Trane Technologies plc

Good morning. Welcome to the Train Technologies Q3 2021 earnings conference call. My name is Paula and I will be your conference operator for the call. The call will begin in a few moments with the speaker's remarks and the Q&A session. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. To ask a question during the Q&A, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to remove yourself from the queue, Simply press star 1 again. In consideration of time, we do ask that you please limit to one question and one follow-up question. I will now turn the call over to Zach Nagel, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Operator. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for Training Technologies' third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. This call is being webcast on our website at trainingtechnologies.com, where you'll find the accompanying presentation. We are also recording and archiving this call on our website. Please go to slide two. Statements made in today's call that are not historical facts are considered forward-looking statements and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of federal securities law. Please see our SEC filings for a description of some of the factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from anticipated results. This presentation also includes non-GAAP measures, which are explained in the financial tables attached to a news release. Joining me on today's call are Dave Rigneri, CEO, and Chris Kuhn, Executive Vice President and CFO. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dave. Dave?

Thanks, Zach, and everyone for joining us on today's call. Let's turn to slide number three. As we do each quarter, I'd like to spend a few minutes up front on our focused sustainability strategy, the engine that enables us to deliver differentiated shareholder returns over time. Long-term sustainability megatrends continue to intensify, and our innovation leadership is transforming the climate industry as the world decarbonizes. Our aggressive goals and bold actions can dramatically reduce carbon emissions and accelerate the world's progress. This is more critical every day as the clock is ticking on climate change. That's why we are calling for businesses and governments to take stronger action at COP26 and why we continue to set aggressive science-based emission reduction targets to push our innovation further and faster. That innovation also extends to emerging trends as we see heightened focus on indoor air quality and strong momentum in aging infrastructure in our schools. We continue to make a difference consistently, relentlessly, and over the long term. This unyielding approach drives market outgrowth over the long term, which in turn helps us drive strong margins and powerful free cash flow to deploy through our balanced capital allocation strategy. The end result is more value across the board for our customers, for our team, for our shareholders, and for the planet. Moving to slide number four. Our global team delivered solid execution in the third quarter, and we continue to target top quartile EPS growth for 2021. Bookings were once again exceptional in Q3, building on strong growth in both Q1 and Q2 and bringing our year-to-date organic bookings growth to over 25% for the enterprise. Underlying demand for our innovative products and services have never been stronger, and our Q3 ending backlog reflects this strength. In fact, Q3 ending backlog for the enterprise is up more than 70%, or approximately $2 billion from year-end 2020, with all three of our business segments at record levels. Americas and EMEA have backlog that are up over 90% and 65%, respectively, from year-end 2020. We're well positioned to close out 2021 on a strong note, and to enter 2022 with unprecedented levels of backlog as well. As we highlighted on our second quarter earnings call and in subsequent forums, global supply chains, logistics systems, and labor markets remain tight and inflation is persistent. Our global teams are focused on meeting the unique needs of our wide-ranging customer base and helping them solve complex challenges on a daily basis as we navigate a challenging, yet positive demand and supply environment. Temporary supply chain delays on key materials impacted portions of our product portfolio, shifting the timing of approximately $150 million or 4% of our revenue out of the third quarter and into future periods. Working closely with our key suppliers and with our customers, we anticipate that between $50 million and $75 million, or roughly 2% of the Q3 impact, will shift into the fourth quarter, leaving our 2021 revenue guidance unchanged. We expect the remaining balance to shift into 2022. We also highlighted our second quarter earnings call that persistent inflation would require us to execute an incremental $150 million in pricing actions in the second half of the year in order to neutralize the impact. Strong execution of our business operating system has enabled us to keep pace with the inflationary curve. In the third quarter, we realized approximately $150 million or 4.3% incremental price. offsetting approximately $150 million of inflation. Leverage was negligible, as you would expect on flat volume, while adjusted operating income was modestly higher in the quarter, primarily reflecting nominal pull-through on M&A and FX growth, consistent with our expectations and our guidance. We continue to execute the business transformation projects we discussed in detail at our investor day in December and are on track to deliver approximately $90 million of incremental savings in 2021. These savings support leading innovation across our end markets through relentless high levels of business reinvestment. They also enable us to stay on track to deliver incremental margins of approximately 30% organic for fiscal 2021. despite persistent inflation, tight logistics systems, and supply chain challenges. We're also on track to deliver a powerful free cash flow of equal to or greater than 100% of net earnings. This provides us with strong optionality to deploy significant cash to opportunities now and in the future, including M&A and share repurchases. Lastly, we never lose sight of our long-term purpose-driven strategy and the tremendous leadership role we can play in bending the curve on climate change. By changing the industry, we can change the world. Executing our purpose-driven strategy is how we will continue to deliver top-tier financial performance for our shareholders. Please turn to slide number five. While we're still in the midst of our planning process for 2022 and anticipate providing guidance in conjunction with our fourth quarter earnings call, we thought it might be constructive to spend a few minutes discussing our initial thoughts on 2022 and some of the key dynamics we believe will be in play. While this is not a comprehensive list, it will highlight some of the key reasons why we're so excited about what the future holds for trained technologies, as well as some of the key challenges we see on the road ahead. First, we expect to have strong fundamentals entering the year. Exiting Q3, backlog in our Americas and EMEA segments are both at unprecedented levels, up over 90% and up over 65% versus December of 2020, respectively. Asia also has record backlog, up nearly 20%. If we very conservatively plot out bookings through the balance of 2021, we anticipate entering 2022 with at least 70% more backlog in the Americas and EMEA than we entered 2020. I've been in this business a long time, and I've never entered any year with a stronger backlog position, which bodes well for us in 2022. Another fundamental strength entering 2022 is the foundation of our business operating system. Strong execution of our business operating system has enabled us to stay ahead of the persistent inflation through 2021 and position us well to manage additional inflationary pressures and deliver strong price realization again in 2022. And we'll continue to drive transformation savings in 2022 that will support high levels of business reinvestment and continued innovation. These savings will also support healthy incremental margins in what we expect to be another year of tight conditions for supply chain, labor markets, and logistics systems. Looking out to 2022, we also expect to see continued acceleration of the strong secular sustainability megatrends that are so tightly aligned with our purpose-driven business strategy. Decarbonization of the built environment is accelerating. U.S. education stimulus dollars are being put to good use, upgrading our aging infrastructure, and momentum around indoor air quality upgrades, retrofits, and new projects continues. Additionally, the global economy is expected to continue to recover in 2022, with solid underlying GDP and other economic indicators driving broader expansion in the non-residential markets. Lastly, we're excited about the future of transport refrigeration markets where ACT and IHS are plotting a steady growth path forward in both 2022 and 2023. All in, we're exceptionally well positioned for strong performance in 2022 and beyond. Please turn to slide number six. Customer demand for innovative climate control products and services continues to grow. we delivered another quarter of robust organic bookings growth, up 20%, with growth across all segments and business units. Customer demand has been high all year, with organic bookings up over 25% year-to-date, driving a record backlog in each segment. Organic revenues were also up 4%, driven by continued strong price execution. Our America's commercial HVAC business delivered robust bookings growth in the quarter, with orders up over 30%. Strength was broad-based, with applied and unitary bookings both up more than 50%, and service bookings up high teens. Demand for system-focused indoor air quality solutions remained strong and contributed to our mid-single-digit revenue growth in commercial HVAC Americas. The residential HVAC markets continue to be strong, and our residential team delivered low single-digit bookings growth, building on nearly 40% growth in the third quarter of 2020. Revenues were flat in the quarter as demand outpaced supply, and we enter the fourth quarter with record backlog, up more than 150% year-over-year, and up from prior record backlog at the end of the second quarter. With year-to-date organic bookings up over 80% and year-to-date organic revenue up over 30%, our America's transport refrigeration business is significantly outperforming the North America transport markets. During the third quarter, with most of 2021 orders already in the backlog, we opened up our 2022 order book solely for the first quarter of 2022, which drove bookings growth of more than 20%. We are methodically managing our 2022 order book in order to mitigate inflationary risks. Organic revenues were also strong, up low to mid-teens. Turning to EMEA, we continue to see strong demand for our innovative products and services that help reduce energy intensity and greenhouse gas emissions for our customers. Our EMEA teams delivered 25% organic bookings growth in the quarter. with strong growth in both commercial HVAC and transport refrigeration. Revenues were also strong, up 8%, led by high team's organic revenue growth in transport refrigeration. Our Asia Pacific team delivered bookings growth of 11%. Revenue grew 1% in the quarter. Though we saw growth in China during the quarter, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to be challenging in the region, with low vaccination rates in some countries. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Chris. Chris? Thanks, Dave. Please turn to slide number seven. Organic revenue growth in the quarter was driven by continued strong price execution, yielding 4.3% incremental price in the quarter. Price over material inflation was positive in the quarter, and combined with mix, offset the net impact of productivity over other inflation and increased investment spending to support leading innovation. organic volume, and therefore pull-through leverage was largely flat for the enterprise in the quarter. At a high level, positive leverage was primarily the result of mix and a modest flow-through of M&A and FX, consistent with our guidance. Net adjusted EBITDA and operating margins declined by 70 and 60 basis points, respectively. Adjusted EPS grew 5%, driven primarily by higher adjusted operating income. Please turn to slide number eight. We discussed the key revenue and margin dynamics for the enterprise on the prior page. The dynamics impacting revenue and margins were similar across each of our business segments, as we've highlighted here, with strong price realization, productivity, inflation, and higher investments in innovation as consistent drivers. In EMEA, solid price realization was accompanied by strong volume growth, delivering good leverage and margin expansion in the quarter. Both the Americas and Asia Pacific segments delivered higher revenues on modest volume declines, impacting leverage. Asia Pacific also experienced price versus cost headwinds in the quarter, further impacting margins. We continue to expect Asia Pacific to deliver solid margin expansion for the full year and are pleased with our overall performance in the region. Now I'd like to turn the call back over to Dave. Dave? Thanks, Chris. Please turn to slide number nine. Commercial HVAC Americas has significantly outperformed the broader markets over a number of years through strong focus, agility, and execution, combined with relentless innovation for our customers. These defining characteristics, compounded by the strength of the underlying market conditions, power the business forward today, yielding bookings growth of over 30% in the quarter, an exceptional backlog entering Q4. Booking strength was universal across nearly every vertical market and major product category. And markets continue to improve. Vaccination rates are improving. and end market indicators are generally strong, with ABI over 50 since February and a healthy GDP. Data centers and warehouse demand remain strong. Education and health care end market demand is also growing. We're benefiting from increased demand across our K-12 customers, with federal stimulus funds supporting both current and, more importantly, future growth. We see this as a multi-year tailwind for our business, given our strong position in the education market and our direct sales force with deep relationships in this vertical. Our residential and markets remain strong. As I mentioned previously, we delivered low single-digit bookings growth in the quarter, compounding on nearly 40% growth in the prior year. And we are entering the fourth quarter with unprecedented backlog. I'm proud of our residential team that has continued to meet customer demand while ramping capacity after a February weather event in our Texas facility. The team delivered historically high revenues in Q3 and is on track for capacity expansion in advance of next year's cooling season. Turning to America's transport, we're significantly outgrowing strong end markets in 2021. Act market forecasts are projecting strong growth in 2022 and 2023 as well. I'll talk more about the transport outlook in our topics of interest section. Turning to Amiya, economic conditions are improving across the region. We expect continued improvement for the remainder of the year with increased vaccination rates supporting the opening of an increased number and variety of venues. Transport markets have been strengthening throughout the year, and we're on track to outperform end markets in 2021 as evidenced by our year-to-date performance. Turning to Asia, we expect growth in China in 2021, supported by increased vaccination rates and strengthened data centers, electronics, pharmaceutical, and healthcare. Outside of China, the picture is mixed, with vaccination and economic recovery rates still low in some countries. Now I'd like to turn the call back over to Chris. Chris? Thanks, Dave. Please turn to slide number 10. Given all the puts and takes we've discussed today, our guidance for 2021 is unchanged. Importantly, we continue to see our 2021 adjusted EPS growth guidance of more than 30% as top quartile among peers in the broader industrials. We've discussed the shift in revenues from Q3 to Q4 in 2022 throughout the call. Our fourth quarter revenues are supported by record backlog, and that backlog is firm. Supply chain, labor, and logistics systems will continue to be challenging and are the limiting factor to potential upside, not demand or backlog. We also continue to expect free cash flow to remain strong at equal to or greater than 100% of adjusted net income. Please go to slide number 11. As we outlined during our investor event in December, we're on track to deliver $300 million of run rate savings by 2023, including $90 million in 2021. Importantly, we continue to invest these cost savings to further fuel innovation and other investments across the portfolio. This consistent investment strengthens our high-performance flywheel, which has a reinforcing and compounding effect over time. Please go to slide number 12. we remain committed to our balanced capital allocation strategy that is focused on consistently deploying excess cash to opportunities with the highest returns for shareholders. First, we continue to strengthen our core business through relentless business reinvestment. Second, we're committed to maintaining a strong balance sheet that provides us with continued optionality as our markets evolve. Third, we expect to consistently deploy 100% of excess cash over time, using a balanced approach that includes strategic M&A that further improves long-term shareholder returns and share repurchases as the stock trades below our calculated intrinsic value. Please turn to slide 13, and I'll provide an update on how we are deploying excess cash in 2021. Year-to-date, we have deployed $1.8 billion in cash, with approximately $1 billion to M&A and share repurchases, including $250 million for the Farrar Scientific Life Sciences acquisition we closed in October. We have paid $422 million in dividends and $425 million to pay down debt. Our strong free cash flow, liquidity, and balance sheet continue to give us excellent capital allocation optionality and dry powder moving forward. We are on track to deploy at least $2.5 billion in excess cash in 2021. Now, I'd like to turn the call back over to Dave. Dave. Thanks, Chris. Please go to slide number 15. I wanted to spend a couple minutes providing an update on the transport refrigeration markets for 2021, as we've seen the forecast shift a fair amount since our second quarter earnings call. I think the primary takeaway this quarter is that ACT is projecting an extended and more gradual upturn in the North America transport refrigeration markets than initially projected. North America trailers is probably the clearest example and one of the most watched by investors and analysts as a proxy for the overall transport refrigeration health. ACT started out the year projecting an almost immediate snapback in the North America trailer production in 2021, up 39% off the lows of the pandemic in 2020. As trailer OEMs have had a challenging year producing enough trailers to meet the forecast, ACT has gradually pulled the forecast down and is now projecting a strong but more gradual improvement in 2021, up 18%, and continued improvement in production rates in both 2022 and 2023, up another 18% and 14%, respectively. If you look at the all-in weighted average market forecast for North America transport refrigeration, 2021 is now expected to be up about 14%, versus 24% projected in July. Year to date, our Thermo King America's transport refrigeration business is up more than 30%, clearly outperforming the markets, and we expect to outperform the markets for the full year as well. Looking at IHS and other key indicators for EMEA markets, the outlook has improved about three points, with the weighted average market growth now expected to be about 12% for 2021. Year-to-date, our Thermo King EMEA business is up more than 20%, clearly outperforming the markets, and we expect outperformance for the full year of 2021 as well. Please go to slide number 16. We added a second transport refrigeration slide to the deck this quarter to add more color around the North America trailer market from both backward and forward-looking perspectives. One of the things we've talked about over the past several quarters is the North America trailer market has not been particularly volatile over the past several years, and it's not projected to be particularly volatile over the ACT forecast horizon either. On the left side of the page, you can see the visual depiction of what we've been describing. We chart ACT's reported actual trailer units built going back to 2015. and acts forecast for trailer builds through their forecast horizon of 2023. The nine-year average is in the mid 40,000 unit range, with the pandemic in 2020 being the only significant outlier. We also see that good growth is projected in both 2022 and 2023. It's important to note that our global transport refrigeration business is highly diversified. Trailer is an important part of the global mix at about 25% of the total. However, we're focused on strong execution across the transport refrigeration portfolio, which we believe will further help reduce variability of this business over time. Please go to slide number 17. 2021 is shaping up to be a strong year for us overall, despite a number of macro challenges that we expect to continue over the near term. We're seeing unprecedented levels of demand for our products and services across the board, and our backlog has never been stronger. We're executing our business operating system well and staying ahead of persistent inflation with strong price realization. And we expect to deliver top quartile EPS growth for the full year. Energy efficiency and sustainability megatrends are only growing stronger. We are uniquely positioned to deliver leading innovation that addresses these trends and accelerates the world's progress, supported by a business transformation and our engaging, uplifting culture. We are proud to have been recognized by Forbes as one of the best employers for diversity and best employers for women, and by Fortune as one of the best workplaces in manufacturing. It's our people that power our innovation and bring our purpose to life every day. We have many reasons to be excited about our prospects for strong performance as we look to 2022 and beyond. When combined with our exceptional ability to generate free cash flow and our balanced capital deployment, we are well positioned to continue to drive differentiated shareholder returns over the long term. And now, we'd be happy to take your questions. Operator?