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spk09: Good morning and welcome to the Regal Rexner third quarter 2023 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. Please note this event is being recorded. I would like now to turn the conference over to Robert Berry, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk04: Great. Thank you, Alan. Good morning, and welcome to Rico Rexnord's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Louis Pingham, our chief executive officer, and Rob Reihard, our chief financial officer. I'd like to remind you that during today's call, you may hear forward-looking statements related to our future financial results, plans, and business operations. Our actual results may differ materially from those projected or implied due to a variety of factors, we described in greater detail in today's press release and in our reports filed with the SEC, which are available on the regalrexnord.com website. On slide three, we state that we are presenting certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are useful to our investors and have included reconciliations between the non-GAAP financial information and the GAAP equivalent in the press release and in the presentation materials. Turning to slide four, let me briefly review the agenda for today's call. Louis will lead off with his opening comments and an overview of our 3Q performance. Rob Reihard will then provide our third quarter financial results in more detail and provide an update to our guidance. We'll then move to Q&A, after which Louis will have some closing remarks. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Louis.
spk00: Great, thanks Rob, and good morning everyone. Thanks for joining us to discuss our third quarter earnings, to get an update on our business, and for your continued interest in Regal Brexnord. Our third quarter can be characterized by strong, controllable execution against an end market backdrop that became weaker than we expected in the quarter, causing us to fall short of our sales and earning expectations for the quarter and for the year. Our strong execution is most evident in our cash flow performance, we generated $162 million of free cash flow in the quarter, keeping us firmly on track to hit our target of at least $650 million for 2023, even with the lower sales and EBITDA expectations. What we generated in Q3, plus some cash on hand, allowed us to pay down $185 million of debt which is further lowering our interest expense forecast. Our team also delivered roughly flat adjusted EBITDA margins down 10 basis points versus prior year on a pro forma basis as our top line fell by 8.5% on a pro forma organic basis, implying a deleverage rate of 22% We also made significant progress rebalancing the portfolio towards our most profitable growth opportunities by reaching an agreement to sell our industrial motors and generators businesses for cash proceeds of $400 million, which is on track to close in the first half of 2024. Adjusting for this sale. our enterprise gross and EBITDA margins should rise by over 100 basis points. And because we intend to deploy all net proceeds to debt reduction, we should be able to accelerate our balance sheet deleveraging. At the same time, We believe our associates in these businesses will benefit by joining an organization that is more aligned with a growth strategy in global industrial motors and generators, which should allow them to excel in the future. We have clearly transformed our portfolio with gross margins four years ago in the mid-20s to achieving mid-30s gross margins today and a clear path to 40% gross margins, which will be helped by the industrial sale. As much as I am pleased with our controllable execution in the third quarter, I am disappointed that our financial performance is falling short of prior expectations, a dynamic largely explained by weaker end markets. Our sales in third quarter were up 24.5% all in, but down 8.5% on a pro forma organic basis. Four of our top five end markets, representing roughly 50% of our sales, were weaker than expected. This weakness was also apparent in our order rates, which on a daily pro forma basis were down 10 percent in the quarter. We did face a fairly challenging 24 percent two-year stack to compare on orders, but performance was below our expected mid-single-digit decline. Normalizing global supply chains continued to impact orders, but a more cautious channel And in some cases, weaker end-user demand were also factors. Our orders and sales performance resulted in a quarter-end backlog that remains above our normal levels in IPS and AMC, with PES levels now close to what we would consider normal. Book bill was 0.94 in the quarter. In October, we did start to see early signs of improvement in our order rates, particularly in IPS, which saw modest year-over-year growth and sequential growth in PES and AMC. This makes us cautiously optimistic that we may be approaching an inflection point. Though an improvement versus what we saw in the third quarter, our current guidance assumes fourth quarter orders are flattish to slightly down versus prior year. Despite third quarter top line pressures, margins in the quarter were strong. Our adjusted gross margins came in at 34%. The third quarter adjusted EBITDA margin was 20.6%, down 10 basis points versus the prior year on a pro forma basis. Two of our segments also achieved nice year-over-year adjusted EBITDA margin expansion. PES was up 310 basis points to 19.7%. And pro forma margins at AMC rose 130 basis points to 24%. Drivers include price cost, improved operational efficiencies, various 80-20 initiatives, and disciplined cost management by our teams. Where we struggled in the quarter was IPS, which saw margins fall 330 basis points versus prior year. The principal driver was mixed pressure, much of it tied to short cycle weakness in the higher margin aftermarket channel. But another factor also emerged during the quarter, which relates to PMC footprint synergy realization. Those who have followed us for some time know that we like to set ambitious operational targets and then work with discipline and urgency to achieve them. I think our track record on margins in particular demonstrates our ability to execute in this manner. However, during the quarter, we decided to incur higher costs to minimize customer disruptions related to our footprint actions. This decision is resulting in some temporary pressure to IPS margins, but to be clear, There is no change to the permanent reductions to our cost structure that our PMC, or for that matter, our ultra-footprint synergy actions are expected to bring. Rob will elaborate on this topic a bit further in discussing segment performance and our updated outlook. However, in total, I am pleased with our team's performance in the quarter, and I want to thank all of our associates for their disciplined execution in a tougher end market environment, and for their hard work and dedication to making Regal Rexnord stronger every day. Shifting focus. You may recall that each quarter I have been spending a few minutes introducing our principal AMC businesses to help investors better appreciate how we are well positioned to accelerate profitable growth for many years to come. This quarter, I'd like to spend a couple of minutes discussing aerospace and defense. Our A&D division, which grew 27% in Q3, sells highly engineered components used in commercial aerospace, air and land-based defense, helicopter, and space exploration applications. These markets are positioned to benefit from strong secular growth tailwinds tied to making air travel more sustainable, to countries addressing rising geopolitical risk, and to our OEM customers prioritizing suppliers with lower risk supply chains. In the realm of aircraft sustainability, we see greater electrification of commercial and military aircraft, the introduction of alternative fuels, and increased use of hybrid propulsion systems. As global geopolitical tensions rise, countries are enhancing their domestic defense capabilities, which is driving demand for our defense products. And in the wake of recent periods of global supply chain disruption, customers are shifting their business to supplier partners with better-managed, lower-risk supply chains. All of these trends play to Regal Resnort's strength. We have been making meaningful investments, in R&D, in engineering, and in talent to significantly raise our new product vitality and production capacity and thereby ensure we are well positioned to continue addressing our customers' needs effectively. I am pleased to share that we have solid momentum. As you can see on the slide, our aerospace business sales are tracking up 20% in 2023. And roughly one quarter of this growth reflects outgrowth tied to the new product investments the business has been making. Through the combination of our legacy Regal Aerospace business with that of Rexnord PMC and now Altra's aerospace businesses, we have a more comprehensive product portfolio and a scalable global platform and footprint to expand from selling components to also providing vertically integrated electromechanical motion control solutions. Today, after only a couple of quarters since the transaction closed, the combined Regal Rexnord A&D businesses have a robust funnel of synergistic bid opportunities. When it comes to our ability to provide differentiated service levels to our customers, our manufacturing footprint and supply chain are increasingly a competitive advantage at a time when such reliability is critically relevant to customers. To this end, we recently completed construction of a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Chihuahua, Mexico. We're tapping into highly skilled local labor pools in a region that has become an aerospace center of excellence for many of our customers, expanding our capacity to address rising demand while improving our service levels and increasing the value we can offer to our customers. I should add, the facility also incorporates a range of state of the art energy and water efficiency features in its design, supporting our commitment to be good corporate stewards of the environment. So when we step back and connect the dots on the power of our A&D portfolio, differentiated, highly engineered products, deep domain expertise, longstanding customer relationships, and opportunities to leverage the combined capability of Regal Rexnord's total portfolio, we see a business position for strong outgrowth into the foreseeable future. And with that, I will now turn the call over to Rob to take you through our third quarter segment financial performance and discuss our latest guidance.
spk07: Thanks, Louis, and good morning, everyone. I'll also begin by thanking our global team for their hard work and disciplined execution at a time when we are facing challenging end market headwinds. Now, let's review our segment operating performance. Starting with automation, and Motion Control, or AMC, organic sales in the third quarter, pro forma for the ultra acquisition, were roughly flat to the prior year, reflecting strength in the data center, aerospace, and medical markets, tempered by weakness in general industrial and global factory automation, particularly the short cycle book and ship business. I will also point out that year-to-date organic sales growth for the AMC segment is up 5.1% on a pro forma basis. Adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter was 24%, in line with our expectation, and at 130 basis points versus the prior year on a pro forma basis. The margin performance reflects pockets of strength in mixed positive markets, such as data center, aerospace, and medical, along with favorable price costs, strong operational synergy realization, and discretionary cost management. Borders in AMC On a pro forma organic basis, we're down roughly 20% in the third quarter on a daily basis, with book-to-bill at 0.86. We expected orders to decline in the quarter versus prior year as supply chains, lead times, and inventory levels normalized. However, order intake was lighter than expected in our book-ship business as more cautious general industrial end markets pushed out inventory replenishment orders. This was most pronounced in our businesses with factory automation exposure, where blanket orders and inventory buildup had been more significant. In October, book-to-bill tracked at roughly 1.1, which we were pleased by, but the order mix is still weighted more towards new projects with longer shipment dates versus in-quarter book-in-turn. For perspective, AMC's third quarter order decline is against a two-year stat just above 40%, and the segment's backlog at the end of the third quarter remains the most elevated of all our segments, roughly 50% above normal. While this level of backlog gives us optimism, its longer cycle waiting will likely benefit AMC in 2024. In fact, the dynamic of weak short cycle orders mainly in automation-exposed businesses, versus stronger long-cycle orders and backlog in automation, aero, medical, and data center, was a key driver of AMC's flat third-quarter sales. We expect this dynamic largely to continue in fourth quarter as well, before starting to improve in early 2024. Turning to Industrial Powertrain Solutions, or IPS, Pro forma organic sales in the third quarter were down 3.7% versus the prior year. Growth in the quarter mainly reflects weakness in the global industrial and ag markets, partially offset by strength in energy, along with metals and mining. In particular, our book shift business was down more in the third quarter than anticipated, which was driven mostly by destocking. Adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter for IPS was 21.7%, below our expectations due to weaker mix and volumes, net of favorable price cost and synergies. Mix, in particular, came in much weaker than our original expectations and presented a significant headwind to margins in the quarter. The weakness in short cycle industrial has a disproportionately large impact on our standard products. which are often sold through distribution and tend to carry well above average margins. At the same time, some of the IPS markets seeing strong growth, such as metals and mining, tend to drive demand for certain low-mix products. The good news is that the channel for standard product is destocking, and when it rebounds, should lever at very attractive rates. As Lewis mentioned, We made a decision during the quarter to incur higher costs in IPS aimed at maintaining quality and service levels for our customers during a period of peak manufacturing footprint actions related to our PMC merger synergies. We are currently in the process of rationalizing multiple manufacturing facilities, and during the quarter, we encountered lower than anticipated labor productivity in the catch plants. that is, at the sites into which we are consolidating production lines. We estimate these higher customer service assurance costs are impacting IPS by approximately $16 million in the second half of this year, weighted roughly 60-40 between the third and fourth quarter. While these costs are masking some of the synergy benefits, they are temporary and in no way impact the permanent level of synergy savings that we ultimately expect to realize from the PMC and Ultra transactions. Pro forma organic orders in IPS were down 4% in the third quarter on a daily basis, and book to bill was just above 1.0. In October, book to bill once again tracked at 1.0, and orders were up low single digits. For perspective, IPS's third quarter order decline is against a two-year stack of nearly 30%, and the segment's backlog at the end of the third quarter remains well above normal. Turning to power efficiency solutions, or PES, organic sales in the third quarter were down 19.1% from the prior year. The decline was driven by significant channel destocking activity and weaker demand in the North America residential HVAC market, weakness in China and Europe, and destock pressure in the U.S. general commercial market. These destock pressures were anticipated, and PES's sales performance is directionally consistent, albeit modestly more severe versus the expectations we outlined on our last earnings call. The good news is that we now believe destocking in residential AC is mostly behind us, although as the heating season begins, we believe there is likely still too much furnace inventory in the channel. The adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter for PES was 19.7%, up 310 basis points versus the prior year period, and modestly ahead of our expectation. Key contributors to the PES margin performance were favorable price cost, improved operational efficiency, lower freight, and favorable mix, partially offset by lower volumes. We also continue to selectively deploy 8020 across the business to move away from lower margin Quad 4 business and focus on growing our Quad 1 business to better serve our most valued customers. Overall, strong margin performance despite sizable top line headwinds achieved through disciplined execution by our PES team. Shifting to orders, orders in PES for the third quarter were down 9% on a daily basis. Book to bill in the third quarter was 1.0 and tracked at 0.97 in October. On the following slide, we highlight some additional financial updates for your reference. Notably, on the right side of this page, you'll see we ended the quarter with total debt of $6.5 billion down $185 million and net debt of $5.9 billion, down $124 million versus the end of the second quarter. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA is 3.86 and our interest coverage ratio is 3.24 times. Free cash flow in the quarter was very strong, coming in at $151.5 million, up from $111.1 million in the prior year period. The teams continue to do a great job improving free cash flow performance, aided by improving working capital, and in particular by lowering inventories, where we continue to see lots of additional opportunity. Moving to the outlook. I would like to start by providing an update on how our principal end markets are tracking versus our expectations earlier this year. The table on this slide shows our end market, the percent of our sales each represents from largest to smallest, and in the third column, our growth expectation for each end market as of the first quarter, which also guided our second quarter expectations. The fourth column indicates how the market was tracking as of the third quarter indicated as stronger, weaker, or as expected versus our prior expectation. You can see that four of our top five end markets specifically general industrial, consumer, food and beverage, and commercial are tracking weaker versus our prior expectation. The fourth of the top five, non-residential construction, is tracking largely as expected. These in-market developments are the reason we now expect 2023 organic sales be down roughly 6% on a pro forma basis versus 2022 and versus our prior expectation of being down slightly. Finally, In the last column to the right, we are providing an early look on how we are thinking about in-market growth rates in 2024, which we will update again when we report fourth quarter and provide our complete 2024 outlook. You can see that we expect generally more favorable in-market conditions next year. A few things in this column that I would highlight. The consumer market, which largely reflects our residential HVAC business, moves from red to green. implying an inflection to low to mid single-digit growth. The non-res construction market, which largely reflects our commercial HVAC business, is forecast to be flat to slightly up. The significant declines we are experiencing this year in food and beverage are expected to subside. The commercial market, which was expected to be flattish in 2023 but has been much weaker, mostly due to destocking, is expected to slightly improve in 2024. And finally, we expect to see continued healthy in-market growth in a number of our secular markets, including aerospace, medical, alternative energy, and data center. As you can see on this slide, we are revising our guidance for adjusted earnings per share to a range of $9.05 to $9.25 versus a prior range of $10.20 to $10.60. The change primarily reflects weaker end markets, as outlined on the prior slide, mix, and to a lesser extent, the decisions we made to minimize customer impacts as we move through the peak period of PMC synergy-related footprint moves in IPS. Revenue for 2023 is now expected to be approximately $6.25 billion versus $6.5 billion previously. On a pro forma basis, 2023 revenue is expected to be approximately $6.7 billion versus $6.95 billion previously. Adjusted EBITDA margin is now expected to be approximately 21% versus roughly 22% previously, or equivalent to the pro forma 2022 adjusted EBITDA margin, despite the top line pressures we are seeing. This represents an approximately 8% reduction on an EBITDA dollar basis, a smaller decline versus on EPS due to our temporarily elevated interest expense. Lastly, we are reiterating our expectation for generating at least $650 million of free cash flow this year, despite the reduction in EBITDA guidance. As a reminder, our capital deployment will remain heavily weighted to debt reductions. Finally, at the bottom of this slide, we present our standard below the line modeling items, some of which have changed slightly since our last update. On this slide, we provide more specific expectations for our fourth quarter performance by segment to make it easier for the investment community to understand our near term financial expectations for the business. While we do not plan to provide this level of detail going forward, we thought it would be useful given the newness of the resegmentation along with the segment-specific headwinds we experienced in the third quarter. Notably, we assume revenues for the enterprise are down slightly versus third quarter, mainly as we continue to experience headwinds in short-cycle industrial, in factory automation, and in China and Europe, partially offset by strength in data center, aerospace, medical, and energy. along with metals and mining markets. We expect adjusted EBITDA margins to be up modestly versus third quarter, aided by line of sight in our backlog to modestly improve mix, improve plan efficiencies, cost actions implemented late in third quarter in response to weaker end markets, and lower customer service assurance costs in IPS versus in third quarter. In summary, we are disappointed to be lowering our guidance. but we are pleased with the way our teams are managing what is under their control, in particular around cash flow and P&L deleverage rates. As we look ahead to the next couple years, we remain motivated by the tremendous opportunities for value creation before us, from delevering the balance sheet to progressing to approximately 40% gross margins and 25% adjusted EBITDA margins, and to working the many strategies underway to improve our outgrowth. Before we conclude, I'd like to connect a few dots on our cash flow expectations and the associated value creation opportunity we envision. If you look at the strong momentum we have on cash flow generation this year and how that level can grow next year on further sizable progress lowering our inventory, picking up an extra quarter of ultra cash flows, since we only owned Altra for three quarters in 2023, plus stepped up synergy benefits, not to mention using the proceeds from the industrial transaction to further pay down debt, it really does start to create a nice picture. Using the majority of this cash flow to reduce our debt and lower our interest costs has a couple of key implications. One is a nice boost to EPS growth even before considering any help from in markets or our many growth initiatives. The second is a nice potential benefit to our equity as debt becomes a smaller portion of our capital structure. At a time when in-market noise is running high, I would urge investors to also keep these value creation levers in mind. And with that, I would now like to turn the call back to the operator so we can take questions. Operator?
spk09: We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Mike Halloran with Baird. Please go ahead.
spk05: Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Let's start on slide 12 and kind of wrap what you're seeing today into why there's confidence in next year. You look at the year-over-year read on 2024, and it certainly reads more positive than some of the in-quarter trends that you were highlighting earlier. So as we think about that picture you're painting for 2024, how much of that is just de-stock comps? How much of that is Regals in Regals control with some synergy benefits on the revenue side or some drivers of outperformance versus fundamentally thinking the market's going to get better from an end market perspective? And any color you could give there would be great.
spk00: Yeah, great, Mike. Thanks for the question. We are feeling a little bit more bullish about 24. And a big part of that is the D-stock. And the D-stock, especially in the consumer space, we're not expecting a significant rebound in demand, if any, for that matter, from an end-user demand perspective. But because of the D-stock we lived through in 23, we expect positive momentum going into 24. A lot of our markets that are more secular-driven aerospace, data center, medical, alternative energy, those are going to continue to be strong into 24. And our efforts to expand our servable market with new product in those markets is going to help us as well. And then when we look at a couple of other markets, for example, non-res construction, which I think could have some additional tailwinds around some of the stimulus in the United States, as well as the investments in data center, we're very well positioned there. On top of that, I would say we're bringing out new products, air handling products, products to support the heat pump market, both in the United States and in Europe. As you probably know, we do not have a strong residential HVAC position in Europe, and so this will be an opportunity for us next year. So overall, we're feeling that 24 should be a bit stronger than Short-cycle industrial is a bit of a question mark for us right now, and we certainly saw more than we expected destocking in Q3 and a little bit more slowdown in demand. We expect that destocking, though, is ending, and certainly IPS's orders being up in October year over year gave us some confidence. But hopefully that helps you understand that we're thinking about 24, and we'll give much more guidance on this at the end of our Q4 earnings in July. Or excuse me, in January.
spk07: The only thing I would add, Mike, to that is that you also asked about synergies and how that might help benefit the business as well. And so I would add that we do expect to realize the $65 million in synergies here in 23 is And then there's another $90 million of synergies in 2024, which is about $45 million for PMC and carryover, and then about another $45 million for Altra. So that's how you get to that extra $90 million. That will certainly help on the bottom line as we move through 2024.
spk05: That helps. Thanks for that. And then is there any way to quantify what the destocking impact was this year and dollar terms, percent terms, anything to help understand the magnitude?
spk00: You know what, Mike? It would be a little bit of a guess for us. We're saying probably about two-thirds of the headwind in PES was likely due to destock this year. And then I would tell you, you know, the headwinds that we saw in IPS in Q3 I'd say two-thirds of the headwinds specific to Q3. And on the factory automation side of AMC, I'd say about two-thirds as well was destocked specific to Q3.
spk05: Okay. Thank you. Last one then. Maybe just talk about the operational headwinds you saw in the quarter. You know, As you're going through these, I think it's natural to have quarters where everything doesn't go smoothly and you have to make some adjustments. So I suspect I'm just more interested in understanding why you think this is not going to linger into next year and if there's any remediation that's necessary here. I'm going to guess no because, again, I think you directly have your hands around it, but Anything that you've gotten from a lesson here that we can take forward and, you know, comfort level that this is behind you once you exit the year?
spk00: Yeah, so thanks, Mike. And we do think we have our arms around this. And we do not expect these inefficiencies to continue into next year. First of all, I want to emphasize that our goal is always to execute any of our restructuring actions with zero customer impact. And our track record has been pretty strong here. When you look back to our 303 plan a couple of years ago, we actually reduced 23% of our manufacturing square footage and closed 21 facilities. and had very little customer impact. And so that was the decision in Q3, is that there were actually four site consolidations going on at the same time. A couple of them were a little bit more complex than we anticipated, and so we took on more headcount and inefficiency at the receiving plants to ensure that we could have high quality and service levels to our customer. About half of that will reduce in Q4 and it will go away fully into next year. And so it gives us an ability to think about the planning of next year a little bit differently. We still have every expectation to achieve our Synergy objectives But this learning gives us an opportunity to be better prepared because we'll be making moves next year as well. And so right now we feel good about our approach. I'm proud of our team and the decision they made in Q3 and feel confident that we'll have this behind us by the end of the year.
spk06: Thanks for that. Track record speaks for itself prior to the quarter, so really do appreciate the color. Thank you.
spk00: Thanks Mike.
spk09: The next question comes from Julian Mitchell from Barclays. Please go ahead.
spk02: Thanks and good morning. Maybe my first question was just trying to think about next year again. So it sounds like, you know, based on slide 12 and some of the comments around synergies, that a kind of a base assumption should be maybe flat to slightly up core sales. And then on the EBITDA front, we have the 90 million of synergy incremental, and then maybe sort of, I don't know, 80-ish million maybe from sort of base EBITDA from the acquisition. And then on the rest of the sort of base business, You know, should we get some operating leverage there? Are you accelerating any cost cutting? Or for now, you think it's safer just to sort of assume the quarter of ultra year on year and then the synergies?
spk00: Yeah, you know, so I think the way you're outlining it here makes a lot of sense and is how we're thinking about 24. Now, to be clear, Julian, we go through our operating planning in the November time frame, so we'll give a lot more guidance on this in January. But I think you are painting the appropriate picture I would tell you that from a PES standpoint, those stronger margins that we saw over the last couple of quarters will continue into next year. We did consolidate one factory in PES, so we have lower fixed overheads. So there will be, I would say, continued nice leverage in our PES segment. And then really the commentary around the synergies affects mostly IPS but somewhat AMC as well. And as you can imagine, when things slow, we tend to get very operationally focused and we tighten our belts. And so there will be some cost saved that continues into next year also. So overall, the way you're describing it is a great starting point.
spk02: Thanks very much, and maybe just my second follow-up would be around in terms of when you look at the history of Ultra and your own history of some of the base motion control businesses, thinking about the typical downturn duration is maybe three, four quarters, and you're obviously... you know, entering it now in the second half of this year. IPS, I think you're in the third quarter of that downturn now. AMC, you're in the first one, it looks like. So are we assuming based on history and sort of your best guess, it's maybe a sort of a four-ish quarter downturn again on core sales, or is there something different about this downturn versus history?
spk00: Julian, I'm not sure we want to try to call the cycle here. I do think we're coming out on PES. There's a slight slow in IPS and parts of AMC, although other parts are very strong. Medical, aerospace, data-centered, up double-digit for us and feels really good. You know, we're going to stay very focused on what we can control, and we've got a lot of levers to pull. The only difference I'd say perhaps from the past is that the supply chain normalization that's going on and the incredibly strong backlog that we still have in IPS and AMC. AMC's backlog is probably 50-plus percent. over normal AMC run rates, and IPS is about 45% over normal run rates. And therefore, we're not forecasting it's going to be a large impact because of those strong backlogs where we stand today going into Q4 and next year. Thanks very much. Sure. Thanks, Julian.
spk09: Our next question comes from Jeff Hammond from KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk01: Hey, good morning, guys.
spk09: Good morning, Jeff.
spk01: Can you hear me? Yeah, good morning. Just maybe to step back. I mean, I think after the Alter deal, you talked about $18 in earnings, maybe $15 if the end markets were flattish. Leverage, kind of 2.5 to 3, I think exiting 2024. and then some margin targets. I'm just wondering, you know, with this reset, you know, how maybe we snap the line a little bit differently on some of those long-term targets.
spk00: Yeah, Jeff, you know, I think the way you described it is pretty spot on. You know, what we came out with is that a statement of we have a path to 40% gross margins and 25% adjusted EBITDA margins. And And with the divestiture of industrial, you know, that path is even clearer and maybe a point above, as I shared in my prepared remarks. A plan to get to a billion-plus of free cash flow, we feel good about that. There are still some levers to pull around trade working capital. And so then it comes down to the sales. Our original planning – would have gotten 4% to 6% organic sales growth to get to $18. And I think you're right. It's slightly over 15 at flat sales. Now, we expect through the next couple of years that the markets will rebound and that we'll see some sales growth. What that is, I'm going to not opine upon right now. But we would expect markets to rebound. On top of that, significant investment at Regal going on right now, doubled our vitality in the last three years. We have an intention to double our vitality in the next three. That will help us through expanding our serve market with new products, very focused on over-servicing our A customers and our A products, and so that will help us accelerate growth. So right now, we're not ready to come out with an update on the top line. We would expect growth. It's likely not the four to six that we were thinking a year ago could be. But, you know, it's going to depend on where market is, and then we're going to definitely outgrow market is our expectation.
spk07: And I would just add, you know, the other side of your question around the leverage as we kind of move through the cycle. we absolutely have a clear path to continue to reduce our debt and get our leverage rates down to that that we talked about during the longer term, despite the reduction that we might see in EBITDA. So it's very strong free cash flow generation expected going forward to do that.
spk01: Okay. And then just shifting gears to HVAC, you know, it seems like most of the OEMs kind of You know, it didn't really surprise anybody. I think they were all kind of claiming destocking has run its course, which is maybe good for you guys. But, you know, I'm just surprised by, you know, the magnitude of kind of the myths and trends. Just I don't know if that's – did you not appreciate the magnitude of the destock? You know, was it more aggressive? Are there some share dynamics, you know? Is there more, you know, some product line simplification? Just what are the moving pieces on the list there? And then just on this refrigerant change, you know, some guidelines came out. Just, you know, are you kind of indifferent to that or how does that impact? And, you know, as people redesign, you know, how are you feeling about share opportunities? So a lot of questions on HVAC, but thanks.
spk00: Yeah, so, you know, first of all, I think it's important to remember that Resi HVAC is only about 30% of our PES segment. Where we, you know, we saw, we do feel like the AC side has gone through its D-stock. We expect furnace to be, to go through in Q4 and maybe a little continuation into Q1, but not significant. The bigger issue that we saw and surprised in Q3 was around the general commercial space and the slowdown in demand and the destock that we saw there. And so that was really more of the pressure in PES than it was the HVAC pressure. Now, with regards to the refrigerant change, This should be an opportunity for us. It's just, you know, all of our OEMs will need to redesign to meet that change. And we have the right product, whether it's our ECM motors, which tends to be a mix-up. It's our air moving solution, which tends to be a mix-up. Or it's our drive solution, which is a new technology that we brought to bear that's going to help achieve that system, overall system requirement with the new regulations will be a mix up. So all in should be a positive. Now, the one piece that we're not quite clear on is the EPA guidance around what the shipment allowance will be as of January 1, 2025. And could that cause some headwind in 24 because the OEMs are further destocking? But they're going to have to go to a new system, and our components and subsystems really fit well to support them in achieving those new system requirements. So hopefully I answered all those questions, Jeff. Happy to follow up if you have anything else.
spk01: No, that's great. Appreciate it, guys.
spk09: Okay, great.
spk00: Thanks, Jeff.
spk09: The next question comes from Nigel Coe of Wolf Research. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning, guys.
spk00: Good morning, Nigel.
spk03: Good morning. So on the 4Q guidance, by the way, now you've started doing this, there's no going back. You have to give us the quality guidance from here on. But, Rob, it looks like you've taken the approach of assuming essentially flattish sequential sales and margin. I'm just curious, you know, just given that this is a very new portfolio, I mean, how would you expect, you know, versus normal seasonality, how would, you know, the three segments normally track? I mean, I think PES, we understand, would normally be down, but how would the other two normally track?
spk07: Yeah, I think, so first of all, on the sales side, slightly down sequentially is the way we would look at that. As it comes to the margins, we do expect to be a little bit better on fourth quarter margins. versus third quarter. You know, when it comes to the seasonality, there isn't a lot of seasonality based on what we've seen with the supply chain disruption. And so we're not expecting a lot of seasonality. Our order rates support that conclusion and our backlogs certainly support that. So that's why we're thinking about it. There's not a lot of seasonality in any of the businesses right now. And that's the progression quarter over quarter.
spk03: And, of course, with assuming flat sequential from a very depressed base with destocking, if you had to put a line in the sand and say this is the quarter when we expect destocking to essentially be done, when would you say it's one queue next year? Any thoughts there?
spk00: From a PES perspective, we would expect it to be likely done at the end of this year. You know, what I like about our portfolio is the diversification of the portfolio. So it's a little bit difficult, Julian, to answer that question without doing it by segment and in some aspects having to do it by division. But let me try to simplify. From an IPS perspective, we would actually expect much of that destocking, we're getting through it. And, again, it would be a Q4 scenario. The factory automation side of AMC, we're still honestly trying to get a little bit more clarity on that. Now, we got some strong orders in October, but they were a bit more longer cycle. That's going to help us in 2024. So, you know, we're getting our arms around the business. I think as the quarters progress, we'll give you more clarity, certainly on the factory automation piece of the business.
spk03: Okay. And a quick follow-on, just to be specific, in 4Q, what is the synergy capture you're modeling, you know, from PMC and Altra?
spk07: Sure, Nigel. At PMC, we're expecting about $13 million in the fourth quarter and ultra about $10 million, so about 23 overall. Remember that for the PMC side, as we said, we do expect to get about $6 million or so of those additional costs to maintain our service levels. It may mask some of that benefit on the PMC side, but the synergies are still permanent and absolutely expected to be realized in the quarter, so a total of 23. Great, thank you.
spk06: Great, thanks.
spk09: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star then 1 to enter the queue. Our next question comes from Christopher Glynn from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
spk08: Yeah, thanks. Good morning. So, Louis, realizing that the October pickup isn't a trend yet, Just curious to dig a little deeper, what channels, what was the nature of the pickup? Particularly, I'm curious if those channel partners that destocked the most in the third quarter are where you see in the October pickups.
spk00: Yeah, so, and the simple answer, Chris, and good morning, is yes. Those that we saw slowing down in Q3, we did see a start of a pickup in Q4. But you're right, one month does not make a trend, and so we'd like to see that continuing. That's partially why we also are forecasting this quarter to be modestly down sequentially from Q3.
spk08: Okay, and in terms of inventory rebalances, how would you compare what you're seeing in distribution channel versus with OEMs? Because, you know, hoarding and gathering was systemic for a little while there. Now that lead times are better, obviously we're on the other end of that.
spk00: Yeah, so I think there's still some room in OEMs. And whereas I think the distribution channel has more quickly tried to readjust. Okay.
spk08: And are there specific conversations with distributors, or is it just too fast-moving and contemporaneous to bring that to bear on your general comments that the distributors are moving through D-Stock faster?
spk00: You know, we have pretty clear visibility to our industrial distribution channel. We see their sales out. We see their inventory levels. We see their calls. Probably why I was a little more unclear around factory automation is we don't have that level of clarity in factory automation. And although I can assure you with the ultra businesses that we now own as part of Regal, we will get that clarity in time. It's just that we don't have that quite yet. But from an IPS standpoint in particular, we know what our distributors are holding for inventory. The majority of our distributors, we know where they stand with sales out and with their orders on us. So good clarity there. Sure. Thanks, Chris.
spk09: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Louis Pinkham for any closing remarks.
spk00: Thank you, Operator. And thanks to our investors and analysts for joining us today. As you heard this morning, while we are facing more challenging and market headwinds in parts of our business, our Regal Rechner team is effectively managing through them. But what keeps us excited is our ongoing transformation, executing our path to top quartile gross margins, to generating over a billion dollars in annual free cash flow over the next couple of years, to rapidly deleveraging our balance sheet, and to the outgrowth acceleration we are confident we can deliver by raising our new product vitality and by executing our many 80-20 growth initiatives. In short, many levers we can pull to create tremendous value for our key stakeholders. Thank you again for joining us today, and thanks for your interest in Ringo Braxnord.
spk09: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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