Eastern Company (The)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Eastern Company fourth quarter fiscal year 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance during this conference, please press star zero on your phone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Marianne Barr, Treasurer of the Eastern Company. Ma'am, the floor is yours.

Good morning, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this morning for a review of the Eastern Company's results for the fourth quarter and full year 2024. With me on the call are Ryan Schroeder, Chief Executive Officer, and Nicholas Vallejos, Chief Financial Officer. The company issued an earnings press release yesterday after the market closed. If anyone has not yet seen the release, please visit the investor section of the company's website www.easterncompany.com, where you will find the release under Financial News. Please note that some of the information you will hear during today's call will consist of forward-looking statements about the company's future financial performance and business prospects, including, without limitation, statements regarding revenue, gross margin, operating expenses, other income and expenses, taxes, and business outlook. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or trends to differ significantly from those projected in these forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to review or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the call. For more information regarding these risks and uncertainties, please refer to risk factors discussed in our SEC filings, including Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 11, 2025 for the fiscal year 2024. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are useful as supplemental measures of Eastern's performance. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or in isolation from GAAP results. A reconciliation of each of the non-GAAP measures discussed during today's call to the most directly comparable GAAP measure can be found in the earnings press release. With that introduction, I'll turn the call over to Ryan.

Thank you, Marianne, and good morning to those of you that are joining by phone as well as those participating via the web. It is truly a pleasure to be here today. I'd like to begin my first call as Eastern CEO by briefly introducing myself to our shareholders and the investment community. As many of you know, I joined Eastern in November of 2024 with a 25-year track record of industrial manufacturing. My experience includes leadership positions at Plastilite, a global leader in acrylic and polycarbonate sheet products. IMI Norgren, a leading manufacturer of motion and control products. and Parker Hannafin, a world leader in motion control products. Most recently at Plastoid, as CEO, my responsibilities encompassed more than 120 product lines and 2,000 employees worldwide. I'd like to share a few early observations that I've seen at the Eastern Company. When I joined Eastern, I visited its facilities and held a series of in-depth conversations with both customers and employees. Based on those interactions, I saw a promising a promising company with many talented and committed employees in its three core businesses. I was also impressed with the strong brands and first-class products each business has, which clearly resonated with customers. In addition, I saw a company that overall, while making progress and improving operating efficiencies, reducing costs, and strengthening its gross margins, there's still a ways to go. At the same time, I saw a compelling opportunity to strengthen Eastern's business model, drive revenue, and take the company to a higher level. Simply put, my mandate is to grow faster and harder. I strongly believe that by creating a leadership team that combines a strong entrepreneurial spirit with an action-oriented approach and a laser focus on real-time results, we'll be able to improve Eastern's results dramatically. I'll share the initial steps in my playbook for optimizing results. operations, achieving long-term growth and increasing shareholder value with you after Nick reviews Eastern's most recent financial results. Nick, over to you.

Thanks, Ryan. I'll focus my review today on the company's financial results from continuing operations for the fourth quarter in full year 2024. For the fourth quarter, net sales increased 4.5% to $66.7 million, from 63.8 million in the 2023 period, primarily due to higher truck demand for returnable transport packaging products partially offset by lower demand for truck accessories and truck mirror assemblies. For the full year, 2024 net sales rose 5% to 272.8 million from 258.9 million in 2023. Our backlog as of December 28, 2024, rose 15.7% to 89.2 million compared to 77.1 million as of December 30, 2023. The increase was primarily driven by increased orders related to the launch of new mirror programs for the Class 8 truck at Bellvac partially offset by a decrease in backlog for returnable packaging products at Big 3. Gross margin as a percentage of sales for the fourth quarter of 2024 was 23% compared to 26.8% in the 28-23 period. The decrease primarily reflected higher material costs in the fourth quarter of 2024 and a favorable adjustment in the LIFO reserve in the 2023 period that did not reoccur in the 2024 period. In the full year 2024, gross margin as percentage of sales was 24.7% compared to 23.9% in 2023. As a percentage of net sales, product development costs were 1.7% in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to 2.1% in the 2023 period. For the full year 2024 and 2023, Product development costs as a percentage in net sales were 1.8% and 2.2% respectively. Selling administrative expense increased 1.1 million or 11% in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to last year's period. The increase was primarily due to higher payroll related expenses, legal and professional expenses, and selling expenses. For the full year, selling administrative expenses increased 3.1 million, or 7.9%, to 42.2 million from 39.1 million in 2023, with the increase primarily due to higher payroll-related expenses, legal and professional expenses, and travel-related expenses. Other income and expense for the fourth quarter of 2024 was relatively flat when compared to the 2023 period. For the full year, other income and expense decreased $1.2 million due to a $1.6 million favorable adjustment for the final settlement of our swap agreement to Santander in 2023 that did not reoccur in 2024. partially offset by $0.4 million unfavorable working capital adjustment in 2023 related to the sale of the Greenwald business. Net income for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $1.6 million or $0.26 per diluted share compared to net income of $3.9 million or $0.63 per diluted share for the 2023 period. For the full year 2024, net income increased 12% to $13.2 million or $2.13 per diluted share compared to $11.8 million or $1.88 per diluted share in 2023. Adjusting net income from continuing operations, a non-GAAP measure for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $2.6 million or $0.42 per diluted share compared to adjusting net income from continuing operations of $3.9 million, or $0.63 per diluted share, for the prior year period. For the full year 2024, adjusting net income from continuing operations was $14.2 million, or $2.29 per diluted share, compared to $13.4 million, or $2.14 per diluted share, for 2023. At the end of 2020, At the end of Q4 2024, our senior net leverage ratio was 1.23 to 1 compared to 1.36 to 1 at the end of the third quarter and 1.41 to 1 at the end of 2023. In addition, we invested $9.7 million in capital expenditures and paid dividends of $2.7 million in fiscal 2024. As of December 28, 2024, inventories totaled $55.2 million, down $3.2 million from the end of fiscal 2023. During the fourth quarter of 2024, we repurchased 39,000 shares of common stock under the share repurchase program Eastern's board authorized in August 2023, bringing us to a total of approximately 150,000 shares repurchased under the buyback program. That completes my financial review. I'll now turn the call back to Ryan.

Thank you, Nick. As I mentioned earlier, my primary goal after arriving to Eastern was to make sure that all of our businesses have leaders with a strong entrepreneurial spirit, an action-oriented methodology, and a laser focus on the real-time results. To that end, we brought in new leadership at two of the company's three businesses. In December of 2024, we appointed Zach Gorney as president of Eberhardt Manufacturing. Zach's mandate is to create a commercial and product development organization that will capitalize on Eberhardt's strong brand in the industry in alignment with its operational excellence. I worked with Zach twice in the past at IMI Norgren and Parker Hannifin and have seen his capabilities firsthand, so I'm very pleased to have Zach on board. In January of 2025, Recognizing internal talent, we promoted Emilio Ruffalo to president of Big Three Precision Products. Emilio was previously at Eberhard, where he served as senior director, global operations for several years. In that capacity, he helped drive the significant operational improvements that Eberhard enjoys today. At Big Three, Emilio is now implementing a comprehensive plan to streamline processes, improve performance, grow revenue, and increase profitability throughout the business. At Eastern's third business, Velvac, we have been very pleased with the accomplishments of our existing president, Dan McGrew. Dan has decades of experience with strategic planning and is a lean expert. He personally led a remarkable acceleration in production in 2024 that strengthened Velvac's position with its core customers and significantly improved results. We look forward to the continuation of that stellar track record in the coming years. Looking into 2025 and beyond, our focus will be on continuous improvement and commercial excellence within each of the Eastern's businesses. We have adopted a more decentralized approach under which Eastern's operating businesses will all be driving their own agendas to meet their customers' needs, receiving the tools and support they need for success from our executive team. Together, we are developing renewed strategies as well as focused and action-oriented teams supported by the foundation of a high-performance culture. Before finishing my prepared remarks today, I want to emphasize that given today's business environment, all of Eastern's businesses have been hard at work developing nimble supply chains. Big Three, Eberhard, and Velvec can each present their customers with multiple sourcing options to address concerns such as costs, made in America, lead times, and tariffs. Operationally, each business is headquartered in the United States with manufacturing in the U.S., Mexico, and China. All three leadership teams are well-equipped to manage tariffs and pricing fluctuations in the short term while redirecting our supply chains in the long term as needed. They have led businesses through COVID-19, previous rounds in tariffs, and are ready with an experienced playbook. At this point, let's start our Q&A session with a shareholder question we received after yesterday's earnings announcement that I think will be of interest to everyone. So the question is this. Your earnings announcement said that you'd like to enhance Eastern's product development activities and expand its business's market share by selling more complete set of products. Can you give us some more specifics around those? So to that end, you know, I'll say this. Both at Velvec and at Everhard, we've seen some real opportunities for product expansion. Specific to Velvec, and there's certainly that at Big Three as well, but I'm going to focus this answer on those two. At Bellvec, we've seen real significant opportunities with our aftermarket business where we serve our customers and distributors better than really anyone else in the marketplace. So the question really is, what other products could we put through that same supply chain and serve those customers better than, say, the competition would? So going through a comprehensive process, a strategic plan where we're identifying what products we might be able to pick up and run through there, is a key initiative for Velbec that they're undergoing actually today, to be clear. On the Eberhard side, like I said in my remarks, it's clear that they have a really good brand and reputation in the markets that they serve. Some of their products need upgraded. In other cases, they need maybe electrified. And then there's some tangential opportunities since we have such a strong presence within the markets we serve. So understanding what we want to go and do there and having a robust and solid process to make sure what goes in one side comes out the other as a successful launch product is a really key initiative from Zach. Zach has a great track record of doing that in the past, and that's why we're so happy to have him and brought him to Everhard. So with that, I'll turn it back over to the operator for additional questions.

thank you very much at this time we'll be conducting our question and answer session if you would like to ask a question via the webcast please click on the ask question box on the left side of your screen type in your question and hit submit if you would like to ask a question via the phone lines please press star 1 on your phone keypad a confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the queue you may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue For any participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before you press the keys. So please wait a moment whilst we poll for any questions, and I can hand to Ryan or Nick to have a look at the Q&A on the webcast, if there's any.

Yeah, sure. We have a question coming in on the web, and the question is, are you able to pass through cost increases to your customers? And for us, you know, we want to work with our customers and partner with our customers. So we are able to pass down those cost increases, but we are sensitive to our customers' needs as well. And we will continue to work with them for what solution is best for their individual environment. And no further questions are coming in on the web.

Okay, I will now have a check to see if we've got anyone in the queue at the moment on the phone lines. I can't see anyone just at the moment. Just a reminder, just in case, you can press star one on your phone keypad. Oh, yeah, we have a question just come in from Ross Davison of Ballaton Capital. Ross, your line is live. Ross, can you hear us?

Apologies. I was on mute. Hey, Ryan. Hey, Nick. Thanks for taking the question. I was curious if you could just comment on sort of the overall market, I guess, specifically maybe for Class 8 for a lot of your business. You know, what are you seeing? And I guess if you think about the future, maybe the next year, obviously nobody has a crystal ball. But, you know, maybe you could highlight if any reasons why you would expect Eastern to you know, opportunities in 2025 to differ from the market? In other words, like where you might see opportunities to gain share as an example.

Sure. So, yeah, so in terms of the Class 8 market, you know, primarily that's served in terms of Eastern's companies through Bellback and mainly through Mears. So we have a very significant market share, I'm happy to report, on the Mears market. On the OE side, our business will track very closely to what production looks like, with the exception of places where we've taken market share with new products. I'm happy to report the team has done that this year. So we're just launching a new MIR platform that is very significant for us that we've taken and are transitioning into production as we speak. So that one will be an incremental improvement compared to the market, I'm happy to say. And then, you know, I touched on our aftermarket side of the business. That tends not to track the class A build market. And actually at times it can track the opposite. So that's been, that's been, we've taken, we've seen growth in that market ourselves, but the market itself as a whole has been, has been fairly flat. We're forecasting on that aftermarket side, I think, to continue to grow that business significantly faster. in the market overall is growing. And then on the Eberhardt side of things, we do supply products that go into the Leeper cab mainly on the Class 8 truck market. Those build rates tend to fluctuate significantly. And over this last year, those were down fairly significantly and had been compressed for, I'd say, maybe the last year and a half. So we're forecasting some improvement there. We think there is a demand that's built up there and that could break loose. And then also, you know, we watch very, very closely the emissions requirements and changes that are coming out in a couple of years from now. And often there's a buildup in the Class 8 market ahead of those emissions changes. So we'll have to see if there's something that the administration changes there. If they pull back on that, it's simply just more of a level loading of the build rate, which is probably good for most manufacturers overall. Thank you. Thanks for the question. Sure.

Yeah, yeah, so versus the pre-buy. If they change that, you just wouldn't see that, but you'd see a more steady bill is what you'd expect. Yeah, exactly. Got it. Okay. Thanks very much.

Thank you very much. Just a quick check to see if anyone else has any further questions on the phone line, and you can join the queue now by pressing star 1 on your keypad. Okay. We seem to have reached the end of our question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Ryan for any closing remarks.

Thanks again for joining us this morning. As you've heard, we've taken many steps to strengthen Eastern's leadership team, reset and enhance our strategic growth plans for our businesses, and prepare to execute faster and more effectively. We look forward to giving you an update on our progress over the first quarter. If you need any additional information in the meantime, please reach out to us. Thank you.

Thank you very much, everyone. That does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.