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Trimble Inc.
2/19/2025
on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And if you would like to withdraw that question, again, press star one. Thank you. And I will now like to turn the conference over to Rob Painter, President and CEO. Rob, you may begin.
Welcome, everyone. Before I get started, our presentation is available on our website, and please refer to the Safe Harbor Statement. Our financial commentary will reflect non-GAAP performance metrics, including organic growth comparisons, which refer to the corresponding period of the prior year, unless otherwise noted. In addition, our P&L commentary will emphasize comparables on an as-adjusted basis, which excludes our agriculture business, our recently divested mobility business, and the extra week that we had in the fourth quarter of 2024. Starting on slide four, we ended the year on an emphatically strong note. As reported, fourth quarter revenue at $983 million, ARR at $2.26 billion, and EPS at $0.89 were all above the midpoint of our guidance. On an as-adjusted basis, revenue was up 9% for the quarter and 6% for the year, with ARR up 16%. Gross margins at 71.7% represent the first time that we have crossed the 70% level. Kudos to our global colleagues and partners. Phil will walk us through additional details of as-adjusted performance in his commentary, which is necessary to set the correct baseline for fiscal 2025. Moving to slide five, our performance in the fourth quarter capped a transformative year for Trimble. For those newer to the Trimble story, we call our strategy Connect and Scale. Our technology is digitizing and transforming work in the construction, geospatial, and transportation industries. These markets are large, global, underserved, and underpenetrated with a combined addressable market of over $70 billion. By executing our strategy, we have simplified, focused, and strengthened Trimble. We now report under three segments with leadership perfectly aligned to this structure. We have also transformed our business model in the process. delivering compelling and compounding financial returns. On an as-reported basis, between 2019 and 2024, ARR increased from $1.2 billion to over $2.26 billion. Recurring revenue doubled as a percent of overall revenue to 62%, and overall software and services increased to 76% of revenue. Gross margins in 2024 at 68.2% have increased over 1,000 basis points, All of this has translated into over 400 basis points of EBITDA improvement, with 2024 ending at 27.2%. At our investor day in December, we outlined the progression and direction of our strategy, detailing our right to win at the intersection of product, technology, and go-to-market. We laid out our 3-4-30 ambition through 2027 to deliver $3 billion of ARR, $4 billion of revenue, and 30% EBITDA margins. By delivering transformative outcomes for our customers, we are poised to deliver compelling returns to our shareholders. Today, I'll highlight the last few months of Connect and Scale's strategic progression in three areas. First, product and go-to-market through the lens of our customers. Second, technology innovation. And third, capital allocation. In the fourth quarter, we engaged with thousands of our customers and partners. Our Dimensions User Conference which focuses on the engineering and construction industry, had more than 7,000 registered attendees. We ran sessions onsite at the venue and offsite at a purpose-built proving ground where we could demonstrate our field solutions in the dirt. We had the opportunity to showcase our product innovation progression as we moved from point solutions to workflow to ecosystems. This progression uniquely leverages the vast installed base we have across the lifecycle continuum of the engineering and construction industry. At the offsite venue, pictured on the cover slide, more than 25 of our OEM partners demonstrated onboard and offboard technology, serving a large array of machine types, and we were able to showcase our unique office-to-field workflow connectivity. The unique value we are offering to the ecosystem is evidenced by the strong growth in ARR in both AECO and field systems. Further evidence of this unique value is in the record level of ACV bookings in AECO in the quarter. In transportation, we see and hear our customers asking us to address similar opportunities as our construction customers. They increasingly seek data-rich solutions delivered in a common and connected data environment. While the freight market macros remain challenged, our team is doing a good job controlling what we can control. For example, the Transporeon business achieved an all-time record level of bookings in both the fourth quarter and the year. When the freight markets return to growth, this business is well positioned to showcase its true financial potential. Complementing the product direction is the innovation that has taken hold with our go-to-market initiatives across the company, which have never been better aligned to unlock the potential of Trimble. On the technology innovation front, We continue to progress state-of-the-art and core positioning technologies along with connectivity, collaboration, and visualization. We believe we are well positioned to be a winner in the data-centric and AI-forward world, leveraging trillions, billions, millions, and thousands. Trillions of dollars of construction programs run through Trimble. Tens of billions of freight run through Trimble. We have millions of users of our software. We manage millions of miles of our roadways. And we have hundreds of thousands of instruments and machines out in the field in the real world operated by Trimble technology. Over the last few months, we have increased the adoption of AI to fuel our own productivity, creativity, and to drive profit expansion. We've been launching agents to better support customers, product managers, and our sellers. The potential is exciting, and we will continue to lean into the technology to drive both internal efficiencies and amplify customer value. Finally, I'll cover three topics on the capital allocation front, starting with the divestiture of our mobility business, which we closed on February 8th. We are a significant shareholder in Platform Science, and we refreshed an ongoing and important commercial relationship with their team to link telemetry with our broad set of capabilities, including dispatch, scheduling, routing, navigation, maintenance, visibility, freight procurement, and more. We are accounting for this investment under the cost method of accountings, where our investment will be represented on our balance sheet rather than the non-GAAP P&L. Second, we remain committed to executing our share buyback plan. We continue to believe that repurchasing Trimble stock is an attractive opportunity for capital deployment given our share price today. As further evidence of our commitment, today we are announcing that our board increased our repurchase authorization to $1 billion. Third, given the strength and momentum in the underlying business, and particularly the success we have demonstrated executing our TC1 platform strategy in AECO, we intend to play offense on the acquisition front. Tuck-in opportunities that can quickly integrate and be put in the hands of our sellers are the most obvious category, building on the success we have had with such moves over the past few years. We will also opportunistically consider larger opportunities should they present themselves, particularly in construction software. Though the bar will be high, anchored in our disciplined focus on ROI and compared to the returns we can generate from buying back our own shares. Trimble enters 2025 with a balance sheet well below our leverage targets with continued strong free cash flow generation and with shares trading at levels we find attractive. Collectively, this gives us a range of good options to consider as we drive value for shareholders. Phil, over to you.
Thanks, Rob. On January 16th, we filed our 2023 amended 10-K along with our 10-Qs for the first, second, and third quarters of 2024. As we messaged throughout the process, there was no change to our filed financial results. Our full attention is now focused on working with our audit provider to complete the 2024 audit. The good news is that the 2024 audit work builds on the 2023 work. The challenge is that because of the 2023 filing delays, the timeline is compressed. We are likely to file our 2024 10-K after the March 4th due date and are working to file within the 15-day extension that is allowed under SEC rules. At this time, we believe any delays to our filing would be solely due to the tight timeframe. We are, of course, working hard and doing everything we can to file our 10-K on time. Let's review the fourth quarter in the year for 2024, starting on slide six. Unless otherwise noted, I'll be talking about our as-adjusted numbers, which remove the effects of the recent divestitures in the 53rd week, including the January 1st term license renewals. As-reported numbers, along with the reconciliation, are provided in the appendix. Organic revenue was up 9% for the quarter and 6% for the year, with ARR up 16%. We achieved EBITDA margins of 27.8 percent for the quarter and the year, both of which expanded nearly 100 basis points. Reported EPS was at 89 cents for the quarter and $2.85 for the year. The reason we didn't see an even larger EPS outperform was primarily due to additional incentive compensation accruals and additional sales commissions. Moving to the balance sheet and cash flow items on slide seven, Our reported free cash flow for the year was $498 million, which represents a conversion rate of 0.71 to net income. Adjusting for $204 million of M&A-related tax payments and transaction costs, cash flow is over $700 million, with a conversion rate of approximately one times. Our balance sheet is strong, with over $700 million of cash and a leverage ratio of less than one times, which is well below our long-term targeted rate of two and a half times. Let's shift to a segment review of the numbers before we close with guidance, starting with AECO on slide eight. Eighteen percent ARR growth for the quarter and the year and operating income at 31.2 percent for the quarter and the year. This is a scaled business nearing 1.3 billion of ARR and revenue and operating well above the rule of 40. In fact, it was greater than a rule of 45 for both the quarter and the full year. ACV bookings increased over 20% in the quarter, providing momentum to our ongoing commitment to grow ARR at our long-term model rate in the mid-teens. We are especially pleased with the ongoing performance of our Trimble Construction 1 offerings, as well as the level of growth in cross-selling and up-selling initiatives. Next, field systems on slide 9. While for the year revenue is slightly down on an organic basis, It inflected positively in the second half of the year and was up 2% in the fourth quarter. Of particular note, ARR growth at 21% for the quarter and the year demonstrates the intentionality of our business model conversions. In almost every business where we have implemented these changes, we have seen the addressable market expand. It should also be noted that the recurring revenue conversions were 150 basis points headwind to 2024 annual revenue growth. Thus, the two must be looked at in combination. It should further be noted that the team executed on these transitions while increasing operating income margins to 30.1% for the year. Finally, transportation and logistics on slide 10. Revenue and ARR were up 8%, both for the quarter and the year, led by growth above the segment average from our MAPS business and the Transporean business. Operating margins were 24.1% for the year. Transporian continues to deliver in a challenging freight environment with strong double-digit bookings growth for the year, including several cross-sells with North American customers as the Connect and Scale playbook is being replicated in the transportation segment. Before we turn to guidance, let's set context with a few considerations related to tariffs and foreign currency translation. Based on what we know today, we have not modeled any impact of new tariffs into our guidance. Given the software centricity of Trimble today and the geographic diversity of our revenue and supply chains, we are confident we can navigate the environment with minimal financial impact. With respect to foreign currency, our EPS has historically been naturally hedged against currency moves given our global workforce. However, with the growth in AECO and Transporean outside the U.S., we now expect a slight amount of foreign currency translation headwind to flow through to EPS. For 2025 guidance on slide 11, the midpoint of our as-reported guidance is $3.42 billion and $2.87 EPS. This includes one month of mobility with approximately $20 million in revenue and under a penny of EPS. On an as-adjusted basis, our EPS guide implies low to mid-teens EPS growth year-over-year, consistent with our long-term model. Our guidance assumes the strong U.S. dollar holds, and we have incorporated into our guidance full-year foreign currency impacts on revenue of minus $50 million, ARR of minus $30 million, and EPS of approximately minus $0.04. Relative to our initial fiscal 2025 guidance we provided in December at our investor day, on a constant currency basis, we have raised our revenue and EPS guidance. For first quarter guidance on slide 13, We expect as reported revenue to be in the $794 to $824 million range and EPS $0.55 to $0.61. We have provided an updated view of calendarization in the earnings supplement on our investor site, which is in line with what we shared at Investor Day. On an as-adjusted basis, organic growth for the first quarter is in the minus 1% to plus 3% range. Please note that there is no January 1st in our 2025 fiscal first quarter. It was in the fourth quarter of 2024. Adjusting for this would result in first quarter 2025 organic growth of approximately 8% at the midpoint. Also note that the January 1st of 2026 will occur in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025. Both revenue and operating margins are expected to trend up in both absolute and percentage terms as we move throughout the year, reflecting the fact that our portfolio is now more heavily weighted to the growing recurring revenue business models and less impacted by seasonality in field systems. With that, I'll turn it back to Rob.
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