Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation (NYSE:WAB) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation (NYSE:WAB) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 24, 2024

Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $1.89, expectations were $1.49. WAB isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good day, and welcome to the Wabtec First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please note, today’s event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kyra Yates, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kyra Yates: Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Wabtec’s first quarter 2024 earnings call. With us today are President and CEO, Rafael Santana, CFO, John Olin, and Senior Vice President of Finance, John Mastalerz. Today’s Slide presentation, along with our earnings release and financial disclosures, were posted to our website earlier today, and can be accessed on the Investor Relations tab on wabteccorp.com. Some statements we are making are forward-looking and based on our best view of the world and our business today. For more detailed risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to our forward-looking statements, please see the disclosures in our earnings release and presentation. We will also discuss non-GAAP financial metrics and encourage you to read our disclosures and reconciliation tables carefully as you consider these metrics. I will now turn the call over to Rafael.

Rafael Santana: Thanks, Kyra, and good morning everyone. Let’s move to Slide 4. I’ll start with an update on our business, my perspectives on the quarter, and progress against our long-term value-creation framework, and then John will cover the financials. Last quarter when we met, we talked about the strong momentum that we had when we exited 2023. Well, that momentum continues. Sales were $2.5 billion, which was up 13.8% versus prior year. Revenue growth was driven by strong performance, largely from the trade segment. And adjusted EPS was up 47.7% from the year ago quarter, driven by increased sales and margin expansion. Total cash flow from operations for the quarter was $334 million. The 12-month backlog was $7.7 billion, up 11%, signifying continued momentum and visibility across the business.

And total multi-year backlog was $22 billion. Overall, we had a strong start to the year. The underlying strength and momentum across the business is evident. We remain confident in our ability to execute, to deliver for our customers, and to continue to make progress against our long-term growth strategies. Shifting our focus to Slide 5, let’s talk about 2024 and market expectations in more details. While key metrics across our freight business remain mixed, we are encouraged by the strength of our business, the strength of our international markets, and our robust pipeline of opportunities across geographies. North America carloads were up 1.8% in the quarter. Despite this carload growth, the industry’s active locomotive fleet was down when compared to last year’s first quarter, while Wabtec’s active fleet was higher.

As we look forward, we continue to see significant opportunities across the globe in demand for new locomotives, modernizations, and digital technologies as our customers invest in solutions that continue to drive reliability, productivity, safety, and fuel efficiency. Looking at the North American railcar builds, last quarter we discussed the industry outlook for 2024 to be about 38,000 cars to be delivered, which has now been lowered by the industry sources to reflect an expected 36,000 cars. Internationally, activity is strong across most of our core markets. Significant investments to expand upgrade infrastructure are supporting a robust international orders pipeline. In mining, commodity prices and an aging fleet are supporting activity to refresh and upgrade the truck fleet.

Finally, moving to the transit sector, the mega trends of urbanization and decarbonization remain in place, driving the need for clean, safe, and efficient transportation solutions around the globe. Next, let’s turn to Slide 6 to discuss a few business highlights. Late in Q1, we signed a $270 million strategic order for new locomotives with a large mining customer in Africa. This, coupled with a recent service order in the region for $64 million, highlights the significant opportunity that we believe exists in Africa. Within mining, we’re seeing continued strength in the business, in particular aftermarket, and the team has signed orders totaling over $250 million in the quarter. In Indonesia, we won a long-term parts agreement with PTK. And finally, our maintenance away team launched its Shuttlewagon Commander, NXT, the next-generation of railcar movers.

The new model was specifically designed for the needs of the customers to optimize tractive effort, reduce wheel slipping, and extend tire life. All of this demonstrates the continued momentum across the business, the team’s relentless focus on execution, the strong pipeline of opportunities we continue to deliver on. Wabtec is well positioned to capture profitable growth with innovative and scalable technologies that address our customers’ most pressing needs. Moving to Slide 7, before turning it over to John, I want to briefly discuss our progress that we are making against one of our company’s key strategies, which is to lead the decarbonization of rail. Our highly capable team, our install base of locomotives, and our advanced locomotive technologies, puts Wabtec in a unique position to lead the industry on fuel efficiency and to reduce carbon emissions.

With this in mind, we’re driving progress on two fronts. First is to enable our customers to transition to near-zero emissions using their current install base of locomotives. Our focus here leverages our customers’ existing fleets and wayside infrastructure. Our customers can improve fuel efficiency and carbon emission by up to 18% through replacing the older fleets with our tier four and modernized locomotives, along with realizing improved durability, haulage ability, reliability, and fuel efficiency. We’re also enabling our existing locomotive portfolio to be capable of reductions of up to 60% in carbon through the use of bio and renewable fuels, and when farther mixed with hydrogen in the locomotive’s internal combustion engine, up to 80% total carbon reduction.

In addition, we believe we have a competitive advantage given the fact that our locomotives are more fuel-efficient and our four-stroke engine architecture facilitates the use of hydrogen in our internal combustion engines. And the best part of this approach is that it provides significant optionality for our customers, and this approach is completely reversible back to diesel if supplies of alternative fuels are not available or not economical. On our second path to decarbonization, we’re developing zero-emissions technology and equipment. As you are aware, we recently introduced the world’s first heavy haul battery electric locomotive to a mining customer in Australia. Given the customer’s application, they plan to operate this locomotive, relying on regenerative braking to charge the batteries.

And later this month, we will ship our first battery hybrid locomotive. Finally, we are investing and partnering with government agencies to develop heavy haul locomotives powered by hydrogen fuel cells. We believe that the commercialization of hydrogen fuel cells for heavy haul locomotives is farther down the road. Consequently, we are pacing our investments with our customers’ readiness to adopt the technology. With that, I’ll turn the call over to John to review the quarter, segment results, and our overall financial performance. John?

John Olin: Thanks, Rafael, and hello, everyone. Turning to Slide 8, I will review our first quarter results in more detail. In the first quarter, we continued to see the underlying momentum that we experienced as we exited last year. As expected, both revenue growth and operating margin growth were overshared in Q1 versus our expectations for full-year growth. As we discussed in the last quarter call, we expected both revenue and margin growth to be higher in the first half versus the second half. While we continue to expect growth in the second half, we expect it to be at a much more tempered pace than the first half. Sales for the first quarter were $2.5 billion, which reflects a 13.8% increase versus the prior year. Sales growth in the quarter was driven by the freight segment, especially in our equipment and services groups.

For the quarter, GAAP operating income was $412 million, driven by higher sales, improved gross margin, and focused cost management. Adjusted operating margin in Q1 was 19.8%, up 3.4 percentage points versus the prior year. This increase was driven by improved gross margin of 2.4 percentage points, and driven by operating expenses, which grew at a slower rate than revenue, increasing our Q1 margin by an additional 1.0 percentage points. GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.53, which was up 64.5% versus the first quarter a year ago. During the quarter, we had pre-tax charges of $10 million for restructuring, which were primarily related to our integration 2.0 and our portfolio optimization initiative to further integrate and streamline Wabtec’s operations.

As you may recall, integration 2.0 is expected to drive $75 million to $90 million of run rate savings by 2025, and our portfolio optimization initiative will eliminate roughly $110 million of low margin non-strategic revenue, while reducing manufacturing complexity. In the quarter, adjusted earnings per diluted share was $1.89, up 47.7% versus prior year. Overall, Wabtec delivered another solid quarter, demonstrating the underlying strength of the business. Turning to Slide 9, let’s review our product lines in more detail. First quarter consolidated sales were up 13.8%. Equipment sales were up 30.2% from last year’s first quarter, driven by robust sales of mining equipment and higher deliveries of new locomotives. Component sales were up 13.6% versus last year, driven by increased sales of industrial products, higher international sales, and the acquisition of L&M in late Q2 of 2023, partially offset by lower North American railcar build.

Digital intelligence sales were down 5.9% from last year, where we continue to experience lower revenues in our North American market, but we do see growth in our next-generation onboard locomotive products and digital mining. Our services sales grew 17.3%. Services growth was driven by significantly higher year-over-year deliveries of mods, increased overhauls, and parts sales. Our customers continue to recognize the superior performance, reliability, and availability of our fleet. Across our transit segment, sales increased 5.5%, behind growth in our products and services businesses. The momentum in the transit segment remains positive as secular drivers such as urbanization and decarbonization, accelerate the need for investments in sustainable infrastructure.

Now, moving to Slide 10, both GAAP and adjusted gross margin were up 2.4 percentage points during the quarter. In addition to higher sales, gross margin benefited from improved pricing and favorable mix between segments. Mix within the freight segment was also favorable despite significantly higher new local and mod deliveries in the quarter. During the quarter, we also benefited from favorable fixed cost absorption and benefits from integration 2.0, as well as comparing against higher next-generation digital development costs in the first quarter of 2023. Our team continues to execute well to mitigate the impact of continued cost pressures by driving operational productivity and lean initiatives. Turning to Slide 11, for the first quarter, GAAP operating margin was 16.5%, which was up 3.9 percentage points versus last year.

Adjusted operating margin improved 3.4 percentage points to 19.8%. GAAP and adjusted SG&A expenses were down as a percentage of revenues, as we leveraged higher sales with a strong focus on managing costs. Engineering expense was $48 million, modestly lower than Q1 last year. We continue to invest engineering resources and current business opportunities, but more importantly, we are investing in our future as an industry leader in decarbonization and digital technologies that improve our customers’ productivity, capacity utilization, and safety. Now, let’s take a look at the segment results on Slide 12, starting with the freight segment. As I already discussed, freight segment sales were up 17.2% during the quarter. GAAP segment operating income was $368 million, for an operating margin of 20.2%, up 5.7 percentage points versus last year.

GAAP operating income includes $3 million of restructuring costs, primarily related to integration 2.0, and portfolio optimization costs. Adjusted operating income for the freight segment was $439 million, up 48.3% versus the prior year. Adjusted operating margin in the freight segment was 24.1%, up 5.1 percentage points from prior year. The increase was driven by improved gross margin behind strong operational execution, favorable mix, improved pricing, integration 2.0 savings, and as we lap last year’s investment in our next-generation digital development costs. At the same time, SG&A and engineering expenses were lower as a percentage of revenue. Finally, segment 12-month backlog was $5.67 billion, up 14.5% from the same period a year ago.

The multi-year backlog was $17.9 billion, down 2.3% from the prior year. Both our 12-month and multi-year backlogs demonstrate good visibility in 2024 and beyond. Turning to Slide 13, transit segment sales were up 5.5% to $673 million. When adjusting for foreign currency, transit sales were up 4.9%. GAAP operating income was $74 million. Restructuring costs related to integration 2.0 were $7 million in Q1. Adjusted segment operating income was $86 million. Adjusted operating margin as a percent of revenue was 12.7%, down 0.2 percentage points from last year, driven by unfavorable mix and higher input costs, partially offset by integration 2.0 savings. Finally, transit segment 12-month backlog for the quarter was $2.04 billion, up 3.3% versus a year ago.

The multi-year backlog was also up 4.2% to $4.19 billion. Now, let’s turn to our financial position on Slide 14. First quarter cashflow was $334 million. During the quarter, cashflow benefited from higher earnings, improved working capital, and increased securitization funding. We continue to expect greater than 90% cash conversion for the full year. Our balance sheet and financial position continued to be strong. We ended the quarter with liquidity of $2.13 billion, and our net debt leverage ratio was 1.7x at the end of the first quarter, which was favorable versus the same quarter a year ago at 2.3x debt leverage. We continue to allocate capital in a disciplined and balanced way to maximize returns for our shareholders. During the quarter, we repurchased $175 million of our shares, and paid $36 million in dividends, which was recently increased by our board of directors, up 17.6% per share versus prior year.

With that, I’d like to turn the call back over to Rafael to talk about our 2024 financial guidance.

Rafael Santana: Thanks, John. Now, let’s turn to Slide 15 to discuss our 2024 updated full-year guidance. As you’ve heard today, our team delivered a very strong start to the year. We believe that the underlying customer demand for our products and solutions continues across our business. Our orders pipeline and 12-month backlog continue to be strong, providing visibility for the profitable growth ahead. With these factors in mind, we are increasing our previous guidance. We now expect 2024 sales of $10.4 billion at the mid-point, up 7.5% from last year, and adjusted EPS to be between $7 and $7.40 per share, up about 21.5% at the mid-point. Finally, we continue to expect cash flow conversion to be greater than 90%. Looking ahead, I am confident that Wabtec is well positioned to drive profitable growth in 2024 and beyond.

Now, let’s wrap up on Slide 16. As you’ve heard today, our team continues to deliver value for our stakeholders, thanks in large part to our resilient install base, world-class team, innovative technologies, and our continued focus on our customers. Overall, we believe we have an opportunity to continue building significant long-term momentum, with growth in modernizations, in new locomotive sales, in digital solutions, and in transit systems. With solid underlying demand across the portfolio, increased visibility through our backlog, and intense focus on continuous improvement and cost management, Wabtec is well positioned to drive profitable long-term growth and maximize shareholder returns. With that, I want to thank you for your time this morning, and I’ll turn now the call over to Kyra to begin the Q&A portion of our discussion.

Kyra?

Kyra Yates: Thank you, Rafael. We will now move on to questions, but before we do, and out of consideration for others on the call, I ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. And if you have additional questions, please rejoin the queue. Operator, we are now ready for our first question.

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Justin Long with Stephens. Please go ahead.

Justin Long: Thanks, and good morning. So, I think the most surprising part of this quarter was the big sequential improvement in freight margins, and I wanted to ask if there was anything unique to this quarter that drove that improvement, or does this just speak to the operating leverage in the business as equipment revenue ramps? And John, if there’s anything you can share on how freight margins are expected to progress over the rest of the year, what’s baked in the guidance versus what we just saw in the fourth quarter, the 24%.

John Olin: Great. Justin, when we look at the freight margins up 5.1 percentage points, we do not expect to end the year up 5.1 percentage points. There are a few things in there that are going to bring it down over the course of the back half. But overall, our margins are building from our guidance – from the last guidance to this guidance. We feel very good about the way the year’s going. But specifically, Justin, on freight margins, let’s talk about a couple of those pieces. One, there was great operational execution that led the increased productivity. That, we would expect would continue. When we look at a couple other things, one, mix was very favorable, and we expect mix to be favorable in the first half, but we do expect mix to turn unfavorable in the back half.

So, that’ll be a drag on freight margins a bit in the back half of the year. The second piece is that there was a fair amount of absorption in the quarter, given the 13.8 – or the 17.2% growth of the freight segment. We don’t expect the back half of the year to have such rich revenue growth, and therefore we would expect that be more neutral in the back half. And then finally, during the quarter, Justin, we lapped a one-time – an investment that we made in the year ago period, if you remember, for our next-generation digital development of a PDS software. And as lapping that in the first quarter of this year, that’s adding about a third of the overall margin benefit to the enterprise overall. So, a little bit more in the freight group. So, we don’t expect that to repeat, but again, as we look to the back half of the year in freight, we expect on margins to be up, but just not the same extent as you’re seeing in the first quarter.

Justin Long: Okay, got it. Thanks. And I guess secondly, we have the proposed locomotive regulations from CARB. I know the public comments around that were due to the EPA earlier this week, but do you have any color around the timing of a final decision on that front? And if the current proposal does pass, any initial thoughts on how quickly this could impact your business, based on some of the recent conversations you’ve had with customers?

Rafael Santana: So, Justin, you’re right there. I mean, the public comment period was due last Monday. They had a public hearing. I think the outcome here of the rule remains, I’d say quite fluid. So, what I’ll tell you is, we’re technically very well positioned here to support customers for all outcomes. We’ve got the best-in-class products. We’ve got the lowest emissions, the lowest fuel consumption, best reliability, ultimately best availability, and value for customers there. One thing that I would want to highlight is, the EPA also recently finalized the new standards for highway vehicles, which requires manufacturers to reduce greenhouse gas by 25% for the heavy truck fleet. And the EPA also defined through that, that liquid hydrogen for internal combustion engines would be classified as zero emissions, despite of using some oil.

And this is important as it allows first for our install base, the internal combustion engines, to use hydrogen, which can be a transition to fuel cells ultimately. But I call this out because this definition of zero emissions I think plays well into our plans to help railroads transition to near zero emissions with really a reversible solution here through that period.

Justin Long: Okay. Thanks for the time and congrats on the quarter.

Operator: Okay, the next question comes from Bascome Majors with Susquehanna. Please go ahead.

Bascome Majors: Thanks for taking my questions. Just to follow up on that, John or Rafael, less about this year, but more long-term, can you go a little bit deeper into the favorability of mix, given the growth and some of the sub-segments, be it equipment or the modification side of services that you’ve typically talked about as being a little bit lower mix in some of your businesses, and how that was able to drive such meaningful gross profit expansion, not just the fixed cost absorption, and just how you view that in a longer term context relative to your long-term incremental margin guidance of the 25% to 30%. Thank you.

Rafael Santana: Bascome, let me start here because number one, we’re confident on the fundamentals of the business. I mean, we’ve had a strong performance over the last years and now this quarter, and hopefully comes through here, the team’s commitment and the robustness of the strategy. I think we’re continuously innovating. I think that’s being a key piece. Even if you think about mods or new locos, we’re continuously adapting to some of these market changes to ensure we remain in the growth trajectory. We’ve been actively managing our pipeline to really convert some of these opportunities into tangible results. I think we’ve also continued to take proactive steps when challenges arise in this process. I think it’s important to highlight that you’re going to continue to see variation on quarters, yearly results.

But we’re confident here in our ability to continue to drive profitable growth over time in the business. I’ll let John comment on the specifics of the quarter and the half.