nVent Electric plc (NVT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Well, welcome, everybody, to our next presentation. We have nVent here today. I should mention, it is the only name I have on our Americas conviction list right now. So no pressure, Gary. So we've got CFO, Gary Corona; as well as Tony Riter, Head of Investor Relations. Guys, thanks so much for being here today.

Yes. Thanks a lot, and I appreciate the support of nVent this year for sure. Well, look, for those of you who are new to the story, I'm going to just give a quick overview, and then we'll jump into some Q&A. This is our normal forward-looking statements. And then I thought we just get a quick overview. We're the leader in connection and protection, industry-leading positions in brands and most importantly, well positioned in electrification, sustainability and digitalization trends. Attractive margins, you can see we have 2 segments, 2/3 systems protection, 1/3 electrical connection and a really important pie chart here in the lower middle around our verticals. You can see year-to-date, our infrastructure vertical is our leader at 43%, industrial 30% commercial, resi and then energy. Very much a U.S.-focused business. Over 80% of our revenue is in the Americas, but our Europe business is strong as well. The story for us is really the year-to-date acceleration. On a reported basis, 25% net sales growth in the first 3 quarters of the year, almost 30% growth in EPS and free cash flow up really strong of 34%. Our guide as of the third quarter was mid-teens organic growth for the second half in the fourth quarter, almost 50% EPS growth, so a nice acceleration. Our strategy has been very similar since we've spun. It's been about growth verticals, new products and expansion globally, but M&A and partnerships are a big part of that growth. We're focused on productivity and velocity and working capital management, really around our strategy around one nVent. This is an important page, which really shows the evolution since we spun out of Pentair, 8 acquisitions, 1 divestiture. What's really important is how the portfolio has changed through aggressive portfolio shaping. As you can see, when we spun out in 2017, we were a $2 billion business, mid-40s industrial and infrastructure was only 12% of our portfolio. Fast forward on a full year, just shy of $4 billion, infrastructure is now over 40% of our portfolio with data centers and power utilities about half and half of that 40%. And we now have a nice balance between short and long cycle. So a real portfolio transformation that has positioned the business for accelerated growth. And a big driver of growth, and I'm sure, Joe, we'll talk about that is our business in liquid cooling. We have a record number of orders in backlog. We're expanding capacity. And we just announced an expanded portfolio of new products. We've been recognized by NVIDIA as a solution adviser and our new tagline that we rolled out at SuperCompute in St. Louis a few weeks ago, where I think many of you were there as we do cool stuff. So it's a significant year of acceleration. The future is bright here at nVent. We're well positioned for growth. The portfolio transformation is on track and has positioned us for acceleration and expect a really strong year here in '25.

Great. I appreciate those prepared comments. And you're right, we're going to get right into liquid cooling. So it was good seeing you guys at SuperCompute a couple of weeks ago, saw 10 new products that you've rolled out. Look, liquid cooling is getting a ton of attention, right? And you're seeing several competitors making like recent acquisitions to build scale. How do you think about your moat in that business and how your technology potentially differentiates from others?

Yes. It was great to see you and many others. It was exciting to launch some new products. Over 10, to be specific, it was 14 new products in the -- that we launched. And the moat for us, as we think about our business, is really around 3 things. The first is around our technological capability. We've been in this business for over a decade. We have deep technical knowledge and deep technical partnerships with the leading chip makers and the leading hyperscalers. And we have to take that technology, we have to scale it and scale it in manufacturing is sometimes easier said than done. We've been doing it for a long time. We announced some recent capacity expansions. I'm sure we'll talk about that. And the third is really quality. And these products can't leak, and that is something that we've been able to deliver on time in -- time and time and again and build a real reputation in the industry for those 3 things, technology, quality and scale of manufacturing.

Great. So you take that moat and you had one of the biggest announcements at SuperCompute was Modine's announcement that they were launching a chiller product that could potentially circumvent the CDU. So keep it open ended. How would you like to respond to that?

Yes. So I'm not going to comment on any of other companies. What I will say is, we really like our CDU business. And as we work with our customers, we know it's absolutely critical for them as they think about managing pressure as they think about managing flow rates, but more importantly, they think about risk management in the -- in their data centers. And that's how we think about it. Our customers are really excited about our products and we're really excited about the new products that we brought to market at SuperCompute.

So take that in the context of, look, you've now increased -- you're increasing your capacity by 8x since the initial announcements back in, I think, early 2024, late 2023. So when you think about the capacity expansion that you currently have underway, like how much visibility do you have to demand for that capacity expansion? And then I know it's probably early stages, but like are you already thinking about what your next potential capacity builds could be?

Yes. We shared the news for our capacity expansion. I think it was late summer, early September. Obviously, we had visibility to the orders that we would report in Q3, and we have been working on it for some time. There's good progress that we're making with that expansion. Again, that's doubling our square footage of our liquid cooling manufacturing, 117,000 square foot expansion in Blaine, it's on track for opening in the first quarter. And so we have good visibility. And as we work with our customers, many of them are looking for us to accelerate delivery, and we're absolutely starting to talk about what and when will be that next expansion? So we're pleased with the progress that we've made, good visibility into Q4 and in 2026 as we think about our liquid cooling business. And our team is working hard. Beth has made a number of comments in our last couple of earnings calls, and our teams are working hard over the Thanksgiving holiday to deliver product for our customers, and we're appreciative of that.

Great. So look, if you're going to be ready to go, I guess, you said the first quarter of 2026, with -- how far out is that capacity based on your crystal ball today, how far is that capacity taking you out to? .

Yes. Yes, it's worth mentioning the first sort of shipments will come out of that factory in Q1, but that capacity will build over the course of the year from Q1 through Q4 will be fully up and running. And we've got good visibility to that business next year. And as I mentioned, we're starting to think about what's next because our -- the response to our new product innovation at SuperCompute was very positive. As we expected, it would be, especially with our row-based CDU that is future-proofed out into 2030 with the NVIDIA and AMD platform, and there's a lot of demand. That product, because of its capacity, because of the pressure, actually requires fewer CDUs on the floor than our competition. And that's creating demand. We expected that product to be primarily through distribution to widen the customer base, but there was a lot of big customers that are very interested in that technology. Tony, anything you'd add?

No.

Okay. One of the things that we noticed at the show, right? And going around like it was pretty clear that some of the larger players were looking to basically combine a -- some type of like modular offering that had both power and thermal, right? You saw it in Vertiv's booth, you saw it with Schneider and Motivair. You didn't see it yet with Eaton and Boyd, but that's where we're going. How important is it for you to partner with somebody that has a power like offering a more holistic power offering to stay competitive in the industry?

Yes. I mean, certainly, partnerships are one way to do it. What I would say is most of our business today is direct. And that go-to-market approach has worked quite well. But we also talked about in the meeting last week or a few weeks ago, partnership with Siemens, where they bring the power. We're bringing the liquid cooling for NVIDIA, super pod products. So that type of partnership, I think, will be common, but we're feeling pretty comfortable about our go-to-market approach and our relationships with a lot of the players on the power side.

I'm sure we can talk about liquid cooling for a while, and I'll stay on this for maybe 1 or 2 more questions and then we move on. But the -- so when you think about it, there's a lot of discussion in -- from the investor base around like capacity additions that are occurring across the sector, like you have seemingly multiple new entrants, right? It feels to us that you have been doing this now for about a decade, have a first-mover advantage. Like how are you thinking about the TAM for you guys? And then also, I know it's still very underpenetrated. So we're just trying to get a real good understanding for the runway here.

Yes. No, it's an attractive market. And as you've said, we've been in it for some time. We're focused on our game and what our customers need. From a penetration perspective, we estimate the penetration is still in the single digits. We said mid-20s in the next couple of years, but we think that's even conservative. We'll have Capital Markets Day here at the end of February, and we'll give a bit more granularity to you and others about the opportunity, but it's -- the penetration opportunity is really, really significant. I mean some of these new chips require liquid cooling, and that sets up really well for the market to really evolve.

So let's talk about your order rates, so that's eye-popping. So now I guess now I'm going to be paying very close attention to your capacity announcements, and it's since those happened slightly earlier, but like up 65% this quarter was a big number, right? And -- but it's interesting because the data center business is up a lot, but then the rest of your portfolio is also high single digits, right? So talk us through what's really inflected across, I mean seeing holistically across your portfolio? And then are we starting to even get some visibility into 2027 at this point?

Yes. So yes, absolutely, that was an exciting quarter for orders, plus 65% organically. It doesn't include what we've seen on Avail, EPG and other long-cycle business, but the core business is solid, high single-digit growth and I think one of the things that's important to mention is the power utility business. And when we acquired Avail and Trachte, that really strategically was about getting exposure to power utilities, getting more long cycle and both those businesses are growing double digits, so we're excited about that. In the broader business is doing well. So good order rates, good acceleration, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, mid-teens organic is what we expect and what we said we would expect in the second half what -- which is excellent. So yes, that balance of a little more long cycle, combined with the short cycle gets us that. As we think about the growth really was around Q4 and '26 as we think about the order growth. There wasn't a lot of '27, but we are, especially in the power utility business, starting to see some of those orders into '27. And that's part of -- it's a positive part about having a long-cycle business.

Seems like a lot of growth into 2026 then. We'll get there in a second. But -- so you mentioned Investor Day, right? So Investor Day at the end of February, your organic growth targets before, I think we're in that 5 to 7 zone and M&A, adding a point, it seems like the acquisitions are working out well. So how -- I mean, I know you're going to give us exact targets later on, but like, how should we kind of think about what -- like what organic growth and M&A target should look like going forward?

Yes, you got it. The last time we gave intermediate targets, they were mid-singles, a point plus of M&A. Obviously, the M&A is far out clubbed that growth in the second half of this year and fiscal '25 is far greater. The big important thing to note is that was pre the Thermal divestiture. That was really a key unlock for us to accelerate our growth. We've made a couple of acquisitions, that from an organic perspective, as I mentioned, are growing double digits. So the short answer to your question is there's going to be more growth, and how much that is, we'll ask you to wait until we speak more formally on it at the end of February, but the portfolio transformation has really positioned us for accelerated growth. We're doing it here in the second half and in '25, and we expect that to continue.

That's great to hear. And like, look, I said earlier, the order number this past quarter, I'm not going to layer that in every single quarter, right? But now you've had 4 quarters of double-digit order growth, right? And it seems like if you take a look at what some of the longer cycle data center equipment providers are doing, I mean you have like companies like Renova that are booking out to like 2029, 2030 and your lead times seem to be like 12 months, like 12 to 18 months. So like, I mean, are we in an environment now where like orders should kind of sustain itself at like a double-digit clip going forward for the time being? Or like how are you thinking about the outlook for your entire portfolio?

Yes. I mean, clearly, and we said this pretty directly that, that Q3 order growth is 65% is not going to repeat itself every quarter. There were some accelerated orders that came in, not just one, there were multiple orders that built to that. But look, the long-cycle business, we expect to continue to accelerate the data center and power utility part of our business is very healthy. Those orders are going to be lumpy and that is the nature of a business of this size and this exposure, but we're positive about the future of both businesses.

Yes. So I have a couple of more questions. I'll open it up to the audience as well after these questions. But maybe just talk about the power utility side of the business a little bit more because that's also been a double-digit growing business. Like -- where specifically is your opportunity in power utilities?

Yes. So in the power utility business, I mentioned it a couple of times, is something that we're spending a little bit less time talking about because so many of the questions are about liquid cooling, but it's a really important part of our portfolio. As you mentioned, it's been growing double digits. It's the reason why we made those acquisitions to get into power utility for Trachte and Avail EPG. We knew they had some data center exposure. As we've said before, we don't put revenue synergies in our acquisition models, but we thought there'd be some opportunity. There has been more than we expected. Those businesses really exposed to T&D, really the control houses supporting transmission. You guys know the power load is expected to double in the next 25 years, and we're going to be right there with those businesses. And we talked a lot about the power excuse me, the liquid cooling expansion that we're doing up in Blaine, but we also talked in our third quarter results about expansion that we're doing on our Avail and Trachte, 4 facilities that we're expanding capacity in to drive that differential growth supporting our power utility customers.

Yes. I mean, it's been a key element, right, to really change that portfolio mix in that longer cycle because I think before Trachte EPG, our power utility business, call it, $100-ish million more short cycle through distribution, we've got a lot of visibility as we talked, some of these orders span well into 2027. These customers are very sticky.

Yes. And just to level set, today, that power utility business is still roughly around 20%.

It's kind of approaching 20%.

20%.

Like roughly a $4 billion business.

Got it.

Okay. Not a full year of Avail in there either.

Yes. Yes. Short cycle, I mean, I used to describe nVent as a cyclical company with a data center kicker. And now you guys are more data center utility exposed than -- but you still have a bunch of short-cycle exposure as well. So talk a little bit about the short-cycle industrial business. Where are you seeing green shoots across, where are you not? Like where is the business still not seeing much of growth?

Yes. I'll just level set us. The industrial side of things, we're guiding a low single-digit performance for the year, commercial resi flattish. And look, we see the makings of green shoots. The interest rate, environment, the taxes, some reshoring. So we see the makings, we don't see the green shoots just yet. Those businesses that we manage are doing well. But a lot of it is top spin finding its way into the data center infrastructure. So we're not ready to talk about our '26 expectations just yet, but we see the makings of some green shoots, just not ready to call it.

Okay. Great. So I'll open it up to the audience, see if there's any questions or I can certainly keep going. All right. I'll keep going. So one of the questions that we get often is the leverage, the incremental margins that you would potentially get in the liquid cooling data center business, right? And I recognize that there's probably some like labor inefficiencies today because you guys are trying to run as fast as you possibly can to get this product out the door. You just mentioned working through the Thanksgiving holiday, right. Talk to us about like what are really the kind of like, incremental margins when we get to steady state? And how long is it going to take us to get to steady state? Because I also recognize that you're making investments in the business as well.

Yes. Let me just kind of level set us on margin expectations. So in the Q3 call, we said that we expect margin growth, excluding the recent acquisitions in Q4 -- so we expect to exit the year in a healthy place from a margin perspective. That assumes sequential improvement in margins. A lot of things going on, on the margin line this year. We had tariffs. We had some significant M&A coming in. And then as you mentioned, significant investment to support this differential growth. Our data center business is -- the margins are -- we've said is in line with our broader systems protection business. And as I think about '26, we'll guide on margins more formally as we get into the new year, but there are puts and takes. We still have tariff overhang in the first half. We've got the M&A to still be new in the first half, but we've done a nice job with pricing, and that has ramped throughout the year and will continue to ramp, and then we're going to get some leverage, but on top of that, we're going to continue to invest because we're going to invest to support the growth. But margins should be better. What I say is, and what I've said, we're focused on growth and returns. And what our guidance implies almost 50% EPS growth in the fourth quarter. So we feel good about both growth and returns.

Great. We have question here from the audience. Right there, wait on a minute. There you go.

Yes. I'm just curious, like there's been a lot of market noise over the last couple of months as Google's model kind of started to look like it's a lot better than what OpenAI has, and there's a lot of success with their ASICs chips. I'm just curious, does liquid cooling needs differ that much between GPUs versus ASICs chips? And how do you think about just like the ability for you guys to grow with those guys?

Yes. What we've said is we partner with all the big customers here in North America. And we're many times agnostic to what's happening at the chip level with our liquid cooling technology. So we feel good about our ability to compete and deliver against, as these announcements come out and as the market shifts, we have visibility. We're partnering with all the chip manufacturers and all of the -- all the hyperscalers. So we have pretty good visibility to what's happening on the ground. And that doesn't mean we aren't running paddling like crazy under water, both to support the business today, but even more importantly, to go where the puck is going from a technology perspective.

I think maybe just one thing we always -- we kind of forget is, hey, a lot of these new chips have to be liquid cooled, but we're not even talking about the efficiency, right, that cooling provides. I was going to remind liquid cooling versus air provides 4x as much efficiency. So as you think about the amount of power, if you can cool more efficiently, right, you can do more. So that's part of the equation that really is kind of a nascent. But as we continue to move forward, that's going to become a bigger part of it.

How do you think about pricing into the hyperscalers? Because here's my -- I guess, my two cents on this. When you take a look -- when I first started seeing what a CDU was like, it was hard to see the differentiation between one CDU versus the next. And what's become a little bit more clear to me is that you spec into the different road maps, right? So to me, it almost kind of seems like this is a more kind of like higher mix, low volume type product because you're specking in. There's more customization, which tends to lead historically to a little bit more pricing power. That's my hypothesis. I could be wrong. Like, what is your pricing dynamic with hyperscalers, colocators as you're specing into this?

Yes. It's a great question, and it's one that we spend a lot of time. What I will say is the partnerships are good and the push is more faster. And in that discussion, price is not a big part of the conversation. However, we've had incremental prices come at us as we've seen inflation in those conversations are -- have been very constructive. And I think it's important to think about the technology and the moat using your term, what -- that we have in the business. And we've also talked about the more modular products. We talked about those and the ability to sell those both directly and through distribution, where we've historically had nice partnership with our customers on price. And we feel good about the margin structure. Again, it's a partnership. So there's not a -- we're being very balanced. And even though there's such demand, we're being very balanced with our pricing efforts.

There's still so much innovation, right? And it's generation after generation of new products that need to come out. So to Gary's point, right, it's like -- it's not comparing price, it's what's the value that we're providing that really shows up to the margin, right? Are we getting the contribution for the value that we're providing. And that's the key element.

You mentioned modular. What is -- what's your kind of like dollar content on a modular product/system versus a stand-alone system? And how far along are you in terms of really seeing penetration with your modular offerings?

Yes. So the modular offering that I was mentioning was for those of you who were at SuperCompute was that specific row-based CDU that had high capacity that's customizable for a lot of different customers, and we think will really broaden our reach in our customer base. That is -- that product that was on the floor will be launched in the first quarter, and that will ramp, I will tell you it will ramp as the capacity ramps across the year. So we're really excited about it. We got a lot of really positive feedback at the show and look forward to having it be a bigger part of our business as we...

Effectively, we have no orders there yet right? And so it's all...

Right, yes. Okay. Got it. No, that's super helpful. Maybe just talking about the margin profile of each of the businesses for a second. The -- so let's talk about electrical connections, right? The margin profile today is around 30%. I have to tell you, like when we get to 30% typically across most industrial companies, they start to get a little nervous. So what's the -- what is kind of like the opportunity for margin expansion across that business.

Yes, electric Connection had a really nice quarter in Q3, as you mentioned, mid-single-digit growth, 30% margin. And I love that business. We don't get a chance to talk about it a lot. I mean, really, to continue to grow that business, both on the top and bottom line, it's about innovation and it's about go-to-market. And that team is leaning in and driving both of those things. So we're excited about the growth prospects of that, and we really like the margin and cash flow that it delivers.

Yes. So the way to think about it, this is a -- the margin opportunity is going to be volume-based going forward predominantly.

Yes. I think it's a healthy margin business, where we innovate and where we drive productivity, there's opportunity everywhere in our business, not just electrical connections in particular, to both grow the top line as well as expand margins. And they've got a really nice productivity funnel and some good innovation.

Got it. M&A. You've been a lot more active, right, the last couple of years. Obviously, we've been talking about Trachte and Avail, how are you guys kind of thinking about your pipeline? I know that you've been very active both on buyback and capital deployment via M&A. So how are you balancing that as well?

Yes. The capital allocation prioritization for the year really started a couple of years ago. And it was the work to drive the exit of thermal to redeploy those proceeds into Trachte and Avail EPG. But to your point, we also bought back around $250 million of stock this year. We leaned in a bit more than expectations at the beginning of the year when we saw an opportunity from an intrinsic value perspective, our stock is clearly undervalued, and we stepped in more aggressively. We paid down a little bit of debt. And as we stand here today, we're below our leverage ratio. That's our target, which is 2 to 2.5x. So the funnel is full. And I will tell you that we will continue to be disciplined as we look, but we really like these chunky deals that can drive meaningful acceleration on both the top line and EPS accretion like we've seen in these last 2. So team is busy, but we'll remain disciplined as we think about the next deal.

Good choice in the buyback, define chunky.

Well, we like the size of the last couple of deals. Never say never on something more transformational, but that's not where our focus is.

What types of assets are you looking at right now?

Yes. Our focus, as you can see, our focus has been to expand the pie of our infrastructure business. Clearly, our organic growth is going to drive expansion there. But we're certainly on the lookout in both power utilities and data centers. Really, a lot of our capital allocation on data centers organic growth. We also look globally. We've made some really good changes in Europe, putting our former EC leader over in Europe where he's based to drive in a one nVent approach. So we would -- and we're underpenetrated there. So an opportunity there. So basically, there's a lot of spots in our portfolio that we see opportunity, but infrastructure is certainly where our capital allocation focus is.

Historically, nVent has been a product-centric company, right? So the answer might be, we're just going to be a price-centric company. But there's got to be some service opportunities that also open up from how your portfolio is evolving. What's kind of like the longer -- what does that look like from a service standpoint 5 years from now?

Yes, especially as our liquid cooling and data center business, as that customer base expands, we do see an opportunity for services. And the system protection team is building a capability there. It's early days, not contributing significantly today, but we do see an opportunity, especially as that liquid cooling business broadens from a customer base perspective. These are customers that might not have the same level of sophistication and technical acumen as hyperscalers and the colos do.

Look, exciting times. And in nVent, Gary, any last final thoughts before we exit.

No, I really appreciate all of your interest in the company. We're having a great year. We're really seeing the work of this team change in the portfolio, accelerate our growth. And the future is bright.

Nice. Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you. Good to see you.