Tennant Company

Good morning. My name is Rex and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Tenant Company's 2022 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded. There will be time for Q&A at the end of the call. Please press star 1 if you would like to ask a question. After the Q&A, please stay on the line for closing remarks from management. If you have joined our call today via telephone and logged into the conference call presentation on your computer, Please mute the audio on your computer to avoid potential quality issues during the call. Thank you for participating in Tenant Company's 2022 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Beginning today's meeting is Mr. Lorenzo Bassi, Vice President Finance for Tenant Company. Mr. Bassi, you may begin.

Good morning and welcome to Tenant Company's Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Lorenzo Bassi, Vice President Finance. Joining me today are Dave Hummel, Tenant's President and CEO, and Faye Webb, our Senior Vice President and CFO. On today's call, we will update you regarding our second quarter performance and guidance for 2022. Dave will brief you on our operations and enterprise strategy, and Faye will cover the financials. After their remarks, we will open the call to questions. Please note, the slide presentation accompanies this conference call and is available on our investor relations website at investors.tenantcode.com. Before we begin, please be advised that our remarks this morning and our answers to questions may contain forward-looking statements regarding the company's expectations of future performance. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially from those contained in the statements. These risks and uncertainties are described in today's news release and the documents we filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We encourage you to review those documents, particularly our safe harbor statement for a description of the risks and uncertainties that may affect our results. Additionally, on this conference call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures that include or exclude certain items. Our 2022 second quarter earnings release includes the comparable GAAP measures and a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to our GAAP results. Our earnings release was issued this morning by a business wire, and is also posted on our investor relations website at investors.tenantco.com. I'll now turn the call over to Dave.

Thank you, Lorenzo, and thank you all for joining the call today. We are pleased with our second quarter performance, which was in line with our expectations. We continue to deliver solid results despite a challenging supply chain and evolving geopolitical environment. We see robust demand for our innovative products and services, as well as growth in many of our end markets, But supply chain challenges, and specifically parts availability, have constrained our ability to increase production. As a result, our backlog remains at record levels, and despite the many actions we have taken that have increased and will continue to increase production, we expect the backlog will remain elevated for the balance of the year. Our second quarter results benefited from increased price realization and an increased contribution from aftermarket service, parts, and consumables. We have taken several meaningful pricing actions to offset the impact of record inflation, and we anticipate that the impact of these pricing actions will provide an increasing benefit over the next two quarters. While inflationary pressures, constrained production volumes, and foreign currency headwinds have impacted second quarter margins, our adjusted EBITDA and EBITDA margins are stabilizing, and the actions we are taking to increase production provide a foundation for further improvement in the balance of the year. We are maintaining our full year EBITDA guidance range and are confident in our ability to deliver adjusted EBITDA between $140 and $155 million. We now expect, however, to be near the lower end of this range as we factor in foreign currency headwinds and evolving market conditions. Our people have demonstrated terrific agility and creativity in tackling the current operating conditions and remain focused on executing our enterprise strategy. In support of their efforts, we continue to make strategic investments to drive short-term improvement while continuing to invest in innovative products to deliver long-term growth, including AMR. We launched our AMR program in 2019, and since that time, we've expanded the product offering and have created a comprehensive robotics portfolio to meet our customers' needs across a broad array of vertical market applications. Our AMR portfolio continues to be well received by a growing number of customers. We have already sold to over 200 individual customers globally with significant repeat business and have generated over $150 million in sales during that time period. And while inflation and supply chain volatility will continue, we remain focused on what we can control, including stabilizing our supply chain to unlock production and reduce product lead times to safeguard our customer experience, and executing on pricing strategies and maintaining strict cost discipline. With respect to our first area of focus, our supply chain team undertook significant countermeasures to mitigate interruptions and expand capacity, which resulted in a sequential increase in production in the second quarter. Some of these actions include increased supplier purchase commitments, a safety stock inventory, extended visibility of production forecasts, expanded dual sourcing supply options, and continued spot-buy activity. We are making incremental investments in internal resources and software, as well as engaging with external resources to augment our global procurement capabilities. We continue to work closely with our Tier 1 suppliers, including integrating into their supply chains and directly procuring difficult-to-source Tier 2 subcomponent parts. In addition, we tasked our technology and engineering resources to design and produce equipment that reduces the reliance on constrained parts. We recently launched a walk-behind scrubber with fewer features that does not require a master control board, and it will provide customers a product option with a shorter lead time. In addition to meet customer demand and to maximize revenue, we are also optimizing our global manufacturing capacity and product platforms to increase production in EMEA and APAC. For example, we have leveraged an existing platform manufactured in Italy to launch new mid-tier tenant branded products in North America. This also provides our customers with a shorter lead time alternative. We believe these actions will result in increased production in the back half of the year, mostly in the fourth quarter. With regard to our secondary focus, pricing strategies and cost of discipline, we have successfully executed pricing increases over the last 12 months that will drive sequential improvement in net sales and gross margin over the next two quarters. We believe our significant pricing actions are sufficient to cover inflation on a full year basis and we will continue to monitor market conditions and take the necessary actions. At the same time, we are continuing our cost-out efforts and are tightly managing discretionary spending. We remain diligent in pursuing opportunities to optimize our cost structure. For instance, we are investing in solar panels to generate electricity in EMEA that will help mitigate increasing energy costs and provide increased reliability. We anticipate that this project will be completed in the fourth quarter of 2022. Investments like this also align and support our sustainability goals as outlined in our recently published 2021 sustainability report that is available on our website. Above all, we remain relentlessly focused on providing our customers with high quality products and exceptional service as we work toward increasing production and executing on our enterprise strategy. We will continue to take decisive and appropriate actions to improve our customer experience while remaining focused on delivering our business objectives. Moreover, we are confident about our outlook, given the actions we have outlined, combined with our record-level backlog, innovative product pipeline, and demonstrated commitment to price and cost discipline. With that, I'll turn the call over to Faye for a discussion of our financials.

Thank you, Dave. Second quarter net income was $16.6 million, compared to $9.8 million in the year-ago period. Comparisons between periods were impacted by non-recurring items, specifically expenses related to the extinguishment of debt in the prior year quarter, as well as a gain on the sale of assets in the current quarter. Excluding these items, as well as other non-comparable items, such as amortization and restructuring charges, adjusted EPS for the second quarter was 92 cents per diluted share. compared to $1.18 per diluted share in the prior year period. Lower growth profit and higher income tax expense were the primary drivers of the year-over-year decrease. Gross margins were impacted by inflationary headwinds, the timing and realization of pricing actions, as well as lower production volume. Certain discrete tax items were favorable in the prior year period and non-recurring in 2022. Lower S&A costs as well as lower interest expense due to the refinancing of debt in the second quarter of 2021 partially offset this decrease. For the second quarter of 2022, tenant reported net sales of $280.2 million, a 0.4% increase compared to the prior year. The increase in consolidated net sales was driven by an organic sales increase of 4.4% on a constant currency basis, with a net unfavorable impact from foreign currency exchange of 4%. Tenant grouped its sales into three geographies, the Americas, which includes all of North America and Latin America, EMEA, which includes Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and Asia-Pacific, which includes China, Japan, Australia, and other Asia markets. Organic sales in the Americas and EMEA increased 6.5% and 3%, respectively, versus the prior year period. The increase was primarily due to the impact of higher selling prices, as well as growth in services, parts, and consumables. APAC organic sales declined 4.5%, primarily due to volume declines in China, as local shutdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic continue to impact demand. As Dave highlighted, we have successfully executed several meaningful price increases over the last four quarters, which have favorably impacted net sales, although the effect was somewhat muted given our existing backlog. Overall demand remains strong, except for China, as previously noted, but the limited availability of certain parts constrained our ability to meet volume demand. The actions that are in flight and plans for the balance of the year will allow us to increase production in the third and fourth quarters of 2022. Moving to adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA for Q2 was $30.3 million or 10.8% of sales compared to $35.1 million or 12.6% of sales in 2021. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA was due in part to lower production volumes, which were constrained by parts availability, as well as lower margins, which were impacted by inflationary pressures across all production inputs. These impacts were partially offset by pricing actions and favorable S&A expenses as we continue to actively manage costs. Foreign currency also unfavorably affected adjusted EBITDA by $3 million as compared to the prior year period. Turning to cash flow and capital deployment, For the first six months of 2022, net cash used in operating activities was $23.6 million, compared to net cash provided by operating activities of $37.8 million in the prior year period. The increase in cash used was primarily driven by an increase in working capital attributable to investments in inventory to support a ramp in production. We anticipate that inventory levels will begin to decrease and normalize in the back half of the year as production increases. The company continues to deploy cash flow towards operational capital needs and to return capital to shareholders in line with its capital allocation priorities. Capital expenditures of $10.5 million were in line with our overall expected capex for the full year. Liquidity remains strong with a cash balance of $73.8 million and with $279.1 million of unused borrowing capacity on our revolving credit facility. Our net leverage remains within our guided range and was 1.3 times based on the midpoint of our 2022 adjusted EBITDA guidance range. Turning to guidance, we anticipate that supply chain constraints specifically component availability, will continue to impact our ability to produce and deliver products in the near future. However, we are confident that the actions that we have outlined will materialize in our operational results toward the end of the third quarter and into the fourth quarter, and that we will deliver results within our guided range. As we factor in foreign currency headwinds and evolving market conditions, We now expect our results to be toward the lower end of our guidance range. Net sales of $1.125 billion to $1.17 billion, reflecting organic sales growth of 6% to 10%. Full year gap earnings in the range of $3.65 to $4.25 per diluted share. Adjusted EPS of $4.15 to $4.75 per diluted share, which excludes certain non-operational items and amortization expense. Adjusted EBITDA of $140 million to $155 million. Capital expenditures of $25 to $30 million. And an adjusted effective tax rate of 20% to 25%, which excludes the amortization expense adjustment. With that, we will open the call to questions. Operator, please go ahead.

At this time, I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Chris Moore. Your line is open.

Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking a few questions. Good morning. Good morning. Maybe we'll just start with backlog. I know you don't give a specific number. Post Q1, you talked about backlog being five times normal. Sequentially during Q2, did the backlog go up further? Did it come back a little bit? Or where are you at there?

Yeah, thanks for asking the question. It's obviously top of mind for us because backlog represents unsatisfied tenant customers. And so the entire organization is wholly focused on serving our backlog and getting products to the customers in a timeframe that they would expect. Sequentially speaking, Q2 to Q1, our orders did increase and our backlog did increase as well. Now, we did increase our planned output sequentially between Q2 and Q1, but it was not enough to overcome the incoming order rate. I've adjusted for constant currency in that remark. as well as excluding what we would call large orders or future orders in the in the order base so you know the takeaway is that the backlog is growing and it's due in large part to a robust demand pattern as well as our inability to ramp production at the at the pace we would like to further dimensionalize the backlog just to give you a picture of the aging you know about 80 percent of our backlog has been booked in the first half of 2022 and the reason that's an important data point It gives you an idea of how long our customers are having to wait. It's an inordinate amount of time, but it's been within the first half of the year for 80% of them. And about 50% of our backlog has been booked in the second quarter. And so those customers have been waiting a shorter, unacceptable, still unacceptable, but a shorter time for their product from tenant. The other reason those data points are important is you know that the backlog is sitting at primarily at our most current pricing, with 80% of it being booked in the first half. The backlog would have gone in reflecting the price increases from prior year, and we've had a price increase in Q2 that would have been reflected in the bookings, about the half of the backlog that went in in Q2. So the backlog is sitting at most current price. We're getting strong price realization on our published increases, and as it works its way through backlog, we get to realize that that impact on the financials.

Got it. Extremely helpful. That's where I was headed to on the kind of backlog pricing. So 80% was booked in the first half of the year, 50% in Q2. You increased prices a little bit further in Q2. So if you look at kind of where you cycle through the older backlog and get to the point where you know, the margins start to increase. Is it towards the end of Q3, or kind of how should I look at that?

Yeah, I think you're right on, Chris. We're seeing about a one-quarter, one-and-a-half-quarter delay in the impact of price increases as they move through the backlog. Obviously, that varies by product line and by geography, but your statement is correct. We published... In the majority of our markets, we publish mid Q2 with a price increase. We would expect to read out the benefit of that increase as it moves to the backlog later in Q3, but certainly in Q4.

Got it. So margins will kind of follow that sequence. So very helpful. You also said orders continue to go up in Q2. I know that you had some You know, kind of pre-ordering early in the year, customers saw the long lead times, got in line earlier than normal. But anything else you can say in terms of kind of the orders that you saw in Q2 and heading into Q3?

Yeah, you're right, Chris. We do see some buying ahead, specifically large customers that have chosen tenant as their primary or sole supplier order. are working with us very closely to establish their needs for the future and secure a place in production by giving us a full year's order for products. That helps them because they get to lock in the price as well as have a continuity of supply and assured supply. They know that by getting in queue, we get line of sight to their production needs and we can better secure inventory and production slots to support them. So it's really a win-win scenario. Just to dimensionalize that kind of future orders, large customers buying ahead, that accounts for about, we think about one time of our backlog. So our backlog is three to five times normal, and you can think about one time of that on top of the three to five times normal backlog.

Got it. Very helpful. Just maybe one more. Supply chain visibility now, say, versus Q1, is it much improved? I know there's still a lot of challenges there, but in terms of what you're seeing and the improvements coming, is there much of a difference now than, say, in April?

Yeah, I think it would be an overstatement to call it an improvement. I would say that there's been a moderate change in our visibility and predictability. What I mean by that is the lead times are still extended, but suppliers are increasingly meeting those extended lead times. So maybe we're getting a little better predictability, but I wouldn't say it's an overall improvement in supply chain. And that was one of the big reasons why we decided to take a very intentional move and procure Tier 2 components for our suppliers. specifically in the space of electronics, we decided to invest the capital in inventory so that those parts are available for our suppliers to build circuit boards and eliminate what is and reduce the risk of what has been one of most of our persistent parts availability challenge. So we have challenges across the rest of the product line, but we took that decisive action, and you saw it in our inventory as well as our working capital. We took that decisive action to try to put ourselves in the best position as possible here in the second half.

Got it. Very helpful. I will leave it there. Thanks, guys. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Farazani. Your line is open.

Morning, Dave. Morning, Faye. Good morning. So given, you know, the guidance was established before we saw these very, very strong FX headwinds, component availability, talking to other companies remains, Very, very challenging, as you just mentioned. And you're still seeing a lot of material price volatility. Hopefully, it's starting to come down here. But confidence in the guidance, given you've got an awful lot of moving parts out there, some not moving in your favor.

Yeah, absolutely. And the uncertainty and the moving parts has certainly been a reality we've been operating in. since Q2 of 2021. And so when we considered our guidance, we took all the factors into consideration. But we also thought about what elements of the inputs to the guidance that we can control. And we've taken specific decisive action to mitigate the risks that are known and set ourselves up for having to take action in the second half if needed. You'll notice in the commentary that we did guide towards the lower end of the range, and that's largely due, as you noted, to the FX impact on our overall business. But, Faye, anything to add from a guidance perspective?

No, I was just going to say, you know, FX certainly has been a headwind for us versus first quarter, and that's considered in our current guidance range.

Steve, I would just add that there are a lot of moving parts and a lot of what is going on in our business is beyond our control. We're not spending an inordinate amount of time sitting around complaining about it, nor are we waiting for the situation to improve. We're focusing on the items that we can control, taking control and taking action to try to improve our position. And while there's no guarantee of success, we feel much better about that posture, not only for our company but for our customers' sake and also versus our competitors. And we'll see how it pans out. But with what is within our control, we have taken action to put ourselves in a position to win, and we're confident we can deliver on second-half guidance or full-year guidance.

Very fair. When I think about, I mean, your pricing isn't – trailing inflation that much this quarter. And we didn't see any of this. I'm assuming we didn't see any of the spring price hike in the quarter. So theoretically, taking the other side of that, whether guidance is too cautious, the flip side would be you're going to see significant pricing impact, some in third quarter, significantly, theoretically, in fourth quarter if material prices stabilize. And then you're thinking volume picks up. You know, the second half could look very good if component availability comes into your favor, right?

With that set of assumptions, the second half could look really good. And listen, I'm optimistic by nature. So that's a scenario that could very well pan out. But the way we're thinking about inflation is, you know, inflation really came in heavier than we had planned in the first half.

Yeah.

We've taken a number of pricing actions. Our realization is strong. As it reads through the backlog into our financials, we feel like we can accurately predict when we realize the benefit, all else being equal. Our full-year guidance really assumes that inflation moderates in the second half of 2022, or at least normalizes. But we have to continue to monitor it and take whatever action we need to to offset it. So I think the scenario you articulated is possible, but we need inflation to moderate in second half as our pricing actions read through, and then we'll see what signals we get from the business and take the appropriate action to deliver on guidance.

Okay. And then you discussed this a bit in terms of working capital, and as expected, inventory is still very high given supply chain issues. How quickly do you think that can start coming down, and how much is that? You're expecting positive cash flow in the second half. Is that correct?

Yes. Short answer, yes. Really, we'll consume our inventory as we can increase our plant output. And that's the simplistic answer. We don't want to recover from our backlog by a drop in demand. And so really, it's about increasing plant output so that we can serve our customers that have their tenant machines sitting in our backlog and work the inventory back down. But we're confident that we can reverse it here in the second half and consume that inventory. Much of that inventory investment was around critically constrained components in the area of electronics. And so we're really confident that as we get those into our suppliers' hands here in the quarter and convert those into finished goods parts that we can put in machines, that will help everyone. That will help reduce our inventory. That will help reduce our backlog. And that will help service our customers.

Great. If I could just get one more in in terms of you sounded fairly bullish in your commentary on AMR. Are you getting more on-site demonstrations going now? And then how do we think about, you know, introduced three years ago, we should start seeing replacement on that product. Is that correct? Are we getting closer to that point where we start seeing that turnover?

Yeah, so you read my comments correctly. I'm very bullish on AMR as a technology, and I think it's our opportunity to rightfully disrupt our own business. We've got the capabilities, we've got the products, we've got the service ecosystem to go satisfy our customers' need. And I remind you, with AMR, we are solving one of our customers' biggest and most pressing business challenges, and that is the lack of availability and the cost of labor. So I'm extremely bullish on the potential. You know, when you look at our AMR journey, we did launch in 2019. Our results in 2019 and 2020 were largely related, almost entirely related, to our deployment with Walmart. And that was a fantastic flagship win. Kudos to the team that won it. It's been a great experience for us, not only from a financial perspective, but also from a learning perspective. Everything we've learned as a result of that relationship and that deployment about how to successfully deploy AMR has served us very, very well. Following up on that, in 21 and 22, we got into more you know, smaller account penetration. We deployed, you know, we expanded the portfolio, so we now have three models in the portfolio. We deployed the product globally so that we're able to sell it outside of the U.S. And we've seen a pickup, and we noted over 200 individual customers and $150 million in sales since launch. And we've seen a pickup in demand from other customers as we move beyond our initial win. We have seen a high percentage of reorders from individual customers, but that's not to, to get to your question, that's not to replace units they bought initially. If you think about the Walmart deployment in 2019, 2020, these were T7s. These are high-end commercial, low-end industrial products that have a, they have a five- to seven- to ten-year life on them, and especially in a protected environment where they're not being run into things and have the use and abuse of human interaction. So to think that they'd be replacing them, it'd be awfully early in the replacement cycle right now for them to consider replacing. But we see reorders from customers that bought an initial amount of AMR as kind of a pilot. Maybe they put it in a few stores to prove the technology themselves. We see reorder, a high percentage of reorders from those customers. An additional data point, thus far in 2022, we have surpassed in units and dollars our full year of 2021 in AMR. So if I take the large success we had right out of the gate and just look at a trend line, we're actually really proud of what we've accomplished, and we think there's upside beyond here.

That's great. Thanks, Dave. Thanks, Sam. Thank you. Thanks, Dave.

Since there are no further questions at this time, I would like to turn the call over to management for closing remarks.

I want to personally thank every tenant employee globally for their hard work, collaboration, and customer commitment as we work together to create a cleaner, safer, healthier world. I would also like to welcome Andrew Heider to Tenants Board of Directors. Andrew is the Chief Executive Officer of ATS Automation, an industry-leading automation solutions provider to many of the world's most successful companies. We are excited to have him aboard and to be able to tap into his expertise as we introduce focused and innovative solutions that will solve some of our customers' toughest challenges. Lastly, please note that we will be presenting at the following conferences, Sedodian Company's virtual conference on August the 18th and Seaport Global's annual industrial conference on August the 23rd. This concludes our earnings call. Thank you for your time and have a nice day.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.