Illinois Tool Works Inc.

Q2 2021 Earnings Conference Call

7/30/2021

spk02: Good morning. My name is Adam and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the conference call. 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 followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. For those participating in the Q&A, you will have the opportunity to ask one question, and if needed, one follow-up question. Thank you. Karen Fletcher, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.
spk05: Karen Fletcher Thank you, Adam. Good morning, and welcome to ITW's second quarter 2021 conference call. I'm joined by our Chairman and CEO, Scott Santee, and our Vice Chairman, Chris O'Herlihy. Senior Vice President and CFO Michael Larson is recovering from a sports-related injury and is not available to participate in today's call. We certainly wish Michael all the best and look forward to seeing him next week. During today's call, we will discuss ITW's second quarter financial results and update our guidance for the full year 2021. Slide two is a reminder that this presentation contains forward-looking statements. We refer you to the company's 2020 Form 10-K and subsequent reports filed with the SEC for more detail about important risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. This presentation uses certain non-GAAP measures, and a reconciliation of those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is contained in the press release. So please turn to slide three, and it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Scott Santee.
spk11: Scott Santee Thank you, Karen, and good morning, everyone. In the second quarter, we saw continued recovery momentum across our portfolio, and we delivered strong operational execution and financial results. Revenue was up 43 percent, with organic growth up 37 percent, and we saw double-digit growth in every segment and geography. Earnings per share of $2.45 was up 143%, 108% if you exclude the one-time tax benefit of 35 cents that we recorded in the quarter. In this strong demand environment and in the face of very challenging supply conditions, Our teams around the world leveraged our long-held, close-to-the-customer manufacturing and supply chain approach and the benefits of staying fully staffed and invested through our win-the-recovery positioning to continue providing world-class service levels to our customers while also continuing to execute on our long-term strategy to achieve and sustain ITW's full potential performance. We're certainly encouraged by our organic growth momentum as order intake rates remain pretty much strong across the board. And during the second quarter, we saw multiple examples of how our ability to sustain our differentiated delivery capabilities by remaining fully invested through the pandemic resulted in incremental share gain opportunities for our businesses. While there's no doubt that the raw material supply environment is as challenging as we have experienced in a long time, maybe ever in my 38 years at ITW, We are as well positioned as we can be to continue to set ourselves apart through our ability to respond for our customers. We've worked hard over the last nine years to position ITW to deliver differentiated performance in any environment, and I have no doubt that the ITW team will continue to execute at a high level as we move through the balance of the year and beyond. Now for some more detail on our performance in the second quarter. As I mentioned, organic growth was 37% with strong performance across our seven segments. The two segments that were hardest hit by the pandemic a year ago led the way this quarter with automotive OEM up 84% and food equipment up 46%. By geography, North America was up 36% and international was up 38%. with Europe up 50% and Asia Pacific up 20%. Gap EPS of $2.45 was up 143% and included a one-time tax benefit of $0.35 related to the remeasurement of next preferred tax assets in the U.K. due to a change in the statutory corporate tax rate there. Excluding this item, EPS of $2.10 grew 108%, It was a Q2 record and was 10% higher than Q2 of 2019. Operating income increased 99%, and incremental margin was 40% at the enterprise level. Operating margin of 24.3% improved 680 basis points on strong volume leverage, along with 150 basis points of benefits from our enterprise initiatives. Year-to-date, our teams have delivered robust margin expansion with incremental margins for our seven segments ranging from 37% to 48%, inclusive of price-cost impact. Speaking of price-cost, price-cost headwind to margin percentage in the quarter was 120 basis points. While the pace of raw material cost increases accelerated in the second quarter, Our businesses have been active in implementing pricing actions in response to rising raw material costs since early in the year, consistent with our strategy to cover raw material cost inflation with price adjustments on a dollar-for-dollar basis. In Q2, we ended up just short of that goal due to some timing lags, and as a result, net price cost impact reduced EPS by a penny in the quarter. We continue to expect price-cost impact to be EPS neutral or better for the year. And I'll come back and provide more color on the price-cost environment a little later in my remarks. In the quarter, after-tax return on invested capital was a record at 30.8%. Free cash flow was $477 million with a conversion of 72% of net income when adjusted for the one-time tax benefit I mentioned earlier. And that was due to the additional working capital investments necessary to support our strong organic growth. We continue to expect approximately 100% conversion for the full year. We repurchased $250 million of our shares this quarter as planned. And finally, our tax rate in the quarter was 10.1% due to the one-time tax benefit. Excluding this item, our Q2 tax rate was 23%. I'm moving to slide four for an update on price cost. We continue to experience raw material cost increases, particularly in categories such as steel, resins, and chemicals, and now project raw material cost inflation at around 7% for the full year, which is almost five percentage points higher than what we anticipated as the year began. And just for some perspective, this is roughly 2x what we experienced in the 2018 inflation tariff cycle. We learned a lot from that experience, and as a result, the timeliness and pace of our price recovery actions are well ahead of where we were in 2018. As I mentioned, we expect price-cost impact to be EPS neutral or better for the full year, with pricing actions more than offsetting cost increases on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Price-cost will continue to have a negative impact on our operating margin percentage, however, in the near term, as we saw in Q2, and that impact will likely be modestly higher in Q3 versus Q2 before it starts to go the other way. For the full year, we expect price-cost impact to be diluted to margin by about 100 basis points, which is 50 basis points higher than where we were as of the end of Q1. That being said, margin benefits from enterprise initiatives and volume leverage will provide us with ample ability to offset the negative effect of price cost on margin percentage and deliver strong overall margin performance for the year. And beyond the near-term price cost impact, we remain confident that we have meaningful additional structural margin improvement potential from the ongoing execution of our enterprise initiatives. With that, I'll turn it over to Chris for some comments on our segment performance in Q2. Chris?
spk10: Thank you, Scott. Good morning, everyone. Starting on slide five, the table on the left provides some perspectives on the growth momentum in our businesses with a look at sequential revenue from Q1 to Q2. As you would expect, the pace of recovery in our auto OEM segment has been dampened by the well-publicized shortage of semiconductor chips, despite very strong underlying demand. And for that reason, we added a row to the table to show portfolio demand trends ex-auto. Our Q2 revenue ex-auto increased 8% versus Q1. This year, Q2 had one more shipping date in Q1, so on an equal days basis, our Q2 versus Q1 revenue growth ex-auto is 6%, which is 2x of our normal Q2 versus Q1 seasonality of plus 3%. In addition, we added more than $200 million of backlog in Q2, Both of these factors show that demand accelerated meaningfully in Q2 across our portfolio. Now let's go into a little more detail for each segment, starting with automotive OEM. Demand recovery versus prior year was most evident in this segment with 84% organic growth. This, of course, was against easy comps versus a year ago when most of our customers in North America and Western Europe were shut down from mid-March to mid-May. North America was up 102%, Europe was up 106%, and China up 20%. We estimate that the shortage of semiconductor chips negatively impacted our sales by about $60 million in the quarter. Operating margin of 18.8% was up 26.6 percentage points on volume leverage and enterprise initiatives. Price cost was a significant headwind of more than 200 basis points due to the longer cycle time required to implement price recovery actions in this segment. Given the ongoing semiconductor chip supply uncertainty, we now expect full-year organic growth in automotive to be approximately 10% versus our original range of 14% to 18% at the beginning of the year. To be clear, this has not lost revenue, but simply delayed into next year. Furthermore, the slower than expected growth in auto is offset by strength elsewhere in the enterprise. Please turn to slide six for food equipment. In food equipment, organic revenue rebounded 46% with recovery taking hold across the board and the backlog that is up significantly versus prior year. North America was up 39% with equipment up 42% and service up 33%. Institutional revenue was up more than 30%, with healthcare and education growth in the low to mid-30s and lodging up in the mid-20s. Restaurants were up about 60%, with the largest year-over-year increases in full service and QSR. Retail grew in the mid-teens on continued solid demand and new product rollouts. International recovery was also robust at 58%. with Europe up 66% and Asia-Pacific up 29%. Equipment sales were strong, up 66%, with service growth of 39%, which continued to be impacted by extended lockdowns in Europe. Operating margin was 22%, with an incremental of 46%. Test and measurement electronics revenue of $606 million was a Q2 record, with organic growth of 29%. Test and measurement was up 20%, driven by solid recovery in customer CapEx spend and continued strength in Semicon. Electronics grew 38%, continued strength in consumer electronics and automotive applications, and the added benefit in timing of some large equipment orders in electronic assembly. Operating margin of 28.1% was 240 basis points, was up 240 basis points, and a Q2 record. Moving to slide seven. Welding growth was also strong in Q2 at 33%. Equipment revenue was up 38%, and consumables growth of 25% was the first time in positive territory since 2019. Our industrial business grew 52% on increased capex spending by our customers, and the commercial business remained solid, up 26%, following 17% growth in the first quarter. North America was up 38%, and international growth was 13%, primarily driven by recovery in oil and gas. Polymers and fluids organic growth is 28%, led by our automotive aftermarket business of 33% on robust retail sales. Polymers is up 34% with continued momentum in MRO applications and heavy industries. Fluids is up 8% with North America growth in the mid-teens and European sales up low single digits. Operating margin was an all-time record 27.3% with strong volume leverage and enterprise initiatives partly offset by price cost. Moving to slide 8. Construction organic growth to 28% reflected double-digit growth and recovery in all three regions. North America was up 20% with 16% growth in residential renovation and with 26% growth in commercial construction. Europe grew 61% with strong recovery versus easy comms in the UK and continental Europe. Australian New Zealand organic growth was 13% with continued strength in residential and commercial. Operating margin in the segment of 27.6% was up 390 basis points and was a Q2 record. Specialty organic revenue was up 17%, with North America up 15%, Europe up 24%, and Asia Pacific up 14%. Our flexible packaging business was up mid-single digits against a tougher comp than the rest of this segment. The majority of our businesses were up to double digits, led by appliance, up more than 50%. Consumable sales were up 19%, and equipment sales up 12%. And with that, I'll turn it back to Scott.
spk11: Thanks, Chris. Let's move on to slide 9 for an update on our full-year 2021 guidance. We now expect full-year revenue to be in the range of $14.3 to $14.6 billion, up 15% at the midpoint versus last year, with organic growth in the range of 11% to 13% and foreign currency translation impact of plus 3%. This is an increase in organic growth of one percentage point at the midpoint versus the updated guidance that we provided at the end of Q1, driven largely by the incremental revenue impact of pricing actions implemented in Q2 in response to accelerating raw material cost increases. While demand momentum accelerated in Q2 versus Q1, as we noted earlier in our presentation, We are admittedly being conservative in not projecting that forward in our guidance at this point in time, given the significant supply chain disruptions that continue to challenge many of our customers in auto and otherwise. We are raising our GAAP EPS guidance by $0.35 to a range of $8.55 to $8.95 to incorporate the one-time tax benefit realized in the second quarter. The midpoint of $8.75 represents earnings growth of 32% versus last year, and 13% over 2019. Factoring out the one-time Q2 tax item, the midpoint of our 2021 guidance is 10% higher than 2019. With regard to margin percentages discussed earlier, the incremental cost increases that we saw in Q2 will result in full-year margin dilution of 100 basis points versus the 50 basis points that we projected as of the end of Q1. And we are adjusting our margin percentage guidance accordingly to a range of 24.5 to 25.5%, which would still be an improvement of more than 200 basis points year over year in an all-time record for the company. And again, we expect zero EPS impact from price costs for the full year. We expect free cash flow conversion to be approximately 100% of net income, factoring out the impact of the one-time non-cash tax benefit we recorded in Q2. Through the first half, we have repurchased $500 million of our shares and expect to repurchase an additional $500 million in the second half. Finally, we expect our tax rate in the second half to be in our usual range of 23% to 24%, and for a four-year tax rate of around 20%. Lastly, today's guidance excludes any impact from the previously announced acquisition of the MTS test and simulation business, which we expect to close later this year. Once that exposition closes, we'll provide you with an update. And with that, I'll turn back over to you, Karen.
spk05: Okay. Thank you, Scott. Adam, let's open up the line for questions, please.
spk02: Yes, ma'am. And once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, simply press star, ending number one on your telephone keypad. Once again, for a question, let us start ending number one. And we'll pause for just one moment to file the Q&A roster. And your first question comes from the line of Andrew Kaplowitz with Citi.
spk00: Best wishes to Michael.
spk11: Thank you. He's on short-term IR, but he'll be back next week.
spk00: Excellent. So, Scott and Chris, you mentioned the raw material cost inflation. We know you said inflation will be EPS neutral or better for the year. Do you see the inflationary pressure has stabilized enough now where you can have a handle on these increases that you sort of put into the guide? So when you look at Q3 and Q4, you have confidence in your forecast. And then 22, you talked about last quarter. What's the probability that these price increases are pretty sticky so you could exceed that 35 to 40 percent longer-term incremental you have?
spk11: Well, on the first question, I think we're very confident that we will cover whatever, you know, all the increases that have already been incurred and anything subsequent to that. I would not be comfortable describing the environment as stabilizing at this point. But ultimately, you know, I think we have demonstrated, you know, we look back over the last You know, going back to 2017 and even in 2018 and certainly this year, you know, sort of on a quarterly basis, worst impacts in price costs and inflationary environments has been a penny, you know, maybe two cents one quarter. So I think we're, you know, fully comfortable that we'll be able to read and react to whatever might happen from here, that the EPS impact of the company will be negligible for the full year ahead. But I think, as I said, it's not based on an assumption that things are going to stabilize from here for sure yet. I don't think we're seeing – we've seen enough evidence of that. Nor am I predicting things are going to continue to reach forward either. I think it's wait and see.
spk10: And we saw a significant pickup in the case of inflation in Q2. Yeah.
spk00: Guys, maybe I could just ask the question specific to auto in the sense that, you know, you gave us the numbers, you know, now 10% for the year. I think this quarter you said 200 base points of price versus cost. As you know, there's always a lag before you can catch up there. So should we assume incremental margins still getting a little worse before it gets better in that business? And how long would you surmise it takes to get on top of price versus cost in that business?
spk10: Well, price versus cost in auto is always going to be challenging given the nature of the industry. I would say in terms of incremental, in the second quarter in auto we had a 47% incremental and in fact a 47% incremental for the first half of the year. So incrementals are strong in auto, no doubt, but there's no doubt that the structure of the industry, the structure of the pricing agreements, it does take a little longer. Hard to say how long it will take for us to catch up there, I would say.
spk00: Thanks, guys.
spk02: And your next question comes from Anne Bignan of JP Morgan.
spk01: Hi, good morning. Good morning. I may need to talk a little bit more about both construction products and test and measurement, where you said you delivered or you did deliver record Q2 operating profit percent. Can you talk about how sustainable those margins are going forward? Was there anything in Q2 mix or Anything that we should be aware of that would result in those margins diminishing from here or are those sustainable at these levels?
spk10: Yeah, so we would say the construction margins are very sustainable. We've been improving margins of construction for a long time now, and certainly for the last few quarters here, we've been in the mid to high 20s in terms of margins in construction. So despite the price-cost environment, we're seeing nice organic growth in construction. We're getting nice price realisation. And so we would certainly expect the margins there to be sustainable, certainly in test and measurement. And test and measurement margins, again, you know, trending in the high 20s here have been like that for a long time. Segment that we like on in terms of level of, you know, differentiation, ability to solve customer problems. So we don't see any issue with sustaining margins in either test and measurement or construction.
spk01: Okay. I'm sorry.
spk11: I was going to add some color commentary about that. I was adding up the count when Chris was reading the comments, but I think we set all-time record margins for Q2 in three of our seven segments, despite the price-cost environment. And I'll just circle back to a comment I made, which is, you know, that there's still room to run in terms of structural margin improvement across the company. You know, we've got 150 basis points of enterprise initiative benefit in this quarter. So there's, you know, these are certainly sustainable outcomes. improvements in performance, and we expect to continue to do better as we go forward.
spk01: Okay. I'll leave it there in the interest of time. I appreciate it. Thank you.
spk02: And your next question comes from line at Stephen Volkman with Jefferies.
spk06: Hi. Good morning, guys. Maybe just following up on On the comment about enterprise initiatives, you know, you're talking about, I think, 100 basis points for the year, but you did 150 this quarter, I think 120, if I have my numbers right, last quarter. You know, you've been overachieving. Do those slow down for some reason, or is there a chance that you do better than 100 this year?
spk10: Yeah, I mean, I think we're saying 100 plus, so we will do better than 100 this year. And there's still a lot of, you know, impetus on enterprise initiatives, both in sourcing and 80-20. You know, these are all initiatives and activities that are very granular within our segments. Within each division, there's a host of activities we are working on and actually have been working on not just this year, but even starting last year. So we entered the year with a fair bit of tailwind in terms of enterprise initiatives. So we would expect to do 100-plus for sure.
spk06: Well, that's less than 100-plus. And then maybe just following up on this price-cost kind of question, I'm just curious about how you think about the policy here. I mean, it doesn't feel like there's a lot of pushback on pricing in any of the kind of verticals that we touch. You know, why not price for dollars plus margin? You know, why kind of create that headwind?
spk11: Well, I don't know. You know, the headwind from my perspective is a percentage headwind. It's not an earnings headwind. You know, the overall... position that we want is, look, we've created an incredibly profitable economic engine, and the most important job we have is to grow it organically. And so from the standpoint of to the extent we don't have to go up as high as other people do, we're leveraging that strong position, and we can translate that into incremental share. That's the preferred option. I don't want our people fighting over the next increment. We ought to get the cost back for sure. But then let's get on to talk to our customers about how we can help them, you know, improve their businesses, you know, operationally, technically, from a sales standpoint. And so that's basically it. You know, we can certainly do more to get all distracted and try to price optimize in the short term, but I don't think that serves our long-term interests very well. We make plenty of money. Fair point. Thank you. Thank you.
spk02: And your next question comes from the line of Jeff Sprague with Vertical Research.
spk06: Hey, thanks.
spk11: Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Jeff. Good morning. Could we just drill a little bit into kind of the whole availability issue? We talked about, you know, price-cost, and obviously it's tied to the availability of supply. Outside of auto, which is very visible and obvious, are there clear places in your portfolio where either you're struggling to meet demand because of availability in your supply chain or you're feeling it on the customer side? Perhaps you can deliver, but they don't want it because they've got problems elsewhere down the line. I just wonder if you could give us some perspective on that and any color on that. to what degree, if any, it may have been limiting the top line here in the quarter or into the balance of the year. Yeah, I'll give you some overall color and then certainly let Chris give you some segment level, business level specifics if some things come to mind for him on this. I would say You know, in terms of overall color, as we talk to our businesses around the world, there's no question that it is a daily battle, you know, to maintain supply position necessary to service our customers. I would absolutely contend that we are doing better than most for a couple of reasons. One is the fact that we have long had localized supply relationships with local manufacturing facilities serving our customers locally. We have, you know, and then the other factor is what we talked about in our remarks, the fact that we kept all our people through the pandemic. We have not had to scramble to bring people back. So, you know, normally our supply chain and our manufacturing, you know, operations function in a very simple automated way. It's definitely taking a lot more boot, let's call it boot force for now. But I think, you know, we're not hearing any big issues from the standpoint of our own ability to supply our customers. It doesn't mean that there's not an occasional $2 bracket that shows up late and there's a couple of welding machines that can't go. I'm just making that up, but I'm sure that's the case. But ultimately, given the service levels that we're monitoring, as a standard part of our operating practices, I would say that I'm very comfortable saying that we're working a lot harder than we normally have to, but ultimately performing pretty well. I would say that the supply chain area beyond auto is much more of an issue for us on the demand side than the supply side, and I'd point to a couple of things. You know, we are seeing a lot of sort of timing changes in terms of orders and requirements, not because we can't deliver something but because another supplier can't deliver something to a customer. And I'd also point to the $200 million of backlog. You know, we've talked about this before. basically today what our customers ordered yesterday. And so we operate with very little backlog. And the fact that we built a couple hundred million dollars of backlog, I can't analyze every dollar of it, but my contention would be that that's a lot more due to sort of customer delays than it is our own ability to supply. And look, that was the $60 million in auto plus the $200 million in backlog. That's another 10 percentage points of organic growth in the second quarter.
spk10: uh you know again i'm not necessarily contending that all of it could have gone but my bet would be most of it i don't feel anything yeah the other thing i i would say in addition to what the scots comes i think you know our overall kind of 80 20 focus here really creates a lot of advantages for us in terms of much more simplified and streamlined product offerings obviously results in simplification of raw materials and components and and that simplification focus also extends to our suppliers A key part of our strategy, and it's worked very well for us for many years, is to have these very strong and long-lasting supplier partnerships. And we're a key customer for most of our raw material suppliers. This becomes really, really important when supply chains become constrained. And we've really seen that work to our benefit here in the last 12 months. Great. And just a second question.
spk11: Just on the M&A pipeline, obviously you don't have a deal until you've got something to announce. But You know, can you give us a sense of how active your pipeline is? Have you been able to cultivate things, you know, maybe handicap the odds of, you know, some other things kind of coming into your strike zone? Well, I would tell you that we are excited about MPS. We are working hard to get that one finished off. You know, that is, what, $650 million of annualized revenue. So that's, you know, certainly enough work to do for a little while anyway. I don't want to necessarily comment on the pipeline as much as to say we remain and will remain very interested in adding high-quality businesses to the company. But sort of the timing of all that is always a subject of the quality of what opportunities present themselves. So there's always stuff going on, but, you know, it's not a matter of how big or small the pipeline is. We're looking for a much narrower set of criteria than I think. So it's more a function of the quality of what's there than the quantity. Okay, understood. Thanks. I'll pass the baton.
spk02: And your next question comes from the line of Joe Ritchie from Goldman Sachs.
spk13: Thanks, Doug. Good morning, everyone.
spk00: Good morning, Joe. Good morning, Joe.
spk13: So I know that I know you guys guide to the organic growth trends, you know, really not improving or declining. And that's just kind of how that's just in your policy going forward. I guess when I think about each of the different segments and how you're thinking about the sequentials from here. Yeah, I don't really think about a lot of seasonality in your business, which may be perhaps the construction business, right, being a little bit seasonally weaker in the fourth quarter. How are you thinking about sequential revenue for the segment, you know, throughout the rest of the year? Obviously, you've given us the auto guide, but really the other segments.
spk11: Yeah, you know, I covered that, I think, overall in my comments. But, you know, we have sort of tamped down the run rate, you know, in terms of the guidance relative to the run rate. Chris talked to you about the fact that in second quarter we saw organic growth rates accelerate by a net three percentage points beyond seasonality. And we basically didn't project that same momentum forward through the balance of the year because of the supply risk involved, the supply chain risk to our customers. So we're playing that pretty conservative. And I think that ultimately is going to have more to do with the pace of the organic from here than trends of demand. There's plenty of demand out there. It's a matter of can our customers get enough raw material to support it.
spk13: Got it. And maybe, Scott, just following on that, you mentioned the backlog in the food equipment business. Where you're building backlog right now, are you seeing that as more kind of like a 2022 opportunity, just given what you're seeing from a supply chain standpoint, or do you expect some of that to convert in the second half?
spk11: I'd say some of it converts. I think the only one that's probably definitely into 2022 is the one that Chris mentioned in auto, where this chip sort of doesn't look like it's going to get resolved anytime soon. But I'd say most of the rest of that backlog, that $200 million, I would expect the given our customers can take it because they can get the other components or things they need, that could certainly convert in the back half. I think it just doesn't make sense to up the revenue guide when everyone is so supply constrained right now. I can't say it any more simply than that. And until we see how things play out, it just doesn't make sense to take things too far from where they are now in terms of run rate until we see you know, how the supply issues play out in affecting our customers' willingness to, you know, ability to take what they've ordered from us and order more. But I would say there's definitely, you know, from the standpoint of order rates and the overall demand, there's definitely enough there to do, you know, well better than what's in our guide if the supply chain situation gets, you know, significantly better from here forward.
spk13: Okay, yeah, that's helpful. I guess maybe one follow-up on price-cost. I know we talked about it a little bit. You did mention that 3Q was expected to get a little bit worse from 2Q, but then you put through some pricing actions in 2Q. So I guess I'm just wondering, does it take a little bit of time for some of those pricing actions to take hold, or why would the headwind get worse in 3Q?
spk10: Yeah, Joe, I mean, the real reason it's getting worse in Q3 is because of the pace of inflation in Q2. We saw a significant pickup in pace in Q2, and obviously there's a little bit of a lag, so we see a little bit of a worsening in Q3. Based on what we know today, based on the cost increases we see and the known price increases, we see a little worsening in Q3 from Q2, really on the base of the pace of inflation in Q2.
spk13: Got it. Okay, great. Thank you both.
spk02: And your next question comes from the line of Jamie Cook with Credit Suisse.
spk04: I guess just two questions, one following up on the revenue outlook, understanding why you guide sort of conservatively, but is there any way you can help us understand just what you're seeing in terms of percentage increases on the order intake rate, like by segment, just to help us sort of understand? what's out there and to what degree are you concerned? Is there any sort of double ordering that's happening as customers are worried they can't get stuff? And then I guess my follow-up question, obviously the organic growth has performed very strong. Are there particular segments or customers where you are more sort of confident that some of these, you know, this organic growth is associated with, you know, market share wins that are actually, you know, sort of sustainable from here on? Thank you.
spk10: So in terms of acceleration of organic growth, we're seeing it. Obviously, we talked about auto work. It's going in a different way, but certainly in food equipment, Test measurement electronics and welding are certainly growing faster than we expected earlier in the year, so we've seen nice acceleration there. We've no reason to believe that it's not sustainable based on our conversations with our customers, the order patterns and so on. Obviously, as we've often talked about, the fact that we've been very busy here in terms of this wind recovery initiative over the last 12 months, and while it's still kind of early to quantify this, we're feeling pretty good about how we're positioned. And as you know, we very intentionally remained fully staffed to serve our customers, protected investments in people, an initiative of customer-backed innovation, and strategic sales excellence. And there's certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence out there that would say that that is turning into real share gains. And if I just maybe highlight some illustrative examples in like food equipment, where high levels of product availability Maintaining service level excellence, as Scott talked about, and being able to respond in supply where a competitor could not, is enabling several share gain and incremental wins from competition in large chains, both in food service and food retail. Another example might be in palmers and fluids, automotive aftermarket. Staying invested here, we're able to sustain sales and innovation focus. coupled with high service levels means we grew, as I mentioned in the commentary, automotive aftermarket grew by 33% in the quarter. And this is well above customer points sales growth, indicating that we are gaining share in a meaningful way. And even on residential construction in our roofing businesses, businesses which are up 45% in the quarter, again, we see very clearly we're gaining share there on competition who have certainly been supplying chain and operationally constrained, extending delivery times and so on. And we continue to maintain differentiated service levels. So again, somewhat anecdotal, somewhat early in the window recovery strategy, but certainly ample evidence that we seem to be gaining share. And these are just a small selection of illustrative examples of the type of progress that we're making across our seven segments.
spk04: Okay, thank you. Anything on the order rate intake, if you can share with us just what you're seeing that you saw by segment?
spk10: Yeah, like I said, we saw an acceleration of the three segments that I mentioned.
spk04: I was just trying to get numbers. You know what I mean? If you can't, that's fine, but...
spk11: Yeah, order is pretty much equalized shipments for us because of what I said, you know, what we, what we, our customers order, we ship the next day. I would say that also your question about, I think you used the term double dip ordering in terms of customers trying to hedge, you know, order more because they can't get supply. I would, I absolutely can't say that we're not seeing any of that, but I would say that it would be much lower for us because of the fact that our service levels are so good. Our customers understand. you know, in terms of order to ship. So, you know, some may be certainly ordering more than they would normally because they're concerned about things. But I would think that, you know, in terms of our service levels, we wouldn't, there wouldn't be anything that wouldn't be a significant part of the overall demand picture for us.
spk04: Okay. Thank you.
spk02: And your next question comes from the line of Nigel Coe with Wolf Research.
spk08: Thanks. Good morning, and best wishes to Mike. I hope he makes a speedy recovery. Hi, guys. I want to go back to the supply constraints. Where are you kind of most concerned? I said automotive, which was predictable, but where are you most concerned? I'm thinking about maybe electronics. prep tools, you know, with batteries, but what do you monitor most closely in terms of, not just for Ilma Toolworks, but for your, you know, your suppliers, you know, which businesses or geographies are you most concerned?
spk10: Yeah, I would say electronics in general have been fairly constrained. So that impacts segments like welding, food equipment, test and measurement electronics would be one that I would call out. The inflation environment obviously has been across the board in terms of steel, resins, chemicals and electronics. But in terms of supply chain constraints, electronics is to a certain extent steel-related businesses.
spk11: But beyond that, I don't think there's anything that really concentrates up. I think, again, the color from our business is, you know, it's something different every day. Right, correct. But, you know, it's not a, you know, it takes a lot more work, and it's not even the big dollar stuff. It's the, you know, again, the $2 bracket. But it is a real effort right now, significantly more than normal.
spk10: To maintain service. Yeah. Yeah.
spk08: And then some companies have talked about spot purchases because of the higher volume service plan. I wouldn't say expert afraid is a big issue for you, but maybe address those two points. Because that theory could change very quickly. So I'm just wondering what impact on spot purchases and free experting.
spk11: Spot purchases.
spk08: Can you explain that a little more? I think you and other companies Yeah, we don't hedge, we don't forward buy.
spk11: So, you know, everything, current costs are flushing through right now, yeah.
spk10: And the second part of your question related to freight and logistics, is that correct? And so with freight and logistics, I mean, obviously there's an impact for us, but I would say less of an impact than some of our peers maybe on the basis that the produce where we sell, produce and source where we sell philosophy that we've long had has certainly mitigated the impact of freight and logistics on our cost structure and availability.
spk08: Thanks, Jack.
spk02: And your next question comes from the line of Scott Davis with Milius Research.
spk09: Good morning, guys.
spk02: Good morning, Scott.
spk09: Hope Mike feels better. Must be a good story, back story to the sports injury.
spk11: It's his to tell.
spk09: Hopefully you didn't join some sort of football team or something, you know, the over 50 football team. Anyways, I only have one question. It's just on MTS. When you bring in MTS, How do you cadence 80-20? I mean, how do you bring in a deal of this size, kind of bring 80-20 in without really disrupting it? Is there kind of a playbook there you guys can walk through and help us understand?
spk10: Yeah, absolutely, Scott. So obviously, you know, we've completely reinvigorated 8020 over the last few years with this front-to-back process. And effectively, the process that we will employ on MTS is exactly the same process that we have employed on our 84 divisions across the company. So we've clear-lined aside on what to do, we've clear-lined aside on how to do it, and we've clear-lined aside on what the outcome should be when we get it done properly. coupled with the fact that we've built a tremendous amount of capability in the company of folks who can go in and help guide MTS on the 80-20 journey. So we feel very confident in the playbook. We feel very confident in our capability. We think the raw materials in MTS are fantastic with respect to 80-20 opportunity. That's one of the key attractions for us and where we bought it. The other thing I'd say is that You know, we've got a very similar business, you know, in our portfolio in test and measurement in Instron where we've done this successfully before. So very confident that we can do this and do this successfully.
spk11: The small plan, yeah. It's probably a three- to five-year process, and part of that is not disrupting the business.
spk10: It's still at the pace that makes sense. We're in no rush here.
spk09: Okay. Okay. Super helpful. Good luck. Thank you.
spk10: Thank you.
spk02: And your next question comes from the line of Nick Dobre with Bayer.
spk12: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Going back to your comments on pricing, obviously a lot changed over the past three months. And can you maybe clarify for us what impact pricing had to your adjustment to the overall organic growth guidance? For the year? Yes, please. Yeah.
spk11: Yeah, that's 1%. Okay.
spk12: I'm presuming then that... That was the 1% we added to organic, yeah. Okay. That's kind of what I figured, but I just wanted to confirm. So, you know, if this is impacting the back half of the year primarily, then at least presumably you have a couple of points of growth just from pricing in the back half. If I look at the implied guidance, right, at the high end we're talking about growing something like 7% organically. A couple of points of that is just your incremental price. I mean, look, Scott, you were talking earlier saying, hey, I'm trying to take a conservative approach here. But at least to me, when I'm adjusting out for this pricing element and I think about the comparisons that are still, you know, fairly easy relative to the prior year, it just strikes me that you really are being conservative here in terms of how you're thinking about your business progression on an X price on a core basis. So, Just to kind of clarify this, is it that there is some lack of clarity as to where maybe demand is going to be because of what's happening with the supply chain? Or is it that you're having some second thoughts with regards to how you're going to be able to convert revenue given some of the disruption that you're having to deal with?
spk11: It's the former, not the latter, if I understood you correctly. Bigger risk for us by far is customer supply chain and what that does to their demand patterns from here on out. It is, as I said before, it's about as volatile of a situation as I've seen in my career at ITW. And so, you know, I'm not trying to be mysterious about it. I think until we see that start to stabilize, it's just really hard to be comfortable you know sort of raising you know i i know we're we're we're serving the demand we have today really well and and uh you know sort of runway from the standpoint that our customers are able to sustain you know i think we're comfortable continuing to you know that our ability to do that will continue on for the back half there is a lot more orders you know a lot more demanding than you know that's again why we built backlog that's Um, there's not a demand question. If we had, if we had, we, our customers had, you know, sort of unimpaired supply chains right now, we'd probably had 10 more points in the second quarter. I'm, you know, I'm, this is, it's not a fact, that's just my opinion, but you know, just looking at the backlog. And so I think demand is certainly much stronger right now, given the pace of the recovery. It's just a matter of, from the standpoint of all the supply chain issues and risks. for our customers, their pace of being able to, you know, what they're ultimately going to need from us. As I said, it's just hard to justify going up with a lot of confidence from here, but it's more their supply side than their demand side, if that makes sense.
spk12: Yeah, I think it does. You know, the follow-up to all of this is we're starting to think about 2022, and, you know, if we're using your framework for the back half of 21 as a starting point in thinking about 2022, it begs the question as to what growth is likely to look like next year, right? Because in recent theory, pricing normalizes next year, so you won't have the kind of tailwinds you have this year in that regard.
spk11: Look, I, you know, my, we're not thinking about 22 much yet, but I would just, you know, say as a general rule, a lot of the supply chain disruption, I think, just pushes, adds to the duration of the recovery. You know, I think, you know, there's plenty of business now, and because all of it can't be satisfied, a point of demand now, and, you know, Chris told you the example of, you You know, this $60 million we couldn't ship an auto in the second quarter, that's not going away. That's just getting pushed out. We've got dealer inventories at all-time lows. You know, I forget what it was, less than a month, maybe less than a month, I think I saw. You know, and so to the extent, you know, I don't think it's necessarily the worst thing in the world that, you know, all the demand that's there right now can't be fully served because it's going to allow us to, you know, again, this recovery duration gets extended by another two to four quarters. Maybe we'll think harder about that as we get to the back part of the year.
spk12: Okay, that's helpful. Lastly, for me, on the topic of M&A, you talked about portions of your business that you consider for divestiture before taking a step back on that this year. I'm sort of curious, as activity has picked up, multiples are pretty good, you know, will you reconsider this at a point in time down the line, maybe 2022? Yes. Okay, thank you.
spk03: And your next question comes from the line of Julian Mitchell of Barclay. Hi, good morning. Maybe just the first question around the free cash flow. I don't think that's been touched on yet. You know, your inventories and receivables are up each sort of 100 million plus sequentially. Just wondered how you see working capital moving playing out in the second half and what we should think about that as a sort of cash flow item for the year as a whole. And also sort of more broadly on the CapEx side of things, you know, how much is your CapEx coming up this year? And have you revised at all your sort of median term CapEx planning assumptions because of these constraints?
spk11: I think the best way to model our working capital requirements is our months on hand and day sales outstanding. We manage the metrics on those. Generally speaking, months on hand runs roughly two and a half months. DSO, I can't remember off the top of my head, but whatever the average is, 60-ish maybe. So that's where... Morgan Capital is going to go. You know, sales go up. You know, the month on hand is not going to go up, but the dollars invested to continue to stay at that month's hand is going to go up. Same with receivables in terms of DSO. So, you know, it's not a, you know, it's something that happens automatically. We don't have to sort of force that to happen. But if sales go up, inventory is going to go up. Like the month on hand is a function of that's how 80-20 works. There's some elements of it. They give us, you know, we want X amount, you know, of inventory to be able to provide the ability to react and respond to our customers that, you know, order today, ship tomorrow kind of system. So, you know, I think that's the best guidance I can give you on working capital is just model that through and, you know, whether that's cash flow, you know, it's not going to be, you know, when you're jumping up as much as we did in Q2 versus Q1, it's going to obviously require some incremental working capital. And then the other question, I'm sorry, I'm trying to do my best Michael impersonation here sometimes.
spk03: No, no, it was just around the capital spending and sort of rate of income.
spk11: So capital capex, I think the plan for the year was up like $300 million or so.
spk05: $300 million is our target.
spk11: Yeah, for the year. Yeah, not up. So there is no incremental capex. We did... defer some incremental capacity investments last year because of the pandemic. We didn't need them. Those are certainly all coming back on, but those are, you know, we operate with, you know, another element of 80-20 is we want to be front-end loaded on capacity. That's how we serve our customers. So, you know, as business continues to go forward, we'll continue to invest in staying, you know, sort of an increment, you know, meaningful increment ahead of current demand, but that wouldn't be, again, something out of the norm of what we always do, and it wouldn't be some big sort of lump coming through.
spk03: That's clear. Thank you. And then just a quick follow-up on the auto OEM margins. Is the point that after that step down sequentially in Q2, the sort of 19%-ish level is a good baseline or floor in the current sort of demand and cost environment. And so from here, they move up sort of slowly given what's going on, but 19 is where they should have bottomed out for now.
spk10: Yeah, I'd say it's a fair assumption. We're seeing a bottom load here, and I think it'll be slow recovery. Based on what we've seen today, slow recovery from here on out.
spk11: Do you remember prior peak margins in auto, Chris, was probably 23 maybe? Yeah. And so there's still a lot of biome recovery to go in auto from where we were then. And so I'd say low to mid-20s is certainly achievable over time. Right.
spk03: Thank you very much.
spk02: And your final question comes from the line of Joel Tiss with BMO.
spk07: Scott, you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. I think you guys sound a little less annoyed by how dumb all our questions are than usual.
spk11: Well, now you know who the gloomy guts of the group is, right?
spk07: So I have like one topic and just two different angles on it. One, can you give us any sense if you think the food industry is kind of distracted with all the consolidation that's going on? And then can we have a little more color on kind of what customers are back? You know, are large pieces of your end markets still not really there? I'm thinking like airports and cafeterias and things like that. Can you just give us a little more detail around sort of the share gains and where the customers are? Thank you.
spk10: Yeah, so I don't know about this distraction from consolidations. I can tell you we're not distracted. You know, we're basically focused on trying to win the recovery here, serve the needs of our customers, innovate new products and so on. So generally, I think we're seeing some real nice recovery in food faster than actually than we thought at the beginning of the year. We're certainly seeing the benefit of staying invested in food. A little bit of price-cost impact in food, certainly, but obviously some of that relates to the fact that You know, the price-cost environment, some additional pricing actions here in the second half. But in terms of the end markets, I mean, basically with food, we're back to about, by the end of this year, we expected back about 90% of the 2019 number. So faster than we thought. In terms of end markets, we're seeing nice pickup in institutional restaurants coming back. We mentioned restaurants being up 60%. In terms of stuff that's coming back a little slower, I would say service. If we point to service in Europe as an example, obviously with the significant lockdowns we're still dealing with over there, we'll probably come back a little slower there. But at least through the first half, we expect to see that pick up here in the second half. But generally, most end markets are coming back. Lodging is a little slower, I would say. Yeah, and transportation. And transportation, right, and airlines.
spk07: Airlines, airlines.
spk10: Airlines, airline catering, right. For sure.
spk07: That's great. Thank you very much.
spk02: And there are no further questions at this time. I'll now turn it back over to Karen.
spk05: OK. Thanks, Adam. We appreciate you joining us this morning. And if you have any follow-up questions, please let me know. Have a great day.
spk02: Thank you for participating in today's conference call. All lines may disconnect at this time.
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