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spk08: Thank you for joining us for the Middleby third quarter conference call. With us today from management are CEO Tim Fitzgerald, CFO Brian Middleman, Chief Commercial Officer Steve Spittel, and Chief Technology and Operations Officer James Poole, as well as Vice President of Investor Relations John Joyner. We will begin the call with opening remarks from management and then open the call for questions. Instructions on how to get into the queue will be given at that time. Please note this call is being recorded. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.
spk12: Thank you and good morning. Thanks for joining us today on our third quarter earnings call. As we begin, please note there are slides to accompany the call on the investor page of our website. We're very excited to have joining us on today's call, John Joyner, our new head of investor relations for Middleby. As many of you may know, John is joining us from BMO, where he did a tremendous job covering Middleby for many years. So he has a deep understanding of our industry with a passion for Middleby. Given the recent expansion and significant expansion in the scope and scale of our business over recent years, it was the right time to establish a dedicated leader for investor relations. And we are excited to have John as the first to step into this role for Middleby. I know John's presence will significantly benefit all of our current and future shareholders, and we're fortunate to have John now on the Middleby team. Now, under the quarter, we are pleased to have posted solid results, reporting record earnings and cash flows in the quarter and for the year, driven by strong execution at both our commercial and our food processing businesses. We continue to make significant progress at our residential business, positioning for growth and a return to higher levels of profitability when the market recovers, while at the same time managing the near-term impacts of the challenging market conditions. We again posted overall improved profitability and are realizing the benefit of our profit actions as we progress toward our longer-term margin targets. We are benefiting from our focus on new product innovation to drive improved profitability in our sales mix. We're realizing efficiency gains reflecting the impact from our manufacturing investments, and we're focused on the long-term supply chain opportunities with ongoing product design and sourcing initiatives providing for greater improvements over the next year. While market conditions have proven to be increasingly challenging, the inventory destocking, which has impacted our commercial and residential businesses, will largely be normalized as we enter 2024, and we will start the year competitively positioned better than ever. At Commercial Food Service, we've extended our leadership in electrified, energy-efficient, and ventless cooking solutions. We have rapidly developed an innovative platform of exciting ice and beverage products in a large and growing market, and we are well on our way to establishing Middleby as the leader in controls, IoT, and automated solutions. positioning us to capture the future of the commercial food service industry. At Residential, we have the broadest portfolio of indoor and outdoor premium brands, with a pipeline of innovation addressing the growing demand for energy-efficient electrified products, and with initial launches of connected equipment now in the marketplace, with more to come. At Food Processing, we have executed on our strategy of becoming a leading provider of best-in-class full-line integrated solutions for the protein and bakery markets. We are offering state-of-the-art automation to address growing labor and efficiency challenges, and we have developed a portfolio of equipment to support our customers' efforts to achieve the sustainability goals for their operations. We have successfully expanded in new markets such as bacon, cured meats, alternative protein, and pet foods, with additional targeted applications providing further growth opportunities ahead. Our substantial go-to-market investments, we believe, are uniquely positioning us for long-term sustainable growth, with great progress made in establishing our digital sales and marketing capabilities, developing our industry-leading culinary teams, and in the alignment of our sales channel and strategic partners. The investments we have made in our innovation centers continues to prove to be a strategic asset for our businesses. Engagement at these innovation centers continues to be meaningful and is providing benefits across our commercial, residential, and food processing businesses. We're confident these investments of today are translating into a pipeline of opportunities ahead, and we're in the early chapters of realizing the impact for all of our food service brands. While market conditions are undoubtedly more challenging across our businesses, given the effects of interest rates and macro conditions, we're continuing to focus on our business execution while building upon our growing competitive advantage at each of our three industry-leading food service businesses that we are confident will set us apart in the long term. Now I'll pass the call over to James to spotlight our ICE businesses. It's a great, fast-growing part of our exciting beverage platform. and a great example of recent strategic investments that we have made both through acquisition and new product innovation that have positioned us for a growth opportunity in a large and addressable market. James.
spk09: Thank you, Tim. I'm going to deviate from peer NPI and technical discussion this quarter to talk about one of our fastest growing segments, ice. With the acquisition of IceTro over a year ago, Middleby is more than a nugget or Tubelet Ice Company. By the way, Tubelet is followed proprietary and trademark name for its nugget ice. We have the ability to satisfy demand for all types of ice, whether it's tubelet, nugget from IceTro, cubed, half cubed, or shaved ice. Our ice portfolio has been one of the fastest growing segments in commercial food service in 2023. And with the trends in the addition of two new IceTro products, we believe we will see growth in the range of $50 million in 2024, with the growth continuing in the following years. This growth is fueled by new marketplace trends around Chubut ice, as well as IceTro's growth in the U.S. and international markets as we go after ice's $1.75 billion to $2 billion global market space. Now on to trends. It's no secret cold beverages are growing at a very fast rate. In 2022, cold beverage sales increased 15% over hot beverages, while a leading coffee chain sees as much as 75% of their beverage mix being cold. This growth has led our customers to focus on more than just ingredients to craft their best beverage. They now appreciate the ice's role in making the best iced coffee possible. ice craft beverages, blended beverages, and fountain drinks. Follett's tubelet ice produces the highest quality and highest margin drink for our customers. This is for several reasons. First, tubelet ice chills the beverage faster due to its total surface area. It dilutes the beverage less as it has a higher percentage of frozen water compared to regular ice. And it allows the ice to absorb the flavor, extending the beverage experience once your soda or coffee is long gone, thus giving you a beverage that keeps on giving. Follett's tubelet ice is also safer and more sanitary as Follett's proprietary extrusion making process allows us to extrude, i.e. pump the ice up to 75 feet from the ice maker to two remote locations within the restaurant without employees having to carry buckets of ice or handle ice. With everything I've said, you would be surprised that Nuggets Ice is only around 20% of the global ice business. The other 80% is cubed ice. With the introduction of our latest machines from IceTro, the 1,700-pound and 2,000-pound machines, which now complete IceTro's full production lineup, IceTro now has the ability to compete and take global market share as we look to expand our cubed ice business. IceTrow machines have a proven track record of reliability globally and have many features that benefited from our competition, such as multi-ingress and egress cooling, split panel access for sanitary servicing, and a proprietary plating process, to name a few. And the last comment before I turn it over to Brian, all Middleby products that require water use filters from Terry Water Filtration. And when it comes to ice, we believe that Terry's H2O Citrine Water Filter provides our customers with the best-tasting ice. Thank you, and over to you, Brian.
spk11: Thanks, James. You know, I'm torn now. Do I leave my tubelet ice in my drink to keep it working so my drink stays colder longer, or do I chew it as I also enjoy to do? I don't know. I'm really torn. But more importantly, Q3 gave us a lot to be excited about. Our performance was at record profitability levels, and we also had record for operating cash flows for a quarter. We are on track for our best year ever in terms of EBITDA and operating cash flow generation, and we are achieving this while facing challenging market conditions. Despite these challenges, we still delivered growth in two of our segments while achieving $981 million of revenue and an organic adjusted EBIT margin of 23%, up 100 basis points from Q2, and up even more over the prior year. With nearly $224 million of adjusted EBIT on the quarter, over the last 12 months, we are at nearly $900 million, an increase of over 10% from the prior LTM period. We continue to increase our profitability, EBITDA, and cash flow generation, even while in the midst of especially tough times for one of our segments. This demonstrates the resilience of our business model, which drives exceptional profitability and cash flows even in tough times. Amongst our strengths is our ability to execute in all conditions. While our total organic revenue was down due to the residential headwinds, we were still able to grow our adjusted EBITDA dollars for the quarter 5% over the prior year. Our total company margins expanded 140 basis points, or 160 basis points organically, over the prior year as well. All the margin values I will discuss hereafter are on an organic basis, meaning excluding any acquisitions and FX impacts. GAAP earnings per share were $2.01, Adjusted EPS, which excludes amortization expense and non-operating pension income, as well as other items noted in the reconciliation at the back of our press release, was $2.35, an 8% increase over the prior year. Commercial food service revenues were up slightly organically over the prior year. Their adjusted EBITDA margin was 28.7%. up 200 basis points over the prior year. We are very pleased with how margins have continued to evolve as we see benefits from improved product mix, from our capital investments, from operational improvements as we integrate acquired businesses, as well as from our constant focus on costs. In residential, we saw organic revenue decline of 21% versus 2022. The adjusted EBITDA margin was a little over 10%. For food processing, revenues of nearly $167 million represents an increase of a little over 1% organically, with year-to-date growth of over 16%. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was 26.6% for the quarter, up 440 basis points over the prior year, and we are just above 24% for the year. our operating cash flow generation was a record at $219 million for the quarter. Over the past two quarters, we've reduced inventory levels by nearly $100 million. Over the last 12 months, our operating cash flows amounted to $532 million. In terms of cash conversion, our free cash flow for the last 12 months is at 97% of net income, and I expect it to be over 100% for fiscal 2023. As we close Q3, our total leverage ratio moved down to 2.75 times. Looking forward, if we were not to make any acquisitions or stock buybacks, our leverage could move down to around two times by the end of 2024. And we currently have over $2.5 billion of borrowing capacity. While market conditions are a revenue headwind, our focus on operational excellence, differentiated products and technologies, and deep connectivity with our customers are driving our strong results. Middleby has always been known for healthy margins and cash flows. We are consistently growing them, and the trend will continue. We remain bullish on our outlook over the coming years. Our actual margins are near our medium-term targets for commercial and food processing. We anticipate achieving our target margins for these two segments on a full-year basis within the next two fiscal years. Residential continues to be profitable at levels well above peers. We have been taking actions to manage costs while still investing in go-to-market strategies, production improvements, developing new products, and entering new markets. These efforts, along with the benefits that will come from improved market conditions, will keep us on track to reach our long-term goal of 25%, albeit taking longer and being harder to predict when, given the current economic conditions. Nonetheless, given we do anticipate a period of high growth as housing and economic conditions improve, I will speculate that we can reach our target in three to four years. Bringing it back to the near term, Here are some quick thoughts on how we think 23 will conclude. Starting with Rezi, last quarter I noted that we expected Q3 to hopefully be the trough, and our results obviously reflect the challenging market conditions. Nonetheless, we do expect that Q4 can produce higher revenues than Q3 and at least maintain double-digit EBITDA margins. For food processing, Q4 will see higher revenues than Q3 and likely at least similar margins. For commercial, I expect Q4 to overall be fairly consistent with Q3 given current demand and the tail end of dealer desocking. Putting the three segments together, when looking at the total company potential Q4 performance, revenue and earnings should be on par or slightly higher than Q3. Looking beyond the fourth quarter, it is obviously hard to know with great certainty what 2024 will look like. However, I will share that our expectation is for modest top-line growth and expanding margins across all our segments. For residential, our belief is generally based on the view that current market conditions will persist through the first half of the year, and we remain optimistic in believing there can be some improvements in the second half of the year. For food processing, interest rates and food costs continue to be a headwind. Nonetheless, given our backlog, pending opportunities, and the benefits our full-line solutions offer, including addressing the demand for automation, food processing should see growth. Lastly, in commercial, while buying patterns have been somewhat volatile, when considering our customers' ongoing build plans, rollout activities, increasing customer engagement with our leading technologies, and a bit of elevated backlog, we also believe we will grow. And while these comments have been revenue focused, we also expect to deliver more margin expansion. We've updated our view on that journey within the slides posted today. And regardless of market conditions, we remain focused on improving our sales mix. This has been a big contributor to the improvements seen to date, as our best solutions solve our customers' most pressing needs. Furthermore, we are relentless in attacking costs, integration projects, and driving operational efficiencies. Managing all these areas keeps us moving forward toward our targets. In conclusion, we are being disciplined, we are managing costs, we are focused on operational excellence, We're also continuing to make strategic investments that drive differentiated products and best in class go to market capabilities. Our technical strengths, strong customer relationships and leading innovations will continue to drive success. This means even better cash flows and expanding margins. We are all hungry for the higher stock price we deserve based on the level of earnings, profitability and cash flow we have delivered. In the meantime, I'm off to our amazing new residential showroom in Chicago to see what our newest chefs, Kristen and Amy, have created. Please stop by to experience our amazing platform for yourselves. And with that, thank you for listening, and we will now take your questions.
spk08: We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star then two. The first question is from Sari Boroditsky of Jefferies. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hi, good morning. So residential took another step down this quarter. Could you just break out the performance in grills versus the remainder of the business? How do you think about underlying demand versus destocking? And lastly, is there any benefit from lapping the destock as we think about growth next year?
spk11: Thanks, Siri. You know, this is Brian. You know, at this point, I would say, you know, that grills are not really a, call it a differentiated performer, you know, versus the other, you know, product lines we have. You know, there are challenges in a variety of them and some, you know, bright spots, you know, as well. But, you know, as we've noted before, you know, Q3 is always the low point of the year for that grill business. And given where stocks are and such, we're not expecting much growth there. And we've noted that our customers are expected to order in in a different manner and with different timing, I would say, for this upcoming grill season or the one that's really kind of just starting than in the past, where they're going to order a little bit later in the season and be stocking probably for more domestic shipments than from the direct plant sources. So Q4 will still be a bit of a challenge then, given that we're in these trying times and we were still in them last year. And, you know, we think things, you know, really improve as we, you know, move into, you know, the back half of the year and, you know, then have, you know, the easier, you know, comps, obviously, to allow. I know there was another part of your question in there, but you threw a bunch at me. Can you remind me what I missed in there?
spk07: Yeah, just, you know, how are we thinking about underlying demand versus destocking and then just the benefit of that destock as we think about next year?
spk12: Yeah, so, sorry, I mean, I think the D stock turns into a tailwind at some point, right, because the sell-through is higher, obviously, than what our incoming order rates are as inventory is coming out of the channel. And then as Brian alluded to, people are also less reticent to stock back up because of a couple of reasons, not only the market outlook, but our lead times are much shorter than they were before as well. So I think as you play that out and you go through next year The D stock, which is a negative, even if it's neutral, that's a positive for us. And then also on the orders, I mean, we've seen them kind of trough out, so to speak, as well. So I mean, I think they're starting to, albeit at much lower levels, they're starting to normalize and then flush back up. So I think we're getting close to the turn, but again, a lot of uncertainty in market conditions going into next year.
spk07: I appreciate the additional color. Can you just talk about what you're seeing from an order perspective in food processing? You talked about growing next year, but how do we think about the benefit of incoming backlog had on this year, and does that create a challenging comp for organic growth in 2024?
spk11: This is Brian. We certainly had very strong backlogs. entering this year, but a lot of these projects take a while, and I would say we still have very healthy backlogs today. So that is part of the reason that gives us confidence looking into next year again, looking what's in the backlog and knowing when those projects continue. The orders have been steady the past couple quarters, albeit not at the highest levels that we had seen, let's say maybe the middle and end of last year, again, given the interest rate environment and what's going on with underlying food costs. But there still is a lot of interest out there. We still are engaging with our customers. We are still winning opportunities, and they're also looking at They believe, you know, inflection point on some of the food costs, which we, you know, hope can, you know, open up to more, you know, robust ordering times. And then, you know, we'll also see how interest rates play out. I think Tim might add.
spk12: So the only other thing I'll add, so our pipeline is very strong. So that's one of the things that we track. So that has actually grown. I think what we're seeing is that there's a bit of, it's taking a little bit longer to place orders, right, given where interest rates are and kind of understanding the outlook for next year with input prices for them, which is largely food. But I think we're, you know, what is promising is the level of activity, quoting, you know, what is that pipeline. It's just a little bit longer for that to convert right now in this period. But I think that Right now, given we've got a strong backlog coming in and a solid pipeline, we feel pretty good about next year. The baking part of our business seems to be stronger right now. We just came off a trade show, which was an industry trade show, and we had very strong activity at that show, so that was promising as well. And I would say across the platform, we have a lot of new products. that are there and certainly built out the full line solution. So those are really of interest to our customers because they're hitting on all the, I'll say, key pain points for their business right now.
spk07: Appreciate all the color and I'll pass it on.
spk08: The next question is from Jeff Hammond of KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hey, good morning, guys. Morning, Jeff. John, welcome aboard. Just I guess on commercial food service, I'm just trying to parse out, you know, kind of this continued destocking versus demand weakening. Where in particularly are you seeing demand weakness? Any cracks in new store development as you look into next year? And just maybe lastly, you know, how far along are we in this with this destock? Thanks.
spk10: Yeah, Jeff, good morning. It's Steve. I would say maybe we'll start with kind of what the end user we're seeing. I think we've talked about on prior calls, obviously, the bigger chains have had a pretty healthy new store build plan really the last year or two. I do think that continues, but what we have seen is some shifting around of that pipeline moving out a bit just with challenges they're having on, well, it's permitting or construction, still some supply chain issues that they're faced on construction. So in interest rates, pushing some of those stores out into next year at this point. So I would say they haven't reduced any of their overall pipeline. It's just more of a timing that's pushed out. That push out does play a role then into the destocking side of it because a lot of where we've seen the excess inventory in the channel show up has actually been for chain customers. Think about the last year or two with the longer lead times, the dealers or the KSs were placing orders far out, trying to bring in inventory to keep up with the chain demand. As we've caught up on our side and then some of the stores pushing out, that's what's creating this excess inventory in the channel. So I do think we are on definitely the backside of it. I mean, again, I think the positive is being very close with a lot of our dealer channel partners. They're seeing the sell through on their side to become more and more positive. I think it's just a matter of time. Obviously, uh, I think over the next quarter or two where the D stock becomes less of a headwind and we kind of get back to quote unquote more of a, a normal, you know, ordering pattern, if that makes sense.
spk06: Yeah, that's very helpful. Just on the margin targets, I understand, you know, Res Kitchen probably needs some volume help. But as you look at commercial food and food processing, I guess if we were to have kind of a flattish demand environment the next two years, do you see yourself being able to, you know, get to those margin targets within that time frame? You know, kind of how much is self-help and how much, you know, needs to come from kind of volume tailwind?
spk11: This is Brian. You know, there is not an, I'll call it an overweighted amount of that that comes from volume. I mean, volume is somewhat of a contributor because I think the volume also, you know, gets after, you know, customers adopting more of that, you know, leading technologies and such. But I think if you, you know, look at, we'll actually post some bar charts and waterfall charts on it. by tomorrow morning as we'll be attending a conference. And you'll see, I'll say, you know, three quarters of the driver, you know, of it are from mix or, you know, self-help type measures, whether it's, you know, improving costs, you know, the integration activities and the like.
spk06: Okay. Appreciate it.
spk11: You bet.
spk08: The next question is from Tim Fine of Citi. Please go ahead.
spk03: Thanks. Good morning. I think, Brian, I think you were touching on this, but just going back to a year ago, being down in Dallas, you outlined some of the drivers for commercial to get to that journey to 30% plus margins. And price-cost and sales mix were two big drivers of that. You've touched a lot on the sales mix. Where are we in terms of price cost? Obviously, the market outlook isn't quite as robust as it was a year ago. I'm just curious as to your confidence level in terms of that being significant of a tailwind for Middleby looking out at a 24 and beyond.
spk11: As I look at it, I'll say in commercial that we're operating, let's call it around 27.5% or so, and we need to get to 30% over the next couple of years. How we've gotten to the 27.5% over the past couple of years, obviously there's been some price costs in there as well as the self-help and a bunch of mix. As we look at what's left to be done, I would say price-cost is a good chunk of it, but a lot of that at this point, I will say, is more the cost side of it, as opposed to the price side of it, because we think pricing will be more moderate going forward, but we do have some cost benefit coming through as we work down inventory and as we manage our costs and look at what's happening in commodities. as well. So, again, you know, fortunately, you know, this journey is not just dependent, you know, on volume or it isn't just, you know, dependent on, again, taking price. And, again, you'll see by tomorrow that, you know, the price piece of it is not as much. But we still have, you know, operating efficiencies and acquisition and integration, maturing of businesses we had, a little bit of volume on some undersized businesses helps as well. And again, mix is not one to be, I'll say, underappreciated either.
spk03: Got it. Okay. And then, I don't know if it's for you or Steve, where would you, to the extent you can get at this, where revenues for commercial will be, you know, call it 30% higher than pre-COVID or, you know, since 2019. Where do you think volumes for that business are relative to 2019? I'm just curious how much we've, you know, where we sit just from a throughput standpoint compared to that time.
spk11: This is Brian. I'll start with it, and then, you know, Steve can, you know, jump in. You know, Volumes are a tough one to put out there, just given how many different brands we have out there. But I think as you look to correlate that also with looking at, I'll say, the number of establishments that are out there, there is building going on. But I wouldn't say that volumes are up appreciably. Obviously, we've had a good amount of pricing coming in. over that, you know, period. And then, you know, are starting, you know, have been seeing some of the benefits from, I'll call it, you know, the unit expansion. But we believe there's, you know, more volume games to be had as, you know, as build-out plans continue and as, you know, people, you know, trade into higher technology solutions.
spk10: Yeah, this is Steve. I would just add on to that, agree with all the comments. Obviously, we've had the benefit of pricing over the last year or two, which certainly gets a little bit tougher from a pricing standpoint going into the next couple of years. So it definitely shifts back to volume. I fundamentally come back to probably three key initiatives, Tim, and what's driving that. Again, we talked about new store development that continues. I do think I've said it before on prior calls, the replacement cycle that has been kicked down the road from going into COVID, got kicked down the road, going through supply chain, new store priority. So I still think you have that underlying replacement cycle that has to take place. And then you still have all the issues that all of our customers still have to address, whether it's labor, whether it's utilities. going up more and more. So I think when you kind of think about those three underlying demand drivers, that's where I think you really still see the volume start to pick back up, call it over the next year or two, and away from, obviously, the pricing benefit we've seen the last 12 to 18 months.
spk02: Got it. Okay. Thank you.
spk08: Again, if you have a question, please press star, then 1. The next question is from Tammy Zachariah of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
spk01: Hi, good morning. Thank you so much. So on slide nine of your presentation, I think there are some targets for EBITDA margin for the year. That would suggest both commercial food service and food processing EBITDA margins down sequentially. And so could you walk us through some of the puts and takes behind that sequential step down?
spk11: I'm going to, unfortunately, this is Brian, by the way, have to disagree with you. I don't think we are seeing a step down in Q4 versus Q3. I think, as I noted, food processing should at least be the same as Q3, and commercial is also expected to be in Q3. in a similar neighborhood. The numbers in the 23 column there is a rough forecast, a rough estimate for the year in total, not for specifically the fourth quarter. So I don't know if that makes a difference in how you are viewing the numbers versus how we believe they will come to be.
spk01: For sure, for sure. Great. My second question is, I think we've heard some home appliance companies in recent weeks talk about some higher promotional activity, especially in North America. Does that also relate to the high-end segment that you service as part of the residential kitchen segment? And how are you thinking about price versus price realization? in the fourth quarter or even for next year as you prepare for the next spring selling season?
spk12: Yeah, so there's definitely some promotional pricing that's going on at, I'll say, lower levels. I mean, I think one of the reasons we've put together the portfolio that we have is, you know, it's premium performance. We sit in a different category versus the, I'll say, the white goods guys. So, You know, on the margins, we're trying to be very smart and tactical on pricing. Pricing has moved around a lot in the last couple of years given all the inflationary, you know, impacts. And so we will look at that tactically. But it's, you know, it's more resilient at that top luxury end of the appliance market. So, I mean, I think we're not seeing, you know, quite the same impact that, you know, that the other guys would have.
spk01: Got it. Great. Thank you so much.
spk08: The next question is from Brian McNamara of Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking our questions. First, we're wondering if you're seeing any change in your restaurant customers' order behaviors given the recent popularity in these GLP-1 drugs. It feels like several restaurant stocks, along with your own, have reacted negatively to the news flow over the last couple months.
spk12: Yeah, so it's very early on. I mean, I don't think anybody has seen any impact to actual behaviors of orders, business, people walking in. If you listen to the CEOs of other restaurant chains, et cetera, so obviously it's getting a lot of headline news. It's too early to indicate what the long-term impact ramifications are of that. But I think we don't expect that there would be really any significant long-term impact to our business at this point in time right now.
spk05: Great. And secondly, can you confirm that your Taylor double-sided grills are being trialed with a popular Mexican fast casual grill chain? And if so, how is that testing phase going? Thanks.
spk12: So we never talk about kind of what's being trialed and out there. Obviously, sometimes you can walk into a restaurant and see a brand of equipment. But I would just say that we've talked about a lot of our leading automation that we've come out with over the last number of years that are help and drive throughput, labor, smaller footprint, efficiency, et cetera. Taylor has been certainly one of those products that James has spotlighted in some of the past calls. And it is part of a great example amongst others, such as ICE that James covered on this call, that we think are going to be, we've got differentiated products that are going to be growth drivers going forward. So I'll just comment that that is one of those exciting products.
spk02: Fair enough. Thanks, guys. Thank you.
spk08: The next question is from Meg Dobra of Baird. Please go ahead.
spk04: Good morning. Thank you for taking the question. Just a quick clarification here on residential. You know, your intro comments, you mentioned that revenue is going to be up sequentially in Q4 versus Q3, and I'm curious as to what exactly is giving you confidence that that's going to be the case. And then as you look into 2024, recognizing that, you know, some of the macro concerns are still with us, do you expect revenue and residential to continue to build sequentially relative to Q4 or not?
spk11: This is Brian. I'll start with the second part. Q4 for residential usually is a bigger quarter. There is some seasonality in some of the businesses where Q4 tends to be higher. We'll have to see a little bit how it plays out because while those will go away and It does start to pick up typically on the outdoor side of things across all our outdoor businesses, but obviously there's the stocking issue. We have not specifically mapped out a quarterly trajectory for next year, but I do put out there that Q4 tends to be stronger than Q1. But then thinking about Q4 versus Q3, really, I think your question was across the segments, food processing, dare I say, always has a strong Q4. There's a lot of deliveries that get made to customers. They want to get things in their plants, and so we have very high confidence there. We noted that Q4 is going to be similar to Q3 on the commercial side of things. There's just been enough I'll call it volatility in ordering. While destocking is mitigating, there's also, I'll say, a little bit of slowness in maybe the restocking, giving everyone's focus on working capital. So that makes that one a little bit harder to precisely predict. And I'd say in residential, we also feel fairly comfortable that Q4 is above Q3 as we look how order patterns change. have, you know, I'll say stabilized, you know, steadied some recently. And then again, there's some, you know, seasonal benefits in a couple of the businesses, you know, in there. So that's kind of the, say, the quick perspective on how we view things coming together.
spk12: Yeah, but Meg, maybe this is repetitive, but your question is on residential. I think as you go into next year, If the headwinds neutralize, that starts to equal growth for us, right? Because I think the destocking starts to go away. There's not inventory. The typical load-ins that you would have, at least on, let's say, our outdoor business that are not happening because people are also tepid on that, you're going to start to see better sell-through during the grill season. And then orders, albeit lower, they're kind of troughed. So we're starting to see them, you know, and flick back up. So it doesn't need to be a, you know, great market to start seeing things improving and growing. And, you know, if housing and remodel starts to, you know, pick up, then that ends up kind of being an adder, you know, on top of that. So I think that's kind of how we think about and as you play out multiple quarters going through next year.
spk04: Yeah, and that was really the nature of my question. I was wondering if we could take a look at Q3 and sort of say this is the trough point for both revenue and margin because if you're right about destocking being at an end, at least in theory, sequentially you should start to see some incremental benefit from the channel normalizing and maybe even potentially some restock as you go into the selling season in the spring. That's kind of what I'm getting at.
spk12: Yes. I think that's how we're thinking about it is how you are also thinking about it.
spk04: Okay. And then my last question, again, in your prepared remarks, you know, you talked about backlog still being elevated in commercial food service and that providing some level of support to 24th. Can you put a final point in that? Can you comment at all as to where backlog currently is? Were you expected exiting 23?
spk12: Backlog is really not elevated at this point. I would say that we're largely back to normal. We've got a lot of brands, so as you kind of pick through it, there are still a few that we've got a larger backlog given either level of orders or along with supply chain being able to keep up with us, but I think that's more the exception than the rule. I would say probably 90% of our companies are back to a normal lead time and backlog.
spk02: Okay. Thank you.
spk08: The next question is from Walter Liptak of Seaport. Please go ahead.
spk13: Hey, thanks. Good morning, guys. I wanted to ask sort of a follow-on from the last one on resi. And so if, you know, in the resi business, the margins, you know, are pretty low at this point. I wonder if you could talk about the cost out and operational excellence that you've done. And then if we do start to see growth in 2024, what does the volume leverage look like?
spk11: Yeah, this is Brian. You know, we have taken restructuring charges, as you can, you know, see on our, you know, P&L and probably over, you know, half of them are, you know, in the residential, you know, area and, right, and we do have, I'll call it, you know, savings that are, you know, certainly, you know, a multiple of the charges we have taken. Again, those have been necessary based on the volumes we have in driving those margins. We do think things recover nicely here. Our incremental margins tend to be pretty healthy, and I think if you go back and look at where our revenue levels were, I'll call it prior to these challenging times, If we get a couple hundred million dollars of revenue back, you'll start to see our margins getting to the upper teens again. So there's no reason they won't expand back to where they were before. And actually, we've done a variety of things, which you can't see right now, to improve the businesses, improve processes, improve manufacturing. you know, rationalize and make more efficient, you know, the distribution processes. Again, you're not seeing those benefits now because, you know, we don't have, you know, the benefits of volume, right? So those are all the reasons why, you know, we still think we will, you know, drive back to, you know, 20% and above and, you know, on the path, you know, to 25. And then, you know, on top of that, there's a variety of, you know, international markets, Expansion opportunities. I'll say on on both sides of the pond We've talked extensively about bringing European products into the North American market and there's that has started and there's more to come We've talked about grills expanding internationally lots of international opportunities of expansion across, you know all our you know, all our brands as well, and a variety of, you know, other initiatives. So certainly, you know, we think we're at a low point, but, you know, there's a lot to be excited about, you know, in the portfolio when, again, you look at the products themselves, the innovations, the expansions, and, you know, all the things we've, you know, done on the cost side, right? We're really proud of, you know, what we've done with all our acquired businesses in terms of, you know, where their margins were when we, you know, bought them versus where they are today and where they are at better times. And so, you know, we know we will get back there. And again, you know, with the portfolio and, you know, get even to higher levels than we were previously.
spk13: Okay, great. And if I can just do another quick one. Sure. on pricing and specifically for commercial food service. You know, there's still inflation out there, even though it's come down. Do you plan on doing price increases at the beginning of 2024?
spk10: Yeah, well, this is Steve. So, I mean, maybe just a quick recap of, you know, I think pricing broadly in commercial, again, has been one of the most important strategic initiatives in the company, trying to get ahead of obviously all the inflationary costs over the last 12, 24 months. So I'm very proud of the team. I think we did a lot of good work to get the pricing through and now to a place where I think we can be a lot more thoughtful about pricing going to next year. I do think there are still products in our portfolio, Walt, where They're still more affected by certain components and supply chain, and we do still need to take a little bit of pricing on those products. But I do think, by and large, going into next year, I do not see us taking a lot of pricing further from a kind of a broad standpoint, certainly subject to any other kind of supply chain or world disruption that could cause further inflation. But I think at this point, I don't see us taking a whole lot more pricing going into next year in commercial.
spk13: Okay, great.
spk02: Thank you.
spk08: That is all the questions we have today. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for closing remarks.
spk12: Well, thank you, everybody, for joining us on today's call, and we look forward to speaking to you next quarter. Thank you.
spk08: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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