EnerSys (ENS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you everyone for attending the 2024 Leveraged Finance -- Bank of America Leveraged Finance Conference. Today, we have Dan Platt, Vice President and Treasurer of EnerSys. He's going to run through a presentation, and then we'll end it with some Q&A. Dan?

Thanks, Steve. Good morning, everyone. My name is Dan Platt. I'm the VP and Treasurer of EnerSys, and thank you to Bank of America for hosting us. And for those in the room, thank you for your interest in EnerSys. Let me point you to direct you to our forward-looking statement slides before we begin. Turning to Slide 3. EnerSys at a glance. For those not familiar with EnerSys, we are a $4 billion global public company. We are an industrial battery company moving to an industrial technology company. We'll talk a little bit about that shift throughout the conversation. Our $500 (sic) [ $507 ] million of EBITDA in fiscal FY '24, and our earnings per share was $8.35. Our midpoint of our guidance this year is $8.90, so good year-over-year growth. We have 3 business segments today and a fourth that is emerging. Our business segments that we report separately today are Energy Systems, predominantly telecommunications, data centers, Motive Power, which is predominantly batteries for forklifts and Specialty, which is over-the-road trucking and aerospace and defense applications. About 3/4 of our revenue comes from the United States with the balance, the rest of the world. Turning to Slide 4. We have been transitioning, and we'll talk a little bit about this on our next slide as we've transitioned from flooded lead-acid to maintenance-free batteries. But when Dave Shaffer took over as CEO in 2016, it was an inflection point for the company. We were moving from our industrial battery, flooded acid to a more maintenance-free solution. Fast forward, we've acquired a couple of companies. We've invested quite a bit organically to continue to grow our capabilities. And today, we've recently announced that Dave will be retiring in May. And Shawn O'Connell, who has led all 3 business units, he is very familiar with our new ventures line as well, will become our CEO in May of 2025. Turning to Slide 5. Really, this is the evolution of EnerSys. And 2017, almost 3/4 of our revenue was from traditional flooded lead-acid batteries. And what that means is that, that battery needs to be maintained or water needs to be put into it. It has some limitations in that, it needs to be fully uncharged before you can charge it again. But what we try to do is we want to make sure that we create solutions for all of our customers. And we work with them in all of our lines of flooded lead-acid batteries, Thin Plate Pure Lead and lithium. And we work with our customers to optimize their energy solutions. And you can see that we've moved from 3/4 of flooded lead-acid batteries in 2017 to 45% today, less than half of our revenue, and that trend is likely to continue. For our customers, lead-acid is the most cost effective. And if they've invested capital in terms of their capital investment, it's the most -- it's the cheapest capital investment, but it's also the most expensive for them to operate. TPPL is about 2x as expensive as flooded lead-acid but has lots of efficiency solutions for our customers like remote charging. And then lithium will become a bigger and bigger part of the story going forward. We're constantly developing new products to try to support our customers. Turning to the next slide. We have 3 established business segments and a new business segment that is emerging. In the upper left-hand corner, we have our Energy Systems, and that's about 44% of our overall revenue. And in that business, we have power conversion, power distribution, think communications, telecommunications like broadband and the Verizons and AT&Ts of the world. We do work for and provide batteries in all of our battery solutions for data centers, and we also provide battery and energy system storage solutions for industrial power and utility companies. Our Specialty segment is about 15% of our overall revenue. It is predominantly over-the-road Class 8 trucking and aerospace and defense applications. We are the largest provider of batteries to the U.S. government and enjoy a great relationship with the U.S. government. Motive Power is the segment that provides forklift batteries, great business for us. We enjoy 50% of the market in the United States and about 30% plus around the world. About 40% of the world's forklifts are still combustible engines, still using carbon-based fuels and all of our batteries in the Motive Power segment are electric forklifts, power electric forklifts. It's a huge component of the cost of the forklift and that transition from carbon to electric forklifts is an opportunity for us going forward. And it's our 3 core foundational platforms that enable the 4 business segments to continue to grow. And turning to the next slide. We have 3 core platforms. And we think about this a lot within EnerSys. On the energy storage side, we have lithium-ion, TPPL and flooded. And they all have unique applications for our customers. Again, flooded might be a capital investment that a customer has made, and they still have a use case for that because maybe their warehouse isn't big enough or the cost benefit of TPPL, we can't -- they can't justify. TPPL, which is our proprietary Thin Plate Pure Lead product, what that enables our customers to do is we'll go in, our sales folks go in. We talk to our customers, and we will build a use case, and the advantage of TPPL is that, again, you can charge it remotely. You don't have to keep additional warehouse space for it. It can enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the distribution center. And then lithium-ion can come into play, think Amazon or robotics where maybe lead battery is too heavy for what it is that particular customer needs, and we have lithium-ion applications that are much lighter in terms of weight and provide solutions for our customers. The power electronics side and predominantly our Energy Systems segment, a lot of that came via an acquisition a few years back, the Alpha acquisition. And really, a lot of this is pushing the signal along, whether it's electric lines or more specifically for us, telecommunications lines. That signal, that telecommunication signal across that line needs power, and that's where our batteries come into play. And then finally, we're constantly in development for smarter batteries. It's a clean and efficient way of storing energy and reducing the carbon in the global world. And anything from simple stuff like where your battery charge level is to much more sophisticated software that can help, again, provide that energy system solution for our customers. We're always focused around our customers and meeting their needs. Turning to the next slide. This slide is really important. It shows the opportunity that exists for EnerSys. And in the lower left-hand corner, you can see all of the end diverse markets that we serve, telecommunications companies, data centers and the build-out that's occurring there. Power and utilities, think those electric utilities that need to store energy while the demand is high. Logistics and warehousing. That's a big, big part of our business. It is the Motive Power business predominantly. And anything that we can do to make our customers, and we have the big ones that you may recognize, anything that we can do to make their operations more efficient is what we try to do. Transportation sector, we provide over-the-road batteries for Class 8 trucks. We have a great relationship, as I mentioned previously, with aerospace and defense, and we do a lot there, tanks, submarines, battery packs for the Army and Navy seals that have batteries in them. And then finally, with our new line of business moving into the commercial real estate and retail operations space, that is our Fast Charge and Storage business. We just installed our first system. We don't report revenue separately yet and we'll do so when GAAP requires. But really attractive segment really, basically, what that does is we have a unit and depending on the customer, could be $750,000 to $1.5 million. But what it does is it takes electricity off of the grid, it energizes or stores energy in our battery so that the grocery store or the retail operation or the commercial operation, apartment complex, et cetera, can then draw that energy when the demand on the grid is very high. And it's peak shaving. And what it does for our customers is it allows them to avoid those demand charges in periods of high demand on the electric grid. So if you think about energy transition and the move from carbon to electric, we play a huge role in that relative to the peak shaving that we just talked about. If you think about connectivity, there's not anyone probably at this conference today that hasn't been connected to the Internet, always looking for faster and more access to the Internet. That's that signal that we talked about. That may be the 6G build-out from 5G from our telecommunications and broadband customers. Automation, the labor market is tight. It's going to become tougher and tougher to find people to do jobs and creating that automation for scalability, particularly in the distribution center environment is very important. Just think automatic robots for Chewy.com or Amazon. We're going to play in that space as well. And then finally, there's not a company here that doesn't have ESG goals and decarbonization goals and our batteries and the storage, and the efficient and clean storage of that energy allows us, EnerSys as well as our customers to help meet their decarbonization goals. Turning to the next slide. This is how we think at EnerSys. These are our core pillars. We need to innovate. And the innovation is always around the customer. And we have new product introductions all the time, our labs, our research, our interaction with our customers is all about helping them make the most efficient use of their energy. We have hardware solutions, software solutions and are constantly working to increase our value proposition for our customers. Expanding margins. We, every year, look at our manufacturing footprint. We allocate work and manufacturing to optimize those facilities. And an example would be Shawn O'Connell, who's our new CEO and soon to be new CEO. He ran the Energy Systems business, and he was able to -- we were able to optimize that business and cut out $47 million of operating expenses through cost reduction. I'm not just focused on revenue, focused on operating earnings as well, but that cost reduction is an example of what we're trying to do to improve operating earnings. And then finally, compounding value creation. That's the new Fast Charge and Storage business that we talked a little bit about, the emergence of lithium-ion. It's a much denser, energy-dense product, and we continue to build out those capabilities. Turning to the next slide. We have announced publicly that we are in the process of planning to build a 500,000 square foot Gigafactory in South Carolina. The Department of Defense has allocated $200 million to us to build that facility, largely in the form of capital reimbursement. State of South Carolina has offered us about $2 million, predominantly property tax, utility abatements, things of that nature. And then, of course, we have funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to the tune of about $120 million to $160 million a year, all evidence of the importance of manufacturing and particularly manufacturing energy and for us, manufacturing batteries in the United States. So the Inflation Reduction Act is predominantly bringing -- geared to bring manufacturing production to the U.S. And for us, it's an example of a great partnership that we have with the government. This plant will produce 2-volt lithium cells. And today, we don't manufacture lithium cells. Most of them are purchased from Asia, China, in particular. And in the future, this is -- this would be a much less risky proposition for us, political risk, supply chain risk, tariff changes, things of that nature, we would be able to self-supply our lithium need domestically, good for us, good for our country. Turning to the next slide. We have a very disciplined capital allocation process like most, we think of all of our constituents, our shareholders, our debt holders, our employees. And as it relates to capital allocation, we have a couple of things in mind on the equity side, we have committed to growing our dividend with earnings. We have about a 1% dividend yield, and you've seen over the last couple of years that we'll adjust that as necessary in line with earnings to stay in that around 1% dividend range. We also have a buyback program where we opportunistically excuse me, buy back shares. A lot of that's to offset dilution, compensation, equity executive compensation, dilution, things like that. Traditionally, we've spent between $80 million and $120 million a year in capital. And some of that's maintenance, but a lot of it is new product introduction, operational efficiencies, et cetera. And that number, of course, with the Gigafactory is going to grow in the next several years. So opportunity to invest organically. And then strategic M&A. We have now a new VP of Business Development. He's doing great. He is out instead of waiting for deals to come to us, hunting for deals. And we like deals in the $100 million to $300 million space, tuck-in acquisitions. That's not to say we wouldn't do something bigger or smaller if it makes sense. But our recent Bren-Tronics acquisition is an example of that. A great deal for us, fits in with our product portfolio, a great multiple at 8.5x, immediately accretive, just a really good deal for us. That's the type of deal that we'd love to do more of and are continuing to pursue in all of our lines of business. And then finally, our balance sheet, and we'll talk a little bit about this as well in the next few slides, is incredibly healthy. Our leverage at the end of the quarter was 1.6x. As you know, we do get incremental EBITDA boost from the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act and cash flow benefit as well. So we look at everything without IRA as well internally, and our leverage is still well within that target, low end of the 2 to 3x long-term net leverage range. Our debt, our revolver, et cetera, will all allow us to go up well beyond that. But that's the range we told shareholders that we'd like to stay in 2 to 3x and at the lower end of that range and those tuck-in acquisitions fit perfectly there. And as I mentioned, anything that we invest in, we want to create shareholder value. We want to create value for our debt holders as well. Next slide is a little bit on our balance sheet. As I mentioned, not leverage, not highly leveraged. We have about $850 (sic) [ $840 ] million of net debt on our balance sheet, $1.2 billion overall, and then the cash comes off of that for our covenant calculations. In the lower part of the screen, you can see that, again, we're at 1.6x levered. We have constant dialogue with S&P and Moody's. S&P has rated us -- has us rated BB+/stable outlook and [indiscernible] is a notch below us, but on -- a notch below S&P at Ba2, but on positive outlook. And we're constantly talking to them. A lot of questions we get from debt holders are what's -- what are our thoughts on investment grade. We think about it. We understand the trade-offs between high yield and investment grade, but we certainly don't want to move in that direction only to come back. So we will continue the dialogue with the rating agencies, which is always constructive and work with them. But the last thing we would ever want to do is go there to investment grade and come back. So that's very top of mind for us as we think about pursuing an investment-grade credit rating in the future. Turning to our next slide. Our Q2 results were in line with the guidance, both from a revenue and adjusted EPS perspective. But more importantly, on the next slide is our look ahead for FY '25. We grew -- we're going to grow our earnings pretty significantly year-over-year. And again, some of that is the operational efficiency that we talked about earlier. The net sales also have grown year-over-year from about $3.6 billion to -- you can see where our target range is here. That CapEx has been a long -- has been in our range, that $100 million to $120 million has been in our range for a long time. That will increase as we start to put a shovel in the ground and build the Gigafactory, a very efficient tax structure at EnerSys. Our tax rate ex IRA before the benefit of the IRA is in the low 20s, so 20% to 21%, and what we said publicly is the IRA benefit is about $120 million to $160 million a year, and that's treated as a reduction of cost of goods sold and is not below the line. Turning to the next slide. We're well positioned for long-term growth. We have different energy solutions than our competitors. And we do that by working with our customers and finding ways to meet their needs. We have megatrends that we are connected to in the telecom broadband build-out. What's going on with data centers in the United States and the build-out that's occurring there, Microsoft buying Three Mile Island for artificial intelligence and the build-out of data centers in Washington, D.C. represents an excellent opportunity for our growth, not only in our batteries, but also in the whole system solutions that come along with that. We generate a lot of cash here. We have -- the Flooded Lead-Acid Battery business is a great cash business. It's here to stay. It's got a long, long tail, and our customers are going to need it and helps provide cash for investment. As we mentioned, we have a really strong balance sheet, and we know how we want to spend our capital. We want to make sure that we're allocating that return of capital to our shareholders as appropriate, but that we're investing that capital wisely in order to continue to grow our EBITDA over time. And then finally, we have a new leadership team. I talked about it a little bit. If you've been following, we had recently announced that Dave will be leaving the company in May. Wonderful job in his 9-year tenure here at EnerSys in terms of the transition of the company from an industrial battery company to really a technologies -- an energy technology solution provider. And now the next shift is going to happen here in May. Shawn O'Connell has been named the Chief Operating Officer and will take over as our CEO in May. Many of you know Andy Funk and the energy and the dynamic leader that she is and the lines of business. They all -- the leaders of the lines of business have significant experience in the energy sector, many with significant experience with energy -- with EnerSys itself and really a great management team as we look to continue to grow the company. And with that, I'll turn it over to any questions that the audience may have.

If anyone has a question, please raise your hand, and we'll have a microphone sent to you. But just to kick it off, Bren-Tronics, you mentioned successful acquisition. M&A is one of the pillars of your growth strategy. You also mentioned you have a new Vice President of Business Development. I guess, in that M&A, what are some areas of focus? Is it a specific product or region? And then kind of related, like what are the multiple ranges for said potential M&A targets?

Yes. Thank you, [ Steve ]. That's a good question. What we said publicly, and I mentioned it earlier, is that we love that tuck-in acquisition. And yes, we have that target range of $100 million to $300 million. It is not exclusive to any region, to any one business unit, wherever we can make a tuck-in acquisition like Bren-Tronics that adds to our product portfolio, complements our product portfolio, where we can bring skill, we can bring sales relationships, customer relationships. They're key to us. But we'll look at anything that helps us provide solutions for our customers. It could be storage cabinets. It could be charging solutions. It could be other battery solutions. So we have a broad list of things that we look at constantly and that $100 million to $300 million that enhances our product offerings to our customers is what's most important to us.

In terms of multiple ranges, Bren-Tronics was, i think, 8.5 you were saying?

Yes. I mean, just like any acquisition, you got to look at a lot of stuff with multiple ranges. What are the potential synergies? What are -- what are the opportunities for growth? The multiple with Bren-Tronics is fantastic, right? 8.5x. It doesn't impact your leverage all that much. It's immediately accretive. Your shareholders like it, your debt holders. It doesn't really weigh on their leverage too much. So that 10x is probably attractive, but that's only going to -- every deal has to be assessed on its own. And we are incredibly disciplined in my short term here that I've learned that we're not going to overspend. We're not going to go out over our skis, and we love companies that fit well within our portfolio. So that multiple, we'd like it to be single digits or low double digits, but it's got to be looked at on a case-by-case basis.

You mentioned your leverage target is 2 to 3x. You're at 1.6x today. And then we're kind of talking about M&A. I guess, if you're thinking about M&A, how would it be funded? How high could leverage get? Like could we get out of that range temporarily to maybe come back down? Kind of how are you thinking about your leverage today and maybe potential options for not only M&A, but maybe also returning capital to shareholders?

Sure, sure. Thank you. Well, very, very dynamic environment, of course, with the world changing constantly. The size of the deal, again, that's contingent upon that deal itself, how attractive it is for us. I don't think we would be scared to go beyond our comfort zone. We recognize that there's risk in bigger deals. But we -- I'm not going to give a specific number, but we would go beyond that range certainly if it made sense for us to do so. In terms of how we would finance it, we look at everything that we do with and without the benefit of the IRA. And if we took out the benefit of the IRA, our leverage would be just a little north of 2. We know that, that has a tail. We know that that's eventually going to go away. So we look at where we are today and where we would be if we did not have IRA. And we're still very low levered. So we've told our investors that we're going to stay -- we'd like to stay at the low end of that 2 to 3x. That may mean that you accelerate that leverage a little bit and bring it back down as most acquisitions will do. So we're going to try to stay within that range. I think that range is still an incredibly conservative capital structure and allows us a ton of dry powder to continue to grow. But we love those tuck-in acquisitions. But if we had the opportunity to do something bigger that was accretive and made sense for us, we would do it. In terms of how we would finance it, I'm always looking for the best way to finance anything that it is that we do. My crystal ball says high-yield bonds will certainly be in the mix. Our revolver comes due next year, and we have some debt that's going to mature in '26 and '27. So maybe we take some of those maturities and wrap it into a bigger bonds. I don't know. That's just something that we're thinking about now to become index eligible, better for our bondholders in terms of liquidity, better for us in terms of execution. So that's kind of a forward eye toward what we're thinking about, but we're always going to go to the market and finance whatever makes the most sense for us.

That's all the time we have today. Thank you very much, Dan, for presenting EnerSys. Really appreciate it.

Thanks, Steve.