Knowles Corporation

At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the NOLS Corporation fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. 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 the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Sarah Cook. Please go ahead.

Thank you and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call. I'm Sarah Cook, Vice President of Investor Relations and presenting with me today are Jeffrey New, our President and CEO, and John Anderson, our Senior Vice President and CFO. Our call today will include remarks about future expectations, plans and prospects for NOLS, which constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under applicable federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements in this call will include comments about demand for company products, anticipated trends in companies' sales, expenses, and profits, and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. The company urges investors to review the risks and uncertainties in the company's SEC filings, including but not limited to the annual report on Form 10K for the fiscal year ended December 31st, 2024. Periodic reports filed from time to time with the SEC and the risks and uncertainties identified in today's earnings release. All forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call and NOLS disclaims any duty to update such statements except as required by law. In addition, particular to Reg G, any non-GAP financial measures referenced during today's conference call can be found in our press release posted at our website at NOLS.com and in our current report on Form 8K filed today with the SEC. This will include a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAP measure. All financial references on this call will be on a non-GAP continuing operations basis unless otherwise indicated. We've made selected financial information available in webcast slides which can be found in the investor relations section of our website. With that, let me turn the call over to Jeff who will provide details on our results. Jeff?

Thanks, Sarah, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. For the prepared remarks, we will provide our normal commentary on Q4 results as well as what we're seeing in our markets for Q1 and beyond. I will also summarize some highlights in 2024. Turn the call over to John to provide financial details on Q4 and guidance for Q1 and then close with some exciting things we have going on which gives us confidence in 2025 being another year of revenue and EPS growth with continued strong cash flow. I think it's also important to note that with the completion of the sale of the consumer MEMS microphone business in late 2024, there is a significant amount of historical financial information being released for our continuing operations in both the 10K as well as the supplemental slides associated with this call. This is the first time we've provided this information and it demonstrates the revenue and earnings growth of our business. Now turning to results. For the fourth quarter, revenue of $143 million was within the guided range. Non-GAAP diluted EPS of $0.27 was also within the guided range and we delivered cash from operations of $35 million, inclusive of CMM. The revenue and earnings shortfall to the midpoint in Q4 was driven entirely by challenges and plant consolidation and ramping production of new products within our specialty film capacitor line, not from a lack of shipable orders. I will provide more detail on these challenges in my commentary within the precision device section. For the full year, on a continuing operations basis, revenue grew 21% and non-GAAP diluted EPS grew 32% from 2023 levels driven by the strength and med tech and specialty audio and the addition of film, mica and electrolytic capacitors from Cornell to our product portfolio. Now for our segments. In Q4, med tech and specialty audio revenue grew 9% sequentially when it was flat on a -over-year basis. 2024 revenues grew by 8% and adjusted EBIT by 13% from 2023 levels. By partnering with our customers to create innovative solutions, enhancing the performance of their products, we continue to drive growth. This coupled with our ability to leverage our fixed overhead drove adjusted EBIT growth. I continue to be very excited about the opportunities we have in the MSA segment ahead of us and expect another year of growth in 2025 as we continue to introduce new innovative custom solutions to our customers and be a world-class manufacturer of these products. We're also beginning to see new opportunities to accelerate growth beyond 2025 by leveraging core competencies in medical markets and we'll share more on this later this year as we close new design wins. In the precision device segment, Q4 revenues grew 4% -over-year. As I stated earlier, challenges with shipments and specialty film capacitor products resulted in a greater than $3 million shortfall in our shipment plans. There were two causes. First, as part of our synergies from the acquisition of Cornell, we were consolidating facilities for specialty film to improve margins. Even though the production transfer was completed in Q4, it took longer than expected and resulted in shipment challenges. With delays in production transfers and the order book and specialty film consisting of numerous new custom products ramping at once, we fell short of our shipment targets. Shipments are expected to improve throughout the first half of 2025. I have confidence that the team will resolve the production challenges and I'm very excited about the demand we have for these custom specialty film products. We expect this product category to drive meaningful growth in 2025 and beyond. What gives me confidence in significant growth for this product line is all the new customers and products that are coming to market and one in particular that will drive significant growth in 2026. We received an order this month for more than $75 million with a sizable prepayment for a new customer in the energy sector. We expect at least $25 million of this order to ship in 2026. We will provide additional details about this exciting order and the rest of the opportunities ahead of us throughout 2025. For the rest of the precision device segment, revenue was in line with expectation. In Q4, PD demonstrated a noticeable acceleration in orders from Q3 driven by medical and defense with both markets having their strongest bookings quarter of the year. It's noteworthy that our distribution book trend was positive in Q4 as we're finally seeing signs of abatement of excess jail inventory in the industrial and markets. For precision devices on a full year basis, revenue grew 36% compared to 2023 as our capacitor portfolio expanded with the addition of Cornell. An additional 2024 highlight, which John will go into more detail, is about our cash from operations. Our continued robust cash generation coupled with our strong balance sheet gives us optionality of capitalizing on M&A opportunities and returning capital through share buybacks. The board continues to be supportive of our share buyback program authorizing an additional $150 million in capacity to repurchase stock. Before moving on, I would like to touch on the fluid tariff situation we are all hearing so much about. First, the sale of CMM significantly reduced our manufacturing footprint in China as well as our exposure to the China markets. On a continuing operation basis in 2024, approximately 5% of revenue could be subject to tariffs on importing goods from either China or Mexico. While the exposure, as we understand today, is limited, we will continue to explore alternatives to mitigate the impact of these tariffs. Now let me turn the call over to John to detail our quarterly results and provide Q1 guidance. After hearing from John, I will share my thoughts on 2025 in Vienna. Thanks, Jeff. We reported fourth quarter revenues of $143 million, up 2% from the year-ago period and within our guidance range. EPS was $0.27 in the quarter, up $0.05 or 23% from Q4 of 2023. Also within our guidance range. In the med tech and specialty audio segment, Q4 revenue was $70 million, flat compared with the year-ago period. On a full year basis, revenue in the med tech and specialty audio segment increased by 8% over prior year levels, driven by increased shipments into the hearing health market. Q4 gross margins were 51.4%, down 130 basis points versus the year-ago period, driven by lower average pricing on mature products and higher factory cost. The precision devices segment delivered four quarter revenues of $73 million, up 4% from the year-ago period. Shipments of high performance capacitors were lower than expected due to a slower than expected ramp up of our specially-built product line. As Jeff noted, we have a strong backlog for this product line and we expect production output to increase throughout the first half of the year, driving a return to total company revenue and earnings growth beginning in the second quarter. Segment gross margins were 38% up 240 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2023, as factory productivity improvements in our legacy precision device business were partially offset by higher scrap cost and production inefficiencies as we ramp up the specialty film product lines. On a total company basis, R&D expense in the quarter was $9 million, up $1 million from Q4 of 2023, driven by increased investments in both the med tech and specialty audio and precision device segments. SG&A expenses were $26 million, up $1 million from prior year levels, driven by higher incentive compensation costs. Interest expense was $3 million in the quarter and flat with the prior year. Now I'll turn to our balance sheet and cash flow. In the fourth quarter, we generated $35 million in cash from operating activities at the midpoint of our guidance. For full year 2024, we generated cash from operating activities of $130 million. Note that cash from operations for the 3 and 12 months ended December 31 includes $2 million and $24 million respectively, generated by the consumer MEMS microphone business. Capital spending was $3 million in the quarter. During the fourth quarter, we repurchased $1.3 million shares at a total cost of $24 million and reduced our debt balance by $23 million. We exited the quarter with cash of $130 million and $203 million of debt that includes borrowings under our revolving credit facility and an interest-free seller note issued in connection with the Cornell acquisition. Lastly, our net leverage ratio based on trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA was .6 times. For the full year, we repurchased 3 million shares at a total cost of $54 million. In addition, the board of directors recently authorized $150 million increase to our stock purchase plan. Moving to our guidance. For the first quarter of 2025, revenues are expected to be between $124 million and $134 million. R&D expenses are expected to be between $8 million and $9 million. Selling and administrative expenses are expected to be within the range of $23 million to $25 million, down $2 million year over year on actions taken to reduce our fixed cost base in order to support the needs of our continuing operations. We're projecting adjusted EBIT margin for the quarter to be within a range of 16 to 18%. Interest expense in Q1 is estimated at $2 to $3 million and includes non-cash imputed interest and we expect an effective tax rate of 13 to 17%. We're projecting EPS to be within a range of $0.16 to $0.20 per share. This assumes weighted average shares outstanding during the quarter of $91 million on a fully diluted basis. We're projecting cash utilized in operating activities to be within the range of $15 to $5 million and capital spending is expected to be $4 million. Cash used in operating activities includes $12 million to settle supplier obligations related to the consumer mems' microphone business. We expect an additional payment of $12 million in Q2. These payments represent substantially all remaining supplier obligations related to the CMM business. In conclusion, based on recent order trends and existing backlog, we expect to resume year over year revenue and earnings growth beginning in the second quarter of this year and expect to deliver operating cash flow of more than 15% of revenues from continuing operations for full year 2025. I'll now turn the call back over to Jeff to share his thoughts on 2025 and beyond. Thanks, John. Now let me close with some thoughts on the strategic positioning of the company. As I look forward, design activity has never been higher for the company. We have a healthy pipeline of new opportunities ramping into production in 2025 across our end markets. Starting with MedTech, the end market for our health products remains broad and our MSA business is expanding the product offering to our customers, positioning them for continued growth. In the defense market, our high performance capacitor business is seeing orders for new and expanding programs. Demand for our specially filling capacitors is high with shipments and orders for these products expecting significant growth through 2025. With this new $75 million plus order in the energy sector, we expect even further acceleration of growth in 2026. As our operation teams increase the output and customer deliveries in specialty film, we expect to see growth in both industrial and energy markets in 2025. Further, we believe the industrial end markets have stabilized as inventory levels within our distribution partners has started to decline. Based on all the activities we are experiencing, I'm confident our ability to grow revenue and profitability again in 2025. We ended 2024 with the sale of the consumer MEMS microphone business closing in late December. The sale culminates a strategic transformation we have been embarking on for a number of years. We strengthened our balance sheet, invested in our core businesses where we have higher returns, completed an acquisition that expanded our portfolio and our serviceable market and provided new growth vectors. Lastly, we returned capital to shareholders through stock buybacks. Knowles has been built on several pillars that guided us through this transformation and will guide us as we move forward. First, through deep engineering and customer application expertise, our high performance technologies drive us as we create new products that solve difficult problems in the real world. Second, after we customize these technologies to create solutions, we leverage our world-class manufacturing operations to be a trusted, high-quality supplier to a blue-chip set of customers. Finally, we use our expertise to serve niche applications within large growing markets such as med tech, defense, industrial, electrification and energy. These fundamental pillars create value for our organization, our customers and our shareholders. For continued operations, we achieved a revenue CAGR of 12% over the past five years through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions as presented on slide 9 in the supplemental materials today. Our ability to differentiate our products coupled with our ability to leverage overhead allowed us to achieve adjusted EVA.CAGR of 36% over the same period. I'm excited about the progress we've made today and our future. I look forward to our investor forum, which we expect to host in Q2 of this year. There, I will go into further detail on our strategy in Atlanta for future growth. Now, let me turn the call over to the operator for the Q&A session. Operator?

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to start your question, simply press star 1 again. We'll take our first question from Anthony Stoss at Craig Hallam.

Hey, guys. Jeff, a couple questions. I just wanted to focus in on you commented about pricing pressure. Is it in a particular segment or is it across kind of all the product lines? And then maybe for John, in terms of the inventory, I know you said it's starting to come down, but maybe you can give us a sense of how many months it still is. And then I have one or two others.

Yeah. So first on pricing pressure, you know, I would sit there and say, generally speaking, the precision device segment, I'd say pricing net net is a positive. I think we talked about, you know, the Cornell acquisition, how we've got about five to six million dollars of pricing increase in 2024. I would expect that we would probably have maybe a neighborhood of two to three million in Cornell in 2025. And then the rest of precision devices, I would say net net price is positive. I would sit there and say there's been a little bit more pressure in the MSA business. On pricing, nothing that gets me overly worried. It's mainly in mature products. It's not about new products. It's really about product mix. And so I think we still are very confident that the MSA business will be north of 50% gross margin going forward. This is it's been in the past on the inventory. You know, I think here's what I'd say. When we look back last quarter, I kind of talked about there being about six months worth of inventory at the end of Q3 in the inventory and the distribution channel. We think that number's come down at the end of Q4, down to about four to four and a half. And what I would say is we had a pretty strong bookings quarter in Q4. Our bookings accelerated quite a bit in Q4 in the precision device segment. And you're looking at our flash reports already for Q1. January was also very strong in bookings as well. And that goes across not just distribution, but also with our direct OEM customers as well. So that's what's honestly giving us quite a bit of confidence in all year 2025 being another year of growth. Yeah, Tony, in terms of inventory, just to clarify, Jeff's referencing the inventory at our customers, either distributors or OEMs versus our inventory. Our inventory is at a pretty normalized level. And I guess what I'd say is, again, six months at the end of Q3, four to four and a half months at the end of Q4, we need to see it be below three months is where it needs to be. And so we'll see where it ends at the end of this quarter. But I guess what gives me optimism, we're seeing a lot more orders from distribution that we weren't seeing in Q3, came in Q4, and actually already in January, we're seeing some pretty strong orders.

Okay. And then just two follow ups. Jeff, you made a comment that on the specialty film that you have confidence that they'll get this fixed. Is it still ongoing? Is it another month or two? Or how long do you think before that's fixed? And then maybe, John, can you just remind us what the consumer business did on an annual revenue basis?

So on the specialty film of a business, we're definitely going to see sequential improvement in output, but it's not yet in Q1 where we want it to be. I think it's probably going to take us into the fully into the second quarter, near the end of the first half in order to really start catching up. I mean, that's, I think, where we're at. But I think what the real positive here is, Tony, is we have a big backlog of orders for shipment already in 2025. This is a really exciting area for us in terms of applications, especially film area. And I think what also gives us really excited about is, and we call it out in the press release, is we got a $75-plus million order already in Q1. I know it doesn't start shipments until 2026, but this is a real order. We got a pretty significant millions of dollars prepayment to start ramping this up. That this is going to be a very big product line for us going forward. We'll talk more about as we get closer to the shipment dates. Yeah, Tony, in response to your question on the CMM revenues for the period January 24 through December 27 when we close, roughly $260 million. Got it. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

And once again, if you have a question, press star one. We'll go next to Bob Labick at CJS Securities.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking our questions. Hey, Bob. Hey, so looking at, we'll call it NOLS 2.0. We estimate maybe 40% of revenues are going to come from MedTech, 40% Industrial and 20% Defense. But the Industrial is the harder one to break down. Can you give us a sense of the biggest end markets there and the trends kind of across those? Yeah,

Bob, I think you kind of see this. This is kind of like the story of it's a lot of the distribution business, right? And where we estimate that we ship it on an annual basis to north of 30,000 customers. I think one of the beauties of this market is we don't really have reliance. And that's areas where we think because we have so many smaller customers, we have a pretty unique opportunity here to continue to look at strategic pricing in this area. What I would say, again, kind of what I said earlier is we are starting to see stabilization. And if I look at our industrial slash distribution business, I think we believe right now what we see is we've kind of hit the bottom on that. And we're starting to rise sequentially in Q1, not to the extent yet where we want to be yet. But the bookings trend is in the right direction. And I think that's what we're kind of looking at, Bob. And so it's really hard. I think we can kind of lay out a lot of these different markets, but there's no one market that really is very, very large for us in the industrial sector. Yeah, I'd say a couple areas that we blame are automation areas, HVAC areas, downhole pumps in the energy. But semiconductor equipment, there's semiconductor equipment. I mean, not just two or three, there's quite a few markets where it's...

Okay, great. And then obviously you mentioned the new specialty film products and the impact on the quarter and whatnot. Maybe give us a little more color on that product, what areas that's going to be sold in. And then R&D investments in general, obviously, if you're rolling out new products, we should see some acceleration and growth going forward as you've talked about. So give us a sense of what the R&D and innovation is being spent on.

Yeah. So I mean, I think what we have a core, and especially film area, we have a core capability. And the applications that we're selling into is what we call pulse power applications. It's applications that require a significant amount of energy in a very, very short period of time. And what they're doing is this application is buying a lot of capacitors, fully charging them, and then releasing the energy all at once. It's a very unique capability that we have, and we're ramping this up. I feel very confident about the shipments from this order, starting in 2026, we'll be ramping this up. But you can kind of see that right now we're ramping up for a whole bunch of smaller customers. And then we have this one big customer who's going to drive a lot of growth in 2026.

Got it. Okay, great. Thank you very much.

And that concludes the question and answer session. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. You may now disconnect.