, reflecting both declining farmer sentiment and the impact of our distribution network changes. Revenue declines were most pronounced in Europe, which makes up the largest portion of our ag hardware business. Partially offsetting the weakness in hardware demand, we experienced double-digit segment ARR growth in Positioning Services, forestry and Cityworks. Financial results in our Transportation segment showed progression in a number of areas. Organic ARR was up at a mid-single-digit rate and margins expanded for the seventh quarter in a row. On the other hand, our mobility business in North America has not seen the uptick in bookings that we originally expected. With planned chart notifications in the quarter, our Transportation segment ARR momentum will moderate going into next year.

Transporeon top line trends remain below our expectations when we bought the business, driven almost entirely by a contraction in overall industry shipment volumes and the depressed spot market. Importantly, we have maintained our customers and our market share. And with our transaction-based recurring model, we are positioned to recover with an improvement in the overall European goods economy when the inevitable upswing takes place. The Transporeon team has managed costs well in this tough environment, and our operating margin since the deal closed remained in line with our original expectations. Moving to Slide 8, I will now discuss our guidance for the fourth quarter and the full year. Our third quarter results reflect a weakening demand environment.

We expect this weakness to extend through the fourth quarter and into next year. We now project fourth quarter revenue between $890 million and $930 million. Our fourth quarter outlook reflects 13% growth in ARR, offset by a decline in our hardware and perpetual software at a low to mid-single-digit rate. This yields a full year revenue outlook of $3.76 billion to $3.80 billion. A significant majority of the reduction in revenue outlook is in our hardware businesses with the biggest impact in Civil Construction Hardware. For perspective, it is helped to look back to the pre-COVID period to determine the underlying long-term trends of our hardware businesses. All three of our core hardware businesses, Geospatial, Agriculture and Civil Construction, have grown at a compound rate of mid-single digit or better since 2019, and our fourth quarter guidance reflects a continuation of this long-term trend.

We project that the combined impact of higher gross margins and lower operating expense versus our prior outlook will offset much of the impact of our lower revenue forecast, resulting in an EPS range for the fourth quarter of $0.55 to $0.63. Our updated full year guidance for EPS is $2.58 to $2.66. Fourth quarter operating margins are projected to be in the range of 24.5% to 25%, a meaningful improvement from year ago levels, but sequentially down from the third quarter, driven primarily by mix. Within the overall outlook for the fourth quarter, we anticipate the following segment trends. Buildings and Infrastructure will remain our strongest segment with organic revenue in the quarter accelerating from third quarter levels to the mid- to high single digits.

Even in the current macro environment, we see strong demand for our software offerings, while our hardware businesses are expected to be down at a mid-single-digit rate. Geospatial segment revenues are expected to be down at a low to mid-single-digit rate in the fourth quarter. Gradual improvement across some areas of our core field survey business will be offset by lower sales in the fourth quarter to the U.S. federal government. Geospatial margins in the fourth quarter will come down sequentially from third quarter levels due to a less favorable business mix. Resources and Utilities revenue are expected to be flat to down at a low single-digit rate. This fourth quarter outlook reflects both the adverse overall demand environment and the impact of our ongoing aftermarket dealer network transition.

ARR growth in the segment will remain at a strong double-digit level. Transportation segment revenues will be flat or down modestly as the impact of higher customer churn in our North American mobility business offsets the growth across the rest of our transportation offerings. This outlook assumes no meaningful improvement in Transporeon’s core European transportation market in the fourth quarter. From a cash flow perspective, we expect full year 2023 free cash flow in the range of $530 million to $555 million. Excluding the impact of full year transaction-related and restructuring-related cash outflows of approximately $100 million, this outlook represents free cash flow of approximately 1x net income. With our strong year-to-date cash flow performance and with contractual certainty on the upcoming close of our Ag JV transaction, we plan to reinitiate share repurchases in the fourth quarter.

Consistent with past practice, we plan to issue guidance for 2024 at our fourth quarter earnings release in February. At this point, our outlook for next year can be characterized threefold. First, we expect that organic revenue growth trends will be better than those we posted this year as our hardware business has stabilized following the declines of 2023 and as recurring revenue sources make up a growing proportion of our total revenue base. Second, we believe ARR will continue to grow at a double-digit rate. Even in the context of a tough macro environment, our bookings and net retention performance continue to support this outlook. Third, with the cost reduction actions we are taking, we expect to hold or improve EBITDA margins even with the impact of the close of our AGCO deal.

This outlook leaves us on track to achieve the EBITDA margin goals we put forward in our Investor Day last year. Rob, I’ll turn it back over to you.

Rob Painter: I want to end the call on the same themes we started with today simplification, focus and execution. The cost action and the organizational moves we’ve discussed, in addition to the forthcoming Ag joint venture, all drive simplification and enhanced focus on our Connect and Scale strategy. On execution, we humbly learned from our failures and successes. We also have the confidence and conviction to manage through this economic environment. We’ve done this for decades, we know what we need to do, and we will stay focused on delivering productivity, quality, safety, transparency and sustainability for our customers. And we will continue to invest and innovate against our best growth opportunities. We will exit this economic downturn on a stronger competitive footing.

Finally, we are announcing today that David Barnes has decided that he will retire as our CFO in May. Phil Sawarynski, our Vice President of Corporate Development, Treasurer and Co-Head of Trimble Ventures, will succeed David. David, Phil and our strong finance team will work together to ensure a smooth transition over that timeframe. I’m very grateful for having had David’s steady hand over the last 4 years as we’ve navigated crises that neither of us ever envisioned. True character reveals itself in a crisis. David’s character represents something we would all benefit from emulating. Phil comes into the role having been at Trimble for 14 years, having worked across a very diverse set of roles along the way. Phil’s mandate for the role is straightforward to leverage his deep knowledge of the company to unlock shareholder value.

Operator, we can now open the line to questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you for the presentation. [Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Jerry Revich from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Jerry Revich: Yes. Hi, good morning everyone and David congratulations.

David Barnes: Thanks, Jerry.

Jerry Revich: Rob, David, I’m wonder if you could just talk about the outlook for ARR growth for the construction software portfolio. It looks like you’re seeing a slowing into the fourth quarter based on the ARR guidance revision. Can you just expand on what that means for the construction portfolio, specifically where you’re nearly 20% in the quarter, what magnitude of slowing are you seeing there and touch on other moving pieces, if you don’t mind.

Rob Painter: Hi. Good morning, Jerry and thanks for the question. This is Rob. I’ll take it. Actually, the bookings for the software businesses and construction continue to be strong in the third quarter. The ARR growth in the B&I segment was over 20% for the quarter as well in Q3. So actually, I see continued strengths into the fourth quarter with our view on ARR growth in that segment. So actually, I would say really the narrative holds there. FX is a bit of a headwind to the ARR growth that will be posted at the top line. So adjusted for that, I think we remain on track.

David Barnes: Yes, hey, Jerry the changes in ARR growth, we’re talking tens of basis points. The big story is that the growth is sustained as Rob said, bookings are really good. There’s no fundamental change in the momentum of our B&I ARR business.

Jerry Revich: Okay. So FX is a key driver then. Okay. And then can we shift gears and talk about the margin trajectory, given that performance in the quarter and exiting the year. I know we’re not talking about ‘24 guidance yet, but it feels like you’ve got margin tailwinds versus the run rate in the first half of 2023. So as we think about the puts and takes around what ‘24 might look like, obviously, some end market challenges. But it feels like, at least on a year-over-year basis, there should be some margin momentum. I’m wondering, if you wouldn’t mind commenting on any other puts and takes we should keep in mind?

David Barnes: Yes. Sure, Jerry. I’ll reiterate the comments in the prepared remarks. Our margin trends are very strong. We think sequentially, Q4 won’t look quite as good as Q3. We had – that’s a mix issue, both between software and hardware and within the hardware part of our portfolio. But fundamentally, our margin story is really good. And we’ve taken actions to manage our operating expense very carefully. Actually, that started early this year. Rob mentioned that we’re going to move even further here in Q4. Our goal is looking into next year to be in a position where we can maintain or grow our EBITDA margins. And I’ll point out that we’re – that includes the impact of the creation of the Ag JV. And if you go back to the financial remarks we had when we made that announcement, we said the creation of the JV puts downward pressure of 70 basis points on our EBITDA margin.

We’re looking to cover that. So yes, margin is a great story. Obviously, the top line on the hardware part of our business has been softer than we anticipated. But the margin story is even better, and that’s something we are carefully managing looking into next year.

Jerry Revich: Super. And lastly, can you just comment on leading indicators within Transporeon? I don’t know if you folks have visibility based on that business in terms of customers prepared shipping plans or anything along those lines. And how are you thinking about fourth quarter seasonally for that part of the portfolio?

David Barnes: Yes. So as you can imagine, we’re – we have visibility every day to a very significant portion of the European transportation market. I think I’d characterize it as stabilizing after a very weak period over – after the last three or four quarters, well, since we bought the business. We’re not declaring a turnaround yet. But if you look at the metrics of transportation volumes, spot pricing, capacity utilization, not necessarily getting better, but it stopped getting worse. So we can see the stabilization and over time, very hard to predict exactly when. But over time, those will recover and with our transaction-based ARR model, the business will recover with it. So it’s stabilizing. It’s still the freight market in Europe.

And I think in America, you characterize it as in recession, particularly some of the end markets. Actually, we can see by part of the economy what’s weak, where there is fewer trucks on the road, shipping goods. But construction equipment, paper and packaging are way down versus last year, reflecting the overall macroeconomic weakness. So we think we’ve stabilized. That’s the basis of our fourth quarter, and we will plan for some improvement looking into next year, but we will be cautious, given the magnitude of the drop that occurred over the last three quarters.

Rob Painter: And Jerry, if that’s the macro. When I look at the micro to complement that, we have 100% customer retention and our win-loss ratios are holding. So our market share is holding in the region. I think that’s important to keep in mind as well for the underlying health of the business.

Jerry Revich: Okay, thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Rob Wertheimer from Melius Research. Your line is open.

Rob Wertheimer: Hi, I have two questions, if I may. The first one is a little bit micro, I guess. But could you look at channel inventory across the businesses on the hardware side? And just do you have an estimate or a ballpark of how much channel inventory there is to come out if you could see a destock and how long that might take? And then the second question is really for Rob, because your tone obviously indicates a more negative macro environment kind of already here. And I’m a bit curious if you’re seeing that in today’s construction market or whether that’s more of a forecast? Thanks.

David Barnes: Hey, Rob, it’s David. I’ll take the dealer inventory question first. We did see a very meaningful inventory destock in the first half of this year, particularly in the first quarter. You probably recall, I said we estimate it was about $40 million in the first quarter, less than that in the second quarter. It’s not really a factor in the back half of this year. Actually, in some of our end markets, dealer inventory went up by just a little bit in Q3. The one change we’re seeing, and Rob referenced this in his remarks, is that on the civil side, we’re seeing the set point, the desired inventory level for our dealers has actually come down. That reflects higher interest rates, so higher cost of carrying inventory.

It reflects the uncertainty about the demand market and frankly, our very good product supply. So the need to hold inventory is less than it was. So that won’t be helpful to us. I think we will see a modest correction. Nowhere near like Q1 and Q4. We’re talking in the $10 million to $20 million range. But we think dealer inventories in aggregate are close to where they will be over the longer-term.

Rob Painter: I’ll take the second part, Rob, on the macro and what we’re seeing. There is a tale of geographies embedded within that – within the answer. So I’ll roughly speaking to North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Let’s look at North America. You won’t be surprised that sub-segments such as the data centers, the renewable energy, the onshoring and manufacturing, those are all positive catalysts. The Infrastructure Bill remains a positive catalyst. The asterisk on that one is when you compare the dollar volume within the dollars associated with infrastructure build, compared to the dirt actually moved is what we see as inflation has been eating up a fair amount of that additional spend. And then residential.