Proto Labs, Inc.

Greetings. Welcome to ProtoLab's third quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Jason Frakeman, Corporate Controller. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Sherry, and welcome everyone to ProtoLabs' third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. I'm joined today by Rob Bedore, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Dan Schumacher, Chief Financial Officer. This morning, ProtoLabs issued a press release announcing its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2024. The release is available on the company's website. In addition, a prepared slide presentation is available online at the web address provided in our press release. Our discussion today will include statements relating to future performance and expectations that are or may be considered forward-looking statements and subject to many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Please refer to our earnings press release and recent SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K for information on certain risks that could cause actual outcomes to differ materially and adversely from any forward-looking statements made today. The results and guidance we will discuss include non-GAAP financial measures consistent with our past practice. Please refer to our press release and the accompanying slide presentation at the investor relations section of our company website for a complete reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results. Now I'll turn the call over to Rob Bedore.

Thanks, Jason. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our third quarter 2024 earnings call. We had solid execution in the quarter, with results coming in above expectations. Despite continued dynamic challenges in the manufacturing sector, our disciplined approach and resilient business model drove solid financial and operational results. Year-to-date, we've grown non-gap earnings per share over 10%. Additionally, in the third quarter, Protolabs generated its highest quarterly operating cash flow since 2020 before the acquisition of 3D Hubs. This was driven in part by continued gross margin improvements in the factory and the network and is a testament to the profitability of our business model against any macro backdrop driven by our unique comprehensive fulfillment model. Our revenue growth is flat year-to-date, and I believe we can accelerate our growth by continuing to invest in our priorities and execute our strategy under the realigned organizational structure. As a reminder, last quarter we announced a realignment separating regional go-to-market teams from a new global fulfillment organization in order to focus our regional teams on our customers to drive growth and to enable global efficiency in fulfillment. Before expanding on the progress made across our realigned structure, I'd like to first cover our strategic priorities. We have made substantial progress on our 2024 priorities to date. As previously mentioned, increasing the number of customers using our comprehensive services across factory and network is critical to our growth strategy. In the last 12 months, the number of customers using the combined offer grew 35% year over year. We are still in the early stages of exposing the full combined offer to customers, and this is a huge growth opportunity for Provolapse. Our other main priority for the year is to increase revenue per customer contact. We've made great strides here as well. Year-to-date, revenue per customer contact is up 5%, demonstrating progress on our shift toward higher-value production orders. Let me now bring this progress to light through the following recent examples of how customers in leading industries with high requirement needs are using Protolabs for production. The first example comes from a world-class clean energy customer that went to market earlier this year with a fully integrated solar and battery system. Protolabs manufactured and assembled multiple parts in the factory to assist the customer's production. Our world-class manufacturing lead times and complete assembly help the customer ramp more efficiently than ever. That's just one way that we win in production. In another recent case, a high-profile medical instrumentation customer relied on Protolabs to solve a key need in their supply chain, low- to mid-volume injection molding production parts. In this customer's case, we have had a strong relationship for many years, supporting early prototypes through 3D printing. Our recent expanded focus on quality and increased inspection capabilities allowed us to win production business with this customer, and they were able to benefit from our quality and speed to keep their new product launch timeline intact. These examples illustrate how our established brand and position in prototyping enable us to grow in production with our existing customers. I also want to highlight our recent collaboration with Harley-Davidson Factory Racings. which we detailed in a press release at the end of September. Harley's engineering team utilizes Protolab's digital manufacturing services to manufacture critical components for their racing motorcycles in a few days. After a Sunday race, the team has a week to prototype, test, learn, iterate, manufacture, and replace critical parts using specialty materials, all before the next race the following weekend. This continuous improvement, enabled by Protolabs' rapid manufacturing, has resulted in significant year-over-year improvements in race times and podium finishes. Harley-Davidson Factory Racing has not only leveraged Protolabs for quick-turn parts, but also our global network of manufacturing partners for larger and more complex parts. These examples demonstrate the power of protolabs to enable our customers to drive innovation, accelerate time to market, and improve performance throughout the prototype to production cycle. Now, I'd like to provide an update on the realigned organizational structure. With regional go-to-market teams now solely focused on revenue generation, The newly created global operations organization is tasked with fulfilling customer part orders by a factory and network in the most efficient manner. We continue to refine our portfolio fulfillment options to optimize consolidated gross margin. At times, this means leveraging our own unique manufacturing capabilities through the factory and at others, it involves network partners. Since our announcement last quarter, the Global Ops Organization has already begun to find ways to improve fulfillment of customer orders. Specifically, we will leverage our global operations to better fulfill customer orders for metal additive parts and some injection molded parts in Europe. Accordingly, in October, we announced portfolio reshaping decisions to streamline our operational efficiency. We will close our prototype injection molding facility in Eschenlohe, Germany, and we will discontinue direct metal laser sintering, or DMLS, manufacturing services through our factory operation in Europe. We remain fully committed to continue offering all our manufacturing services to customers across Europe, including injection molding and metal 3D printing, through other existing factory and network fulfillment options. The only change is in how these services are fulfilled, consistent with the realignment to a new global fulfillment strategy. This decision was not taken lightly, and I want to take a moment to thank all impacted employees for their commitment to Protolabs and to serving our customers. The closure and discontinuation are in no way a reflection of their efforts. We will provide transition services to those impacted, and we truly wish them all the best. Looking ahead, we believe these decisions will improve operational and fulfillment efficiency. while bringing the full capabilities of our global operations footprint to our customers. We are acting with urgency to capitalize on our unique ability to meet customer needs, accelerate our growth, and continue to drive industry-leading profitability and cash flows. In summary, we posted solid third quarter results while continuing to manage through ongoing manufacturing sector challenges. We remain committed to accelerating our growth as highlighted by the actions we initiated at the end of the second quarter to reorganize our internal structure. We continue to win in production, as I illustrated through examples of customers using Protolabs for high requirement and used parts. That continued shift will better position the company for growth and value creation over the long term. We are the clear profit and cash flow leader in the industry and are committed to executing on our priorities and increasing value for shareholders. I want to thank our entire Protolabs team for the tireless efforts to best serve our customers and execute accordingly. I'll now hand it over to Dan to cover our financials in detail, as well as our outlook for the fourth quarter. Dan?

Thanks, Rob. Our financial results begin on page eight of the slide presentation. Third quarter revenue was $125.6 million. representing a 4% decline from the record revenue we achieved in the third quarter of last year. Revenue was flat sequentially and slightly above our guidance range, as order rates picked up more than anticipated through August and September. Turning to revenue by service on slide 9. Third quarter injection molding revenue declined 10% year-over-year in constant currencies, as we saw weakness in the industrial and consumer electronics verticals. To drive growth in molding, we continue to invest in production capabilities, and our new regional go-to-market teams are making production business a priority. CNC machining was flat year-over-year in constant currencies. We saw strong growth in our network CNC business. Third quarter 3D printing revenue declined 1% year-over-year in constant currencies, and sheet metal revenue declined 13% year-over-year. We serve 22,511 customer contacts in the third quarter. Revenue per customer contact declined 1% year over year, largely due to the decline in injection molding revenue, our highest value per order service. As Rob discussed, growing revenue per customer is a long-term priority of ours, yet there may be bumpiness from quarter to quarter as we shift to more production work. In that respect, year-to-date revenue per customer is up 5% over 2023. Third quarter consolidated non-GAAP gross margin increased 50 basis points sequentially to 46.2%, with improvements in both the factory and the network. Factory gross margin was 49% in the third quarter, up sequentially from 48.8%, driven by continued automation improvements and excellent work by our plant management teams to align staffing with volumes. ProtoLab's network gross margin was 35%, up from 32.8% in the second quarter, driven by our AI-powered pricing and sourcing algorithms. Year-to-date non-GAAP gross margin is 45.8%. up 130 basis points compared to the first three quarters of 2023. We are very pleased with our gross margin improvement, a testament to both our hardworking employees and our resilient, profitable business model. No other company in the digital manufacturing services space can match the margin profile of our combined factory and network model. Third quarter non-GAAP operating expenses declined $1.8 million compared to the second quarter of 2024. As a percent of revenue, non-GAAP operating expenses decreased to 35.3 percent from 36.8 percent in the prior quarter, driven primarily by lower incentive compensation. In summary, third quarter non-GAAP earnings per share were 47 cents up 9 cents sequentially on flat revenue growth. As Rob mentioned earlier, year-to-date adjusted EPS is up over 10 percent year-over-year on flat revenue. We will continue to invest our profits to drive future growth through our priority areas further enabled by the previously addressed realignment. Transitioning to cash flow and balance sheet highlights on slide 11. Cash flow from operations was 24.8 million, our highest quarterly figure since 2020, prior to the acquisition of 3D Hubs. As I say on every earnings call, our business model generates industry-leading cash flows, allowing us to invest in organic growth and return capital to shareholders. To that end, we repurchased 19 million of common shares in the third quarter. On September 30th, 2024, We had 117.6 million of cash and investments on the balance sheet and zero debt. Our outlook for the fourth quarter of 2024 is outlined on slide 13. We expect to generate revenue between 115 and $123 million. This guidance incorporates order and revenue trends through the first four weeks of the fourth quarter. Further, a sequential revenue decline in the fourth quarter is normal seasonality in our business due to fewer working days and lower orders during the holiday season. We expect foreign currency to have an approximately $1 million favorable impact on revenue compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. Moving to earnings guidance, we anticipate non-GAAP add-backs in the fourth quarter to include stock-based compensation expense of approximately $4.4 million, Germany closure expenses of $4 million, an amortization expense of $900,000. We currently estimate a non-GAAP effective tax rate of 20% plus or minus 50 basis points. In summary, we expect fourth quarter non-GAAP earnings per share between 28 and 36 cents. That concludes our prepared remarks. Sherry, please open the line for questions.

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question is from Brian Dabb with William Blair. Please proceed.

Hi, good morning. Good morning. Hey, Dan. Hey, Rob.

I just wanted to talk about gross margin. The gross margin is pretty solid and higher than it's been in a while. Where do you expect to be able to sustain that and how do you see the fourth quarter in terms of gross margin? I'm also, in asking this question, looking at the network, which is of course, you know, somewhat lower gross margin. And it looks like growth there decelerated some. So I'm just wondering if you're seeing maybe, you know, a convergence in the growth rate eventually here in the overall business between the network and the factory, and maybe you don't have this headwind in terms of gross margin from the faster growth on the network side.

Yeah, let me... Brian, I think there's two questions in there. I think one's related to gross margin and one's about the growth from the network. I'll take the gross margin one first. Yeah, what I would tell you is the gross margin percent improved, as I said, both in the factory and the network. And so, you know, in terms of the network gross margins, as we've talked about before, you know, we're experiencing gross margins that are – above, you know, the range that we've given. And, you know, we're really happy with our sourcing algorithms and how we're able to use that model to drive more profitability through that area. Now, you know, we've been in, you know, a state in which manufacturing continues to contract. You know, we're keeping our range at that 25 to 30%. even though it's at 35%, but I don't expect conditions to change much quarter over quarter and would expect that we're going to be above the range on network gross margins in the fourth quarter. As it relates to the factory improvements, we continue to add automation to the factory side of our business, and we're doing a better job in terms of managing labor costs as that goes through. you know, there's improvement there as well. So I know you kind of alluded to, is there a mix in which, you know, the network may be not growing as high as it was last year? You know, there may be some aspect to that, but if you look at the core, both the network gross margins and the factory gross margins are improving.

Now, Rob, did you want to take a question on network growth? Yeah, certainly. Thank you, Brian, for the question. So, yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, look, so in Q3 of last year, we saw absolutely stupendous growth in the network, right, north of 80%. On the year-over-year comparison, you know, we grew network 11% in the third quarter this year, building upon that. And we did that in the context of a difficult macro. I think I read the report. We're now at 22 consecutive months of contraction in manufacturing. And so I'm pleased with it. I'm very confident that we can grow the network even higher in the future and fully expect that the network is going to continue to be a strong growth engine for our business. And we're seeing customers adopting it, right? I mean, we had 35% growth year over year in customers adopting our comprehensive offer, buying more of the network. So I'm pleased with that and do expect it will continue to be a strong growth engine for us.

One more thing, Brian, that was in your question that did not cover on gross margin. We do expect gross margin to come down quarter over quarter. As we go into the holiday season, we're a little more inefficient with our labor as we're using contractors and such, and the volume ends up being a little more uneven as you go through that holiday period. So we would expect the gross margin to come down just Q3 to Q4.

Right. Okay. And that's what I figured. I mean, obviously that's typical in the fourth quarter for you. Yeah, it's typical. Right. Rob, on the blend of... The idea that you're getting more people using the blend of the services, what can you tell me about where that stands now in terms of – it's still very early in that opportunity, right? Is it a low single-digit percentage of the customer contacts that are using both services?

Yeah, we're still in early innings with this service. Absolutely. So I see it as a really big continued growth opportunity for our business. But I'm quite pleased to see the rate of adoption that we're getting in terms of customers buying the comprehensive offer and also more and more customers using us for production and bringing value to them, like in the examples that I shared earlier. uh, in the prepared remarks, but, but yeah, overall, uh, we're still in the early innings. I would consider it, you know, less than 5% of customers. Um, so there's a lot of opportunity for us to continue to penetrate and that's what our go-to-market teams are focused on.

Okay, great. And maybe I'll just ask one more and then pass it on. Um, You touched on it in the prepared remarks. I think that the increased inspection capabilities that I've talked to you guys a lot about and seen the capabilities in the facility, and it's impressive. It seems like that's a key strategic initiative that you have, and it's making a difference. Can you just talk a little bit more about the traction that you're getting from the high-volume work? Obviously, the You know, you've got, you know, a challenging environment that you're operating in. Revenue is down, but still the revenue per customer is up. And, you know, so this is like a key lever that you're pulling in. Can you just talk about the traction you're getting in higher volume orders through that?

Yeah, so, you know, we've been going through this transformation, right, to really drive production and to serve our customers end-to-end across their entire product lifecycle. And of course, given that we started with prototyping, that means doing more and more production work for them. And so adding capabilities around comprehensive offerings, the ability to produce a much broader range of their part needs, and also being able to do the inspection and other documentation, process control documentation and the like that they expect in production have been important additions. And as we've brought that forward. Our customers have been adopting it, and we're seeing nice growth there. That drives our average revenue per customer to be, I think, the highest in our industry, and we're seeing continued growth in that number as more and more customers are adopting production and and we're seeing that grow kind of 35% in terms of the customers buying the comprehensive offer year over year last quarter. So I'm pleased with it. I think it's, again, we're in the early stages. We're really driving to grow it, and we're seeing strong and positive customer response. So I think we're on the right track, and we're going to keep focused.

All right, great. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Our next question is from Jim Rashudi with Needham & Company. Please proceed.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks. Congrats on the quarter, by the way. If we go back to August, you talked about slowing activity, and it sounds like the pace picked up a little bit relative to your expectations. Any sense as to what drove that better showing in August, September? Was it just the overall market, some of the things that you've done. And I'm just wondering if you've seen some of that traditional pickup in the daily rates, how has that been trending thus far in October?

Yeah, Jim, the market that we're playing in is very uneven, is what I would tell you. As I talked about in the prepared remarks, we saw it in really June and into July that a lower order rate. And what we did see, to your point, is we did see a higher pickup than normal seasonality in our order rate perspective in August and September. But that was starting from a data point of July that was really lower than historical, obviously, because we reported that revenue was down. So it was nice to see the pickup in August to September. I would say there wasn't anything in particular that I would point out. I would just say the general business responded better than what seasonality would say from a really low June and July. And as I'm creating the guide, again, I'm looking at four weeks of data that I have around shipments and orders, and the guide is showing kind of a normal decline quarter over quarter, Q3 to Q4, that we normally see.

Yeah, I would just say I'm pleased that go-to-market teams were able to get better than expected traction, right, as we kind of ended the quarter.

And a nice sequential step up in operating margins in the quarter. And I'm wondering if there's a way for you to help us with the global operations organization alignment. How much of that would you attribute to it? Or is it just mainly a function? The revenues came in at the upper end of the range. We saw some nice solid improvement in gross margins as well.

Yeah, what I would say is, again, kind of to repeat, two aspects to that gross margin, one being our network gross margin, which is really about how we continue to improve our sourcing algorithms and improve the pricing within that model. And the second is really on a plant-by-plant perspective in terms of the automation that we're putting in, and the tools that we're using to manage our costs in those areas in an environment in which the volume can be volatile. We just continue to improve in those respects, and that's what drove it. In terms of the new organization, I'll let Rob talk to that.

Yeah, so I think as we look at that longer term, Again, the strategy there was a few things. One, we want to be able to bring our global full capabilities. So wherever we've got manufacturing capabilities around the world, we want to be able to bring those full capabilities to every customer, regardless of what region that they're in, to be able to serve them fully and to the best of our ability. Secondly, that structure now allows us to also reduce areas of redundancy or parts of the operation where maybe we're not operating at healthy margins, right? We have some more degrees of freedom to really optimize that. And so you're seeing, you know, these recent announcements is one example of that. And I think over time, you'll see more and more opportunity for us to kind of optimize our operations from that standpoint, to both drive you know, healthy profitability for the business, but also make sure that we're serving our customers as fully as possible.

Thank you.

Our next question is from Troy Jensen with Cancer Fitzgerald. Please proceed.

Hey, gentlemen. Congrats on the great margins and cost controls here. Thanks, Troy. Thanks, Troy. Good morning. Hey, so maybe I'll first start off with the German facility update. Was this the old, was it the AlphaCam acquisition, mainly additive out in Germany?

Yeah, that's right. So these were a couple of the components of the business that we acquired from AlphaForm years ago.

AlphaForm, okay, all right. Did you do much DMOS in Europe, or is it all mostly polymers and you did metals in Raleigh?

Yeah, so we have both polymers and metal additive manufacturing in Europe, in Putzbrunn, and this announcement was specific to the metal, the DMLS, and so we'll be phasing that out of fulfillment from Germany and fulfilling it instead through a combination of of our capabilities in North Carolina and our network partners.

But what I would tell you, Troy, is similar to our Raleigh operation. You know, DMLS is a good chunk of the business, but it's not the majority of the business in either location. Okay.

All right. I guess we'll two questions come of that then. Can you help me out with the OPEX savings? I know we probably won't see it in Q4, but how much will this reduce OPEX in, like, either March or June quarters of next year?

This is Troy. So this is more of a savings from a gross margin perspective than it is from an OPEX perspective. For instance, in Putzbrun, we're still maintaining the facility. We are just fulfilling the DMLS differently, both through our manufacturing partners and also through Raleigh.

Understood. I thought it was shuttering the facility, but it's just kind of realigning it. I get it.

So we do have another facility that is the precision injection molding facility, and so that one we are closing.

Okay, cool. And I get it. You're doing this because you can get better margins running through the network. Curious if there's other products kind of in your portfolio that make sense. I guess I'm wondering primarily about sheet metal. I've seen that to me that's like a lower gross margin product segment that hasn't grown for you guys. Would it make sense to kind of run that through the network business also?

Yeah, so last quarter I think we definitely saw headwinds in sheet metal. I'll remind you that's our smallest service and it's got a lot of exposure to kind of the computer electronics segment, which which did see slowing last quarter and actually has seen headwinds for several quarters now. I'll remind you that we've taken action there. We've right-sized that business. We're monitoring it and operating it very closely. So I would say that the new global structure enables us to, I think, have some degrees of freedom around this that we haven't had before. And, you know, we're considering all these things as we go forward.

Gotcha. All right, guys, we'll keep up the good work. Thanks, Troy. Thank you.

Our next question is from Greg Palm with Craig Callum Capital Group. Please proceed.

Hey, thanks for taking the questions here. Maybe just kind of starting with the outperforming I'm curious if you can attribute any of the outperformance to sort of the realignment. Rob, it sounded like maybe you hinted at that. Maybe that was a little bit of that. And then just to be clear, as it relates to the order trends, you said pick up August, September. Have those picked up in October? Have they stayed at similar rates? I'm just trying to gauge kind of the guide of where order rates are for the first four weeks. versus what normal seasonality is in the quarter?

Thanks for the question, Greg. I'm pleased with how we were able to end the quarter and beat our expectations. The work that our go-to-market teams did in terms of driving demand in the second half of the quarter was great to see. I do believe that as we refocused our teams through this reorganization, focusing our go-to-market teams on the customers within their region, allowing them to specialize and focus on that, I do believe helped and expect to see that continue to help provide benefits for growth as we continue to go forward with this model.

On the order rate question, no, they have not picked up. I would say it more that June and July were soft. And then we got to a more normal kind of seasonality in August and September. So there hasn't been a pickup in October, and that's reflected in the guide.

Okay. And, you know, the margin, you know, performance was impressive. I'm curious on the network side, have you changed – you know, the algorithm at all, the way you're sourcing stuff, or, you know, do you attribute some of the outperformance, not just this quarter, but, you know, year to date? Is that more of a byproduct of the environment we're in, you know, the fact that a lot of suppliers just have more open capacity right now?

Yeah, I think you're right. So I attribute it to two things. One is we launched this pricing algorithm about a year and a half ago. which was a significant improvement, and then we continued to make incremental improvements in it over that period, and I think you're seeing that play out in terms of the margin. As we look at it externally, we believe that we are very competitive in terms of our pricing, but we are able to get, and we've got very strong close rates, right? So we're seeing that be very competitive, yet we're able to continue to increase the the gross margin because of the way the algorithm is working. So I'm quite pleased with that. At the same time, I would agree with you that we're clearly seeing excess capacity in manufacturing, and that is factoring in to the margins that we're able to get right now in this macro environment.

Yeah, okay. Makes sense. I guess just lastly, as it relates, I just want to make sure I'm clear on the P&L impact of sort of the recent news around the European facility. What is the expected P&L impact, I guess? So it doesn't sound like much of an OPEX, but it sounds like potentially some COGS savings. Are you able to quantify anything at all?

Yeah, nothing that we're going to specifically come out with in terms of specific numbers, but there's a precision molding part of the business that, you know, some of that business will be able to be fulfilled through the network and some of it will not. So there is, you know, some of that business that we looked at as wasn't strategic for our production strategy. And so there is some revenue that won't be there, but we should see some gross margin improvement overall. I would say it's not a huge amount because of the relative size of what those businesses are.

And I assume the revenue impact, I mean, it's more like in the hundreds of thousands of maybe business that gets lost versus millions or?

Yeah. Yes. It's not a huge amount. And what I would say is, you know, what that business was doing was doing much more complex molds, but it was very difficult the way they were doing that to take it to production. And so what we're shifting is doing more of those complex molds through the network using steel tools and other types so that we can then take that customer from prototype to production as a part of our strategy. So what we feel is although there might be a short-term impact from that, from the longer term it much better aligns with our strategy to move more to production over the long term. Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

All right. I will leave it there. Thanks. All right. Thank you.

With no further questions, this will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.