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spk04: Good morning. My name is Chris and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Barnes third quarter 2022 earnings conference call and webcast. All lines have been placed 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, then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. Thank you. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations.
spk03: You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. Bill Pitts, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin. of our corporate website at onebarnes.com. That's O-N-E-B-A-R-N-E-S.com. During our call, we will be referring to the earnings release supplement slides, which are also posted to our website. Our discussion today includes certain non-GAAP financial measures, which provide additional information we believe is helpful to investors. These measures have been reconciled to the related GAAP measures in accordance with SEC regulations. You will find a reconciliation table on our website as part of our press release and in the form 8K submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Be advised that certain statements we make on today's call, both during the opening remarks and during the question and answer session, may be forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Please consider the risks and uncertainties that are mentioned in today's call and are described in our periodic filings with the SEC. These filings are available through the investor relations section of our corporate website at onebarnes.com. Let me now turn the call over to Tom for his opening remarks. Then Julie will provide a review of our third quarter performance and our updated outlook for 2022. After that, we'll open up the call for questions.
spk02: Thank you, Bill, and good morning to everyone. During my first full quarter at Barnes, I've traveled to our manufacturing facilities across Europe and North America. I'm impressed with the people, operating processes, and manufacturing expertise at Barnes. There's a highly engaged and passionate team of leaders and associates, and I appreciate the frank and clear discussions held with these team members during my visits. Barnes has a good business portfolio and a solid foundation upon which to build our future. That said, not all aspects of our core business execution are performing at the level needed, and we are taking actions to improve our execution to deliver the true value embedded in our businesses, in particular, in our commercial processes. To put it in simple terms, our focus is to drive revenue, improve profitability, and secure the backlog required to drive future growth. This top line, bottom line, pipeline triad, you'll hear me repeat often, is the guiding principle through which we will steer the company's revival. Our first step is to determine the most advantageous ways to address the markets we serve. Approaching our markets in a more holistic manner by leveraging the breadth of our portfolio to more efficiently and effectively serve our customers. This moves beyond cross-selling products to providing valuable solutions that solve customer problems. Doing so will allow Barnes to command price while creating incredible value for our customers. With our operations, there are significant opportunities to drive enterprise value. On the aerospace side, we have a well integrated and aligned business that approaches its global markets as Barnes Aerospace. It's a highly investable, solidly performing business with opportunities to scale through greater participation in the industry recovery and further expansion into military and MRO. Accordingly, we'll dedicate more resources to top-line growth and to evaluate M&A targets in this space with integration and alignment top of mind. At Industrial, our immediate priorities are different. The portfolio strategy has been built along decentralized and independent brands, and this has led to a high level of complexity. And while there are pockets of strength, the global pandemic has exposed inefficiencies and gaps in our effectiveness. So at this time, we are pausing M&A activity until we more fully integrate, consolidate, and rationalize the business within this segment. This includes an evaluation of industrial architecture with a view on simplifying and streamlining the business. To that end, we have advanced our restructuring efforts. Since our second quarter earnings call, the closure of our Bristol facility announced on our July's call is tracking to plan. We have commenced the closure of our molding solutions facility in Switzerland, which will be completed by June 2023. We have undertaken headcount reductions in Canada, Sweden, Spain, and Germany, and we have closed several smaller locations. In addition, in October, we approved the second round of our multi-phase restructuring, which will drive $12 million in annual savings at a cost of $5 million. Collectively, with what we announced in July, we anticipate approximately $26 million of annual savings with a total restructuring cost of $29 million. We expect to achieve full run rate savings by 2024. Plans for additional restructuring actions are in development and will be shared in due course. With all of the above, we will approach the work at hand with a refreshed organization culture built on candor, clarity, and action. While respectful of the existing company culture, we are moving with greater agility and urgency. We are focused on getting things done. We are more analytically driven, letting data support our decision-making processes. And we are driving a pay-for-performance mindset deeper into the organization. This increase in speed and directness is uncomfortable for some, but we have a lot to do, and we're getting after it. Before I close my prepared remarks, you may have seen in our AK this morning that Patrick Dempsey has voluntarily retired from his role as Executive Vice Chairman and that he has also voluntarily resigned as a member of the Barnes Board of Directors for personal reasons related to the health matters affecting a family member. We are incredibly grateful for Patrick's leadership and contributions to Barnes over his 22 years at the company. Personally, I would like to thank Patrick for his support in my transition to the CEO position. I truly appreciate his advice and counsel. From the entire Barnes team, we wish Patrick and his family well in this next phase of life. In closing, I'm incredibly energized by the future I see ahead at Barnes. The leadership team and I are rapidly working to deploy actions designed to accelerate our financial performance recovery, drive core business improvement, align our commercial resources, and address industrial complexity and inefficiency. These actions will work towards unlocking our full potential, delivering the top line growth, bottom line returns, and steady orders flow that Barnes is capable of. Let me now pass the call over to Julie for a discussion on our third quarter performance and some end market color.
spk00: Good morning, everybody, and thank you, Tom. Let me begin with highlights of our third quarter results on slide four of our supplement. Third quarter sales were $315 million, down 3% versus the prior year period, with organic sales increasing 2%. Foreign exchange negatively impacted sales by 6%. Operating profit was 30 million, down 31% from last year's 43.7 million. Excluding net restructuring charges of approximately 9 million, adjusted operating income was 39 million this year, down 11% from 43.9 million last year. Adjusted operating margin of 12.4% was down 110 basis points from 13.5% a year ago. Net income for the quarter was $17 million or $0.33 per share compared to $27.9 million or $0.55 per share a year ago. On an adjusted basis, excluding restructuring charges of $0.16 per share, net income per share of $0.49 was down 11% from $0.55 a year ago. In the quarter, interest expense was $3.4 million, a decrease of approximately $670,000 as a result of both lower average borrowings and a lower average interest rate versus a year ago. Other expense was $2.4 million versus last year's $1.2 million, primarily driven by incremental pension expense from restructuring actions. Excluding restructuring charges, our adjusted tax rate for the third quarter was 27.6%. For the first nine months of 2022, the effective tax rate was 111% compared with 27% a year ago and 21.9% for the full year 2021. The increase in the 2022 year-to-date effective tax rate from the full year 2021 rate was driven by this year's goodwill impairment charge, which is not tax deductible, and last year's benefits related to a realignment of Italian tax basis goodwill and intangibles and foreign audit adjustments. These items were partially offset by a change in the mix of earnings between high and low tax jurisdictions. Now I'll turn to our segment performance beginning with industrial. For the third quarter, sales were $204 million, down 12% from a year ago. Organic sales decreased 4% while unfavorable foreign exchange lowered sales by 8%. Industrial's operating profit was $8.8 million versus $30.1 million a year ago. Excluding 9.1 million of restructuring charges in the current year, adjusted operating profit of 18.3 million was down 39%, and adjusted operating margin of 8.9% was down 410 basis points. Adjusted operating profit was impacted by lower sales volume, lower productivity in part attributable to supply chain challenges, and the net impacts of inflation. For the quarter, across the industrial segment, we incurred approximately $10 million in gross raw material, freight and utilities inflation. Through ongoing pricing and procurement actions, we were able to mitigate approximately $8 million, resulting in a net $2 million inflation impact. For the fourth quarter, we anticipate a net inflation impact of approximately $1.5 million. Across industrial significant end markets, we saw year-over-year orders strengthen in personal care and medical. Organically, automation orders were very strong. There was a bit of relative softness in packaging, while automotive and sheet metal forming orders were flattish, excluding the impacts of foreign exchange. Book-to-bill was 1.03 times for the third quarter. With respect to orders and sales across our businesses, at Molding Solutions, organic orders were strong, increasing 15% year-over-year, while organic sales decreased 9%. For 2022, we continue to expect Molding Solutions organic sales to be down low to mid-single digits. At force and motion control, organic orders were up 4% and organic sales were approximately flat. We anticipate low single-digit organic sales growth for the year, which is a bit softer than our prior view. Engineered components saw organic orders increase 3% and organic sales increase 6%. The organic sales growth is driven primarily from cost recovery efforts. Full year organic sales growth is anticipated to be up low to mid single digits. At automation, organic orders were up 22% while organic sales declined 6%. Order performance provides some positive momentum heading into the fourth quarter. We continue to expect flattish organic sales for automation in 2022. For the segment, we also continue to expect flat organic sales. We have tightened our adjusted operating margin expectation to the range of 8.25% to 8.75%. At aerospace, sales were $111 million, up 18% from a year ago, primarily driven by strength in the aftermarket business, where sales grew 55%. This business is clearly benefiting from the continuing narrow-body recovery in the commercial aerospace industry. Operating profit was $21.2 million, up 56% as compared to the prior year period. Excluding a favorable restructuring adjustment of $400,000, adjusted operating profit of $20.8 million was up 50% from last year. Contributing to this strong performance in adjusted operating profit is the benefit of higher sales volumes, in particular robust aftermarket sales, offset in part by unfavorable productivity due to labor availability and supply chain challenges. Adjusted operating margin of 18.8% increased 400 basis points from 14.8% last year. In our OEM business, after two consecutive quarters with book to bill in excess of 1.5 times, orders took a pause. Third quarter book to bill was .65 times, though we see that as a timing item and nothing of concern. Our OEM backlog declined slightly from the second quarter as a result, though remained solid at $729 million. We expect to convert approximately 45% of this backlog to revenue over the next 12 months. Our OEM outlook is unchanged from our prior view as we see low double-digit growth for 2022. In the aftermarket, sales growth remains robust with MRO up 39% and spare parts up 85%. For the year, we continue to foresee low 30% sales growth in MRO and now expect even stronger spare parts sales up over 50% for 2022. Aerospace adjusted operating margin is now forecast to be between 18% and 18.5%, an increase of the bottom end, reflecting the higher aftermarket contribution. The Barnes Aerospace team continues to perform strongly and expects to end the year well positioned for 2023. With respect to cash, year-to-date cash provided by operating activities was $43 million versus $128 million in the prior year period. The primary drivers of the lower cash generation are an increase in working capital and paid incentive compensation related to 2021. As discussed last quarter, inventories have increased as we built buffer stock to combat supply chain constraints. will begin to wind inventory down over the next several quarters and it will be a focused priority for 2023. free cash flow was 22 million versus 101 million last year capital expenditures were 22 million down approximately 5 million from a year ago With our balance sheet, the debt to EBITDA ratio, as defined by our credit agreement, was a bit under 2.3 times at quarter end, down slightly from the end of the second quarter. On a net debt to EBITDA basis, we'd be just under two times. Our third quarter average diluted shares and period end shares outstanding were both approximately 51 million shares. During the quarter, we did not repurchase any shares and approximately 3.4 million shares remain available under the Board's 2019 stock repurchase authorization. Moving to our updated 2022 outlook on slide six of our supplement, we continue to expect organic sales to be up 5% to 6% for the year, although we now anticipate a higher negative FX impact of 4%. Adjusted operating margin is forecast to be between 11.5% and 12%, up 50 basis points on the low end of our previous range, given the strength of the aerospace aftermarket. Adjusted EPS is now anticipated to be in the range of $1.90 to $2 per share, down 2% to up 3% from 2021's adjusted $1.94 per share. excluded from our adjusted earnings is a 27 cent impact on eps for restructuring primarily associated with our industrial segment and a 1.33 goodwill impairment charge taken in the second quarter a few other outlook items we anticipate interest expense of approximately 14.5 million and other expense of approximately 4 million an effective tax rate of approximately 24.5% excluding Reg G items, CapEx of approximately $35 million, which is lower than our prior view, average diluted shares of approximately $51 million, and cash conversion of approximately 90%. In closing, For the third quarter, we experienced a continuation of the performance trends we've seen throughout 2022 with strong aerospace and challenged industrial performance. As Tom articulated in his comments, our change agenda that started in Q2 is progressing. There are many actions underway and others under evaluation to address our cost structure and competitive positioning. We are laser focused on delivering the underlying value of our business and taking the necessary steps to accelerate the process. Operator, we will now open the call for questions.
spk04: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. Our first question is from Miles Walton with Wolf Research. Your line is open.
spk01: Good morning. You have Lula Fedelon from Miles.
spk03: Good morning, Lou. Hey, Lou.
spk01: Hi, how are you? Julie, thank you for all the colors. Tom, nice to speak with you. Can I just go back to the margins in aerospace? They were good, but I guess given the mix sequentially, maybe you thought they would have been stronger. Is that just the productivity and supply chain you mentioned or anything else to be aware of?
spk00: It is partially attributable to some of the supply chain challenges, and then there was a little bit of a mix issue in our OE business that also contributed to that.
spk01: Okay, great. And then you said just timing on sort of the backlog and the orders and stuff like that, nothing else to be mindful of given the slower sales there as well? No, no. Nothing you're seeing from the OEMs, I guess.
spk00: No.
spk02: I think the OEMs are just rationalizing the production schedule to a realistic rather than opportunistic, and so there's really nothing there other than normalizing the output rate on their end. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're linked to that very tightly.
spk01: Okay, yeah, it just seems like we've heard some comments this week about you know, maybe production not necessarily being where people thought it was going to be. So I just wasn't sure if people were starting to see that. And, you know, again, some rationalization that could be that. I guess also the lower CapEx, just obviously anything just pushing out of things, nothing major there. And then did you give us the industrial margin guide and they have missed it?
spk00: So from a CapEx perspective, yes, it's just, what we're actually seeing is some slowdowns in delivery of the equipment we have on order which is pushing cash into next year that's been a trend where our suppliers on that equipment are just not living up to you know the original timelines they expected so nothing of concern and the investments are still being made in the business and then your question on industrial margins was that for actuals or the outlook
spk01: Yeah, the outlook. I just didn't know. I know you gave it for Arrow. I didn't know if there was one for industrial.
spk00: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No worries. Our outlook for the industrials for the full year is 8.5% to 8.75%, so 8.25% to 8.75%. And we just tightened that range. Really didn't change the midpoint. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah, no worries. Thank you. Thank you.
spk04: The next question is from Christopher Glenn with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.
spk07: Yeah, thanks. So amidst all the actions being taken and great opening explanations, Tom, you're closing Bristol. Curious the revenue there. I know you'll transfer some, but are we thinking about attrition, uh exit i'll leave any you know divestiture uh intense to the side for now but in terms of intentional shrinkage as uh you know i think you have some mixed issues within the industrial portfolio and you're uh looking at mix and maybe some attrition as one of the levers yeah chris that's a great question is is that as part of my learnings and garnering really deep insights into the industrial business with julie and steve mool
spk02: is to kind of look at the tail product lines we have and evaluate the product portfolio, in particular things that are high mix and low volume. So when we're doing this consolidation rationalization, we're going to be kind of trimming the tail or pricing the tail in a way that would move customers to more standard products, let us drive faster turnaround for them in order to remittance. And trying to, you know, I mean, there's a balance here. We are a solutions provider, so there's a lot of customization, but we don't want to have infinite customization because it's extremely expensive and slow. So it is a tool we're using during the industrial rationalization at each product line. It's embedded into the projects for manufacturing facility consolidations, and that is active both for the Q2 announcements with Bristol as well as the OW Switzerland facility, as well as the phase two restructuring that we just announced. In there is the product lines, you know, realignment and rationalization as well.
spk07: Okay, thanks. And so I know we're not going to talk 23 guidance at this point, but a lot of influences such as some of what you just discussed are, on the table. So, you know, conceptually, you know, you mentioned focus on revitalizing backlog refill to drive growth. Should we be thinking at this point, you know, granted more information to come, 23 a year of maybe modest organic declines and, you know, with some margin levity, maybe a little, maybe a good bit?
spk02: Well, Chris, as a CEO of only 100 days, it's a little early to give 23 guidance. However, I will not be satisfied with accepting in our industrial segment declines in our revenue opportunities for 2023. Since my arrival and transition with Patrick Dempsey, we are heavily focused on core business execution and industrial. Julie and I and Steve Moodle Demand that we grow that. We have to win business, book it into the orders, and get it into our P&L through order remittance process. But I won't accept that we're going to shrink in 2023 in the industrial segment.
spk07: Okay. And then I have one on Aero. You mentioned targeting further expansion into military and MRO, and I think it might have been related, the comments on looking at acquisition targeting in that space. I'm wondering if you could elaborate on that bucket of comments.
spk02: Certainly is. Well, I find our aerospace business is performing at a very high level currently, and it is managed through prior leadership in the business through the COVID period quite effectively. It actually improved its efficiency and effectiveness during COVID operationally. So coming out of COVID under Ian Reason's leadership, we've picked up a lot of commercial momentum and we're leveraging that operating capability. We feel we can naturally, organically use that capability to expand military opportunities and MRO, but also because that business is really well run and it's recovering very strongly in each of its segments, OEM, MROs, in the aftermarket. that we feel that we can also entertain targeted M&A opportunities, and we've been evaluating those for where they would be complementary into our portfolio. So we're, although Barnes has not done an aerospace acquisition for a couple of decades, we still think that is a very well-prepared and aligned business to consider that. But we're being very disciplined in the approach of those evaluations right now. That extends into investments organically into our operating capabilities within aerospace that could also potentially open up market opportunities for us, in particular on customer projects where we think we have competitive differentiation into the market. So I think aerospace for us is a very investable segment, and we're looking at it very broadly as to where we feel we could grow that to continue the growth trajectory and profitability trajectory that they're already on. Sorry, if I could do one last one. How is the pipeline looking? The pipeline in aerospace looks very healthy. We have right now some operational limits, as Julie pointed out. Labor availability has been particularly complex in certain areas, but we have also been actively implementing arbitraging production locations to where we have better labor availability to be able to mitigate that effect. I would say that we expect, obviously, in the single aisle the continued robustness in the market. I still think the wide-body aircraft recovery is going to occur over a longer period of time, so there the opportunity set is not as robust. But right now, we feel very confident in the trajectory of our customers and their demand patterns. And if we could get more out, we'd be growing faster. Sorry, I agree with all that. I meant the deal pipeline. So there's plenty of opportunities on the deal pipeline side. We're being very narrow in terms of our focus. so is uh you know mostly focused on organic core business performance on the aerospace side but we're looking at individual targets or a handful of targets but mostly just on the assessment phase um i think that you know our aerospace business looks you know similar to many other aerospace companies that went through covid um they went through difficult times so we there's targets that potentially could fit, and there's plenty of targets that really just strategically wouldn't fit with us. So a lot of evaluations right now that we're going through on the aerospace, but really nothing to communicate in terms of, you know, deal opportunities. Great. Thank you very much for everything. Thank you, Chris. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Chris.
spk04: The next question is from Matt Summerville with DA Davidson. Your line is open.
spk05: Thanks. Good morning. Realizing, Tom, that this might make some internal people uncomfortable that might be listening, I have to ask the question. You've been there 100 days. What is your assessment as to the effectiveness of the leadership team here at Barnes? Where are you finding gaps, and what are you doing to affect change therein?
spk02: Yeah, no, Matt, it's a fair question. You know, I believe in a lot of candor and communication. And I never mistake effort for results. Our results, you know, in particular on our industrial performance, need to improve dramatically. I think from a leadership perspective, we have leadership improvement that needs to be done, have already started that on a targeted basis. As you know, many of the senior leaders here are fairly new. You know, Steve Mool, two years in reason. six months. Julie has been here 18 months, myself 100 days. I find there's a lot of very good leadership talent on the manufacturing floor. I've gone to about 27 facilities in 100 days to do very comprehensive visits to garner deep insights into the business. So I think manufacturing leadership-wise, we're strong. We have weak commercial leadership. I come from a background of much stronger and impactful commercial leadership So on the industrial side we've been reorienting our entire go-to-market here quickly in the first 100 days and that has meant the transitioning and displacement of leaders in several of those businesses. I view that it would be a progression, Matt, over the course of quarters to have this done due to the upheaval and the tumultuousness of making these types of changes. So it's a progression that I'm working on with Don Edwards, Julie, Steve Moore to do. It's really more focused on industrial. The operational leadership and executive leadership in aerospace is very good. Commercial teams, manufacturing teams, very good in aerospace. So most of, I think, the references that I would make towards leadership transitions will occur on the industrial side of the house.
spk05: understood and then as a follow-up maybe since bigger picture your strategic view on the industrial asset base and you know the sbu structure by which that business has kind of been operated upon what's your early assessment therein uh too much complexity and too much inefficiency and part of the integration cost rationalization and consolidation initiatives were
spk02: you know, really communicating at the second quarter and the second round today, phase two today, is aimed at realigning driving efficiencies and reducing that complexity. If I had a year to do all the evaluations in real time and then kind of do it at one time sometime next year, that's the approach we would have taken. But given the urgency of the need to make a change and do these, you know, realignments, integrate, consolidate, cost rationalize, We've made the decision to do this in a series of phases, and that way it allows us to plan out, decide, and lock off on buckets of opportunities like we announced in the second quarter conference call in July and today for the second phase. And you can expect that going forward there will be additional phases that are a continuation on addressing that complexity and driving efficiencies and effectiveness. Because in the end is underlying product lines and industrial are very sound. We have too many facilities that need to get aggregated. And my background is doing a lot of facility consolidations. There's a lot of efficiency to gain a more comprehensive facilities at a scale that can leverage better productivity. That's the direction we're going. Um, we don't have a lot of, we, we don't have, we have a lot of opportunity. but we have the resource limitations on how fast we can do this within the company. So by taking these in phases, a series of quick phases, kind of chunks at a quarter at a time, it'll allow us to get a lot of progress over the next 12 months in kind of an orderly and effective manner to let us dramatically improve not only the profitability of the industrial business segments but it'll simplify it and it'll give us the ability to invest more impactfully and go to market to get the top line moving more aggressively. Hopefully that's helpful, Matt.
spk05: Well, that is helpful, Tom. And maybe just one more follow-up. The $26 million of anticipated cost savings from Phase I and Phase II, Can you maybe bucket how much of that will be realized and benefit the P&L 22 versus 23 versus 24? I'm kind of looking for, I guess, kind of a cadence of realization.
spk02: Yeah, let me have Julie answer it with kind of the data forensics on that. She'd be able to do that easily.
spk00: Hey, Matt. So for 2022, you know, the net impact is pretty de minimis. when you when you consider the charges um for 2023 we would expect you know somewhere in the neighborhood of call it you know 17 to 20 million to drop through and we'll be at full run rate in 2024. got it thank you guys i appreciate it welcome thank you thank you
spk04: The next question is from Michael Jarmoli with Truist Securities. Your line is open.
spk06: Hey, good morning. This is Pete Osterlund on for Mike this morning. Thanks for taking the question. Good morning, Pete. Hey, Pete. So first, just wanted to get your thoughts on supply chain and later dynamics and how you're thinking about that as the coming year approaches. Just trying to get a sense for if there are specific raw materials that you're building inventory for or, you know, if you expect that you would be able to continue mitigating any cost pressure you see with higher pricing.
spk02: Yeah, great question, Pete. The supply chain challenges, you know, continue to exist. However, they are abating. But both within the aerospace and industrial product lines, we still see longer lead times and some levels of constraints and availability, but it's nowhere near as bad as it was in prior years during kind of peak COVID. We systematically as a company are focused very heavily on the mitigation of inflationary effects from materials to labor by reducing working with our customers to do pricing pass-throughs, value engineering as a way to mitigate those effects. We cannot as a company accept that we will accept the brunt of inflation without fully offsetting it with our customers and our own productivity efforts in partnership with our customers. We do see labor availability constraints. They're asymmetric. It goes more by region. So certain regions have less recovery in the labor markets and availability than others. So we've been using some level of arbitrage to production areas where we can attract direct labor that allows us to grow the business. As you know, because we're doing a lot of consolidation work in the industrial segment in particular, we're making some decisions with regards to where things are consolidated into based on there being labor availability in those markets to pick up the business and expand in our facilities. So we're partially addressing it through the consolidation programs. Going forward, I expect that there's going to be continued inflation in 2023. So the reason for very quickly here with Ian Reason in aerospace, Steve Muehl in industrial, and Julie, and very focused on getting on rational terms with customers, on an ongoing continuous basis because the secret for inflation management is to mitigate the full amount of inflation at the time it's occurring. And unfortunately for Barnes, 2022 is a really tough year of learning because we were late in mitigating it and we did not have the systems in place to mitigate the full amount. And so we've basically been on a recovery loop with that. And we don't want to be on a recovery loop for inflation in 2023. So we'll have the via the operating mechanisms to ensure that does not happen prospectively.
spk06: Very helpful, Carlos. Thanks. And I also wanted to ask, where within your production footprint or your supply chain would you be most exposed to any potential energy-related disruptions in Europe? Are there any specific product lines or facilities where there would be elevated risk of, you know, production curtailments if the situation does worsen over the winter?
spk02: Yeah, I mean, that's a fair question, Matt. I think it's that we're particularly sensitive to our operations that are in Germany and Italy for natural reasons. So I think we end up having to be somewhat careful in terms of how we're going to plan our operations. Right now we don't see that as a significant factor, but it's something we're very aware of. And if we do have limitations. We will alter our production schedule to use off hours with our manufacturing teams to run the facilities when energy is more available on a reliable basis. So we're going to be nimble, but we have a contingency playbook, but right now we don't necessarily see that from being an issue.
spk06: Very helpful. Thank you. You're welcome, Pete.
spk04: We have no further questions at this time. I'll turn it over to Bill Pitts for any closing remarks.
spk03: Great. Thank you, Chris. We would like to thank all of you for joining us this morning and look forward to speaking with you next on February 17th of 2023 with our fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call. Operator, we will now conclude today's call.
spk04: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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