ITT Inc. (ITT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. So we've got ITT with us. They are based in Stamford, Connecticut. ITT is a manufacturer of critical engineered components through fast-growing end markets in transportation, flow, energy, aerospace and defense. ITT has 82 million shares outstanding. Shares trade at $143 for an $11.6 billion market cap, $220 million of net debt and $11.8 billion total enterprise value. Joining us from ITT are Emmanuel Caprais, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Mark Macaluso, Vice President of Investor Relations and Global Communications. We'll start and Emmanuel is going to start with a brief overview of the business before we jump into questions.

Good morning. First of all, good morning, and thanks to [Mario] and the entire team for having us. It's great to be back here and also thanks for your continued support and investment in ITT. Real quick, just to get the legal jargon out of the way, presentation and Emmanuel and my comments may contain forward-looking statements, which are based on our best view of the world and our businesses as we see them today. We just kindly ask that you view them in that light. Of course, these expectations can change as we've all learned, and we encourage you to look at our Form 10-K and other SEC filings for the latest risks and uncertainties. Maybe just to jump quickly to the overview. For those of you who don't know, ITT is a manufacturer of highly engineered critical components for harsh environments that serve the fast-growing end markets in transportation flow, which I'm sure we'll talk about today, energy, aerospace and defense. As you can see with our recent acquisitions, which I'm sure we'll talk more about shortly, we are just about over $3.6 billion in revenue spread across our 3 segments. In terms of end market exposure, automotive and chemical and industrial pumps, each make up about 1/3 of the business, followed by aerospace and defense, which has grown to 18% and with our acquisition of kSARIA followed by energy, general industrial and rail. And just one more point from me, and then I'll turn it over to Emmanuel. As you can see on the lower right, I think historically, ITT's value creation has come from organic growth and margin expansion. And to that algorithm, especially in 2024, we started to really add value from M&A. So with that, I'll turn it over to Emmanuel on Slide 4.

Thank you. Good morning. Good morning, [Mario]. Good morning, and thank you for having us. Thank you to the Gabelli Funds team for having us here. We always look forward to this event. So just a quick summary of our 2024 results up there on the screen. You can see that we grew revenue organically by 7% and then if we take into account the acquisitions of Svanehøj, which is a cryogenic pump manufacturer and kSARIA, which is a cable connector and cable assembly specialist, we grew 11% for the year 2024. This includes also the divestiture of one of our businesses, Wolverine, which was an automotive business and that we sold in Q3 -- early Q3 last year. From a margin standpoint, you can see a really nice progression. We grew operating margin by 80 basis points to 17.7%. So a nice improvement, both obviously fueled by the growth in revenue, but as well our productivity and cost reductions that we've been implementing for the past few years. You could see EPS also grew very nicely at 12%, and this is on top of 17% that we grew in 2023. So a really nice performance here. I mean, one thing that you'll hear is that we've been outperforming our financial targets that we communicated publicly in 2022. And then from a free cash flow standpoint, we continue to make progress. We have a free cash flow margin of 12.1%, continuous improvement. I think here, the main focus has been to really drive down working capital, specifically inventory, that had grown to really unsustainable levels after COVID. And so we've been engaged in really driving working capital efficiencies. The good news is that this year, inventory is actually a source of cash which is very positive, not enough. And then -- so will continue in the future. If we look at our 2025 outlook, I just want to cite a few numbers here. So you can see we're planning to have roughly 4% organic growth, which is on top of the 7% that I just talked about. We plan to have roughly 80 basis points of margin expansion at the midpoint and an adjusted EPS of roughly 8%, which is on top of the 12% that we were able to generate in 2024. And then from a free cash flow standpoint, our midpoint is at around $475 million, which is roughly $30 million above what we were able to deliver in 2024. We are confidently showcasing those numbers. We do have a significant backlog. We've accumulated $1.6 billion of backlog, mostly in our Industrial Process business, which is our Pump & Valve business. We have almost $1 billion in backlog, close to 50% of our 2025 revenue with our current backlog and so this is -- historically, if we look at historic data, we're on the high end of our range. So we're very happy with that. I think the focus is going to be on converting that backlog in a timely manner. It requires a lot of productivity, a lot of -- some expansion also from capacity standpoint. But I think that this is a really good setup for ITT. The second part I wanted to highlight after the organic value creation is the value creation we are developing through M&A. We -- as I mentioned, we acquired Svanehøj, which is a cryogenic pump manufacturer for vessels as well as kSARIA, an interconnect specialist. So these are companies that are leaders in their end markets. So Svanehøj is leaders in 2 -- is leader #1 position in 2 of its 4 end markets and then #3 and #4 on the other two. So really strong position here. kSARIA is also one of the -- in the top 5 of the Defense Cable Assembly business. So they both have really strong growth profiles. Svanehøj is expected to grow low double digits over the next 5 years. And kSARIA high single double -- single-digit growth also over the next 5 years. So really good prospects, allows us to really focus on high-growth end markets, also more profitable. And so if you take that -- if you take into account the fact that we divested Wolverine, which was a very profitable business, but an automotive business, very cyclical, I think we are reorientating the portfolio of the company towards high-growth, high-margin type of business. A little snapshot about Industrial Process. So Industrial Process closed 2024 with $1.4 billion in terms of revenue and operating margin of over -- well over 20%. This is a business -- for all the people that have followed us for years, this is a business that in 2017 was in the mid-single-digit range of margin. So obviously, a lot of progress has been made. We've been able to really substantially grow this business roughly doubling the size, mostly through organic actions but also with the acquisition of Svanehøj that I just talked about that we did in the beginning of 2024. You can see that in terms of end markets, we are pretty diverse. Obviously, chemical and energy are the lion's share of our Pump business, but we also have good presence in general industrial and also in mining. The ratio of, let's say, OE versus aftermarket, so a little bit more than 40%, this Svanehøj acquisition that we made is roughly aligned with that split in terms of aftermarket. So good recurring revenue from an aftermarket standpoint. And then as you can see, we're mostly a North American business. But we are also expanding outside with -- for instance, we gained a lot of market share in the Middle East in '23 and in '24. We have a really strong partner there -- partnership there with all the oil companies in the Middle East, including Saudi Aramco. And so we expect to be able to continue to drive those market share gains, especially in the project space. We have roughly 1.6 million installed base in terms of pumps. So that gives us significant recurring revenue from an aftermarket standpoint.

And then maybe we'll get to questions. Just a quick plug for our upcoming Investor Day. As Emmanuel mentioned, hopefully you heard, we had our last Investor Day in 2022. We set long-term targets for revenue, operating margin, EPS growth and free cash flow. We've largely met or exceeded the bulk of those targets about 2 years early. So we're excited to showcase the business, including the acquisitions we've done since 2022, there will be a lot of expansive interactive technology demonstrations. The leadership team, plus all of the people that are on the ground doing the work are going to be there. So please, we encourage you all to join us. And with that, I'll turn it over to Q&A.

Great. Thank you both so much. I think that's terrific. Clearly, business firing on, if not all cylinders, most cylinders. I mean, hitting your margin targets 2 years early is certainly an accomplishment. Maybe keying in first on the M&A aspect. I mean, you spent almost $900 million on these 2 deals, which you touched on, divested Wolverine. Right now, you've just over $200 million in net debt, so have a lot of capacity. Could you talk about your pipeline right now, the environment and obviously, you want to get into these higher-growth niche segments, can you talk about what we could expect from a geographic standpoint, product area, et cetera?

Sure. Thank you for the question. So let me start first by saying that we're very happy with the acquisitions that we made in 2024. Those were -- this was the largest amount of capital deployed in any single year for ITT and that was a big milestone. But more importantly, those were -- the capital was deployed to good acquisitions. Svanehøj has been firing on all cylinders, as you said. We had more than 20% -- I think it was 26% orders growth versus the prior year in 2024. So really strong performance there. Revenue also grew significantly in the high -- in the low double digits and we expect this to continue because it is fueled by all the LNG expansion that we see across the world. Svanehøj has a privileged position there. And so we get a lot of benefits from that. kSARIA, we acquired them in September, and things are going well. They also grew nicely in the fourth quarter in terms of revenue, and we expect this to continue in addition to margin expansion also there. Looking forward, as you mentioned, we don't have a lot of debt. And I think that this is the result of really strict and responsible diligent working capital management. We've been really trying to drive down working capital. We'll be making progress. Today, we have roughly 20% of our revenue is tied in working capital which is a significant improvement compared to where we were in the past. And we're targeting to be in the 16% to 17% over the medium to long term. And so with this cash performance, and with our low net debt, we will be able to go after more M&A. However, we -- and this is going to sound like not very differentiated, but we want to be very disciplined. And so we have a very active funnel composed of, I would say, medium-sized deals, like Svanehøj and kSARIA, as well as larger deals. So very active. We're trying to make sure that this funnel matures as quickly as possible so that it turns out in -- results in actionable opportunities. But we're very disciplined. So that means that we weed out also from the funnel a lot of opportunities that we don't consider we could be successful with. And so those are usually strategically aligned, but there is something that is not right for us. So for instance, we were looking at a company in one of the spaces that we are focusing on, which is connector and also pumps and valves. And so when we looked at it, it was perfect strategic fit, really complementary products. They had really good products. Some of them were even better than ours. However, when we looked at the management team, when we looked at the footprint, it seemed like a really, really heavy lift. And while the returns looked attractive, if you deduct it and if you risk adjusted those returns, they were much less attractive. So we decided to pass on that because we didn't think that we had a really good chance to be successful. And so those are decisions that we make because when you think about M&A, you're not thinking about a CapEx investment for $3 million, $4 million, $5 million that you're going to be -- if it doesn't work, you're going to be stuck with, but the impact is limited. When you think about M&A, for us, it has a multiyear impact. And if we make wrong choices, these are -- this has multiyear consequences. And so we're very attentive before making that decision. And as Luca said, our CEO, the last thing we want to do is to fall in love with the deal, we want to make the deal for the right reasons.

Sounds like aggressive but disciplined, I like it. Maybe let's start on the business itself, Industrial Process since we are at a pump/valve conference, if you could review a little bit your portfolio, what your core competencies are relative to other pump valve companies and you have been gaining share. Can you kind of help us with what's behind that in terms of new products or just new customers and end markets?

Sure. So yes, you're right, we've been gaining share, and this has been very encouraging to us. So the Industrial Process business was, as I mentioned, a very challenged business back in 2017. We worked really hard to downsize the footprint, to restructure this business, to implement a growth strategy and that worked. That worked because our margins are now over 20% despite the dilutive impact of Svanehøj and we've been posting really nice growth in terms of orders. Just to give you an idea, our green energy orders have grown significantly and now accounting for $200 million of orders booked about in the past few years. And so a lot of things are going well for our Industrial Process business. We continue to have really good strong positions in our anti-pump business, which gives us a lot of pricing power. And so this is obviously contributing to a lot of the margin expansion because over the inflation period, we have been able to outpace the cost inflation, thanks to price. Roughly, the impact of price over the past 2 to 3 years has been 500 basis points. So that really, really helped us. In addition to this, we're very focused on reducing costs. And so we are implementing lean in all our factories. We are implementing, in other words, the Motion Technologies playbook, Motion Technologies is our transportation business which is for transport business hitting roughly around 19%, 20% margins and so we expect to be at 20% this year. And then it's a very specific playbook centered around standardization of production processes, automation and materials and labor productivity. And so we've been implementing this in our Industrial Process business as well as our CCT business. And this has driven really a lot of the cost reduction. And as we were growing, we were able to disproportionately also increase margins because we were not only putting more revenue through our factories, but also reducing the structural cost of our factories.

Got you. And in terms of the aftermarket being about 40%, has that been consistent? Has it grown over time? I'm curious about margin differential of new products OE versus aftermarket?

So when I was speaking about price, most of the price gains that we got was for aftermarket. And the reason for this is because we have a large installed base. And so we take advantage and we make sure that we capture all the value we can with the aftermarket that we sell. In terms of percentage, that has been between 40% and 45%. In the past few years, it's been ramping up as we were able to not only increase price, but also -- so a good volume increase at the same time. Our aftermarket business is constituted of both parts that we sell to OE customers as well as distributors but also service. And so here, this is an area that we are really excited about because we made significant progress. We've been focusing on reducing the repair lead times for our customers. And as a result, we saw more volume coming through our shops and customers are really appreciating the fact that we are able to guarantee competitive lead time and also beat them. One other initiative that we've taken is that we're really focused on our North American spare part business. And so roughly, 90% of the spare parts that are ordered through our distribution center in the U.S., go out in 24 hours. And then you get to roughly 98% in 2 days. So this has been really a differentiator for us. We do think those lead times, making sure the customers receive the parts as soon as possible, that has allowed us to really grow significantly.

Using automation, AI, digitization, how are you getting those lead times down?

So a lot of different things. So first of all, you heard me talking about inventory. So we reduced inventory, but within the inventory, there was a shift between the buckets. So what we're doing is that we're reducing work-in-progress inventory and we're increasing finished good inventory. And so as a result, we were able to have more inventory on hand to ship to our customers without affecting too much the overall inventory number. As far as AI or other technologies, unfortunately, I can't really say that we're using them. I mean, we're -- there are so many -- I would say this, there are so many opportunities that we can -- low-hanging fruits that we can really address with simple and common sense management that, for the moment, there's no really reason for us to include AI into the equation. Once we start running out of those low-hanging fruits, then maybe there will be a good opportunity.

That's great to hear. I'll remind everyone. We're happy to take questions both in the room as well as people can submit on the Zoom, but I'll just continue for now. I'll get to the inevitable tariff question, but I'll say it not just on tariffs, but obviously, those are coming or maybe coming, how that will affect you, maybe review your manufacturing footprint a little bit, both in IP, but for the company generally? But beyond that, I'd say, regulation, potential tax changes like bonus depreciation, how might that affect you or your end customers that might change the demand picture?

So regarding tariffs, I mean, obviously, the situation is quite fluid, it changes every day. I think the focus for us is we're not going to change our footprint. Our footprint is close to our customers. So that's part of the advantage we have compared to others, where we produce in the U.S. or North America is mostly for North America, where we see in China is for China. We don't import into China. We don't export out of China. And so I think that we have the right footprint because we're close to our customers. The reality is that we'll have some tariff impacts like everybody else. And so the solution or how we're going to address it is by passing it through to our customers. We'll do as much as we can, mitigation from a cost standpoint. Obviously, we're always after productivity. But in reality, it has to go through our customers. And this is including Industrial Process, customers at CCT and our Motion Technology OEM automotive customers.

Okay. Great. Maybe I'll just move on to Motion a little bit. If you could review some dynamics in that business, specifically on the Friction business. You made a big push into EVs. That market slowed a bit. Can you talk about your position with ICE versus EV vehicles for your Friction business? Does it matter? Is there a margin differential to you? And what are you doing from a share perspective?

Yes. So on friction, which is, let's call it, 80% of all Motion Technologies, roughly 70% of the business is OE and then the other 30% is aftermarket. The aftermarket is comprised of both OE service and also the independent aftermarket where we go to market with continental through a 10-year agreement that began in 2024. Hopefully, you heard in our earnings call, our global market share surpassed 30% for the first time this year, but that's not just unique to ICE. We have strong positions in ICE, electric vehicles and also hybrids, which is going to be sort of an intermediary step. So in terms of production, we're sort of agnostic as to where the growth is. Obviously, if EV production slows further, that means the production in ICE is going to pick up. And there, we have probably even a stronger position just given that sort of historical legacy of the business.

And if I can add, so at the difference of a lot of automotive suppliers, we do not have to change anything in our production process. whether it is an EV brake pad or an ICE break pad or a hybrid brake pad, it's made on the same -- exact same presses. And so we made a push on EV from a commercial standpoint, but we're tying to customer demand. And so the fact that we have production processes that are absolutely agnostic is making the transition back and forth very easy.

And maybe just on the performance itself, in ICE, for example, the market grew -- our business grew 1% in a market that was down 10%. So our performance is about 1,100 basis points and the outperformance in EVs, similarly strong in both North America, U.S. and especially in China. So historically, the business has outperformed between 700 and 800 basis points a year. We look at versus S&P's Global automotive production estimates. And then for this year, we think that number will be between 400 and 500 basis points spread across all powertrain types.

Okay. And then maybe also on your rail business, KONI has done incredibly well the last couple of years also. What's been behind that? And how sustainable is it going forward?

So yes, our KONI business is our rail business within Motion Technologies, and it's doing really well at significant growth from both an order and a revenue standpoint. And then in Q4, we reached 20% margin, which is a significant improvement. When I joined ITT, I joined as a segment CFO for our Motion Technologies business. And when I joined, KONI was -- ended up the year 2021 at minus 0.4% margin. And so being at 20% feels like really it was a long time ago, but it feels like really a significant achievement. Here, there are a few things that I want to highlight. First, we've been really aggressively expanding geographically, the reach of our products. So for instance, in Europe, which is where KONI all started, KONI is a Dutch company. We -- through market analysis and talking with customers, we saw that the Eastern Europe market, we didn't attack it with enough aggressiveness. And so we went after -- for the past 3 years, we went after all the Eastern European customers and we've been able to gain significant share there, especially as those customers are also trying to expand into Western Europe. In China, we've been really focusing on high-speed trains. And here, we've been qualified on the 450 kilometers per hour, that's roughly 300 miles, something like that, per hour train, and we're the only one qualified on that platform. And so when it starts later in 2025, we stand a really good chance of gaining a lot of market share from that business. And then in North America, we've had a significant base on the passenger rail there, a significant position. And then with the investments, the $60 billion on Amtrak that has been given to Amtrak, I think, back in 2023, I think we stand to reap significant benefits for that in the near future.

Great. And we're coming up on time. I'll maybe just have one more then, and that's that ITT has used financial engineering with great success in the past. I'm just curious, as you continue to get bigger in IP and in connect and control, which a lot of that is aerospace, if I understand correctly, is that something you would ever consider again down the road?

So thank you for the compliment. I would call this financial common sense. We've been really working on simplifying our businesses. We got rid of the asbestos liability we had and there was a significant -- we got rid for -- it was roughly $400 million. And then so this debt-like item left the balance sheet, then it was a great release for us because it provided so much more visibility from a cash flow standpoint. We got rid of our U.S. pension as well. And so all those big historical legacy liabilities, we got rid of them. I think that looking forward, that gives us a lot of opportunity to go for M&A. So we're going to continue to work to shift the portfolio towards pumps and valves and connectors, and then reducing at the same time the weight of our Automotive business, which today is around 30%. So the target for us is to be around 20% -- sub-20%. So by adding businesses -- our Motion Technologies business, Automotive business is going to continue to grow because it is outperforming automotive markets by 800 basis points on average every year. However, with organic growth and inorganic growth through M&A for our Connector and our Pumps and Valves business, we're going to really increase the weight of those businesses and reduce the Automotive portion of our businesses and as a result, make our business and make ITT exposed to higher growth, higher-margin end markets.

I think we have to call it there. Thank you to both of you, and we look forward to hearing more on May 15.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.