Parker-Hannifin Corporation (PH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Parker-Hannifin Corporation Virtual Annual Meeting of Shareholders. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Tom Williams, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Keith, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Parker-Hannifin Corporation. I am Tom Williams, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the company, and I will be presiding at this meeting. The meeting will now please come to order. Here today with me are our executive leadership team, are Joe Leonti, Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of the company, who will act as Secretary of this meeting; as well as Lee Banks, Vice Chairman and President; Jenny Parmentier, Chief Operating Officer; and Todd Leombruno, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I'd also like to introduce our director nominees and other company representatives who are joining today's meeting. The 12 nominees for election as our directors are: Lee Banks, Jill Evanko, Lance Fritz, Linda Harty, Bill Lacey, Kevin Lobo, Joe Scaminace, Åke Svensson, Laura Thompson, James Verrier, Jim Wainscott and myself. Also here today is [ Julie Warman ], a representative from Deloitte & Touche, LLP, our independent registered public accounting firm. Julie is available to answer appropriate questions concerning the company's financial statements during the question-and-answer period following the meeting. And finally, the company has appointed Broadridge Financial Services to act as inspector of election. [ Ms. Anna Hagberg ] is present by virtual means on behalf of Broadridge and has taken the oath of Inspector of Election. Before we move on to our voting matters, I'd first like to turn it over to Joe to cover a few procedural items.

Okay. Thank you, Tom, and good morning, everyone. First, I'd just like to give a high-level overview of the meeting agenda and the rules of conduct, and we'll be strictly following those to make sure that we have an orderly meeting. You'll see both of these documents are posted on the bottom on the meeting web page. And just to give you a few highlights from each. The webcast is scheduled for 30 minutes, and it will end no later than 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time. We'll first conduct the business of the annual meeting of shareholders. All shareholders of record as we closed the business on September 3, 2021, the record date, are entitled to vote at this meeting. After we adjourn the annual meeting, then Tom will make a few closing comments, and that will be followed by a brief question-and-answer period. We will address questions presented in accordance with the rule of conduct. Any questions that are unanswered here can be directed to our Investor Relations department. And please note, this webcast is being recorded. A playback will be available shortly on our website at www.phstock.com and at www.virtualshareholdermeeting.com/ph2021. In addition to the agenda and the rules of conduct, in my capacity as secretary, I've delivered and presented the following documents, which will incorporate into the minutes of this meeting. Number one, the minutes of our last Annual Meeting of Shareholders that was held by a live webcast on October 28, 2020. Number two, the financial statements of the company for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2021 certified by Deloitte & Touche LLP. Number three, an affidavit of mailing, establishing that notice of this annual meeting was duly given. And number four, a list of the company's shareholders of record as of September 3, 2021, certified by our transfer agent, Equiniti Trust Company. Finally, I want to confirm that I've been informed by the inspector of election that at least 112 million shares of common stock are present, which constitutes a quorum for the transaction of business at this meeting. And at this time, we will move on to our voting matters, so I'll turn it back over to Tom as Chairman.

Thank you, Joe, and I will now present the matters to be voted on. The first proposal to be voted on is the election of directors to serve for the terms expiring at the Annual Meeting of Shareholders in 2022. Our Board has nominated the following 12 persons for election as directors of the company: Lee Banks; Jill Evanko; Lance Fritz; Linda Harty; Bill Lacey; Kevin Lobo; Joe Scaminace; Åke Svensson; Laura Thompson; James Verrier; Jim Wainscott; and myself, Tom Williams. The second proposal to be voted on is the ratification of the appointment of Deloitte & Touche LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022. Our Board of Directors recommends in favor of this proposal. Third proposal to be voted on is the approval on a nonbinding advisory basis of the compensation of our named executive officers. Our Board of Directors recommends in favor of this proposal. That concludes the items that will be voted on today. The polls are now open. Any shareholder who hasn't yet voted or wishes to change their vote may do so by clicking on the Voting button on the web portal and following the instructions. Shareholders who have sent in proxies or voted via telephone or Internet do not need to take any further action. I'm going to pause for a second in case anyone wants to change. [Voting]

The votes are now in, and I declare the polls closed. Joe, please go ahead and review the preliminary voting results.

Okay. Thank you, Tom. Based on the preliminary voting results, each of our director nominees has been elected, the appointment of Deloitte & Touche, LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2022 has been ratified and the compensation of our named executive officers has been approved on a nonbinding advisory basis. The final results will be available and disclosed on a Form 8-K that will be filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and after the votes have been certified by our Inspector of Election.

Thank you, Joe. With no further business to be addressed in this meeting. The meeting is now adjourned. I'd now like to make a few brief closing comments before we move on to the question-and-answer session. So what I'd like to do for shareholders and for anybody listening in is to kind of frame the comments on 2 categories, how we did last fiscal year of fiscal '21 and the transformation of the company related to the future of the company. So for last year, it was an outstanding year. I'm going to give you a few highlights. 29% reduction in safety incidents put us in a top quartile performance versus our proxy peers. We achieved numerous all time in the history of the company records, and they were sales, operating margin, net income, earnings per share and cash flow. We had significant margin expansion. I'll just highlight 2 them. Adjusted operating margin was up to 21.1%. That was a 230-basis-point improvement versus prior year. And adjusted EBITDA margins were 21.3%, which was up 200 basis points versus the prior year. As I mentioned, cash flow was an all-time record, and that enabled us to increase the dividend and paid down $1.9 billion of debt. So a little bit on the second topic, how the company has changed in the future. Through the efforts of our global team, the portfolio enhancements that we've made over the last number of years, Win Strategy 2.0 and now Win Strategy 3.0, we've seen significant improvement over the last 6 years, and I'm going to give you 2 indicators that kind of illustrates that. Adjusted EPS over this time period to the 6-year time period I'm referring to has more than doubled from $7 per share approximately to $15.04 that we did last year. Adjusted EBITDA margins are up 660 basis points from 14.7% to 21.3% last year. Now regarding the future, there's really 3 drivers to our future. The first is living up to our purpose, second is being great generators and deployers of cash and the third is being a top quartile performer versus our proxy peers. And one of the highlights I wanted to mention along the way that we did just in July was we announced our new sustainability targets. Scope 1 and 2 targets are a 50% reduction by 2030 and to be carbon neutral as a company by 2040. Scope 3, which would be our supply chain, the targets there are 15% reduction in 2030 and a 25% reduction in 2040. An exciting part of our portfolio is that about 2/3 of our technologies today help enable a cleaner tomorrow for our customers. So our opportunities related to sustainability and clean technologies in general are very bright because we have onboard the equipment opportunities as well as the infrastructure around the world to support these clean technologies. Hopefully, you noticed we had a major acquisition announcement on the capital deployment side, Meggitt, which we officially announced on August 2. It's going to double the size of aerospace with complementary technologies. 70% sole-sourced with proprietary products, a very strong aftermarket recurring revenue stream and will be accretive to us in organic sales growth, margins, EPS and cash flow within the synergy period. And we're still forecasting an approximate close date at the third quarter of calendar 2022. The exciting part is from the Win Strategy standpoint 3.0 is in the early days, so we see a lot of upside. So if I would just summarize. It's a very bright future ahead. My thanks to all the shareholders for your ownership of the company, your trust and your confidence in the management team, and thanks as always to every Parker team member around the world. We couldn't do it without you, and you're a big part of our success.

And with that, we have received -- I'm going to now open it up for questions from shareholders. Only validated shareholders will be able to ask questions in the designated field on the web portal. And out of consideration for others, please limit yourself to one question in accordance with the rules of conduct. Additionally, please note that we will not be commenting on our first quarter results to our scheduled earnings call next week. And I think we have one question. And the question, and I'm reading off the screen is, where do we see the company going in the future as far as the business goes, business trends, despite of COVID-19? Hopefully, some of the comments that I mentioned in my comments summarizing kind of the future come to play around purpose, engineering and deploying cash and being top quartile. But I look at what we've done with acquisitions and the momentum there, Meggitt in the future with our internal performance with Win Strategy 3.0 and the opportunity we have as we all click to a journey into a more sustainable future and our technology is helping to enable that, not only for our team members, but for our customers, more importantly, as we help them on their journey to a more sustainable future. I feel very positive. I think that COVID is with us, and I think the world is going to continue to get more used to dealing with it, and I think the company is going to have a very bright future and look forward to sharing that with all the shareholders on a quarterly basis. And I don't know if we have any more questions, but I think there are no more questions at this time. So on behalf of our Board of Directors and all of our team members around the world, thank you for attending your participation today and your continued support of Parker-Hannifin. And I'll turn it back to you, Keith.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you for attending today's virtual webcast. The meeting has now concluded. You may now disconnect your phone lines.