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spk10: Good morning and welcome to the Acuity Brands Fiscal 2023 Third Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, the company will conduct a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Charlotte McLaughlin, Vice President of Investor Relations. Charlotte, please go ahead.
spk08: Thank you, Liz. Good morning and welcome to the Acuity Brands Fiscal 2023 Third Quarter Earnings Call. As a reminder, some of our comments today may be forward-looking statements based on our management's beliefs and assumptions and information currently available to our management at this time. These beliefs are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which may be beyond our control, including those detailed in our periodic SEC filings. Please note that our company's actual results may differ materially from those anticipated, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements. Reconciliations of certain non-GAAP financial metrics with their corresponding GAAP measures are available in our 2023 third quarter earnings release, which is available on our investor relations website at www.investors.qtbrands.com. With me this morning is Neil Ashe, our Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, who will provide an update on our strategy and our third quarter highlights, and Karen Holcomb, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, who will walk us through our fiscal third quarter financial performance. There will be an opportunity for Q&A at the end of this call. For those participating, please limit your remarks to one question and one follow-up, if necessary. We are webcasting today's conference call live, Thank you for your interest in Acuity Brands. I will now turn the call over to Neil Ash.
spk13: Thank you, Charlotte, and welcome to all of you joining us this morning. In the third quarter of fiscal 2023, we expanded adjusted operating profit margin, both sequentially and year over year. We continued to grow adjusted diluted EPS, and we generated strong cash flow from operations, despite a decline in net sales. We completed the acquisition of Key2Therm and we continue to repurchase our shares. We are making meaningful progress in both our lighting and spaces businesses. In the Acuity brand's lighting and lighting controls business, our strategy is clear. Increase product vitality, increase service levels, and use technology to improve and differentiate both our products and our services. This quarter, we launched Design Select, We developed Design Select to elevate our service for the specification community by making it easy for them to choose superior solutions with dependable service. Design Select consists of 3,000 configurable products that meet important specification needs from some of our core families of lighting and lighting control brands, including AccuLux, Gotham, Lithonia Lighting, Enlite, and SensorSwitch. Design Select is an important addition to our service strategy. ABL lighting and lighting control products are now organized into three clear categories. Contractor Select is 300 of the most important everyday lighting and lighting control products available in stock at retailers and electrical distributors. Design Select is 3,000 configurable products that meet the key choices of lighting specifiers with dependable service. And the remainder is made to order. Through the combination of high product vitality and improved service levels with the specification community, distributors, and contractors, we continue to differentiate ourselves and challenge the existing industry standards. We also continue to introduce new products during the quarter. Our luminous brand launched the inline family of exterior luminaires for use in plazas and arenas. Each light module can rotate 355 degrees and can be individually controlled. allowing installers to position the luminaire on-site for improved flexibility to create optimal illumination solutions. The recognition of our product vitality efforts is important to our team and our customers. In this quarter, several of our products won prestigious Red Dot Design Awards, including products from Luminous and Eureka. The Eureka Tangram Trace was awarded a Red Dot Best of the Best Distinction for its groundbreaking design. Other winners in this category included products from Apple, IBM, and Sonos, and spanned categories from VR headsets to first responder drones. We're proud to be in this company of innovators. Now, moving to our Intelligent Spaces group. This was a big quarter for our Spaces team, both at Distech and at Atrius. First, on Distech, our strategic priority is to expand our addressable market, which we are doing in two ways. The first is geographic, which continues to progress successfully. The second is by increasing what we control in a built space. During the quarter, we announced the completion of the acquisition of Key2Therm, which allows us to expand DISTEC's addressable market by entering the commercial refrigeration control space. By controlling commercial refrigeration, we are able to more effectively sell the entire DISTEC portfolio in verticals like retail, restaurants, and schools. The timing is significant as the refrigeration industry responds to the need for ultra-low global warming potential refrigerant technologies. This has led to growing demand for trans-critical CO2 solutions, which require the precision of digital controls to provide safety, efficiency, and reliability while delivering cost savings to the customer. I now want to spend a few minutes on Atrius. Our strategy with Atrius has been to build a data layer that connects the edge to the cloud and use that data to develop applications that make a difference in built spaces. Earlier this month, we showcased our products at the IvyCon 2023 conference in Las Vegas. This is the largest smart building conference for commercial real estate and facilities companies. At IvyCon, we launched Atrius Data Lab, a powerful data layer that supports a portfolio of Atrius applications that is foundational to our ability to automate the environment of a built space. Atrius Data Lab captures data from a building management system and organizes it in the cloud. From there, it harmonizes the data for accessibility and usefulness and creates a digital twin. Applications are then built on top of that digital twin, allowing users to analyze historic scenarios get live updates of the current building environment, and model other scenarios. This service is important because every building is different. Our Atrius applications have been built to ensure that our partners achieve their specific energy and sustainability goals through the collection, measurement, and management of data in each of their built spaces. Atrius Sustainability and Atrius Energy are live and were built on the foundation of Atrius Building Insights. Atrius Sustainability is an automation tool that captures, categorizes, and reports on carbon emissions within built spaces. Atrius Energy facilitates the reduction of energy and carbon usage by allowing facilities teams to benchmark their usage against science-based targets. Later this year, our team will be rolling out Atrius Facilities and Atrius Resolve. Now, looking to the remainder of fiscal 2023, Our third quarter played out as we expected, with sales being impacted by both lead time normalization and the macro environment. Entering our fourth quarter, we believe that there will be a continuation of these trends. While our order rates and our shipment rates are returning into closer alignment with each other, we have not yet returned to normal sequential seasonality. In ABL, we are going to focus on strategic pricing, continued productivity improvements, and managing material costs. In ISG, we're going to focus on the continued growth of Distech and Atrius and the successful integration of Key2Therm. We will continue to prioritize managing margin, generating strong cash flow, and allocating capital effectively. Now, I'll turn the call over to Karen, who will update you on our third quarter performance.
spk07: Thank you, Neil, and good morning to everyone on the call. In the third quarter of 2023, we delivered sequential and year-over-year adjusted operating profit margin improvement despite a decline in net sales. We grew adjusted diluted earnings per share and generated strong cash flow from operations. For total AYI, we generated net sales of $1 billion, which was 6% lower than the prior year as a result of the decline in net sales in our ABL business. As Neil described, this was the result of lower volumes, consistent with lead time normalization trends and the impact of the wider macro environment. As we made clear on our last call, our focus is on delivering margin and operating cash flow. During the quarter, both operating profit and adjusted operating profit were flat on lower sales. We expanded adjusted operating profit margin to 16.3%, which was an increase of approximately 100 basis points over the prior year, and an improvement of 230 basis points sequentially, driven by the improvement in gross profit margin. During the quarter, our adjusted diluted earnings per share of $3.75 increased 23 cents, or 7%, over the prior year. Moving to our segment performance review. ABL net sales were $941 million in the quarter. This decrease of 7% compared with the prior year was largely driven by declines in the independent sales network and lower OEM sales. This was partially offset by infrastructure projects in the direct sales network and continued strong performance in our retail channel. ABL's operating profit and adjusted operating profit were both flat on lower net sales, and we delivered adjusted operating profit margin of 17%, a 120 basis point improvement over the prior year, and a 200 basis point improvement sequentially as price held and material input cost improves, particularly steel and inbound freight. The Spaces segment continued to perform well with another good quarter. Sales were $66 million, an increase of 13% as both Distech and Atrius continued to grow. Spaces operating profit was $9 million and adjusted operating profit was $13 million as we continue to invest in the business for longer-term growth. Now moving to our cash flow performance. We generated $472 million of cash flow from operating activities for the first nine months of fiscal 2023, an increase of $306 million over the same period in 2022, driven largely by improvements in working capital. We have improved both days of inventory and accounts receivable, compared to the end of the year. As we've discussed on prior calls, we've continued to bring inventory down by 22 inventory days from the peak in February 2022. And we've also brought inventory levels down by over $36 million sequentially from the second quarter of fiscal 2023. Year to date, we invested $48 million in capital expenditures and allocated $219 million to repurchase approximately 1.3 million shares. Our capital allocation priorities remain the same. We have invested for growth in our current businesses through R&D and CapEx. We've expanded our platform through acquisitions as evidenced by the purchase of Optitronics in our lighting business and Key2Therm in our spaces business. We've maintained our dividend and we've created permanent shareholder value with approximately $1.2 billion of share repurchases since the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020 at an average price of approximately $142 per share, which was funded by organic cash flow. To summarize our performance for the quarter, we delivered strong margin in cash flow despite sales being down year over year. Based on year-to-date results and our expectations for the fourth quarter, We now expect full year net sales to be between $3.9 billion and $4 billion. Our expectations for full year adjusted diluted earnings per share have not changed. Our focus continues to be on meeting the needs of our customers and delivering margin and cash flow. Thank you for joining us today. I will now pass you over the operator to take your questions.
spk10: If you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Tim Woese with Baird.
spk03: Maybe just to start out on the market, I appreciate kind of the color around kind of order rates and shipment rates and kind of how those are normalizing. I was curious if there was any way to kind of break that out by channel or segmentation, whether it's kind of the project business or what you're seeing on the stock and flow side and then maybe some of your more direct accounts.
spk13: Yeah, good morning, Tim. So let me start from kind of back to front. So first on the corporate accounts and on the OEM side, that's where, you know, those are obviously going to be volatile and those are down and those order rates are relatively low. There's lots of reasons for those. The timing of renovations at our big customers on the corporate account side And then second, on the OEM side, there's probably some continued destocking going down in the driver market. Then as you kind of get to our direct sales network and our project business, that's where the C&I order rate is relatively stable at this point. And our direct sales is also consistent. So they're finding a level here where they're relatively consistent. And then finally, we've had continued strong performance in retail. So, you know, when you boil it all back together, I think it's a continuation of the trends we've seen from this quarter and looking out to what we can see right in front of us.
spk03: Okay. Okay. And I guess, like, you mentioned in your preparer remarks that you're not really quite back to normal revenue seasonality yet. I mean, is there any – kind of expectation or thought, you know, when you might be back to that kind of normal seasonality?
spk13: Yeah, we're not ready to call that yet, Tim, as we sort our way through this. I mean, we're looking at the same, you know, kind of windshield metrics that you are to try and understand. So because we haven't gone through, you know, a period that looks like this one, we don't have a perfect proxy for where that is. So we're at this point going to take it one quarter at a time. Okay. Okay. Makes sense.
spk03: And then, Just the last one, and this is maybe more of a bigger picture question. Just with how you're bucketing sales with just kind of the contractor select, the design select, and kind of the MTO products, I mean, I guess could you talk about what's different with that segmentation versus before? And if you're aligning it this way, does that have more of a top-line sales impact for you? It's just easier to order? Or is that more of a benefit to margins because maybe it eliminates a lot of, like, cats and dogs on some of the products?
spk13: Yeah, so I think the delineation, the clarity of the delineation is powerful on a number of levels. First, as you know, we've had a lot of success with Contractor Select. So building a product, 300 SKU product line that's built for stocking and resale and retail and electrical distribution. provides us the ability to have very high product vitality, have very high service levels, and be an important partner to the retail and electrical distribution industry. And it allows us to compete effectively with whoever wants to enter the market through that channel. So that's been a real success for us. Design Select is then about configurable products for the specification community. And what this allows them to do is choose, basically make good choices among the product families. So this is the next step in that process. So our expectations aren't that this creates a new line of revenue, but it is that our expectations are that we'll create a lot more efficiency for them as well as for us. And then finally, we can isolate made-to-order. So when we isolate made-to-order, then we can treat it as such, which is made-to-order, and we can price it accordingly, and we can service it accordingly. So that's the import of creating those different buckets is ultimately that we're trying to make the lighting, lighting control business more predictable, repeatable, and scalable.
spk03: Okay. Okay. Very good. Appreciate the commentary. Thanks, guys. Good luck on this year.
spk06: Thanks, Jim.
spk10: Our next question comes from Joe O'Day with Wells Fargo.
spk04: Joe, your line is now open.
spk02: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to start on the margin front, really strong gross margins during the quarter. I think just sort of if you could unpack a little bit on the price cost dynamic and maybe if we go back a couple of years, you were talking about a gross margin target of around 42%. It looks like you should be north of 43% this year. So how we think about the sustainability of that and then what you might be seeing on the price side, any sort of incoming pressure you're seeing there.
spk07: Hey, Joe. Thanks for the question this morning. I'll start and then I'll pass it over to Neil to add on. So, you know, as we talked about on the call, at ABL, we're really focused on strategic pricing, continued productivity improvements, and managing material costs. So, you know, we've demonstrated discipline in all these areas this year, which is resulting in the strong gross margin that you see in the third quarter, and that's going to continue to be our focus. You know, the other thing I would add is that we're having continued growth at ISG, and so that's helping us as well.
spk13: Yeah, and I would only build on that a little bit, Karen. I think you summarized it well to say that, Joe, I think we have made an improvement from where we were when we were targeting the 42%. So clearly, we've improved the business since then. And I would just pick up on two things that Karen pointed out there. First, around strategic pricing. So That's where, you know, on the contractor select portfolio, we can compete with anyone that wants to enter the market through those channels, which is very effective. And we can choose which projects we want to participate in based on pricing. So we're significantly more strategic about how we're pricing. Second is that we are really working hard, and our teams have done a nice job on the combination of productivity improvements and material improvements. material cost savings. That's a combination of our product vitality efforts and the work that we're doing in our supply chain to level load. And then finally, I'd emphasize that the continued growth of ISG is growth accretive, margin accretive, and returns accretive.
spk02: Thank you. And then just a question related to outlook, both this year and next. I think this year, the earnings outlook sounds like maintaining that, but it's a $1.50 range. And so anything that you would talk to in terms of what's most likely within a narrowing of that band. And then as you think about a 24 guide in a few months, Neil, just what are sort of the most important watch items for you over the next few months to sort of inform how you'll be thinking about that outlook.
spk13: Yeah, so let me contextualize first and then I'll dig in to answer the specifics of your question. As we've said consistently, our plan is to provide annual guidance and not update that guidance through the year. We felt it important to identify for you that we weren't going to meet the lower end of our net sales guidance for the year. but we still are in the adjusted EPS range that we gave at the beginning of the year. And to be transparent, we're proud of that. So this has been a – our teams have done really hard work to deliver the results that we're delivering this year to, you know, to maintain dollar profit margin on lower sales, to increase margins, et cetera. So we feel really good about that. As we look forward to 24, as – As I said, we're going to take this one quarter at a time for right now, so we're not going to get too far ahead of ourselves on predicting 24. Our general indications are that the rest of this calendar year feels like it's going to be similar trends that we're having now. That could change. And we're confident in our ability to continue to grow the ISG business and then some of the growth initiatives that we're planning for ABL going forward. So, Our priority, as we've said, through this environment is to layer in margin, which we've demonstrated that we're doing. Whether or not we have sales growth, we're trying to layer in margin. We're trying to continue to deliver free cash flow, and we've delivered a ton of it. And we're going to continue to grow the intelligence-based group.
spk06: Thank you.
spk10: Our next question comes from Ryan Merkle with William Blair.
spk16: Hey, thanks. Good morning, everyone. I wanted to pick up on the orders again. Just so we're clear, it sounds like orders are tracking sort of down mid-single digits, and you mentioned lead times and the macro. Can you just unpack, you know, those a little bit more? Is it distributor destocking? Is it tighter credit? What are some of the factors that are impacting the order rate, decelerating a little bit here?
spk13: Yeah, I will take a shot at that, and Karen, fill in any gaps that I leave in the explanation. So first, just to reiterate, the bigger picture here. So looking back to last year, we had a combination of longer lead times and a price increase environment, which basically pulled forward a lot of orders. So we had a swelled backlog, and we've been working through that backlog through this year. And through this quarter, it's starting to be back to about normal, which means that in any period, we will basically ship what's ordered. So over the long arc of time, obviously we will, but in a normal quarter, we will ship generally what's ordered in that quarter and a little bit from the quarter before. So we're starting to get to kind of more normalized levels there. On a positive side, those numbers are relatively consistent, absent the volatility of the corporate accounts and the OEM, which I discussed in the first question. So we feel good about kind of where we are on that front. So as you look forward off of that, then the quarters, the next one, and this is why we're saying we're taking this one quarter at a time, will be impacted by kind of normal macroeconomic trends. And I don't think, you know, we're looking at the same data you are, and we don't pretend to have a crystal ball. So our focus there is then we're going to continue to get every piece of business we can get All indications are from all of our data sources that we're either holding or taking share, and we'll continue to try and layer in margin and deliver free cash flow in this environment.
spk16: Got it. That's helpful. And then another question I had was on project releases. I was hearing that tighter credit and shortage of switchgear was delaying the releases of projects. Are you guys seeing that and any visibility as to when maybe that gets a little bit better?
spk13: Yeah, so I'll take switchgear and then projects. First on switchgear, the lead times, as we understand it, have not yet, have not compressed for switchgear. So just to put that in context, they were in the, you know, kind of 50-week range. So not days, weeks range. So they have been the bottleneck on many of the already funded projects. So that's the switchgear thing. All those projects will continue to happen. And now that our lead times are basically normal, our expectation is that they will order their lighting for those projects on a more normal schedule. So that should play out over a while. In terms of new projects, that's really, from our perspective, that's the macro environment. So with higher rates, I think everyone's going to re-look at their projects. And so anecdotally, we have a fair number of projects in our independent sales network that are in queue, but they're being changed, modified, kind of re-evaluated, those sorts of things, which is frankly normal. It's not abnormal. but it doesn't make it clear exactly what the market size is going to be, which is why, again, we're taking it quarter by quarter, and we're focused on kind of layering a margin and delivering cash flow. Got it.
spk05: Very helpful. Thank you.
spk10: Our next question comes from a line of Chris Snyder with UBS.
spk06: Hello? Hi, Chris.
spk12: Hey, sorry about that. I had a little phone trouble. So, the last couple quarters we've seen, you know, very significant 300 basis points gross margin expansion, but also pretty steep volume declines. And I know there's these stopping headwinds, but is there a negative volume impact in response to the company's increased focus on margins? And, Neil, I would just be interested in hearing about how you think about that tradeoff and why the focus on margins is the right one for acuity. Thank you.
spk13: Yeah, so I'll happily address that. And from our perspective, we're very clear with our company on how we create value. We grow net sales, we turn profits into cash, and we don't grow the balance sheet as fast. So as we look out strategically around price, volume, et cetera, our objective with the lighting and lighting control business is to be predictable, repeatable, and scalable. And we're delivering on that. So in the current environment, you're right, and Karen has indicated this on other calls, that we have had more price than volume over the course of kind of this year. So And that's a combination of, you know, kind of all of the factors we've talked about before. And that is delivering the results that we are seeing. We also have all indications from our external sources that we're either maintaining or taking share in the process. So we're trying to guide the company to or steer the company to, as I said, this ability to be more predictable, repeatable, and scalable in this business. So we do think these are the right choices. That is how we will create value. We'll grow net sales, we'll turn profits into cash, and we won't grow the balance sheet as fast. And we're demonstrating that we can do that in a number of different market environments. We succeeded through the challenge of the pandemic when things fell off. We succeeded when they shot up. And now I believe we're succeeding as we try and return to some normalize. marketing or market environment.
spk12: I appreciate that. Thank you. And I want to follow up on the commentary around share gains, you know, which is very impressive, you know, considering grazing gross margin and taking share. I guess what gives you confidence that the company is taking share? Because I think investors see, you know, construction markets up, you know, 20% on the non-res side and obviously ABL down 7%. So how do we, you know, obviously a big lag there. How should we think about or how do you guys think about the impact from the D stock within that versus, you know, the potential share shifts, which are, you know, maybe more structural in nature? Thank you.
spk13: Yeah, sure. And so this is a, this could be a soliloquy, a long kind of PhD level soliloquy, but let me just kind of summarize it as much as that. that with the benefit of a lot of the data work that we've done, there is not a like-for-like correlation between the lighting industry and a specific same-quarter external macro number that we can point to. There requires a basket to have any kind of correlation, and the correlations we've gotten are, you know, kind of R-squares of like, you know, 0.8. So we're in the... We're in the good, not great range on the predictability of that. It takes multiples of those. The second is that our research has shown that generally we are performing ahead of the general macroeconomic cycle, both for the good and for the not as good. So we're working through that now. So the direct answer to your question is it is not a surprise to us that those numbers would diverge the way you described it. Second thing that I would highlight there is the difference between nominal and real on the construction data. So that also, you know, to the last question, is consistent with our performance as well. So there's, you know, I wish there were a more algebraic kind of tie to external market data that would predict our results. But there isn't. It's a basket, and we're not surprised by the relationship between those numbers that you described.
spk06: Appreciate all that coloring. Really helpful. Thank you.
spk10: Our next question comes from the line of Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs.
spk09: Hey, everyone. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question.
spk00: Hey, Brian.
spk09: I might have missed this, and I hate to kind of beat a dead horse, but the lead time issue, could you elaborate a bit more maybe in quantitative terms just sort of where they are, where you want them to be, the sort of trajectory from here? And is it a purely destocking issue at the moment? Just maybe give us a frame of reference with some of the quantification. That would be helpful.
spk13: Yeah, Brian, we covered this in some detail in the last quarter call, so I'll summarize it now, which is that, you know, kind of at the end of last fiscal year, our lead times and days were in the 50s range, and now they're in the 20s range. So basically, we've reduced lead times by about 30 days. So that resulted in a buildup of backlog, you know, towards the end of last fiscal year that we've been working through this year. And correspondingly, obviously, a little bit of an order drought as projects have been and needs have been pulled forward. So that's the big picture view of that. And also why we've identified that we're starting to come back into balance and that basically we ship what's ordered over basically a 60-day period.
spk07: Yeah, Brian, the only thing I would add is that last year, if you recall, we had several price increases as well, and that resulted in some of that pull forward that Neil described in addition to the lead time.
spk09: Okay, fair enough. Yeah, I appreciate that clarification. And then I guess the second question I had, and thanks for bringing it up, Karen, just was around the price. I know you guys – have gone away from talking specifics on price. But as you alluded to, last year price was a meaningful tailwind. Historically, price has generally been, I think, maybe... plus or minus kind of low single digit type of number for y'all. Is that kind of where we are in terms of, you know, back to being toward a more normal? And then in relation to that, you know, you've had a decent amount of product vitality. You introduced some new stuff and the design select as well. So maybe any high level sense you can provide as to the impact on mix and price, just as you're introducing a lot of these new products as well. Thank you.
spk07: Yeah, Brian, I would just go back to our posture on strategic pricing that we talked about earlier. We have really focused on this discipline over the past couple of years. We talked about it with our contractor select portfolio, which is really a combination of 300 everyday lighting products that we're able to compete with the right product, the right place at the right price. So that gives us the ability to compete in a certain part of the market that a while ago we weren't able to compete in. And then if you look on the project side of the business, our strategic approach there is that we're able to pick the projects that we want and just be more disciplined about our pricing overall. So that's really what's driving the pricing that we're seeing today.
spk05: All right. Fair enough. I'll take the rest offline. Thank you.
spk10: As a reminder, to ask a question, that is star 1-1. Our next question comes from a line of Jeffrey Sprague with Vertical Research.
spk14: Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
spk06: Hey, Jeff.
spk14: Hey, good morning. Hey, a lot of ground covered. I wanted to go a little bit further back just into what you're seeing in kind of the renovation markets in general. You obviously address kind of what you see in corporate account level, but Anything you could kind of add there on, you know, kind of the vertical markets within that? You know, you think this is mostly kind of a function of, you know, rates squeezing out, you know, marginal projects or any other color there would be interesting.
spk07: Sure, Jeff. You know, at ABL, the sales decreases by vertical are really what you would expect to see. We had declines in industrial. If you recall last year, we had a lot of warehouse and logistics projects that were taking place. And then also we're seeing declines in healthcare and commercial office due to the impact of the wider macro environment. So really nothing surprising on the vertical front.
spk13: And on the renovation front, Jeff, I would say that change for us is good. So we've gotten a lot of questions about what happens in the commercial office space or the commercial around the broader lending environment, valuations, et cetera. And so I would just use, I think everybody saw the Wall Street Journal article about the building on Market Street in San Francisco that had a $300 million valuation in 2019 and then was sold for $60 million recently. So while it's unpleasant experience for the capital side of that trade, the reality with that building is that it will now be reset at a different rates new tenants will move in and they will need to customize the space to what they want. And so they're going to need lighting and lighting controls. So that's kind of that. So, so that's anecdotally how renovation will play out for us over the, uh, you know, over the next foreseeable future.
spk14: Yeah. And I guess that could be a two or three year process though, right. As a kind of work from home and everything resettles, um, no great visibility on that. I would think, um, the, um, Could you just address a little bit more on, you know, also just on the price side? You know, you were pretty explicit about managing the algorithm, right? And you've said it a couple times, you know, growth margin, you know, lagging growth in the balance sheet to kind of leverage the capital base. But do you see an environment, you know, emerging where you know, it in fact would make sense in that algorithm to, you know, just kind of overtly seed share, you know, in the name of protecting margins and cash flow. I mean, do you see that sort of competitive pressure brewing or starting to emerge anywhere?
spk13: Yeah, Jeff, part of the reason we talk a lot about Contractor Select is that we have fundamentally changed our posture on product vitality. So we now have a product portfolio on a relatively consistent basis that is able to compete with all comers. And it allows us to deliver a margin at a price that's competitive in the marketplace. So that's a, you know, I think about the strategy around contractors select as as really like what Kirkland is to Costco, contractor select is to the electrical distribution industry. In other words, it doesn't necessarily have to be the lowest priced product out there, but it is the highest value price and is competitive, very competitive. That's allowed us to be in a very interesting position. And so, We've tested this on price and whether we drive volume with price, and we've had really good results on that. So a little bit can go a long way there, which allows us to manage that. And to your ultimate question about which one, which would we choose, I don't think we will unnecessarily chase share if we think it's going to impact us negatively on our value creation algorithm. So we are very competitive. We're comfortable with our position in the marketplace from a competitive perspective because of all the vitality and productivity improvements we've demonstrated. And so now we really want to make the lighting and lighting control business as predictable and repeatable and scalable as we can for a longer period of time, which would deliver value for a lot of us. And then I don't want to answer this question without also highlighting the importance of the intelligence spaces group in our portfolio. So, you know, as you saw this quarter, we continue to grow with this tech. We continue to grow with Atrius. We continue to find, we're finding ways where we can put capital to work to make that business better. So then the whole company hopefully looks different going forward. The lighting business is more predictable, repeatable, and scalable with an obvious value creation algorithm, and we're growing the technology business at ISG.
spk06: Great. Thanks for that very complete answer. I appreciate it. Thanks, Jeff.
spk10: Thank you. And I'm showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I'd like to turn the call back to Neil Ash for any closing remarks.
spk13: Thank you, Liz. I'd like to thank all of you for joining us today. We appreciate the engagement and the questions. We had a solid quarter. We delivered margin and cash flow despite a decline in sales. We allocated capital effectively, and we continue to improve our underlying businesses. So thank you for your interest in Acuity Brands, and we'll look forward to seeing you again next quarter.
spk10: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating.
spk04: You may now disconnect.
spk01: Thank you. Thank you. Music playing. Music Playing
spk10: Good morning and welcome to the Acuity Brands Fiscal 2023 Third Quarter Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, the company will conduct a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Charlotte McLaughlin, Vice President of Investor Relations. Charlotte, please go ahead.
spk08: Thank you, Liz. Good morning and welcome to the Acuity Brands Fiscal 2023 Third Quarter Earnings Call. As a reminder, some of our comments today may be forward-looking statements based on our management's beliefs and assumptions and information currently available to our management at this time. These beliefs are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which may be beyond our control, including those detailed in our periodic SEC filings. Please note that our company's actual results may differ materially from those anticipated, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements. Reconciliations of certain non-GAAP financial metrics with their corresponding GAAP measures are available in our 2023 third quarter earnings release, which is available on our investor relations website at www.investors.qtbrands.com. With me this morning is Neil Ashe, our Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, who will provide an update on our strategy and our third quarter highlights, and Karen Holcomb, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, who will walk us through our fiscal third quarter financial performance. There will be an opportunity for Q&A at the end of this call. For those participating, please limit your remarks to one question and one follow-up, if necessary. We are webcasting today's conference call live, Thank you for your interest in Acuity Brands. I will now turn the call over to Neil Ash.
spk13: Thank you, Charlotte, and welcome to all of you joining us this morning. In the third quarter of fiscal 2023, we expanded adjusted operating profit margin, both sequentially and year over year. We continued to grow adjusted diluted EPS, and we generated strong cash flow from operations, despite a decline in net sales. We completed the acquisition of Key2Therm, and we continue to repurchase our shares. We are making meaningful progress in both our lighting and spaces businesses. In the Acuity brand's lighting and lighting controls business, our strategy is clear. Increase product vitality, increase service levels, and use technology to improve and differentiate both our products and our services. This quarter, we launched Design Select, We developed Design Select to elevate our service for the specification community by making it easy for them to choose superior solutions with dependable service. Design Select consists of 3,000 configurable products that meet important specification needs from some of our core families of lighting and lighting control brands, including AccuLux, Gotham, Lithonia Lighting, Enlite, and SensorSwitch. Design Select is an important addition to our service strategy. ABL lighting and lighting control products are now organized into three clear categories. Contractor Select is 300 of the most important everyday lighting and lighting control products available in stock at retailers and electrical distributors. Design Select is 3,000 configurable products that meet the key choices of lighting specifiers with dependable service. And the remainder is made to order. Through the combination of high product vitality and improved service levels with the specification community, distributors, and contractors, we continue to differentiate ourselves and challenge the existing industry standards. We also continue to introduce new products during the quarter. Our luminous brand launched the inline family of exterior luminaires for use in plazas and arenas. Each light module can rotate 355 degrees and can be individually controlled. allowing installers to position the luminaire on-site for improved flexibility to create optimal illumination solutions. The recognition of our product vitality efforts is important to our team and our customers. In this quarter, several of our products won prestigious Red Dot Design Awards, including products from Luminous and Eureka. The Eureka Tangram Trace was awarded a Red Dot Best of the Best Distinction for its groundbreaking design. Other winners in this category included products from Apple, IBM, and Sonos, and spanned categories from VR headsets to first responder drones. We're proud to be in this company of innovators. Now, moving to our Intelligent Spaces group. This was a big quarter for our Spaces team, both at Distech and at Atrius. First, on Distech, our strategic priority is to expand our addressable market, which we are doing in two ways. The first is geographic, which continues to progress successfully. The second is by increasing what we control in a built space. During the quarter, we announced the completion of the acquisition of Key2Therm, which allows us to expand DISTEC's addressable market by entering the commercial refrigeration control space. By controlling commercial refrigeration, we are able to more effectively sell the entire DISTEC portfolio in verticals like retail, restaurants, and schools. The timing is significant as the refrigeration industry responds to the need for ultra-low global warming potential refrigerant technologies. This has led to growing demand for trans-critical CO2 solutions, which require the precision of digital controls to provide safety, efficiency, and reliability while delivering cost savings to the customers. I now want to spend a few minutes on Atrius. Our strategy with Atrius has been to build a data layer that connects the edge to the cloud and use that data to develop applications that make a difference in built spaces. Earlier this month, we showcased our products at the IvyCon 2023 conference in Las Vegas. This is the largest smart building conference for commercial real estate and facilities companies. At IvyCon, we launched Atrius Data Lab, a powerful data layer that supports a portfolio of Atrius applications that is foundational to our ability to automate the environment of a built space. Atrius Data Lab captures data from a building management system and organizes it in the cloud. From there, it harmonizes the data for accessibility and usefulness and creates a digital twin. Applications are then built on top of that digital twin, allowing users to analyze historic scenarios get live updates of the current building environment, and model other scenarios. This service is important because every building is different. Our Atrius applications have been built to ensure that our partners achieve their specific energy and sustainability goals through the collection, measurement, and management of data in each of their built spaces. Atrius Sustainability and Atrius Energy are live and were built on the foundation of Atrius Building Insights. Atrius Sustainability is an automation tool that captures, categorizes, and reports on carbon emissions within built spaces. Atrius Energy facilitates the reduction of energy and carbon usage by allowing facilities teams to benchmark their usage against science-based targets. Later this year, our team will be rolling out Atrius Facilities and Atrius Resolve. Now, looking to the remainder of fiscal 2023, Our third quarter played out as we expected, with sales being impacted by both lead time normalization and the macro environment. Entering our fourth quarter, we believe that there will be a continuation of these trends. While our order rates and our shipment rates are returning into closer alignment with each other, we have not yet returned to normal sequential seasonality. In ABL, we are going to focus on strategic pricing, continued productivity improvements, and managing material costs. In ISG, we're going to focus on the continued growth of Distech and Atrius and the successful integration of Key2Therm. We will continue to prioritize managing margin, generating strong cash flow, and allocating capital effectively. Now, I'll turn the call over to Karen, who will update you on our third quarter performance.
spk07: Thank you, Neil, and good morning to everyone on the call. In the third quarter of 2023, we delivered sequential and year-over-year adjusted operating profit margin improvement despite a decline in net sales. We grew adjusted diluted earnings per share and generated strong cash flow from operations. For total AYI, we generated net sales of $1 billion, which was 6% lower than the prior year as a result of the decline in net sales in our ABL business. As Neil described, this was the result of lower volumes, consistent with lead time normalization trends and the impact of the wider macro environment. As we made clear on our last call, our focus is on delivering margin and operating cash flow. During the quarter, both operating profit and adjusted operating profit were flat on lower sales. We expanded adjusted operating profit margin to 16.3%, which was an increase of approximately 100 basis points over the prior year, and an improvement of 230 basis points sequentially, driven by the improvement in gross profit margin. During the quarter, our adjusted diluted earnings per share of $3.75 increased 23 cents, or 7%, over the prior year. Moving to our segment performance review. ABL net sales were $941 million in the quarter. This decrease of 7% compared with the prior year was largely driven by declines in the independent sales network and lower OEM sales. This was partially offset by infrastructure projects in the direct sales network and continued strong performance in our retail channel. ABL's operating profit and adjusted operating profit were both flat on lower net sales, and we delivered adjusted operating profit margin of 17%, a 120 basis point improvement over the prior year, and a 200 basis point improvement sequentially as price held and material input cost improves, particularly steel and inbound freight. The Spaces segment continued to perform well with another good quarter. Sales were $66 million, an increase of 13% as both DISTEC and Atrius continued to grow. Spaces operating profit was $9 million and adjusted operating profit was $13 million as we continue to invest in the business for longer-term growth. Now moving to our cash flow performance. We generated $472 million of cash flow from operating activities for the first nine months of fiscal 2023, an increase of $306 million over the same period in 2022, driven largely by improvements in working capital. We have improved both days of inventory and accounts receivable, compared to the end of the year. As we've discussed on prior calls, we've continued to bring inventory down by 22 inventory days from the peak in February 2022. And we've also brought inventory levels down by over $36 million sequentially from the second quarter of fiscal 2023. Year to date, we invested $48 million in capital expenditures and allocated $219 million to repurchase approximately 1.3 million shares. Our capital allocation priorities remain the same. We have invested for growth in our current businesses through R&D and CapEx. We've expanded our platform through acquisitions as evidenced by the purchase of Optitronics in our lighting business and Key2Therm in our spaces business. We've maintained our dividend and we've created permanent shareholder value with approximately $1.2 billion of share repurchases since the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020 at an average price of approximately $142 per share, which was funded by organic cash flow. To summarize our performance for the quarter, we delivered strong margin in cash flow despite sales being down year over year. Based on year-to-date results and our expectations for the fourth quarter, We now expect full year net sales to be between $3.9 billion and $4 billion. Our expectations for full year adjusted diluted earnings per share have not changed. Our focus continues to be on meeting the needs of our customers and delivering margin and cash flow. Thank you for joining us today. I will now pass you over the operator to take your questions.
spk10: If you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star 1 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Tim Woese with Baird.
spk03: Maybe just to start out on the market, you know, I appreciate kind of the color around kind of order rates and shipment rates and kind of how those are normalizing. I was curious if there was any way to kind of break that out by channel or segmentation, you know, whether it's kind of the project business or what you're seeing on the stock and flow side and then maybe some of your, you know, more direct accounts.
spk13: Yeah, good morning, Tim. So let me start from kind of back to front. So first on the corporate accounts and on the OEM side, that's where, you know, those are obviously going to be volatile and those are down and those order rates are relatively low. There's lots of reasons for those. The timing of renovations at our big customers on the corporate account side And then second, on the OEM side, there's probably some continued destocking going down in the driver market. Then as you kind of get to our direct sales network and our project business, that's where the C&I order rate is relatively stable at this point. And our direct sales is also consistent. So they're finding a level here where they're relatively consistent. And then finally, we've had continued strong performance in retail. So, you know, when you boil it all back together, I think it's a continuation of the trends we've seen from this quarter and looking out to what we can see right in front of us.
spk03: Okay. Okay. And I guess, like, you mentioned in your prepare remarks that you're not really quite back to normal revenue seasonality yet. I mean, is there any – kind of expectation or thought, you know, when you might be back to that kind of normal seasonality?
spk13: Yeah, we're not ready to call that yet, Tim, as we sort our way through this. I mean, we're looking at the same, you know, kind of windshield metrics that you are to try and understand. So because we haven't gone through, you know, a period that looks like this one, we don't have a perfect proxy for where that is. So we're at this point going to take it one quarter at a time. Okay. Okay. Makes sense.
spk03: And then, Just the last one, and this is maybe more of a bigger picture question. Just with how you're bucketing sales with just kind of the contractor select, the design select, and kind of the MTO products, I mean, I guess could you talk about what's different with that segmentation versus before? And if you're aligning it this way, does that have more of a top-line sales impact for you? It's just easier to order? Or is that more of a benefit to margins because maybe it eliminates a lot of, like, cats and dogs on some of the products?
spk13: Yeah, so I think the delineation, the clarity of the delineation is powerful on a number of levels. First, as you know, we've had a lot of success with Contractor Select. So building a product, 300 SKU product line that's built for stocking and resale and retail and electrical distribution. provides us the ability to have very high product vitality, have very high service level, and be an important partner to the retail and electrical distribution industry. And it allows us to compete effectively with whoever wants to enter the market through that channel. So that's been a real success for us. Design Select is then about configurable products for the specification community. And what this allows them to do is choose, basically make good choices among the product families. So this is the next step in that process. So our expectations aren't that this creates a new line of revenue, but it is that our expectations are that we'll create a lot more efficiency for them as well as for us. And then finally, we can isolate made-to-order. So when we isolate made-to-order, then we can treat it as such, which is made-to-order, and we can price it accordingly, and we can service it accordingly. So that's the import of creating those different buckets is ultimately that we're trying to make the lighting, lighting control business more predictable, repeatable, and scalable.
spk03: Okay. Okay. Very good. Appreciate the commentary. Thanks, guys. Good luck on this year.
spk06: Thanks, Jim.
spk10: Our next question comes from Joe O'Day with Wells Fargo. Joe, your line is now open.
spk02: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to start on the margin front, really strong gross margins during the quarter. I think just sort of if you could unpack a little bit on the price-cost dynamic, and maybe if we go back a couple of years, you were talking about a gross margin target of around 42%. You know, it looks like you should be north of 43% this year. So how we think about the sustainability of that and then, you know, what you might be seeing on the price side, any sort of incoming pressure you're seeing there.
spk07: Hey, Joe, thanks for the question this morning. I'll start and then I'll pass it over to Neil to add on. So, you know, as we talked about on the call at ABL, we're really focused on strategic pricing, continued productivity improvements, and managing material costs. So, you know, we've demonstrated discipline in all these areas this year, which is resulting in the strong gross margin that you see in the third quarter, and that's going to continue to be our focus. You know, the other thing I would add is that we're having continued growth at ISG, and so that's helping us as well.
spk13: Yeah, and I would only build on that a little bit, Karen. I think you summarized it well to say that – Joe, I think we have made an improvement from where we were when we were targeting the 42%. So clearly, we've improved the business since then. And I would just pick up on two things that Karen pointed out there. First, around strategic pricing. So that's where, you know, on the contractor select portfolio, we can compete with anyone that wants to enter the market through those channels, which is very effective. And we can choose which projects we want to participate in based on pricing. So we're significantly more strategic about how we're pricing. Second is that we're really working hard and our teams have done a nice job on the combination of productivity improvements and material cost savings. That's a combination of of our product vitality efforts and the work that we're doing in our supply chain to level load. And then finally, I'd emphasize that the continued growth of ISG is growth accretive, margin accretive, and returns accretive.
spk02: Thank you. And then just a question related to outlook, both this year and next. I think this year, the earnings outlook Sounds like maintaining that, but it's a $1.50 range. And so anything that you would talk to in terms of what's most likely within a narrowing of that band. And then as you think about a 24 guide in a few months, Neil, just what are sort of the most important watch items for you over the next few months to sort of inform how you'll be thinking about that outlook?
spk13: Yeah, so let me contextualize first, and then I'll dig in to answer the specifics of your question. As we've said consistently, our plan is to provide annual guidance and not update that guidance through the year. We felt it important to identify for you that we weren't going to meet the lower end of our net sales guidance for the year, but we still are in the adjusted EPS range that we gave at the beginning of the year. And to be transparent, we're proud of that. So this has been a – our teams have done really hard work to deliver the results that we're delivering this year to maintain dollar profit margin on lower sales, to increase margins, et cetera. So we feel really good about that. As we look forward to 2024, as I said, we're going to take this one quarter at a time for right now, so we're not going to get too far ahead of ourselves on predicting 2024. Our general indications are that the rest of this calendar year feels like it's going to be similar trends that we're having now. That could change. And we're confident in our ability to continue to grow the ISG business and then some of the growth initiatives that we're planning for ABL going forward. Our priority, as we've said, through this environment is to layer in margin, which we've demonstrated that we're doing. Whether or not we have sales growth, we're trying to layer in margin. We're trying to continue to deliver free cash flow, and we've delivered a ton of it. And we're going to continue to grow the intelligence-based group.
spk06: Thank you.
spk10: Our next question comes from Ryan Merkle with William Blair.
spk16: Hey, thanks. Good morning, everyone. I wanted to pick up on the orders again. Just so we're clear, it sounds like orders are tracking sort of down mid-single digits, and you mentioned lead times and the macro. Can you just unpack, you know, those a little bit more? Is it distributor destocking? Is it tighter credit? What are some of the factors that are impacting the order rate, decelerating a little bit here?
spk13: Yeah, I will take a shot at that, and Karen, fill in any gaps that I leave in the explanation. So first, just to reiterate, the bigger picture here. So looking back to last year, we had a combination of longer lead times and a price increase environment, which basically pulled forward a lot of orders. So we had a swelled backlog, and we've been working through that backlog through this year. And through this quarter, it's starting to be back to about normal, which means that in any period, we will basically ship what's ordered. So over the long arc of time, obviously we will, but in a normal quarter, we will ship generally what's ordered in that quarter and a little bit from the quarter before. So we're starting to get to kind of more normalized levels there. On a positive side, those numbers are relatively consistent, absent the volatility of the corporate accounts and the OEM, which I discussed in the first question. So we feel good about kind of where we are on that front. So as you look forward off of that, then the quarters, the next one, and this is why we're saying we're taking this one quarter at a time, will be impacted by kind of normal macroeconomic trends. And I don't think, you know, we're looking at the same data you are, and we don't pretend to have a crystal ball. So our focus there is then we're going to continue to get every piece of business we can get All indications are from all of our data sources that we're either holding or taking share, and we'll continue to try and layer in margin and deliver free cash flow in this environment.
spk16: Got it. That's helpful. And then another question I had was on project releases. I was hearing that tighter credit and shortage of switchgear was delaying the releases of projects. Are you guys seeing that and any visibility as to when maybe that gets a little bit better?
spk13: Yeah, so I'll take switchgear and then projects. First on switchgear, the lead times, as we understand it, have not yet, have not compressed for switchgear. So just to put that in context, they were in the, you know, kind of 50 week range. So not days, weeks range. So they have been the bottleneck on many of the already funded projects. So that's the switchgear thing. All those projects will continue to happen. And now that our lead times are basically normal, our expectation is that they will order their lighting for those projects on a more normal schedule. So that should play out over a while. In terms of new projects, that's really, from our perspective, that's the macro environment. So with higher rates, I think everyone's going to re-look at their projects. And so anecdotally, we have a fair number of projects in our independent sales network that are in queue, but they're being changed, modified, kind of re-evaluated, those sorts of things, which is frankly normal. It's not abnormal. um but um but it it doesn't make it clear exactly what the market size is going to be which is why again we're taking it we're taking it quarter by quarter and we're focused on kind of layering a margin delivering cash flow got it very helpful thank you our next question comes from the line of chris snyder with ubs hello hi chris hey sorry about that i had a little phone trouble um so
spk12: The last couple quarters, we've seen, you know, very significant 300 basis points gross margin expansion, but also pretty steep volume declines. And I know there's de-stopping headwinds. But is there a negative volume impact in response to the company's increased focus on margins? And, Neil, I would just be interested in hearing about how you think about that tradeoff and why the focus on margins is the right one for Acuity. Thank you.
spk13: Yeah, so I'll happily address that. And from our perspective, we're very clear with our company on how we create value. We grow net sales, we turn profits into cash, and we don't grow the balance sheet as fast. So as we look out strategically around price, volume, et cetera, our objective with the lighting and lighting control business is to be predictable, repeatable, and scalable. And we're delivering on that. So in the current environment, you're right, and Karen has indicated this on other calls, that we have had more price than volume over the course of kind of this year. And that's a combination of kind of all of the factors we've talked about before. And that is delivering the results that we are seeing. Okay. We also have all indications from our external sources that we're either maintaining or taking share in the process. So we're trying to guide the company to, or steer the company to, as I said, this ability to be more predictable, repeatable, and scalable in this business. So we do think these are the right choices. That is how we will create value. We'll grow net sales, we'll turn profits into cash, and we won't grow the balance sheet as fast. And we're demonstrating that we can do that in a number of different market environments. We succeeded through the challenge of the pandemic when things fell off. We succeeded when they shot up. And now I believe we're succeeding as we try and return to some normalize. marketing or market environment.
spk12: I appreciate that. Thank you. And I want to follow up on the commentary around share gains, you know, which is very impressive, you know, considering grazing gross margin and taking share. I guess what gives you confidence that the company is taking share? Because I think investors see, you know, construction markets up, you know, 20% on the non-res side and obviously ABL down 7%. So how do we, you know, obviously a big lag there. How should we think about or how do you guys think about the impact from the D stock within that versus, you know, the potential share shifts, which are, you know, maybe more structural in nature? Thank you.
spk13: Yeah, sure. And so this is a, this could be a soliloquy, a long kind of PhD level soliloquy, but let me just kind of summarize it as much as that. that with the benefit of a lot of the data work that we've done, there is not a like-for-like correlation between the lighting industry and a specific same-quarter external macro number that we can point to. There requires a basket to have any kind of correlation, and the correlations we've gotten are, you know, kind of R-squares of like, you know, 0.8. So we're in the... We're in the good, not great range on the predictability of that. It takes multiples of those. The second is that our research has shown that generally we are performing ahead of the general macroeconomic cycle, both for the good and for the not as good. So we're working through that now. So the direct answer to your question is it is not a surprise to us that those numbers would diverge the way you described it. Second thing that I would highlight there is the difference between nominal and real on the construction data. So that also, you know, to the last question, is consistent with our performance as well. So there's, you know, I wish there were a more algebraic kind of tie to external market data that would predict our results. But there isn't. It's a basket, and we're not surprised by the relationship between those numbers that you described.
spk06: Appreciate all that coloring. Really helpful. Thank you.
spk10: Our next question comes from the line of Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs.
spk09: Hey, everyone. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question.
spk00: Hey, Brian.
spk09: I might have missed this, and I hate to kind of beat a dead horse, but the lead time issue, could you elaborate a bit more maybe in quantitative terms just sort of where they are, where you want them to be, the sort of trajectory from here? And is it a purely destocking issue at the moment? Just maybe give us a frame of reference with some of the quantification. That would be helpful.
spk13: Yeah, Brian, we covered this in some detail in the last quarter call, so I'll summarize it now, which is that, you know, kind of at the end of last fiscal year, our lead times and days were in the 50s range, and now they're in the 20s range. So basically, we've reduced lead times by about 30 days. So that resulted in a buildup of backlog, you know, towards the end of last fiscal year that we've been working through this year. And correspondingly, obviously, a little bit of an order drought as projects have been and needs have been pulled forward. So that's the big picture view of that. And also why we've identified that we're starting to come back into balance and that basically we ship what's ordered over kind of basically a 60-day period.
spk07: Yeah, Brian, the only thing I would add is that last year, if you recall, we had several price increases as well, and that resulted in some of that pull forward that Neil described in addition to the lead time.
spk09: Okay, fair enough. Yeah, I appreciate that clarification. And then I guess the second question I had, and thanks for bringing it up, Karen, just was around the price. I know you guys – have gone away from talking specifics on price. But as you alluded to, last year, price was a meaningful tailwind. Historically, price has generally been, I think, maybe... plus or minus kind of low single digit type of number for y'all. Is that kind of where we are in terms of, you know, back to being toward a more normal? And then in relation to that, you know, you've had a decent amount of product vitality. You introduced some new stuff and the design select as well. So maybe any high level sense you can provide as to the impact of on mix and price, just as you're introducing a lot of these new products as well. Thank you.
spk07: Yeah, Brian, I would just go back to our posture on strategic pricing that we talked about earlier. We have really focused on this discipline over the past couple of years. We talked about it with our contractor select portfolio, which is really a combination of 300 everyday lighting products that we're able to compete with the right product, the right place, at the right price. So that gives us the ability to compete in a certain part of the market that a while ago we weren't able to compete in. And then if you look on the project side of the business, our strategic approach there is that we're able to pick the projects that we want and just be more disciplined about our pricing overall. So that's really what's driving the pricing that we're seeing today.
spk05: All right. Fair enough. I'll take the rest offline. Thank you.
spk10: As a reminder, to ask a question, that is star 1-1. Our next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Sprague with Vertical Research.
spk14: Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
spk06: Hey, Jeff.
spk14: Hey, good morning. Hey, a lot of ground covered. I wanted to go a little bit further back just into what you're seeing in kind of the renovation markets in general. You obviously address kind of what you see in corporate account level, but Anything you could kind of add there on, you know, kind of the vertical markets within that? You know, you think this is mostly kind of a function of, you know, rates squeezing out, you know, marginal projects or any other color there would be interesting.
spk07: Sure, Jeff. You know, at ABL, the sales decreases by vertical are really what you would expect to see. We had declines in industrial. If you recall last year, we had a lot of warehouse and logistics projects that were taking place. And then also we're seeing declines in healthcare and commercial office due to the impact of the wider macro environment. So really nothing surprising on the vertical front.
spk13: And on the renovation front, Jeff, I would say that change for us is good. So we've gotten a lot of questions about what happens in the commercial office space or the commercial around the broader lending environment, valuations, et cetera. And so I would just use, I think everybody saw the Wall Street Journal article about the building on Market Street in San Francisco that had a $300 million valuation in 2019 and then was sold for $60 million recently. So while it's unpleasant experience for the capital side of that trade, the reality with that building is that it will now be reset at a different rate. new tenants will move in and they will need to customize the space to what they want. And so they're going to need lighting and lighting controls. So that's kind of that. So, so that's anecdotally how renovation will play out for us over the, you know, over the next foreseeable future.
spk14: Yeah. And I guess that could be a two or three year process though, right? As a kind of work from home and everything resettles. Um, no great visibility on that. I would think, um, the, um, Could you just address a little bit more on, you know, also just on the price side? You know, you were pretty explicit about managing the algorithm, right? And you've said it a couple times, you know, growth margin, you know, lagging growth in the balance sheet to kind of leverage the capital base. But do you see an environment, you know, emerging where you know, it in fact would make sense in that algorithm to, you know, just kind of overtly seed share, you know, in the name of protecting margins and cash flow. I mean, do you see that sort of competitive pressure brewing or starting to emerge anywhere?
spk13: Yeah, Jeff, part of the reason we talk a lot about contractor select is that we have fundamentally changed our posture on product vitality. So we now have a product portfolio on a relatively consistent basis that is able to compete with all comers, and it allows us to deliver a margin at a price that's competitive in the marketplace. So that's a, you know, I think about the strategy around contractor select as as really like what Kirkland is to Costco, contractor select is to the electrical distribution industry. In other words, it doesn't necessarily have to be the lowest priced product out there, but it is the highest value price and is competitive, very competitive. That's allowed us to be in a very interesting position. And so, We've tested this on price and whether we drive volume with price, and we've had really good results on that. So a little bit can go a long way there, which allows us to manage that. And to your ultimate question about which one, which would we choose, I don't think we will unnecessarily chase share if we think it's going to impact us negatively on our value creation algorithm. So we are very competitive. We're comfortable with our position in the marketplace from a competitive perspective because of all the vitality and productivity improvements we've demonstrated. And so now we really want to make the lighting and lighting control business as predictable and repeatable and scalable as we can for a longer period of time, which would deliver value for a lot of us. And then I don't want to answer this question without also highlighting the importance of the Intelligent Spaces Group in our portfolio. So, you know, as you saw this quarter, we continue to grow with this tech. We continue to grow with Atrius. We continue to find, we're finding ways where we can put capital to work to make that business better. So then the whole company hopefully looks different going forward. The lighting business is more predictable, repeatable, and scalable with an obvious value creation algorithm, and we're growing the technology business at ISG.
spk06: Great. Thanks for that very complete answer. I appreciate it. Thanks, Jeff.
spk10: Thank you. And I'm showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I'd like to turn the call back to Neil Ash for any closing remarks.
spk13: Thank you, Liz. I'd like to thank all of you for joining us today. We appreciate the engagement and the questions. We had a solid quarter. We delivered margin and cash flow despite a decline in sales. We allocated capital effectively, and we continue to improve our underlying businesses. So thank you for your interest in Acuity Brands, and we'll look forward to seeing you again next quarter.
spk10: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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