Eaton Corp PLC

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Eaton Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this point, all the participants are in a listen-only mode. However, there will be an opportunity for your questions. You may queue up for a question at any point during the call simply by pressing 1, then 0 on your touchtone telephone. If you need any assistance during the call, please press star 0. An operator will assist you offline. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I'll turn the call now over to Yan Jin, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Mr. Jin, please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. I'm Yan Jin, Eaton Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you all for joining us for Eaton's second quarter 2021 earning call. With me today are Craig Arnold, our Chairman and CEO, and Tom O'Cray, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our agenda today includes the opportunity remarks by Craig highlighting the company's performance in the second quarter. As we have done our past course, we'll be taking questions at the end of the critics' comments. The price released and the presentation we'll go through today have been posted on our website at www.e10.com. This presentation, including adjusted earning per share, adjusting free cash flow, and other non-GAAP measures, they're reconciled in the appendix. A webcast of this course is accessible on our website and it will be available for replay. I would like to remind you that our comments today will include statements related to the expected future results of the company and are therefore forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from our forecasted projections due to a wide range of risks and uncertainties that are described in our earnings release and presentation. With that, I will turn it over to Craig.

Okay. Thanks, Jen. So we'll start on page three like we normally do with highlights of the quarter, and I'll summarize by saying that, you know, we had another very strong quarter with And we're seeing significant increases, obviously, in our market. And as a result of that, we're taking our 21 guidance up for the second time. Our teams continue to perform at a very high level, despite significant supply chain disruptions and rising commodity costs. Q2 adjusted earnings of $1.72 for Q2 record, 15% above the midpoint of our guidance. And earnings were up nearly 100% versus last year, and importantly, 20% sequentially. Our sales were 5.2 billion, up 35%, 27% organically, and above the midpoint of our guidance. For the second quarter in a row, we delivered record segment margins. Q2 margins were 18.6%, up 390 basis points from prior year, and up 90 basis points sequentially. We're also pleased with our incremental margins of 30%. We think strong results, given the material cost headwinds that we're facing. Our order growth was perhaps the biggest highlight of the quarter. Orders were up more than 40% in each of our electrical segments, and both ended the quarter with record backlog. And our portfolio transformation continues. We closed the acquisition of Cobble Mission Systems and our 50% ownership in Jiangsu Yining's electric business in China. We're also pleased to have completed the sale of hydraulics at Danfoss yesterday for $3.3 billion. The sale of hydraulics is certainly a successful outcome for Eaton, our shareholders, and for Danfoss, who we think will be an excellent owner of the business. We want to thank our former hydraulics employees for the loyal service to Eaton, and we wish them well under the leadership of Danfoss. Lastly, we continue to make strong progress on our strategic growth initiatives, and I'll point out just a few highlights on the next slide. So turning to page four, you've heard us talk about the three most important secular growth trends for the company, electrification, energy transition, and digitalization. We're making significant progress in all three areas and we're seeing strong results. Highlighting a few notable examples, I'll begin with electrification, where we've had significant wins in both our electrical and vehicle businesses. In vehicle, we delivered $50 million of new wins for electric vehicle powertrains, which includes EV transmission, EV gearing, and EV differentials. And I'm noting this example because it demonstrates that even in an area where many of you think about as our traditional vehicle business, electrification is creating very large growth opportunities for the company. In electrical, as you'd expect, our team secured attractive winds tied to renewable energy and residential applications. In this case, we're noting a wind with a leading solar and energy storage OEM. In energy transition, we recently won a large distributed energy management project for a leading financial services company. This is a greenfield project and a great example of building as a grid solution. Eaton will be providing the low and medium voltage switchgear, our Foreseer electrical power monitoring software, and our microgrid controller. In digitalization, our BrightLayer team delivered a win in the industrial market with a leading global chemical processing company to provide remote monitoring software solutions. In this application, our solutions really leverage Eaton's portfolio of electrical hardware, along with our expertise in power management to provide the customer with real-time operational data, alarms, and insights that are delivered directly to their mobile devices. In addition to the operating benefits, the customer will be able to use Brightlayer's industrial trending and measurement data to optimize energy usage. So it's an exciting time to be at the center of these three growth trends, and we'll certainly keep you updated as we continue to progress in this area. Moving to page five, we summarize our Q2 results, and I'll point out just a couple of highlights here. First, on 35% total revenue growth, we delivered a 71% increase in operating profit, so very strong operating leverage. Second, our adjusted earnings of $690 million increased by 99%, so we're also effectively managing our corporate costs. Overall, our teams are certainly executing at a very high level. They're efficiently managing supply chain constraints, increasing productivity, and delivering the expected benefits from our multi-year restructuring program, and a trend that we expect to continue for the balance of the year. Turning to page six, we summarize the results of our Electrical America segment. Revenues were up 15% organically, driven by strength in residential and data center markets, but we also had solid growth in commercial and institutional markets as well. The acquisition of Triplight added 8%, and favorable currency added 1%. Looking at our sequential growth, we were up 8% over Q1, and historically we would have seen a 5% lift between the quarters, so I'd say our growth rate is accelerating here. Our operating margins increased 60 basis points to 21.3%, a Q2 record. This is 190 basis points above pre-pandemic levels in Q2 of 2019. Our portfolio changes, the sale of lighting, the acquisition of trip light, solid execution, and benefits once again from our multi-year restructuring program all contributed to the improvement. We're also pleased with the 43% growth in orders in the quarter, 13% increase on a rolling 12-month basis. This led to also a 43% increase in our backlog, which now sits at record level. We had broad order strength in all end markets with particular strength, once again, in data centers, residential, and commercial and institutional. You'll recall that at the end of Q1, we started to see some large orders in select commercial markets. This pattern strengthened in Q2, and our negotiation pipeline in the commercial market was up significantly. Data, all data, which suggests that the second half of the year and really going into 2022 should see solid growth. Turning to page seven, you'll see the financial summary of our electrical global segment. And as you can see, we had strong organic growth here, up 22%, and currency added some 6%. Like the Americas, organic revenue growth was driven by residential and data center markets, but we also had broad-based strength in commercial and institutional and utility and in industrial markets as well. We posted strong operating margins of 18.3%, once again a Q2 record, up 230 basis points from last year and up 130 basis points sequentially. The incremental margins on an organic basis were solid at 32%. Results, once again, of good cost control and benefits from our multi-year restructuring program. Orders were also very strong, up from 46% from last year and up 10% on a rolling 12-month basis. Once again, we had strength across all markets with particular strength in data center and residential markets. And we ended the quarter with record backlog, up from 50% from last year. Moving to page eight, we show the results of our aerospace segment. While we have a long way to go, we're starting to see signs of recovery in this market, which posted 17% growth in the quarter. As you know, we closed the Cobham transaction on June 1st, and the business delivered solid results in the month of June, adding 16% to our quarterly revenue. Currency also added 3%. Operating margins were 21%, 600 basis points from last year, and 250 basis points sequentially. With improving volumes, the team executed extremely well, delivering 50% incremental margins on an organic basis. Orders on a rolling 12-month basis are still down from 16%, but this is an improvement from down 36% in Q1. In fact, sequentially, orders were up 12%. The commercial industry is seeing an increase in leisure travel, especially in domestic markets, but international travel continues to be down sharply. We think the market will grow over the next several years, but we don't expect it to return to 2019 levels until 2024. Lastly, our backlog here has stabilized and was flat with the last year. Next, on page nine, you see the financial results of our vehicle segment. Organic revenues more than doubled with strength in all regions. Operating margins were 17.9%, And we delivered very strong incremental margins, which were over 40%. The margin performance was driven by higher volumes, certainly, but also, once again, from the benefits from the multi-year restructuring program. And despite volumes still being down some 10% to 15% below pre-pandemic levels, the business is really already sitting on the cusp of achieving a long-term margin target of 18%. Now, turning to page 10, we show a summary of our e-mobility business. Revenues were up 57%, 54% organically, 3% from positive currency. The organic revenues were driven by strong growth, really, in all e-mobility markets around the world. Operating margins were negative 6.8%, and they continue to be depressed by heavy investments in new programs. As you know, we're investing in this segment in high-voltage power electronics and power distribution and power protection, but you should also be aware that we have significantly expanded our view of the market here. We now see large opportunities for our traditional business in the e-mobility segment. These technologies include EV gearing, EV transmissions, and torque control solutions. As I noted earlier, and we already have wind in these areas. In fact, our traditional products have increased the size of the addressable market for e-mobility, we think, some $5 billion, and so it continues to be a Really exciting segment and a big part of the company's future. Moving to page 11, we've updated our guidance for 2021 on organic revenue. And as you can see, we are significantly increasing our organic revenue growth for the second time this year with an increase in most segments. In fact, we're raising the midpoint of our organic growth guidance by 400 basis points from 8% to 12%. And this is on top of a 300 basis point increase that we took in Q1. The largest increases are in electrical global and vehicle, with smaller increases, as you can see, in the Americas in e-mobility. With very strong first half, robust order book, and a growing backlog, we're comfortable with 11% to 13% growth outlook for the year. This is despite, quite frankly, some of our markets that remain in what we'd say are in the early stages of recovery, notably commercial construction, industrial, oil and gas, and commercial aerospace. We expect to see certainly continued recovery in these markets over the balance of this year, and we think it bodes well for 2022. Next, on page 12, we show an update of our segment margin guidance for the year. For Eaton overall, we're increasing segment margins by a 30 basis point at the midpoint from 18.3% to 18.6%, which will once again be an all-time record for the company. The 30 basis point increase, as you know, follows the 50 basis point increase that we reported following our Q1 earnings call. And we've raised the margin guidance in each of our segments with the exception of view mobility. We continue to expect organic incremental margins of around 30% and for price and commodity costs to be approximately neutral for the year. Our team has certainly been very effective at managing through these complexities related to price increases and supply chain constraints, and we would expect this to continue through the balance of the year. And on page 13, we have the remaining items of our 2021 guidance. We're raising our full-year adjusted earnings per share by 63 cents to a range of $6.58 to $6.88. At the midpoint, $6.73 This is an increase of 10% over our prior guidance and a 37% increase over 2020. You'll recall that we raised guidance by $0.50 in Q1. With this increase, we're now forecasting a 20% increase from the midpoint of our original guidance, which was $5.60. With our recent M&A activities, we now see net headwinds of 1% from acquisitions and investitures, And this is down from our prior outlook of 4%. And we now expect positive currency of $350 million up from our prior forecast of $200 million. And we're also raising our guidance for adjusted operating cash flow and adjusted free cash flow, both up $200 million at the midpoint. The increase is really driven by a combination of higher profits on organic growth and sales, the timing of acquisitions and divestitures, but also partially offset by some investments that we're making in working capital given the current constrained supply chain environment. The remaining components of our full-year guidance remain unchanged. And lastly, our Q3 guidance is as follows. We expect earnings to be $1.72 to $1.82, for organic revenues to be up 11% to 13%, and for segment margins to come in between 19% and 19.4%. And lastly, I'll wrap up the presentation on page 14. Now, you've heard us talk for the last few years about Eaton's transformation into an intelligent power management company. This strategy is built on the belief that there's a few secular growth trends, electrification, energy transition, and digitalization, that allow the company to grow at a much faster rate than we have historically. And every day we get confirmations that we're on the right path. We're seeing it in the growing importance of sustainability initiatives in society. We're seeing it in government spending, and we're certainly seeing it in our opportunities and in our wins. We're pleased with the progress that we've made on the portfolio. Each move has been consistent with our objectives of delivering a company that has faster growth, higher margins, and better earnings consistency. And you've seen our track record on margin expansion. The Eaton business system is what provides the consistent approach to how we run the company, how we execute, and how we expand margins, and it's working. And this enables us to be on track to expand margins by the 400 to 500 basis points over the five-year planning period, and as you can see, we're running ahead of plan. And we're committed to our sustainability goals. They reflect the right thing to do for society, but just as importantly, sustainability is at the core of what's driving our growth. I'd also note that we published our 2020 sustainability report and our first task force on climate-related financial disclosure report at the end of June. I'd encourage those of you who have a special interest in sustainability to read it. I think they're extremely well done and reflect the direction the company's headed in. Lastly, we continue to generate very attractive cash flows. We'll continue to generate very attractive cash flows. Over $9 billion through 2025, which will allow us to return cash to shareholders and also make investments to grow the company. And as you can see, we're off to a very strong start in 2021. At the midpoint of our guidance, once again, revenues expected to grow 12% and earnings by 37%. So with that, I'll turn it back to Yun and open the line for questions.

Okay, great. Thanks, Craig. For the Q&A section of our call today, we would like to ask you to limit your opportunities to just one question and one follow-up. you know, thanks in advance for your cooperation. With that, I will turn it over to the operator to give you guys the instruction.

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press 1, then 0 on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by repeating the 1, 0 command. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question, you may press 1, then 0 at this time. And first, we'll line up with Josh Pokrinsky with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning, guys. Morning, Josh. So, Craig, I was wondering if we could talk a little bit about the composition in orders in electrical. Clearly pretty solid there, but hoping for a little bit more color on maybe the cyclical momentum versus the secular kind of electrification. So I appreciate the examples on slide three, but really trying to get at how much of this is sort of illustrative versus something that you see You know, really moving the needle here in the short to medium term.

You know, I'd say it's really a combination, to your point, Josh, of both of those in order to really strong across all geographies and end markets with, as I mentioned, the highest growth coming in data centers and residential. You know, and we talk about these secular growth trends that will be such an important part of the future of the company. We still believe strongly that we're just in the early innings of really seeing a material impact from some of these bigger secular growth trends that are going to drive, you know, we think the future of the organization. You know, we're not seeing any benefits around, you know, government kind of infrastructure spending yet. And so I say a lot of what you're seeing today, I just think, is a reflection of the broader strength in many of our end markets. And certainly, you know, we always talk about data centers as a great example of the world he's consuming and processing and storing increasing amounts of data. So I think a lot of what you're seeing today is restocking because markets have certainly been strong in many of our end markets. Inventories were taken down pretty hard during the pandemic last year. And so I'd say, once again, broad-based strength. You know, we talked about the fact that there's been a lot of stuff written about what's going to happen with commercial construction. Commercial construction has come back very strongly. We had outstanding orders as well as negotiations in the commercial sector. and institutional side of the business as well. So it really has been a story of really broad-based strength in orders across almost every end market and every geography. So at this juncture, we think we're at the very front end of what should be a pretty exciting runway as we look forward as some of the longer cycle businesses we talked about, whether that's commercial construction or oil and gas or some of these other markets, large projects start to come back

into the business uh we think you know this should go on for a while let's go got it and then just on the incrementals um you guys are going to be in the kind of low to mid 30s this year coming off of you know really great you know decremental margin control last year you know presumably some strain to cost for hydraulics and you know i think you know pretty well documented uh you know inflationary environment i mean is the the normalized range You know, once we kind of clear, you know, some of the noise out of that, you know, still in this 30% to 35%, or can we go higher as, you know, maybe some of these headwinds, you know, normalize or dissipate?

You know, we think that 30% incremental for a planning, you know, guideline still makes sense at this point. If you think about modeling the company on a go-forward basis, clearly we're having to make some fairly sizable investments in the business right now as we deal with, you know, a revenue growth outlook that's more robust than what we've seen historically. So we'll be putting some investments in the business. We're also obviously investing pretty heavily right now in electrification in places like e-mobility and as well as in other aspects of the business, like in the BrightLayer platform that we're bringing online. So we think that that 30% incremental number is still a good planning guideline as you think about modeling the future of the organization. And it's largely, I think, on the basis of the investments that we're going to be making in the business that perhaps will hold back what could be, you know, an incremental story that would expand. But given the investments that we think are important to make for the future growth of the company, we think 30% makes a lot of sense.

Understood. Appreciate all the comment. Thanks.

Thank you.

And next question from Andrew Obin with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. Good morning. Good morning, Andrew.

Yeah, just maybe to go into a little bit more depth on commercial construction for second half and 22. What are you hearing from the customers and just trying to get a sense, how much visibility is there into 2022?

Yeah, I appreciate your question on commercial construction. That's obviously been a point of a lot of debate in general. And so as we talked about in Q2, And our order growth of commercial structure was really in line with the rest of the business with more than 40% growth for the entire sector, you know, and with quite frankly, particular strength in the global segment as well. And so we continue to see, you know, positive signs in commercial construction markets. And we don't think there's any reason why, you know, there should be any lead up in those markets that we think about going to the second half of this year or into 2022. Our negotiation pipeline, which, as we talked about on prior calls, precedes an order, obviously. And our negotiation pipeline for both light commercial as well as large commercial projects, including commercial buildings, was up very strongly year on year and up actually very strongly sequentially as well. And so at this juncture, we're optimistic that commercial construction will come back. And we think the second half of this year and into next year, should pose fairly, you know, strong growth.

Thank you, Craig. And just my follow-up question, you know, this has been a strange recovery, but your industrial customers, do you see them thinking about CapEx differently? I think you did highlight before your high content incentive app facility, so that's one particular growth driver, but what kind of longer-term conversations are you having, and do you think people are thinking differently about CapEx needs this cycle versus the prior decade. Thank you.

Yeah, and I think it's fair to say that, you know, on the industrial side of the house in general, really across many of our end markets, there's probably been historically some underinvestment. So I think that on the one hand, there's going to be some catch-up that needs to take place. Then I think, you know, the big challenge that everybody's dealing with is fairly sizable labor shortages, you know, in many of the markets around the world. And so investments in industrial and automation and the like tends to be what follows. And so we think the industrial markets are another one of these markets that I think, you know, in the relatively early stages of recovery has been relative underinvestment in manufacturing over the last number of years. And so we think that market, you know, should do well into 22 and really, quite frankly, beyond. Thank you so much.

Next, we'll go to Scott Davis with Mellius Research. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, guys.

Good morning.

Craig, can you talk a little bit about where you guys, what's your strategy in EV charging, you know, whether kind of content with being a, you know, sub-supplier into it or whether you want to perhaps take a bigger role there? I'll just leave it at that.

Yeah, this is certainly very much at the core of our strategy for our electrical business, and Uri Yadav and the team spent some time during our investor day really taking you through strategically what we're trying to get done there. And it's one of the reasons why we made the acquisition of GreenMotion. We acquired GreenMotion, which is a European company that does everything from the physical hardware of charging all the way through the charge port operating and billing systems, And so we think that e-charging, whether that's at residential, commercial buildings, or really more on a grid scale in the bigger industrial application, is going to be an important part of what we're trying to do inside of our electrical business. Those markets, as you're seeing, and you see it reflected in some of the infrastructure bills that are being proposed in the U.S., you see fairly sizable investments that have taken place in Europe and in Asia. So we do think e-charging, both in the physical hardware as well as in the software, will be an important part of what we're going to try to get done in our electrical business. So it's an exciting space. It's going to grow dramatically, and we'd expect to be a part of it.

Okay, helpful. And then just as a follow-up on e-mobility, I mean, can you give us a sense of kind of on the wins that you're getting, What does good look like on a content story for you guys on an electric vehicle? It can just be an illustration or example if you want, but trying to get a sense of that. Thanks.

Yeah, and it's tough to really pick a typical e-mobility vehicle, but I will tell you that, as we talked about once again on our investor day, that the content opportunity for ETEN in an e-mobility application is is a huge multiple of what we saw in our legacy business. And whether that's in some of the new electronic-based inverters, converters, power distribution. But I said also, even in our legacy vehicle business, and that's what we're really highlighting this quarter, that you think about this legacy business that we had, and you say, what's going to happen to that business in the context of the world's transition to electric vehicles, when we say, hey, there's a huge growth opportunity, you know, in gears, in differentials, in, you know, transmissions, hybrid transmissions for our legacy business as well. And so those opportunities for us, and, you know, we laid out a goal of getting to $2 billion to $4 billion between now and 2030, but the opportunity set is much larger, an order of magnitude five, ten times greater than it would be for our traditional vehicles vehicle business where we're doing valve and valve actuation and some charging. So it's tough to pick a typical vehicle. I can tell you where we have wins, we have had wins. Once again, these wins and these opportunities are coming once again in multiples of 5 to 10x what we would have on an historical vehicle platform.

Good luck, Craig. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question is from Joe Ritchie with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, and congrats on the quarter.

Thanks, Joe. Appreciate it.

Craig, maybe just, I know you talked about the price-cost equation basically being neutral for the year, but I'm just curious, as it relates to 2Q and the rest of the year, what did that look like in 2Q for you guys? Sure. Is there any particular quarter where we should expect any headwinds? You know, just any thoughts around, like, you know, how far ahead you are of inflation at this point?

Yeah, I appreciate the question. And we're obviously dealing with, you know, fairly sizable challenges in and around supply chain and probably no secret to anybody on the call. You know, when we provided our Q2 earnings guidance at the end of Q1, We had an expectation around the amount of commodity inflation that we would see in the business, and commodity prices, quite frankly, have only gone up, and in some cases, fairly significantly since that time. So we've naturally, as an organization, have had to continue to work to offset additional commodity price inflation more than what we anticipated. And I do really think about that whole thing maybe even shifting a whole quarter in terms of the pressure points that we expected to see in the business. And so At this juncture, when we think about, you know, the year, we're calling the year neutral. We don't think it gets worse in terms of the impact in our company on the balance between price and cost, but we think the year is neutral, and we think, you know, the pressure points in Q3 are going to be probably as great as what we expected in Q2 as a result, quite frankly, of seeing commodity prices continue to run down. And once again, we're running to obviously catch up with that in terms of the things that we're doing around taking prices up in the market as well as working on things to take costs out of the organization. So neutral for the year, things have probably shifted a quarter to the right based upon the fact that commodity prices have continued to run.

Got it. That's helpful context. And I guess maybe my quick follow-on question is, You know, one area that really surprised us to the upside this quarter was your aero margin. I was wondering if you can maybe try to help parse out, you know, what really kind of benefited aero this quarter? And, you know, should we start thinking about 20 plus as like a baseline, you know, as we start to see the recovery in the commercial aero business?

Yeah, and I think, you know, if you think about it in simple terms, you know, our team when we were dealing with kind of this pretty dramatic downturn last year and setting an expectation that we would not see these markets come back to 2024, the team very proactively and aggressively put in a number of restructuring programs to take out some of the fixed costs that we knew would be a challenge on a go-forward basis. And so I would really attribute it to the team being proactive, putting in the restructuring early in the downturn, and then really doing an effective job of running the business as well as managing, you know, managing costs. In terms of the expectation going forward, yeah, I think it's reasonable to say that, you know, as this business improves, you know, we approach 25% return on sales in our aerospace business, you know, back in 2019 prior to the downturn. And our goal is certainly to get back to those numbers. But I do think, you know, something north of 20% is where really we'd expect this business to perform and certainly as volume comes back to work our way back towards the 24%, 25% return on sales that we used to be at.

Makes sense. Thank you. Next question is from Nigel Coe with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.

Hey, Craig. Hey, this is Brandon Reagan. I'm from Nigel Coe. I just want to piggyback off of that Arrow comment. Also kind of not in the spotlight on the top line, but certainly very strong performance on the margin. Maybe just some more color on the components of aerospace. Like how did commercial OE, commercial aftermarket defense perform in 2Q? And maybe just a follow-up would be, you know, what is the outlook for defense? Has it changed at all since our last update? Thank you.

I appreciate the question. I'd say that our aerospace business probably is not too much of an outlier from what you've seen from others in the market. Clearly, the commercial side of the house continues to be under pretty significant pressure. While we're certainly seeing revenue passenger kilometers return, those markets are still running well below where they ran in 2019. We did see a little bit of an improvement in aftermarket in the quarter. that business was certainly off dramatically last year. I'd say that commercial OE continues to be weak. Commercial aftermarket is still weak versus where we've been historically but improving. Really, on the military side of the house, I'd say pretty much no change. You think about that business being kind of a low single-digit grower is kind of our outlook for the military market. We think that pretty much consistent with what we think the outlook is going to be over the near term as well. So a lot of the, once again, the margin piece really, I'd say, is mostly a function of our team's ability to execute. It wasn't in any way driven by, let's say, a dramatic mix shift to aftermarket business overall.

Our next question is from Jeff Sprague with Vertical Research. Please go ahead.

Hey, thank you. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Jeff. Hey, good morning. Maybe just a question on kind of backlog conversion and also just kind of the scramble going on in the channel. Craig, you mentioned you did think you saw some channel inventory rebuild out there. You know, we've heard a lot of mixed things from other companies on that, you know, things like people would like to rebuild inventory but can't because there's not availability, et cetera. But, you know, maybe you could just give us a little bit of color on, you know, on that dynamic. And, you know, do you think we're somewhat caught up on inventory relative to where the demand is?

You know, the way I'd characterize it today is as we think about kind of doing the channel checks with our, you know, distributor partners, I'd say on balance, In aggregate, you know, inventory levels probably match the outlook for the demand that we expect. But then there are certainly certain segments of the market where we're woefully short. And a good case in point would be what's happening today in the residential market. Certainly in the residential markets and electrical, we're well short of where we should be, and our distributors have not been able to restock. I think the fact that we're building, you know, fairly sizable backlogs, is a reflection of the fact that some of these end markets, you know, would like to have more inventory than they're currently sitting on. But in aggregate, I do think that, you know, inventories are probably largely in line with our view and our outlook and our true outlook for the market going forward, other than in certain of these subsegments of the market.

And so the backlog growth you would attribute – mostly or sounds like completely to the demand side as opposed to your maybe inability to deliver a few things in the quarter?

No, I think there's a combination. I think as we mentioned, there are these certain sub-segments of the market where clearly, you know, there's more demand in residential construction as an example than we have the ability to ship. So I think it's a combination of the two. But I think on aggregate, once again, You know, markets are good. You know, the underlying demand is good in most of these end markets, and there's certainly no inventory buildup taking place in the channel. But I do think the fact that the backlog has grown to the extent that it has, once again, record backlogs in both the Americas and global, you know, up some 40-plus percent in both segments, I'd say is mostly a function of the fact that the markets are rebounding quite nicely right now.

Right, and maybe just a follow-up, if I could. Just on the, you know, you called out at the end of your remarks with your commentary on your ideal capacity. You know, things are heating up, and obviously you guys have been super busy yourself. Maybe you could just comment a little bit on the pipeline, whether the organization, you know, can do more or is ready to do more, and, you know, what might be actionable, or is there something else actionable before your end here?

I appreciate the comment, and the team has been, I'd say, very successful, really betting down a number of acquisitions that are very strategic and very attractive multiples, we think, as well. And it is, to your point, I'd say the deal activity is certainly heated up, and the pipeline today is probably about as full as it's been in some time. And I'd say we do have capacity, depending upon which segment of the business you're talking about. I'd say that one of the good things about being kind of an organization that works across multiple businesses and industries and doing the deals the size that we've done is that none of these deals are going to be so big that they're going to really consume the capacity of the entire company. And so if you're talking about some of the things that we've done recently in aerospace, they may be a little bit full on the fuel and motion side of the business, but we have capacity maybe on the other side. And the same thing would be true in electrical. We really haven't done very large deals in electrical. We've done very strategic deals. We've done deals that I think are outstanding additions to the portfolio. But I'd say by and large in our electrical business, we have plenty of capacity organizationally to go out and find opportunities and to bring them in and integrate them in. And that will not be a bottleneck or a limiter in terms of our ability to actually go out and do transactions. And we continue to say, from a priority standpoint, we continue to be focused on electrical and aerospace as the two places that will likely deploy capital.

Great. Thank you. Next, we'll go to Nicole DeBlaze with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. Good morning, guys.

Good morning, Nicole.

Can we just clarify a couple of things in the guidance? I guess, you know, how much of the raised EPS came from the early close of Cobham and and hydraulics being in for an extra quarter. And then can you just also clarify, did you include one month of hydraulics in the 3Q guidance, given that the deal closed in August, or has that been removed from 3Q?

You know, we just maybe I'll work backwards. Certainly, we own hydraulics for the month of August. And so for that month, we did, in fact, include hydraulics in the guide. And so that would add four to

If you look at the $0.63 guide increase, first of all, we flowed through the $0.22 fee. And within that $0.22 fee, we had about $0.07 that's related to M&A timing, $0.04 hydraulic, $0.03 Cobham. And then we had another $0.13, which was $0.04 for hydraulic and $0.09 Cobham. So in total, M&A timing was 20 cents of the 35 cent fee, which is the 22 cents flow through and the 13 cents for the remaining timing. And then the remaining 28 cents is related to operational performance.

Okay, that's really clear. Thanks for that clarification. And then I guess, can we just talk a little bit about what you guys are seeing in China? Obviously a lot of noise with what's going on from a data perspective and questions about stimulus from here, but You know, have you seen any slowing in your business?

Yeah, no, I'd say no, Nicole. I mean, our business in China, you know, grew quite strongly. You know, we reported as part of our electrical global segment, but I would say that that underlying strength that you saw in our electrical global segment is also reflective of what we've seen in our China business as well. The market is, you know, and we'll see what the future holds, but The market to date has performed extremely well, and our team has performed extremely well in addition to that. One of the things for us, we've always believed in manufacturing and being local and local markets, and it's one of the reasons why we've made these investments in these joint ventures, two of them that we've done so far in China, to really expand our access to the market, these huge ventures. Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets in China that we've historically not participated in. These two JVs, I tell you, really create an exciting opportunity for our company as we move forward to really participate in the largest segment of that market with really strong partners in China. So for us, I'd say market is important. Perhaps even more important than the market is really our opportunity to penetrate the market and grow market share on the basis of really now participating in these very large segments of the market that historically have been closed to us.

Thanks, Craig. I'll pass it on.

Next, we'll go to David Russell with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you for the time. On the electrical focus for M&A, can you help us think through where are the areas of focus moving forward? Is it more geographic? Is it vertical? I mean, I guess ideally a technology that can cross geography and verticals, but just give us a sense of where you see the portfolio from here, still having opportunities and, you know, maybe some holes. And then I just wanted to follow up on the strong doubling of organic sales growth guide for electrical global. Maybe a little more color on what's accelerating so much from your thoughts three months ago, and maybe update us if you could. on just currently the geographic sales mix of electrical global.

So on the M&A focus question specifically, I'd say that if you just think about it strategically, we've laid out as a company these three kind of major particular growth trends of electrification, energy transition, digitalization. So that will be kind of a good kind of framework for you to think about where we're likely to deploy M&A dollars in terms of, you know, following these strategic kind of growth factors that we think are important to the company. You think about, you know, acquiring a company like Green Motion. Think about acquiring a company like Triplight, you know, which is really in, you know, data centers and 5G expansion. And so as you think about what we've done, they ought to be really thought about as an expression of the strategy in the areas that we said that we'd like to really take the future of the company. In addition to that, if you think about it geographically, we have huge opportunities outside of the American market to really round out the business portfolio and participate, as we mentioned, like in China, in some of these very large markets that have been historically closed to us. We have those kinds of opportunities in Asia still. We have some of those opportunities that still remain in Europe. And so there will be some geographic plays where we'll actually do things to augment supplement the portfolio as a way of participating in markets that we have historically essentially not played in as fully as we do, let's say, in the North America market. I think you're going to find that there's a pretty wide set of opportunities that we have to continue to look at ways of growing the company through M&A in our electrical business based upon these broader strategic platforms as well as the geographic expansion and filling some of these product gaps in some of these other emerging markets of the world. You know, the other question that you had with respect to kind of the, you know, the global business and why the increase in the guys, I'd say one, I mean, if you just think about it on a relative basis, you know, the global markets fell more than the America's business. And so the comp is a little easier there. but also in some of these global markets, specifically in Europe, for example, they're now coming back. The reopening of these markets is also, you know, coming into the business at a time when, once again, you know, the markets are ramping. And so the same kind of reopening kind of phenomenon that took place in the U.S. off of a higher base because they didn't close as much is now starting to take place in markets across Europe. And as I said, it's every place. I mean... It's not just in these historical hot segments of data centers and residential, but we're seeing it in commercial institutional. We're seeing it industrial. We're seeing it in utility. It's a broad set of end markets that are really responding nicely in Europe and, quite frankly, in Asia as well as these economies continue to open and our underlying growth In Asia, an underlying growth in the European pieces that make up the global business, those markets, I say, both perform very well. The one segment that, if you recall, that we report inside of global that tends to be or will be more of a later cycle play will be what's happening in our Krauss-Heinz business, which is kind of the place where we really get most of our oil and gas exposure. That market is starting to see a number of brain shoots, fell certainly not back to levels that it was at historically. But we think, you know, second half of this year and into 22, that market also starts to come back and should help continue to drive growth in the global sector. And so it's really a kind of a broad range of these end markets, most of which that are doing well right now.

Obviously, it's pretty broad, but maybe you can help us with just some numbers, update us geographically, the current mix. And I assume Krauss-Heinz writes that is within the industrial piece with an electrical global. If you can remind us roughly the size of Krauss-Heinz nowadays.

Yeah. Maybe we can take that one offline, Dave, and you can talk to Jan about what we've given historically in terms of that business. Just want to make sure we're consistent with what we provided historically in terms of splitting out the global segment so we don't end up with a collective disclosure issue.

That's fine. Thank you very much. I appreciate the time.

Thank you.

Next, we'll go to John Walsh with Credit Suite. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Wanted to build upon a couple of earlier questions. Appreciate the price-cost commentary for the balance of the year, but just wondering as you look across your portfolio and as we think about incrementals next year, where do you think price will be most sticky, and maybe you can just remind us the historical experience coming off of the last deflationary cycle. I think, you know, under the prior segments, products held a little bit more price than the systems business, but any color there would be helpful.

Yeah, appreciate the question on price-cost, and it's, you know, in many ways we're kind of all kind of working through this period of unprecedented commodity inflation and learning together in terms of where it's actually going to land uh as i said earlier we anticipated that you know we would have seen the worst of it you know in q2 and it looks like a lot of those pressure points have been pushed out into q3 into into the second half of the year and it's a and once again i think as a general rule we talk about being neutral between price and cost and i don't think there's any reason to suggest that that won't be the case, that price costs will continue to be neutral. It does, as you can imagine, put a little pressure on our incrementals as well, as you don't typically get a normal incremental on commodity inflation. And so in terms of how it impacts incrementals, it obviously puts downward pressure on incrementals. But having said that, we still think 30% from a planning perspective is the right way to think about incrementals for the companies. You know, on price stickiness, I'd say that, you know, typically speaking, you know, if you're in an inflationary environment and the commodity costs are up, you know, the price is going to be sticky. And so in this kind of environment, it's never easy to get priced. But I'd say in this kind of environment, it's very understandable, you know, that prices are going to go up. It's very well publicized. Everybody's dealing with the same challenges. And so I would imagine that price, will be very very sticky in this environment uh given you know the supply shortages across the board you know the fact that markets are doing well really today i say almost across the board and so you know it's never easy but you know this is probably one of the easiest times at least in my professional career to actually you know pass on price because you know essentially the the environmental factors are essentially warranting it. We're seeing labor inflation as well, and so all of these things bode well for at least the price environment and suggesting prices will likely be sticky through this part of the cycle for some time to come.

Great. And maybe just a follow-up to that. A lot of color given about geography is the last question, but We've seen very strong organic growth from a lot of your competitors as well. Was just curious if you're noticing any discernible share shifts that you would call out, or if it's more kind of the strength of the market, or do you think there might be some pockets where you're gaining share? Thank you.

Yeah, you know, I'd say that if you think about it today, I'd say, you know, largely, you know, we think shares are pretty much, you know, folding across the board. There's always going to be quarterly timing depending upon, you know, what companies do and various end markets and segments or the geographic mix. But I would suggest to you that probably at this point in time, given the fact that so many of us are dealing with supply chain challenges and there's probably more business out there than any of us can handle and we're building pretty large backlogs and probably other companies are as well. So my speculation would be that there's probably not large share changes taking place at this point in the market. We're probably holding market share in terms of our core businesses, and we would imagine that really until you get to the point where you actually have enough capacity to serve the underlying demand overall and you stop building backlog, that share shift is probably not going to be something that's a big part of the picture, at least in the near term.

Great, thanks for taking the questions.

Next, we'll go to Julian Mitchell with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. I just wanted to ask about cash flow, as I don't think that's been touched on yet. I saw the free cash flow guide went up, but if I look at the year's numbers in aggregate, it looks like you're guiding for about an 11% free cash flow margin this year. And the adjusted sort of conversion from net income is maybe in the mid or low 80% range. So just wondered if you could sort of remind us, you know, what are some of those major headwinds on the free cash flow margin and or conversion at present? And if there are any specific items, you know, maybe CapEx coming down next year or working capital headwinds easing. when we're thinking about cash flow margins and conversion into 2022.

Julian, if you look at last year, we finished the year at $2.6 billion in free cash flow, which was considered a strong year. This year, we characterized it as a transitory year. Having said that, we're going to spend roughly $200 million more in CapEx this year, which takes us down to $2.4 billion, which compares to the midpoint of our guide, which is $2.2 billion. I'd put that additional $200 million in investments in working capital, given the environment that we're in.

It turns out, as you think about 22 and beyond, I mean, getting... you know, being above 100% on free cash flow conversion is certainly where you'd expect the company to perform. And as Tom mentioned, this is really kind of a transition year due to inventory build and increase in restructuring spending, increase also in capex.

I think it's also important to note on an operating cash flow basis, year to date, you know, we're a little bit ahead of last year. So, you know, we feel good about our cash flow performance this year.

Thanks for clarifying. And then on the top line side, just wanted to try and understand what you're seeing in the utility markets at the moment. There is a lot of sort of chatter out there any time there's a storm or something about grid hardening and all the rest of it. So just wondered if you could give us an update on the utility piece and how the utility market growth looks this year relative to your overall sort of electrical revenue growth guides, which I think sort of average out globally in the low teens type range? Thank you.

No, I appreciate the question on the utility market because, as we've said before, this is a very different market segment in terms of what it represents for Eaton and what it represents for growth than it has historically. And historically, a market that's really been kind of a very low single-digit growth market. We think as we look into the future for the utility market, we think it becomes one of the faster-growing segments inside of the company. And so maybe that growth is mid-single digits in the near term. As you think about some of the big investments that have to go into energy transition first, which is obviously a really big one, and then that obviously involves things like grid hardening and grid resiliency due to climate change and some of the weather-related events that we've seen. And so we like the utility market, and we think that that market will certainly be a growth market into the future. I will say that we've not yet seen, once again, these big inflection points that we would expect to see in the utility market. We think most of that growth is still out in front of us. Those markets, as you know, they tend to move more slowly. We have, over the last number of years, seen more investments going into the distribution side of utility, which certainly plays to our strength. But the bigger plays that we think around grid hardening, grid resilience, energy transition, the things that utilities are going to have to make fairly sizable investments in, we think most of that growth is still out in front of us.

Great. Thank you. Our final question will be from Anne Dinan with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. I appreciate you squeezing me in. Most of my questions have been answered, but maybe, Craig, a similar question on data center demand, how you saw progress through the quarter, just from an orders perspective, maybe versus start of the year, and then maybe regionally also, what you're seeing going on in data center demand. Thank you, and I'll leave it there.

Yeah, thanks, Anne. I appreciate the question, and it's obviously, you know, one of the most exciting segments that we're in, and certainly the acquisition of a company like Triplight just strengthens our hand there in terms of what data centers represent for the company overall. And I'd say, you know, it's the one market I'd say that we have very clearly for some time now seen global strength which we see it in every region of the world and we see it across really you know almost every segment of data centers whether that's the on-prem whether it's the colo operators uh you know whether it's the hyperscale data center market just continues to surprise to the upside and as we've said before that those markets that can be lumpy there could be a quarter or two or even a you know a year or so where a particular hyperscale uh player will take the time to consolidate and not expand. And so the business can be lumpy, at least specifically in hyperscale. But the projections for that market and what we've experienced is that it continues to surprise on the upside with respect to growth. I think this year we're talking about high teens kind of growth in the data center market. And as we've looked at that market, we've looked at our own forecast for that market, it's a big piece of what's performing better than what we originally anticipated when we put our guidance out for the year. And once again, this whole idea of more data, more storage, more compute, you know, the world's more connected. And so we think it's just a trend that's going to, you know, continue for a very long time into the future.

Okay, good. Thanks, guys. As always, Chip and I will be available to do any follow-up questions. Thank you, and join us. Have a good day. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.