Littelfuse, Inc.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Little Fuse First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I will turn the call over to the Head of Investor Relations, Tricia Tutland. Please proceed.

Good morning, and welcome to the Little Fuse First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. With me today are Dave Heinsman, President and CEO, and Minal Sethna, Executive Vice President and CFO. Yesterday, we reported results for our first quarter, and a copy of our earnings release and slide presentation is available in the Investor Relations section of our website. A webcast of today's conference call will also be available on our website. Please advance to slide two for our disclaimers. Our discussions today will include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements may involve significant risks and uncertainties. Please review yesterday's press release and our Forms 10-K and 10-Q for more detail about important risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. We assume no obligation to update any of this forward-looking information. Also, our remarks today refer to non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measure is provided in our earnings release available in the Investor Relations section of our website. I will now turn the call over to Dave.

Thank you, Tricia. Good morning, and thanks for joining us today. Let's start with slide four. Building on our noteworthy success in 2021, our global teams delivered tremendous performance, substantially above our expectation to start this year. We achieved record revenues and earnings per share growth as we successfully executed on our strategy and continued to outperform the markets we serve. Across our electronics, commercial vehicle, and industrial businesses, we attained double-digit organic growth compared to last year, while our passenger car business outperformed global car build. Broad in-market demand continues to remain strong. and our team has resiliently managed supply chain disruptions. Our organic growth trajectory, combined with our strategy-led acquisitions, continue to strengthen and diversify our business. As a result of our persistent execution, we remain extremely well positioned to further capitalize on current and future growth opportunities within the global structural themes of sustainability, connectivity, and safety. That said, we are operating within a more volatile macro environment compared to 90 days ago, given events related to COVID and the war in the Ukraine. In particular, the shutdowns in China due to COVID-19 have impacted our operations, which will impact our second quarter sales and earnings. Our teams achieved outstanding results driven by increasing demand creation across the industrial, transportation, and electronic markets we serve, and worldwide execution. I would like to recognize and thank all of our associates around the world for their ongoing determination to drive record growth by winning new business, making significant strides with additional strategic acquisitions, and meeting customer demand within a challenging macro environment. Our strong performance through these unprecedented times is truly a reflection of our great people and the strength of our business. Moving on to performance within our segments. Our electronics product segment achieved remarkable results. We drove significant revenue growth across all regions, driven by our diverse product offering, far-reaching go-to-market strategy, and our team's ability to overcome ongoing macroeconomic challenges. Demand for our products was driven by a broad range of applications, including data centers, telecom infrastructure, industrial automation, appliances, and automotive electronics. We expect to capitalize on the ongoing themes around connectivity, automation, and electrification. Exiting the first quarter, our electronics book to bill remained above one, and weeks of inventory at our distribution partners are within our normal range, underscoring sustained strong, ongoing demand. This demand setup is positive, but we are working through the resurgence of COVID-19 in China, which directly impacts our electronics business. Our teams continue to maintain focus on this dynamic environment. Our transportation product segment delivered solid performance within a challenging supply chain environment. Our passenger vehicle business was impacted by OEM shutdowns and their lower production levels driven by their ongoing material shortages and the war in the Ukraine. Withstanding this, we continued to outperform global car build, given our increasing product content in passenger vehicles. We see a number of ongoing content growth opportunities and expect to continue our market outperformance despite lower global car build projections. Our commercial vehicle business drove strong demand for our combined portfolio of legacy and car link technologies, products driven by our deeper and broader presence across material handling, heavy duty truck, bus, construction and agriculture equipment, marine, and power sports markets. We have a strong order backlog which sets up for continued performance. Turning to our industrial product segment, Our strong performance was an outcome of our global team's ability to serve new customer applications, increase new product sales, and leverage a broader product portfolio. We saw robust demand in our strategic markets, including industrial safety, HVAC, and renewables. In North America, we were seeing improving trends in oil and gas and non-residential construction. with sustained strength in mining and industrial MRO markets, while electrical distributors inventories remain lean. MENA will provide additional color on our strong financial performance. Our ongoing results and successes reflect both the strength of our team's execution and the power of our strategy, which is shown on slide five. Since launching our five-year growth strategy in early 2021, we have aggressively advanced our strategic business initiatives. We are investing for growth, both organically and through acquisitions, within the structural growth themes of sustainability, connectivity, and safety. These investments include resources to partner with our customers as they deploy their applications related to these themes. We have expanded our product content and captured share gains globally in high-growth markets. During 2021, we also completed two acquisitions aligned closely with our strategic goals, Heartland Controls and HVAC, and Carling Technologies and Commercial Vehicles, Telecom Infrastructure, and Renewables, all higher growth in markets, adding approximately $300 million in annualized sales. In April, we announced two additional acquisitions, CNK Switches and Embed, Turning to slide six, we are looking forward to welcoming C&K employees to the LittleFuse team upon closing of our announced acquisition. C&K is a leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance electromechanical switches and interconnect solutions with annualized sales of over $200 million and has historically had EBITDA margins of approximately 20%. In addition to of C&K expands our product portfolio, addressable market, and growth globally across industrial, automotive, and datacom markets, serving as a platform for continued growth. Our complementary go-to-market models will continue to strengthen our partnerships with distribution channels. C&K's technology leadership in high-precision manufacturing, miniaturization, haptics, and operational footprint will broaden our capabilities. We expect to close the transaction late in the second quarter and look forward to getting the integration underway. Moving on to slide seven, let me begin also by welcoming Embed team to LittleFuse. Embed is a proven provider of embedded software and firmware developed for a broad range of applications. This acquisition will help us to better serve our customers by expanding our software design, engineering, and technical expertise. This capability is critical given the complexity of vehicle electronification and electrification, as well as the proliferation of communications and applications driven by IoT trends in industrial markets. We now have additional capabilities to deliver broader hardware and software solutions to our customers, applications, or automation and controls for industrial applications. The addition of embed will unlock new growth opportunities across the transportation and industrial markets we serve. Since early 2021, we are on track to deploy $1 billion in capital for acquisitions lined with our long-term growth strategy, adding approximately $500 million in annualized sales to further diversify and strengthen the end markets we serve and expand our organic growth opportunities. Our disciplined approach towards M&A positions us so that newly acquired businesses accelerate our success in higher growth markets through diversification, expand our geographic presence, and leverage our core competencies, creating value for all of our stakeholders We are very excited about these businesses and their close alignment with our strategic and financial objectives. Now let's move on to highlights and design wins in the end markets we serve. Within our industrial end markets on slide 8, we continue to generate increased business wins across a broad range of applications to grow our business. expanded our portfolio with acquisitions. During the first quarter, we captured business in the commercial kitchen and food and beverage industries that enable our customers to meet tighter safety requirements. Our ability to provide strong technical support across a broad set of higher voltage products have allowed us to secure global design wins. As a result, we secured business in renewables across a variety of applications including solar, wind, and energy storage systems. In HVAC, we continue to secure more business with our expanded product portfolio. With the breadth of our high-quality offerings, we are increasing product content with leading customers, and we expect this to continue given our global brand and their sustained focus on safety and sustainability. Turning to our transportation end markets, on slide nine, We continue to increase our product content to outperform the market. Within electrification, our high voltage products secured global business for battery management systems and onboard charging applications in passenger vehicles. In commercial vehicles, we captured business for power distribution in two-wheelers, onboard charging in buses, and rail traction for trains. We also expanded our business and electric vehicle charging infrastructure applications. With the increasing complexity of vehicles, we secured business based on our engineering capabilities for heavy-duty trucks, material handling, and construction and agriculture equipment. We are also leveraging products from our successful integration of Carling to grow our business in these end markets. Within safety, comfort, and ADAS applications, we captured wins based on our product performance. With our investments for growth and expanded capabilities and portfolio with the additions of Carling and Embed, we are very well positioned for continued growth within transportation applications. Moving on to slide 10, electronics end markets, we are seeing significant growth from innovative products targeting key end markets. During the quarter, we capitalized on the proliferation of electronics content across a wide range of applications centered around connectivity. We secured business for data centers and telecom infrastructure with our responsiveness to customize solutions. In appliances, we expanded our presence with existing customers based on our long-term engagement. In addition, our product features won us business for building security systems and general-purpose electronics. Our ongoing success of winning business and our announced acquisition of C&K will serve as a platform for continued growth. Across the high-growth industrial, transportation, and electronic end markets we serve, our pipeline of new business opportunities is very active and we are confident in the The organic growth from these new business wins, coupled with our acquisitions, will enhance and sustain our growth and position us to continue expanding our market presence. I will now turn the call over to Minal to provide additional color on our financial performance and output.

Thanks, Dave. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Let's start with slide 12. our team delivered a quarter of record financial performance that exceeded the high end of our guidance. Revenue grew 34% year-over-year to $623 million, with organic growth of 22%. Decarling and Heartland acquisitions added 14%, and foreign exchange reduced revenue by 2%. Gap operating margins were 24.2%. Adjusted operating margins were 25.6%, 850 basis points higher versus last year. First quarter gas diluted earnings per share was $4.70. Adjusted diluted EPS was $4.99, up 87% over last year. The strength of our results in the quarter was led by our electronics segment, where overall demand was stronger than we had expected, which included improved shipping rates as we worked through logistics challenges. We also risk-adjusted our first quarter forecast for potential COVID-related production slowdowns, but our teams were able to continue our operations during the first quarter despite the COVID surges. Our operating margins reflected strong sales volume and related leverage. We ended the quarter positive on price-cost as our teams remained focused on offsetting ongoing inflationary headwinds. Given the current market conditions and the ongoing customer discussions we're having on pricing, we expect to stay positive on price cost for the remainder of the year. And as I've been referencing the past several quarters, we continue to have margin benefits from lower than typical discretionary spend, even as we continue to invest for growth across our businesses. We generated $52 million in operating cash flow in the quarter and $22 million in free cash flow. This reflects the higher working capital and capital expenditure investments we've been making to support our revenue growth and higher cash compensation payments related to last year. We've also continued our strategic direction to carry higher inventory levels to help mitigate supply chain risk and sustained service levels to our customers. Turning to slide 13, our capital allocation priorities remain in full alignment with our growth strategy. We continue to prioritize reinvesting in our business for both organic growth and for acquisitions to diversify and expand our value proposition to our stakeholders. Since we shared our updated five-year strategy with you last year, we've committed to deploy $1 billion in capital to further our growth trajectory from acquisitions. Our constant focus on cash generation is allowing us to fund more than half of this deployment directly from our balance sheet. While we plan to take on additional debt in the near term from these acquisitions, our leverage will remain comfortably within our target levels. Moving on to our segments on slide 14, let's start with electronics. Revenue in the quarter grew 28% and 29% organically. Operating margins were 33%, reflecting strong price-cost benefit, favorable regional and product mix, and ongoing volume leverage at these record revenue levels. Our teams continue to drive operational efficiencies and ongoing automation investments, adding to the margin expansion. In these current market dynamics, we expect our electronics segment to maintain an operating margin averaging in the mid-20% range. Moving on to transportation, formerly known as our automotive segment, sales were up 44% and up 3% organically, the main difference being the Carling acquisitions. Sales in commercial vehicle were up 21% on an organic basis with positive market and content trends across our vertical. Sales across passenger vehicle were down 3%, excluding foreign exchange, on a mid-single-digit global car bill decline. Operating margins were 14.3%, offsetting continued metals headwinds and dilution from the newly acquired Carlin. Sales in industrial grew 50% in a quarter and 32% organically, with the main difference being the Heartland acquisition. Operating margins were 17.1% as we drove improvements in operational performance, price increases offsetting cost headwinds, and strong volume leverage. Overall in the first quarter, we had excellent operational execution across the board and strong financial performance in what continues to be an uncertain and volatile macro environment. Moving to slide 15, we continue to see broad strengths across the end markets we serve. This remains the case for automotive and consumer demand, though new and ongoing supply chain issues have dampened car build projections, impacting us through our customers and suppliers. Recent events, from the tragic Ukraine invasion to China COVID, have also elevated uncertainty across the macro environment. However, we continue to successfully manage through market challenges across a number of fronts and have incorporated market conditions as we see them today into our forecast. For the second quarter outlook, We expect sales in the range of $594 to $608 million, a growth of 15% versus last year, and 7% organic growth at midpoint. This includes about a 300 basis point currency headwind versus last year. At current foreign exchange rates, we expect an approximately $50 million sales headwind for the full year. We're projecting second quarter adjusted EPS to be in the range of $3.95 to $4.11, up 18% at the midpoint. This assumes a 16.5% tax rate in the quarter. We are maintaining our full-year adjusted effective tax rate in the range of 16% to 18%. The China COVID-driven lockdowns that began late in the first quarter are affecting some of our operations, largely in our electronic segment, as well as impacting some of our customers and suppliers. Due to these lockdowns, our guidance includes a 300 basis point sales headwind versus last year, as well as costs we are incurring to support our operations and our employees. Consistent with our historical accounting convention, our second quarter guidance also includes higher stock compensation expense in the quarter of approximately $0.30 in EPS. We closed on the embed acquisition in April, but don't expect it to have a material impact to the P&L or cash flow in the quarter. Our Q2 guidance excludes any financial impact for C&K switches and for interest expense from new debt. Slide 16 includes some additional full-year forecast considerations. We expect $50 million in non-cash amortization expense for the year, excluding C and K. And we're projecting $18 million in interest expense, excluding interest expense for new debt. We are maintaining our projection of 100% free cash flow conversion an estimate $110 to $120 million in capital expenditures for the year. C&K Switches has annualized sales of over $200 million and has historically had EBITDA margins of approximately 20%. Dave discussed how C&K closely aligns with our target markets and portfolio, and it will also align well with our financial profiles. we see a number of opportunities to enhance C&K's growth and bottom line performance. We anticipate the transaction closing late in the second quarter and expect it to continue being earnings accretive after including non-cash deal amortization. I'd like to conclude by thanking our associates around the world for continuing to deliver on our commitments to our customers and shareholders amidst these challenging times. And with that, I'll turn it back to Dave for some final comments.

Thanks, Minal. In summary, on slide 17, we've had an accelerated start to delivering on our five-year strategic goals. With our ongoing deployment of resources and capital to enable customers' applications, we remain extremely well-positioned to further capitalize on current sustainability, connectivity, and safety. We continue to focus on what we can control to drive our performance than a volatile market, which is reflected in our second quarter outlook of continued double-digit sales and earnings growth. I am confident our talented associates around the world, investments for growth, and operational excellence will deliver ongoing value for all of our stakeholders. And with that, I will now turn the call back to the operator for Q and A. We will now begin the question and answer session.

To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch tone phone. If you are using a speaker phone, please pick up your handset before pressing the key. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star then two. The first question is from Luke Young with Baird. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for taking the questions. First question probably for Mino. Just wanted to better understand the electronics margin from here and what elements of the current core upside are sustainable or more specifically how you define the current market dynamics that would support a mid-20s margin in this business. Alternatively, what has to go wrong, if you will, to drive the business back towards the low 20% level you had previously assumed in your through-the-cycle margin target? Is that still the right target for this business through the cycle? in light of the improved productivity and automation investments you referenced.

Thank you. Thanks, Luke. Let me just step back for a second. We're in a market that really we've never seen before. A lot of unique factors going on ranging from the demand increases that we've seen, pretty sharp demand increases, the inflationary environment, and then we're in a price realization mode versus a business that typically sees price erosion every year. When you asked about, hey, what are the market dynamics that are going on that have caused us to think about the margin profile, that's what I call the current market dynamics. I would say we have worked very hard on a couple of things, one around pricing. As I mentioned last year, we were working to catch up a little bit with the inflationary environment, and we've done that now from a price perspective. But we've also done a lot of internal work really around productivity, efficiency, and investing in automation. So what I would say is with these current market dynamics, with what we've done right now, you know, for the foreseeable future, I see us in that mid-20% range margin profile. I think we just need to continue monitoring the environment and see how things evolve over time.

Okay, thank you for that. And then my follow-up question, also margin-related, and I'm wondering about the sustainability of transportation margins in the mid-teens As you mentioned, a number of headwinds still this quarter, be it inflationary headwinds, where the level of light vehicle production is right now, Carling-related impacts on the margin profile of that business right now. What's baked into the second quarter guidance in the very near term, and is the outlook here for midterm margins sustaining as we look out the next few quarters? Thank you.

Sure. I'd say our target profile for the segment remains mid-teens margins. As you're saying, the business and a lot of the factors, there's a lot of choppiness going on. One of the biggest things that I've talked about in the past are things like input cost, especially metals, really impact this segment the most. And we've seen a lot of choppiness, a lot of inflationary price increases there. So I would say, again, our target remains the same. It's going to depend on a lot of the market dynamics more than anything else between things like car build, the continuation of growth that we're seeing around end markets, not just in auto, but also in commercial vehicle. And then we're doing what we do best, which is we're working on managing through the environment. We're working on productivity initiatives, automation initiatives to work on I'm mitigating it and working to keep it in that mid-teens margin.

Okay, great. I will leave it there. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Luke, for your questions. We'll take our next caller, please.

The next question is from Nick Todorov of Longboy Research. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Nick. Yeah, thanks. Good morning, everyone, and then congrats on great results and execution, really impressive results. Questions first on China impact. Can you help us understand the assumed impact sequentially, both from a revenue and cost standpoint related to China lockdowns?

Yeah, Nick, I'll talk a little bit on the revenue side and let Minal speak to any cost issues associated with it. But we talked about that 300 basis point headwind in the second quarter that we're facing. And it really comes from a couple areas. Primarily, it shows up in our electronics business, impacts our electronics business. We have a couple of manufacturing sites in the greater Shanghai area that have been shut down for a few weeks. And we expect them to begin to ramp back up in the coming weeks. But it clearly has an impact on our ability on some smaller product lines that we have at those locations. So that's certainly a headwind for us. And, of course, it has some indirect impacts on us with customers on the auto side, but also on the electronic side, that their supply chains are disrupted. Their inability to operate impacts us as well. So that's really kind of what we incorporate in that 300 basis point headwind.

Sure. And on the cost side, Nick, I'd say a couple of things. One is we're incurring costs. operational costs right now. You know, Dave mentioned that we've had a few plans shut down for a few weeks now. We've got it, you know, there are still a number of fixed costs going on that we're continuing to maintain, including, you know, continuing to pay our employees, as well as we talked about providing employee support. It's quite a difficult, personal, challenging time right now, and so we're doing everything we can to support our employees personally as well in a lot of different areas. So the combination of those two costs, I would say, you know, a big chunk of our sequential earnings decline is really coming from what I'd call a temporary situation with the China COVID shutdown.

Okay, that's very helpful. And then another question related to margins. We've seen this specifically in electronics. I would call it volatility. You've had this Very strong third quarter margins and a little bit of moderation in the 4Q now. Very strong first quarter margins. You know, I'm guessing you mentioned mix played a major role. Can you please help us understand what product families, you know, are driving that high accretion in the electronics margins?

Yeah, no, it's a great question, Nick. You know, I would say a few different things going on. You know, I talked about a few quarters ago, mix played an outsized role in terms of our margin profile. For us, it's geographic mix also that helps, you know, some stronger margin profiles. As we think about North America, Europe, a little bit different in Asia. So mix was a piece there. At the same time, you know, with the earlier question I answered, I mentioned we've been doing a lot of work to catch up with the inflationary environment around pricing and So I'd say the past few quarters, that's where we're seeing some bigger benefit as part of that catch-up. And also just really around productivity and automation, the operational excellence that you count on us for. And we've been spending a lot of time and, frankly, a lot of investment in making sure that we're doing what we need to in our own house to really improve our cost position. So that's really some of the dynamics there. I'd say what's adding to the choppiness, frankly, is a lot of the supply chain environment. I know an overused term, but especially around logistics, where we're moving product, in many cases from Asia to North America or internally, and we saw some choppiness in the fourth quarter, which caused some of the margin decline. We worked through that. It got better in the first quarter, but that's still, I'd call it a day-to-day battle for us right now.

Got it. Very helpful. And if I can squeeze one more Just if you look at the organic growth, very strong 22% despite a tough comp. I guess, can you help us understand how much of that is coming from pricing on a year-over-year basis? It sounds like you're also starting to gain traction on price-to-cost in the transportation and industrial markets this quarter. So can you help us on a year-over-year basis how much of the 22% organic growth comes from pricing?

Yeah, I would say really there's this Overall, we have very strong in-market demand kind of across our businesses that are really driving the bulk of the organic growth. So it's really more related to in-market demand. Yes, pricing helps and uplifts that, particularly in areas like electronics and industrial. But the bulk of that is really in-market demand driven.

Yeah, and I would add the work that we've been doing really to enable us to meet that in-market demand. And I keep coming back to the investments we've been making. both in our operational efficiency, the productivity, and then the automation investments. And honestly, that's allowed us to be able to meet the demand that we've seen in that pretty quick slope that we've seen.

Got it. Congrats. Thanks again on the results.

Thanks, Nick. Appreciate your questions. We'll take our next caller, please.

The next question is from Josh Buckalter of Collin. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Josh. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Congrats on the awesome results. Last quarter, I believe you mentioned that you thought your distribution partners to the point that it matched end demand. I guess, given the China lockdown, firstly, is that still the case? And secondly, should we then interpret the current resulting guide as a function of really just being pulled in by a demand and less so any sort of channel or distribution inventory build?

Sure. It's a great question, and it's a very dynamic environment across the businesses. But in the electronics distribution portion of our business, obviously we monitor inventory positions there very regularly. What we would say is for the most part, they're pretty much kind of in a normal range in our business. with some particular product categories that continue to be lean. So we don't see a potential near-term problem with inventory positions in our distribution channels and electronics. I mentioned it in the prepared remarks that in the industrial portion of our business, actually electrical distributors, which we sell through particularly here in North America, their inventories are still quite lean. So we see... inventory as something to watch, but we clearly are not seeing an outsized inventory problem at all. In fact, there's some areas where we're still lean and need to do more to kind of fill those channels.

Yeah, and maybe just adding one thing, non-operationally, one of the headwinds we talked about year over year, even bit sequentially, is foreign exchange, right? The euro has gotten weaker. That's definitely a headwind for us on the top line.

Got it. Thank you. Um, and then also you had previously mentioned that you, um, you had you, that there could be some restocking that came into play for your, your transportation growth in 2021. Um, and since then IHS cut SAR numbers, but again, your, your results came in, uh, you know, well above expectations. I guess, can you just walk us through some of the bigger, chunkier, um, content growth drivers that you have that are allowing, that are insulating you from units, whether it's SEV related or, um, It sounds like commercial vehicles in particular have been strong. Thank you.

Yeah, clearly, if you look at the transportation segment, as we reported, it starts approaching kind of 50-50 on how much is passenger car versus commercial vehicle. And we saw tremendous organic growth on the commercial vehicle side of things. And quite frankly, I think our customers are limited by their supply chains. The demand remains pretty robust there. And our ability also really, our revenues are driven by our ability to support them as well at times. So we see really strong demand there. And it's really across the board. Heavy truck and bus, construction and agriculture, material handling, these are all areas that we see quite strong demand for our products, which are component level, but also power distribution systems in those applications where we see nice growth. By the way, we're also beginning to see traction and electrification in the commercial vehicle side as well, which creates further content opportunities for us there. On the passenger car side, it's still the big drivers for us that are the electrification of vehicles are certainly a content increase for us. The product mix for our customers is the way they tend to be when they have limited supply chain focused on higher-end vehicles, which have slightly higher content for us. Those are key areas that are driving kind of content and outside growth in the transportation section.

Thanks, guys, and congrats again. Thanks.

Thanks, Josh. We'll take our next caller, please.

As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star, then 1. The next question is from David Kelly of Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Good morning, David.

Hey, good morning, team. I wanted to double back to the revenue guidance and how you're thinking about trends into the second quarter. You pointed out the China disruptions. If we adjust for that 300 basis points headwind, I'm still coming up a bit below typical seasonal trends. So can you walk us through some of the incremental headwinds you're seeing in other markets or maybe there's an element of risk adjustment here similar to your first quarter guide.

Yeah, David, so what I'd say is in addition to the China headwind we talked about, I just mentioned on an earlier question the foreign exchange headwind, you know, especially with the weaker euro that we've seen, that's been impacting us on the top line. And I said similar to China being a 300 basis point headwind in the quarter, same sort of – range also from foreign exchange. I'd say that. And I would also say we had, you know, some really good strength in the first quarter. So I think some of the historic seasonal patterns that we've seen have sort of gotten thrown out a little bit. But we feel good about, you know, really we would have been pretty close to sequential, honestly, from Q1 to Q2 had it not been for these headwinds.

Okay, got it. Thank you. And then maybe following up on the transfer discussion, how should we think about pricing offsets in that segment to potential metals inflation? We're hearing about pricing from a variety of tier one suppliers, which happens, frankly, once every 10 to 15 years. So curious if that's been a meaningful opportunity for you in the past couple quarters, or maybe it's an opportunity for you know, going forward to help offset some of that ongoing, you know, metals inflation I'm sure everyone's seeing.

Yeah. David, you know, we've talked about in the past the differences in our ability to pass along cost increases in different segments and different customer bases. And what I would say is if you look at our transportation segment, you know, Passenger car is probably the toughest place for us to be able to do that. We tend to have long-term contracts with our customers. And so, you know, annually you get a chance, obviously, to address those sorts of things in many cases. So that in the pass car side is an area where we're not, have not been able to keep pace, if you will, with cost increases. So it is still a headwind for us. on kind of the price-cost mix in the passenger car portion of the business. The commercial vehicle side of the business gives you a little more latitude and ability to pass along those inflationary costs to customers. So we've probably done a better job at trying to kind of neutralize that in the commercial vehicle side of it. But it's an ongoing battle. You talk to a lot of tier ones. but as a Tier 2, we continue to work with our customers to try to pass along where we can, but in some cases, we're not able to close that gap.

Okay, great. That's helpful. And maybe just one quick follow-up on our point of clarification on C&K. Just given their distribution channel exposure, the 20% EBITDA margin you referenced, is that a longer-term through cycle average, or are they currently tracking at those levels?

That's where they've been operating at in the recent past. So we have that data at this point. Obviously, the distribution channel exposure that they have matches very well with the distribution exposure that we have in our electronics business. We see that as certainly one of the areas for synergy as we continue to engage with and partner with our distribution partners to maximize the opportunity for growth there. So we think that's where they've been operating EBITDA area recently, but we think there's lots of opportunity for us. Okay, great. Thanks so much.

Thanks, David. Appreciate your questions. We'll take our next caller, please.

The next question is from Matt Sheeran of FIFO. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Matt.

Yes, hi. Good morning. Just a couple of follow-ups from the previous questions. One on inventory, Dave, you talked about distribution channels being lean, but we're seeing other customer bases, specifically EMS and OEMs, build inventory at record levels, and we don't know exactly what that mix is. So are you getting, I mean, I know in the last quarter you talked about EMS inventories maybe creeping up. Do you have any insight there on that inventory picture and how that plays out through the year in terms of your orders?

Yeah, I think our view on that is it's a little unusual in this cycle that the level of inventory build at the end customer EMS as well as OEMs. So, of course, it's an added thing to consider in the mix I'm not sure that we have seen specifically any meaningful increases for our products in those areas in the last quarter. The big questions come down to really what will be the behavior patterns over time. You know, our current view is with the current volatilities in the market and supply chain activities, whether they're COVID-related, whether they're Ukraine war-related number of disruptions that have kind of impacted our industry in the recent couple years. The question mark is, how long will it take to return to a more normal kind of inventory environment? We don't see that changing in the near term. We do see that over time, will that begin to work its way down? Sure, I think it will. But we see that as more of a long-term trend, not kind of a short-term, because just like ourselves, even if we have supply available to us, we have less limitations. The volatility and the ability to ship products around the world and other disruptions, we're probably going to carry a heavier inventory for the foreseeable future. We see that same trend with customers we're talking to as well.

Okay, thank you for that. And then I just wanted to go back to the issue of pricing and how that's benefiting your business specifically, electronics. I mean, your electronics revenue grew, call it 24 million sequentially, but your operating income was up 40 plus million. So clearly, the pricing environment is beneficial. And I know you've put in through price increases, as have your competitors, but could you quantify it for us and how much of that uplift was pricing versus leverage and other moving parts?

Yeah, I mean, we've been talking, Matt, really about what we're doing around the different levers, so we've not gone into detailed quantification, but what I would say is we've done a lot of work in the past few quarters really around catch-up, right, around really making sure that that the value we're bringing to our customers is recognized given the fact that our costs have gone up due to a lot of market factors. So there's a lot of work that was done in the past few quarters, and we're seeing the benefits come through from our margins, and really it's a catch-up. At the same time, a lot of work done to really improve our capacity through efficiency, through some automation investment. So I'd say both of those have been strong drivers for us on margins.

Okay, thank you. And then given the headwind, the manufacturing and production restrictions that you're seeing in the June quarter, I know it's hard to look beyond one quarter here, but are you expecting, I mean, I would imagine your backlog is building, and would you expect September to bounce back somewhat in electronics?

Yeah, it's really challenging to see, and it's a pretty volatile space out there these days. And our current view is that the current disruptions in China, specifically impacting us in the greater Shanghai area, we're expecting those to moderate through the course of May and hopefully begin to get back towards normal by the end of the second quarter. So I think that headwind will likely lessen for us. However, who knows? you know, are other parts of China or other regions of the world going to get impacted by, you know, additional waves from COVID? Yeah, it's just difficult to say at this point. So kind of our strategy and our approach is to make sure that we have the capacity in place to respond to the demands as our customers need it, have the teams in place and supporting them, and just be prepared to react, you know, to changes in direction there. But we're hoping the specific demands problems we're talking about are behind us certainly by the third quarter.

Okay, fair enough. Thanks very much.

We appreciate your questions. Matt, we'll take our next caller, please.

The next question is a follow-up from Luke Young of Baird. Please go ahead.

Yeah, just one follow-up question. I'm wondering if you could comment on the Carling acquisition, especially key observations now that you've had your first full quarter of ownership there. What have you learned from that you didn't necessarily know coming into making that deal. And, you know, if I zoom back and look at the strong organic result that we saw in the commercial vehicle, part of the transportation portfolio this quarter, that's certainly a strong outcome. To what extent is, you know, Carling already adding to what you're seeing there? Thank you.

Yeah, I think, you know, first of all, we feel, you know, at least as strong, maybe stronger about the opportunity with Carling once we've had a chance to actually, spend some time at the factory locations, spend some time with the engineering teams and sales teams. So we feel very bullish about that. We like the commercial vehicle space. We think it's a great place to operate in and lots of opportunity. The added scale of Carling certainly creates us being a more important supplier in the electrical systems for the commercial vehicle space that are evolving pretty rapidly and pretty dynamically. Carling has some unique capabilities that are primarily focused in the marine space with more sophisticated modules and systems. We think there's an opportunity longer term to take some of that capabilities more broadly into the commercial vehicle space. And oh, by the way, the embed acquisition we made, which is adding about 35 embedded firmware software engineers to our team. will help us enable those sorts of activities as well. So we see opportunities in commercial vehicles as well as the industrial side.

So we feel pretty bullish about it. Thanks for your follow-up question, Luke.

Do you have another question, Luke? No, that was all I had. Thank you. All right. Thank you. We'll take our next question, please.

The next question is a follow-up from Nick Todorov of Longbow Research. Please go ahead.

Nick? Yeah, thanks for allowing the follow-backs. Question on OPEX. Minho, how should we think about the OPEX into the second quarter? I'm asking because SG&A dipped versus the trend we've seen in the last three quarters in 1Q. You talked about $0.30 incremental uptick in stock compensation. Any color additional, or how should we think about absolute level of OPEX in 2Q that would be helpful?

Sure. Yeah, no, great question. I think, one, just, you know, on the trends a little bit, when I talk about things being choppy from quarter to quarter, we've seen that a little bit on the OPEX side also, a lot of that being in outcomes. frankly, related to COVID, you know, discretionary spend starts to tick up and then something happens and it comes back down again just because of, you know, can you get out, can you travel, can you see customers, can you go to sites. So that's been, you know, some of the waves that we've seen on our OpEx spend, frankly. And that's also been, you know, right now I'd say in the current market dynamics, that's been, you know, one of the unique drivers that we're just not spending at the level we would in some areas on OpEx. Specifically, as it relates to the second quarter, the $0.30 of stock compensation accounting I mentioned, it's just a provision in some of our stock comp grants that we have out there related to retirement provisions, and rather than taking the cost for retirement, some parts of the stock comp over a few years. We have to take it all in the quarter. So don't think of it as an outsized additional cost, but more just from a timing issue. And so we try to give everybody directionally what that is every year in the second quarter.

Got it. One question for Dave, a bigger picture question. You know, Dave, obviously in the financial markets, investors are getting worried about potential slowdown in economy and even recessions. And at the same time, you have an inflation potentially being persistent, so creating a stagflation environment. I guess it would be interesting to hear your views on how the business and the industry behave in an environment where we have stagflation potentially into not so distant future.

Yeah, great question, one we talk about regularly and debate regularly. You know, it's pretty difficult. It's been an abnormal situation for the last couple of years, right? And situations we're in today are a bit abnormal. So we talk about it regularly. We feel that transportation, particularly the pass car area, is going to continue with increasing demand. There's just been pent-up demand that hasn't been being able to be supplied because of supply chain disruptions. So we don't see, even with kind of potential global financial trends changing, we see demand on the transportation side continuing to be quite strong for the foreseeable future. So we don't see that as a concern. Obviously, you know, if the balance between inflation and slowing economies, those will have an impact on us. but we have not seen a lot of evidence of anything yet, you know, in the markets and in the spaces that we're operating. The demand patterns that are in customers continue to remain very, very strong.

Very helpful. Thanks. Appreciate it. Good luck. Thanks.

Thanks for your follow-up questions, Nick. We'll take our next caller, please.

The next question is from a follow-up from Josh Balcolter of Collin. Please go ahead.

Hi, Josh.

Hey, thank you for the follow-up. Just one from me. You called out the impact of the China lockdowns and the revenue guidance. I was wondering, any impact of inventories there? The reason I ask is a few of your peers have mentioned that they're able to build parts but not ship them due to logistic challenges in China. So I was wondering if you saw any sort of similar dynamic as well as we think about modeling inventories the rest of the year. Thank you.

Yeah, no, limited impact on inventory. Our challenge, really, that's impacting us directly is we have factories that are locked down and shut down. So we're not producing. It is difficult to ship in and out of Shanghai. So other locations, we're finding ways to ship other routes in and out of China rather than through the Shanghai port. But our impacts are more directly related to our ability to produce. So I think it's less impactful on the inventory.

Yeah, and I would say the elevated inventory that we've been carrying to service customers has actually paid off a little bit and mitigated our revenue headwind for the quarter because we've been able to ship out of inventory right now. So that's been part of the mitigation that we've been working through and fortunate to be able to continue to help our customers continue business.

I appreciate the caller. Thank you.

Thanks, Josh. We appreciate your follow-up question. Thank you for joining us on today's call and your interest in LittleFuse. We look forward to talking with you again soon. Have a great day.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.