TE Connectivity Ltd

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the PE Connectivity first quarter earnings call for fiscal year 2021. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Vice President of Investor Relations, Sujol Shah. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our conference call to discuss TE Connectivity's first quarter results. With me today are Chief Executive Officer Terence Curtin and Chief Financial Officer Heath Metz. During this call, we will be providing certain forward-looking information, and we ask you to review the forward-looking cautionary statements included in today's press release. In addition, we will use certain non-GAAP measures in our discussion this morning, and we ask you to review the sections of our press release and the accompanying slide presentation that address the use of these items. The press release and related tables, along with the slide presentation, can be found on the investor relations portion of our website at te.com. Due to the large number of participants, On the Q&A portion of today's call, we're asking everyone to limit themselves to one question to make sure we can give everyone an opportunity to ask questions during the allotted time. We're willing to take follow-up questions, but ask that you rejoin the queue if you have a second question. Now, let me turn the call over to Terrence for opening comments. Thanks, Sujal, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today to cover our results for our first fiscal quarter and also our expectations for our second fiscal quarter of 2021. Before I get into the slides, I would like to share some perspective on our first quarter. As you will see in the results, we are benefiting from our diverse portfolio and are continuing to execute on our margin expansion plans. While markets have been very dynamic over the past year, we are seeing improving conditions across the majority of them. Against this backdrop, we are demonstrating not only the resiliency of our operations, but also the ability to drive organic content growth ahead of our markets while expanding operating margins and demonstrating strong free cash flow generation that is in line with our business model. We are positioned to continue to benefit from secular trends in growing markets while driving the margin expansion plans that we've highlighted to you. And you'll see the benefit of these efforts in our first quarter results as well as our guidance for the second quarter. With that as a quick backdrop, let me now frame out some of the key messages of today's call. First, I am very pleased with our execution in the first quarter, and I believe our teams delivered strong results. We delivered sales growth of 11% and adjusted earnings per share growth of 21% year over year, demonstrating the strength and diversity of the portfolio and the benefits from our operational improvements. Our sales were ahead of our expectations in each segment, but with the greatest outperformance in transportation, where we continue to generate strong content growth from electrification of the powertrain, as well as increased data in the vehicle. Our adjusted operating margins expanded 190 basis points year over year to 17.7%, with margin growth in both transportation and our communications segment and a slight decline in our industrial segment where we maintain mid-teens margin performance despite a sales decline. We continue to demonstrate our strong cash generation model with our quarter one free cash flow being at a first quarter record of approximately $530 million. We continue to expect approximately 100% free cash flow conversion to adjusted net income for this fiscal year. And as we look to our second quarter, we are expecting our strong performance to continue. We expect sales and adjusted earnings per share similar to the first quarter at approximately $3.5 billion of revenue and $1.47 in earnings per share. And like in the first quarter, we again expect double-digit sales and adjusted earnings per share growth year over year. Now, I'd like to take a moment to discuss our performance relative to where our markets were in the pre-COVID timeframe of our fiscal 2019. And, you know, we do hope this will provide a baseline for evaluating our performance and progress this year. At the overall company level, our revenue is approximately back to pre-COVID levels, despite the majority of our markets being below 2019 levels. And I'd like to give you some color by the three different segments. In our communication segment, we have seen strong improvement in our end markets. And this has helped enable sales to recover above pre-COVID levels. And for example, in data and devices, as well as in appliances, we're benefiting from continued data center build-outs and home investments, respectively. In our industrial segment, it is a very different environment. We have markets that continue to remain weak as a result of COVID impacts. Commercial air and medical markets and our sales are still well below pre-COVID levels. However, what we are seeing is it does look like order patterns are indicating that we could be touching along the bottom in both of these businesses, and we could see some improvements later in the year. And in our transportation segment, our auto and commercial transportation businesses are now generating revenue above the levels we saw prior to COVID. even though global auto and truck production is still forecasted to be below fiscal 2019 levels. Content growth and share gains have driven the outperformance, reflecting our leadership position in these markets. TE products and technology are designed in the next generation of sustainable vehicles at every leading OEM worldwide. The real proof of the traction is our content per vehicle progression. In fiscal 2019, our content per vehicle in auto was in the low 60s, and it's now trending into the low 70 range. As consumer adoption increases for hybrid and electric vehicles, and we continue to bring more innovation to our customers, we expect our content per vehicle to expand into the 80s over time. What's nice is that consumer preference continues to drive the features and the technology and we will continue to benefit as vehicles become more safe, green, and connected, driving more content for connector and sensing solutions. While I am pleased with our results and the progress that we've made operationally, I'm even more excited about the sales growth and margin expansion opportunities that we still have ahead of us. We continue to execute on our margin expansion plans in transportation and industrial, that we started prior to COVID and accelerated during the pandemic. I'm also very proud of the margin progression in communications, which has offset the volume related pressure that we're seeing in industrial as a result of the market impacts due to COVID. So now if we could turn to the slides and I'd ask you to turn to slide three to provide some additional details for the first quarter and our expectations for the second quarter. Quarter one sales of $3.5 billion were better than our expectations, up 11% on a reported basis and 6% organically year over year. We had 12% organic growth in both transportation and in communications, with growth across all businesses in those two segments. Industrial segment sales were down 8% organically due to the COVID-related impacts I already talked about. During the quarter, we saw orders of $4 billion, and this was up 25% year-over-year, reflecting an improvement in the majority of the end markets we serve. And I'll come back to orders in a couple of slides. From an earnings per share perspective, our adjusted earnings per share was $1.47. This was up 21% year-over-year due to the strong operational performance where we showed adjusted operating income being up approximately 25% year-over-year. As we look forward, we expect our strong performance to continue into our second quarter, with sales and adjusted earnings per share being similar to first quarter levels, despite lower sequential auto production. For the second quarter, we expect sales to be approximately $3.5 billion, and this is up approximately 10% year-over-year on a recorded basis and mid-single digits organically. Similar to our first quarter, year-over-year growth will be driven by transportation and communications, partially offset by an organic decline in industrial. Adjusted earnings per share is expected to be approximately $1.47 in the second quarter, and this will be up 14% year-over-year with adjusted operating margin expansion included in the earnings performance. So if you could, let me turn to slide four and I'll get into our order trends that we're seeing. For the first quarter, our orders were approximately $4 billion with a book to build of 1.15. I would like to highlight that this level of orders reflects improvements in a number of our end markets, as well as some supply chain replenishment. As we see markets improving, it is not surprising that our orders reflect the impact of supply chains being replenished after shutdowns that occurred in the U.S. and Europe in the third quarter of last year. We are also seeing customers placing advanced orders in some cases due to product constraints and the broader electronic component categories like semiconductors and certain passive components. And the guidance that we give does factor in the impacts of these supply chain dynamics. In looking at orders by segment, on a year-over-year basis, transportation and communication orders both grew 36 percent with broad-based growth across all businesses. Industrial orders declined slightly year-over-year, but on a sequential basis, we did see orders growth in all businesses in each segment. So let me also add some color on what we're seeing in orders from a geographic perspective, and I'll provide this on an organic basis. In China, our orders were up 33 percent in the first quarter, with growth driven by transportation and communications. We are benefiting from our strong position in auto, commercial transportation, and appliances, and continue to see strong improvement across those markets in China. We also saw 26% year-over-year growth in Europe, with growth in all segments. This represents a second consecutive quarter of orders growth in Europe, with some markets improving following the large drops from COVID back in the middle of last year. And in North America, orders were flat, with growth in transportation and communications being offset by declines in industrials. Now, what I'd like to do is touch upon our segment results briefly, and I'll cover those in slides five through seven of the slides we issue. Starting with transportation, our sales were up 12% organically year over year with growth in each one of our businesses. In auto, sales were up 11% organically versus global auto production growth in the low single digits. The outperformance is driven by continued strong content growth and some benefits from the supply chain replenishing. We are seeing gains from our leadership position in next-generation products and technology and the value that we bring to our customers. As I mentioned earlier, we are seeing strong content growth from the move to an electric powertrain and increased data connectivity, as well as the continued electronification of the vehicle. In our commercial transportation business, we saw 25% organic growth driven by electronification trends, which are helping content outperformance as well as ongoing share gains. We are also benefiting from higher emission standards and new increased operator adoption of Euro 5 and 6 in China and new emission standards in India. We saw growth in all regions, as well as all market verticals that we serve in our commercial transportation business and continue to benefit from our strong position in China. We are also seeing increased program wins in the electric powertrain and commercial transportation that will provide future content growth. In sensors, we saw 29% growth on a reported basis, which included the revenue contribution from the first sensor acquisition. On an organic basis, sales increased 3% driven by growth in auto applications. And we continue to expand our design wind pipeline in auto sensing and expect growth as these platforms continue to increase in volume. From an operating margin perspective, the segment expanded margins by 200 basis points to 19.4%, driven by strong operational performance. Now let me move over to the industrial segment where, as I mentioned, our sales declined 8% organically year over year, and our adjusted operating margins were down slightly to 13.5% despite the 8% organic sales decline. I am very proud we were able to maintain our mid-teens adjusted operating margins due to the cost actions that we initiated over the past couple of years. During the quarter, the segment continued to be impacted by the decline in the commercial aerospace market, with our AD&M business declining 22% organically. As I mentioned earlier, we do believe we're touching along the bottom in this business and could see improvement in Comair later in this year. Our industrial equipment business was up 8% organically, with growth in all regions and strength in factory automation applications. And we continue to see weakness in our medical business with ongoing delays in interventional elective procedures that have been caused by COVID. We anticipate this to be a short-term dynamic in medical that is consistent with what our customers are seeing and expect this market to return to growth as these procedures start to increase later in the year. And lastly, in our energy business, we saw a 4% organic decline driven by COVID impacts on utility spending, but we did see growth in renewable energy applications and the wind and solar application. Now let me turn to the communications segment, where our sales grew 12% organically year-over-year, with growth in both data and devices, as well as appliances. We do continue to benefit from the recovery in China and Asia more broadly, which represents over half of our sales in this segment. In data and devices, our sales grew 5% organically year-over-year due to the strong position we built in high-speed solutions for cloud applications. And in appliances, we grew 21% organically year-over-year with growth across all regions and benefits from home investments and an improved housing market. I would have to say our communication team continues to perform very well. delivering 17.6% adjusted operating margins, which is up 550 basis points versus the prior year. Now, with that segment over you, let me turn it over to Heath, who will get into more details on the financials and our expectations going forward. HEATH HILLIARD. Thank you, Terrence, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to slide 8, where I will provide more details on the Q1 financials. Adjusted operating income was $624 million, approximately 25% year-over-year, with an adjusted operating margin of 17.7%. GAAP operating income was $448 million and included $167 million of restructuring and other charges and $9 million of acquisition-related charges. We plan for the restructuring to be front-end loaded this year and continue to expect total restructuring charges in the ballpark of $200 million for fiscal 21 as we continue to optimize our manufacturing footprint and improve the fixed cost structure of the organization. Adjusted EPS was $1.47 and GAAP EPS was $1.13 for the quarter and included a tax-related benefit of $0.09. We also had restructuring, acquisition, and other charges of 43 cents. The reconciliation is provided. The adjusted effective tax rate in Q1 was approximately 20%. For the second quarter, we expect our tax rate to be in the high teens and continue to expect an effective tax rate around 19% for fiscal 21. Importantly, we expect our cash tax rate to stay well below our reported ETR for the full year. So if you'll turn to slide nine, sales of 3.5 billion were up 11% on a reported basis and up 6% on an organic basis year over year. Currency exchange rates positively impacted sales by 106 million versus the prior year. We are demonstrating our business model execution with adjusted EPS of $1.47 up 21% year over year. Adjusted operating margins were 17.7%, as I mentioned earlier, and that is an expansion of 190 basis points versus prior year. I am pleased with the progress we are making in driving improvements to our cost structure and our strong operational performance. And we continue to execute on our footprint consolidation and cost reduction plans in both transportation and industrial areas. And we are now benefiting from the heavy lifting that we have already completed in our communications segment. Transportation adjusted operating margin was 19.4%, which is nearing our business model target of 20%. Industrial adjusted operating margins remained in the mid-teens despite significant volume drops, which demonstrates the benefits of our cost actions we have been discussing with you over the past few years. I'm also very pleased with the 17.6% percent adjusted operating margin and communication, which reflects our strong operational execution that I mentioned earlier. In the quarter, cash from continuing operations was $640 million, and we had very strong cash flow for the quarter of approximately $530 million, which represents the first quarter record, as Terrence mentioned. We returned $286 million to shareholders through dividend and share repurchases, Our strong cash flow performance last year and into the first quarter of this year demonstrates the strength of our cash generation model, and we continue to expect free cash flow conversion to approximate 100% for the full year. We remain committed to our disciplined use of cash, and over time, we expect two-thirds of our free cash flow to be returned to shareholders and about a third to be used for acquisitions. And before we go into questions, I want to reiterate that we remain excited about how we positioned our portfolio with leadership positions in the markets we serve, along with organic growth and margin expansion opportunities ahead of us. To summarize, we have discussed the benefits of secular trends across our portfolio. You are seeing content growth enabling sales performance above our markets in auto and commercial transportation, benefits from market recovery and data and devices and appliances, and some markets that have been impacted by COVID in the industrial segment that are now showing signs of stabilization. We initiated cost of actions well ahead of the COVID downturn. You are seeing strong margin expansion as a result of our efforts. We expect to continue to generate strong cash flow, maintain a disciplined and balanced capital strategy, and drive to business model performance, our focus on value creation for our stakeholders going forward. So now let's open this up for questions. Sujal? Sujal Raghavanamalai, CFO Alphabet and Google Jaro, could you please give the instructions for the Q&A session?

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. In order to have time for all questions, each participant is limited to one question. If you would like to ask a follow-up question, press the star one on your telephone keypad to return to the queue. Your first question comes from the line of Craig Haydenbach. You may now ask your question.