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

Well, thanks, everyone, for being here. It's my pleasure to have up next Parker-Hannifin, Todd Leombruno, CFO. I think Todd has a couple of quick slides, and then we'll go into questions.

Thank you so much, Julian. It's great to be here. It's great to be in the warm weathers here in Miami. We left Cleveland yesterday, it was 6 degrees. So we welcome that. For those of you that aren't familiar with Parker-Hannifin, we are the global leader in motion control. We've been doing this for over 100 years. We will be about $20 billion in revenue this year. And what I'd like to really point out on these slides is really the mix change that's happened within the company, really the portfolio changes. Today, we have over 30% of the company that's levered towards aerospace end markets. And you can see that's a nice balance with the industrial side of our business, both in the international regions and also in North America. If you look at the next slide or the next chart, the technology platforms, really, if you haven't followed us for a while, this has been a big change. Historically, the -- what you may think of Parker-Hannifin would have been the Motion Systems, Flow and Process Control of the business. Today, if you add those together, that's about 40% of the company. But where we've really been able to expand both the portfolio from an M&A standpoint and from an organic growth standpoint has been on our Aerospace Systems business and also the Filtration and Engineered Materials platform. So you can see that's 60% of the company today. We play in a $145 billion market space. We are $20 billion. So we've got about 14% market share in that space. We continue to gain share across all of these end markets. The aerospace end markets that are in our industrial businesses, it's about 33% of the company, followed by the second market, which would be implant and industrial equipment and then transportation and off-highway kind of round out the big 4, if you will. What's neat about our portfolio is 2/3 of our revenue comes from customers that buy 4 or more of our technologies. So the interconnectedness of the portfolio is real. It is a value driver for our customers, and it's a big meaningful piece of the company especially from the distribution standpoint. And we've never been more levered towards these longer-term growth. Aerospace, of course, is a clear one, but also levered by a lot of CapEx projects. If you wonder how Parker-Hannifin wins, it's really our operating system. We call it the Win Strategy. We are on version 3 of that Win strategy. It's now been in place for decades with periodic revisions as we've seen fit. We're highly decentralized. We're very fierce about that. We think the best thing is to be close to the customers as many of our team members that we can get to own a P&L, every -- knowing whether or not they're winning and whatever space they're playing in is vital to us. Innovative products is a driver. The way we apply those technologies to our end customers, bring value to them in ways that our competition can't. I already mentioned how interconnected the portfolio is. But if you look at the company today, we have a 50% OEM sales mix and a 50% aftermarket mix. The vast majority of that aftermarket goes through our independent distribution network, which would be second to none in the space. So a very powerful piece of the company. If you look at how that has all turned into results, this is just the last 3 years. This is a 3-year CAGR. We have grown revenue at a growth CAGR of 8%. If you look at margins, we've expanded margins by 350 basis points. Our guide for this year is 25.8% adjusted segment operating margins, and you can see EPS and cash flow, we've grown those in a CAGR that has been greater than our sales growth. So it's been a huge focus of the company. That has given us confidence in setting these longer-term targets. And this is the first year of this framework of targets, and we're off to a very good start. So all I can say is the company has never been larger. We've never been more probable. I would tell you, we've never been more aligned and focused on driving the company towards these targets.

Great. And maybe say the demand environment seems quite uneven if we start with the short term. I think a number of companies, this conference have seen decent order growth recently, but sluggish revenue, particularly in sort of industrial applications. And I think Parker, that's a similar phenomenon. Kind of what do you think explains that? Like do we see those orders, are they more long dated into revenue? Is it just always had easier comp? Is it real customer improvement?

Yes. So first, I'd be remiss to not mention our Aerospace business, 30% of the company, that has been growing at double digit organic growth now for multiple years. We expect that to grow at high single digits for the foreseeable future. The 70% of the company that's industrial has been through 6 quarters now of negative year-over-year order comparisons. We were really happy to see those comparisons turn positive. Last quarter, they did that really unilaterally across the regions, across all of the industrial businesses. So we were really positive and really happy to see that turn. We track this for decades. And usually, the longest orders stay negative once they go negative on average of 6 quarters. So we're right in line with that. I would say that what's been different this time is the severity of the decline. It's been much less of a deep decline. It's been more shallow. We have always expected the recovery to be shallow as well to match that, not as steep, I guess, I would say. And we think that the positive orders turning last quarter was a nice sign for the future, for the company. To be honest with you, it has been delayed. We've seen this within our fiscal year now 2 quarters, a bit of a delay and a bit of a push out. But I would tell you that where we see promise in those longer-cycle orders, I think, is a good sign for the future and the fact that on the shorter elements of our business, that usually comes back quicker and more fierce, if you will. And I don't see why anything would be different this time versus others.

Great. And when you think about the backlog on the industrial side, it's less of a concept historically, but your business mix has become longer cycle, not just in Aerospace. Do you think that industrial backlog is sort of bottoming out now?

Yes, I do. I think there's been a structural change with the company. We kind of highlighted that on some of those pie charts with more filtration, engineered materials business. If you look historically, we used to have mid-teens, maybe 15% coverage on our backlog for the next 12 months of shipment. That's mid-20s today. That is slightly down from the peak of some of the supply chain challenges that everyone has [Audio Gap]. We are not expecting that to take another step down, and we expect it to stay at near record levels.

Perfect. And when you look across those various industrial verticals or geographies, sort of where do you think we might see that improvement coming first, maybe industrial and implant versus the transport and off-highway side seems strong.

Yes. I think you hit it there, Julian. The most promising would be the industrial plan and equipment vertical for us. Next, you look at off-highway, that is really being pulled down by all the issues that are in the ag markets right now. Some of the construction markets globally, a negative impact on that. Transportation has been softer than expected. I think we'll see that come back in the near term. But where we really expect to see it is through the distribution network, which is a lot of the aftermarket business. Over 50% of the sales goes through that distribution network. And we're expecting it to come back there first.

Yes. And your impression of kind of inventories -- and again, it's a huge range of products and SKUs and markets, but when you think about inventory levels, those distribution partners...

Excuse me...

No worry.

I have a little bit about sore throat.

That's okay.

So we've said this on the distribution network, our distributors have been positive. There's been a lot of great sentiment. We do believe destocking is over in the distribution network. Restocking has not begun by no stretch imagination. That would be a positive sign when we see that restocking continue. On the OEM channel, there still is, we believe, pockets of destocking that needs to happen and probably continue.

Got it. And then you mentioned, we saw the sort of phenomenal margin expansion, and it's happened not just in aerospace with synergies and volume growth, but you've also had good industrial margin expansion with kind of minimal help from volumes. When people look at that sort of sometimes they ask, is there a lot of pruning going on sort of deliberate exit reduction of SKUs, 80/20 type work and sort of trying to understand the interplay of how much of the margin expansion is tied to low volume. So maybe just kind of any thoughts around that.

The margin expansion story at Partner has been an unbelievably strong story to tell. There's no doubt about it. It has been a lot of hard work across a lot of different initiatives. The biggest driver, I would say has been really our focus on our lean system, our culture of Kaizen where we consistently take cost out of our businesses every day over and over and over again. And that never goes out of style. We have done some things like you mentioned, some pruning around the portfolio. These have been small businesses that have been dilutive to our growth, dilutive to our margins. I think the total now is 10 over the last 8-or-so years. But these are small prunings. These are not big limbs that we've cut out of the company. We like all the technologies there in the company. You will not see us divest a big piece of the company by any stretch imagination. And I would tell you the majority of that we've worked through, but we constantly challenge each one of our businesses to earn its spot in the portfolio every year. We have an annual process. We call it the best owner process that we make sure that those businesses earn their right in the portfolio, and they've got plans to be part of this FY '29 target that we've set across all of our businesses. So it's a meaningful exercise across company. And while we have it as an annual process, it's something that's happening every month, every quarter within the way our businesses are managed.

And so when we think about organic market share, I think your point is, you're getting organic share in industrial that's occurring alongside margin expansion as well. In that industrial side, I guess, do we think about all the technology platforms similarly because I guess from the outside motion feels...

Yes. Well, I would tell you that in the Motion Systems and the Flow in Process technologies, we are clearly the market leader in that space. So when it comes towards maybe acquisitions, it becomes a little bit more difficult to find one that it's not just a market share grab. We know that, that's probably the most expensive way to grow just by buying market share. That's why we focus on building out the aerospace, the engineered materials and the filtration pieces of the business over the last 10 years or so. And that's been a meaningful impact. You look at share, we have about 14% share across the entire market space today. We constantly challenge our team to make sure that we're continuing to gain share. We do not believe we've lost any share anywhere. One of the things that we've done, and this really was something that came from the LORD transaction, was the building of what we call Growth Triangle, which is basically a combination of account management, application engineering expertise and product management to really go after end markets, customers, secular trends in a way that we've never done before. And that's been a nice plus to our market share story. So even in light of all the negatives that we see out in the industrial space, we still believe that we've gained share in areas we've chosen to focus on.

Got it. And when we're looking at the different way, industrial implant Aero. How are you sort of trying to prioritize or focus investments from a vertical standpoint, whether it's inorganic or organic?

It's more the technologies that we focus on from a growth standpoint. These technologies bleed across all of those verticals. So whether you're in an aerospace end market or implant equipment or automation standpoint or even an off-highway. The Flow and Process, the Motion Systems, the ceiling shielding, the filtration technologies, that's what's important to us. We want to make sure that we've got what we need in that portfolio to obviously meet current needs of customers, but also future needs as things shift towards cleaner technologies or electrification or really taking advantage of this mega cap project build. That really is our focus because those technologies bleed across the end market applications. Looking specifically, we love all the technologies. We would do transactions in any one of those technologies. But when we look at the pipeline, just by sheer numbers of opportunities, there tends to be more that fit in the aerospace or material science, engineered materials, filtration space.

Perfect. And geographically, a lot of companies, they typically earn much higher margins in the domestic U.S. market. Parker's industrial margins are very strong internationally. Kind of help us understand why is that when the top line hasn't been there for some time.

Yes. It's a great observation. We've worked on this really for decades. This has been a focus of the company for really many, many, many years. Our belief always was there should be no reason why a product is less profitable in Europe than it is in North America. So we have worked hard on our cost structure. We've worked hard on our mix. We've had an on-purpose plan to increase the OEM aftermarket mix. In our international businesses for decades, we've added 100 basis points of mix improvement to that ratio over the last 8 years now. And really just making sure that our teams are empowered. They use our Win Strategy. They use every tool in that tool book to drive cost out of the business, to get value for the product, to really focus on end markets and applications that we can win in. And that's really been the story on how we've gotten international margins to be where they're at today. I'm really proud that they are performing at the levels they're performing at right now. You kind of mentioned it. Europe has been soft for a long time. We continue to expect Europe to remain soft. Asia has struggled out of the post-COVID restart, if you will, but we've started to see some green shoots coming out of Asia and really the teams there have done a great job managing what they can control. And that's what the way we teach our leaders is to focus on things that you can control and drive results. I have to give credit to our Latin America team. I know it's a small percentage of our sales, but they have really figured it out. They are above company growth, they're above company margins. And I'm really proud to see them put up those kinds of performance numbers.

Great. And when you're thinking about sort of different geographic regions and so forth, tariffs come up very frequently now. Help us understand sort of competitively does anything change with any of that and the sort of comfort around being able to pass on these costs as needed.

Yes, certainly a hot topic. We can't go through 1 meeting without talking about tariffs for sure. What I would tell you this is -- Parker-Hannifin has grown globally as our customers have grown globally and expanded globally. We have always felt that it is best to be in region for region to procure and invoice in local currencies, to have local team members from an application engineering expertise from a customer service standpoint. And that has been our strategy forever. That has served us well as the world has gone through the challenges that we've seen in supply chain. We've been through the tariff process before. It was an immaterial item for us last time. I would tell you the teams have been working on that ever since. This is not a surprise for them. It has been more rapid, and it's been obviously a lot more change. It is not easy. It creates a lot of work within the business. But I will tell you, that will have no impact on our financial results. We have never had better tools. We've never had better analysis of the data, and we've never had more pricing power when it comes to making sure that, that is not going to be an issue on our results.

When we look at pricing, it often comes through, let's say, gross margin level and looking at the P&L. When you think about gross margin levers from here, aside from price, is there a lot of need for, say, further footprint consolidation? How should we look at that?

Well, Julian, I would tell you we're agnostic when it comes to cost. We love to take cost out of every line on the P&L every day, every year. The gross margins have expanded. They have expanded because we have been really driving continuous improvement across all the operations. We do a fairly consistent amount of restructuring every year. We don't wait for a big decline. We don't wait for something to happen. Our businesses are very decentralized, and they all have targets that are aligned with the company's '29 targets. So you're not going to see a big restructuring program come out of Parker-Hannifin. We do a little bit every year, and we feel like that's the right amount to do. When you look at where we can improve, obviously, the biggest bucket of cost still sits in cost of sales. So the opportunity in gross margin still is the largest. But I think if you looked at our segment operating margins, if you look at our EBITDA margins or if you look at our gross margin, you would see a consistent trajectory that matches. Not one of those have been outsized, the improvement hasn't been outsized across those levers. But it really has become a focus of the corporation. A lot of this is a testament to where we've put the organic investments, where we have managed innovation. We have a concept we call strategic positioning within the company, where each one of our businesses focuses on the end markets and products where they have the clearest path to winning gross margin improvement. So I think that what you'll see is you'll see us continue that path. We're going to march towards those '29 targets. And every one of those lines will be part of that.

And on the '29 targets, I think it's a 27% segment margin goal. This year, as you showed, just [ higher than ] 26%, so we can assume that the 27% you can get to without major portfolio changes. If you're thinking about the next step, conceptually, let's say, a 30% segment margin, do you think that would require major portfolio shifts on...

No, I don't. I'm really proud of the team. We're off to a great start. I think when we started the year, we guided 50 basis points of segment operating margin expansion. Through 2 quarters, we're now saying that's going to be 90. That is much greater than what we originally saw just 6 months ago. A lot of that has been continued success on the Meggitt integration. There has been an unbelievable aftermarket mix, both in aerospace and quite honestly, on the industrial side of the businesses that has been a piece of that. But if you listen to Jenny, we focused on demand and capacity planning making sure that we are as efficient as we could be in our operations. And that has been a meaningful driver even in an industrial period of slow to negative growth [Audio Gap] well on that. When we put those targets [Audio Gap] did not incorporate any additional portfolio moves in or out. So I don't believe we need any additional actions to change that trajectory. We're off to a good start, and we'll keep marching in that direction. What we drive everyone in the company to do is to generate top quartile performance in every metric, whether that's safety, whether that's growth, whether that is margin, whether that's earnings per share, whether that's cash flow. And it's now part of everyone's compensation. We changed our compensation program a few years ago. I think it's 3 years now that we've been -- everyone in the company has been on the same compensation program, and it's been a meaningful driver of our performance as well. But what we're really focused on is getting that top quartile level. If that happens to be 30%, that will be our focus. But right now, squarely focused on those '29 targets.

In aerospace, I think you're close to that sort of 30-ish percent EBITDA margin that was talked about around the Meggitt deal. Mix has helped alongside synergies. So sort of -- you confident, Aero, you can keep pushing up, let's say, even if mix normalizes?

Yes. The aerospace team has done an unbelievable job. We've always thought when we were looking at Meggitt that we could get Meggitt to above or to 30% adjusted EBITDA margins. We now think we can push it above that. But the conversation always was, why -- if we can get Meggitt there, why can't our likely aerospace business get there? And what you're seeing now is they're basically operating in a very similar manner. All things are favorable right now. They've got strong growth. We've had double-digit organic growth for some while. We've got synergies still rolling in from the Meggitt transaction. We've got an unbelievable aftermarket OEM mix. So all things are positive right now. But quite honestly, we always thought, and I always do think going forward that aerospace should be well above the company average when it comes to anything, growth, margins, cash and the team is really working hard to prove that out.

Great. And then on the acquisition front we had to get there sooner or later. Is it still the appetite if conditions allow us for a sort of a larger-type transaction?

I would tell you that we -- I mentioned it earlier, we manage this pipeline very closely across the entire organization. We could be happier that we got Meggitt done. We couldn't be happier that we did Exotic. We couldn't be happier that we did LORD and even CLARCOR if you go back to 2017. And I think we learned a lot with each one of those transactions. A testament to how well Meggitt has gone is because we took the lessons learned from the first 3 and applied it to. Meggitt but I would tell you, there is no driving force to do a transaction bigger than Meggitt. There is no dragon force to do a transaction just because our leverage has hit a certain threshold. We're going to still be disciplined. We know that we have a great process. We know that we integrate better than anyone in our space. And that when done well, that this creates great value for our shareholders, but we're not in a rush. So we don't want to do the wrong deal. We don't want to do a bad deal. We don't want to chase something down. It's not going to work. So it's going to have to fit. It's going to have to be a business that fits within Parker-Hannifin. And the great thing is being $20 billion in sales and a $145 billion market, the targets are ample. So there isn't one deal that we have to do, and we're not rushing, but I would tell you that we know our preference clearly is to take all of our capacity and apply it towards transactions if they fit all of that criteria.

And if we think sort of away from, say, financial criteria for a second, should we think Parker's trying to go more for sort of revenue growth models versus fixing up low margins.

I would tell you, there are still a number of companies that we admire that we believe would be a better fit within the Parker-Hannifin family that we can utilize the Win Strategy to make even better. And I think our focus is there. It's got to be technologies that are meaningful. It's got to be in end markets that we're familiar. We like the technologies that we're in. We do see some slight adjacencies that [Audio Gap] better, but you're not going to see the Motion Control space that doesn't fit. But listen, we can make our core business better, we can make any acquired business better and that really has been the focus of the team.

Fantastic. Well, now we'll switch to the audience response survey questions, please. So the first one, do you currently own shares in Parker?

This will be interesting to see, Julian. So no, we -- there's opportunity out there.

Yes. Secondly, what's your sort of general bias to Parker right now?

Hard to not be positive on the company right now.

We'll see.

Now I want to leave the witness...

There we go.

There but there we go [indiscernible].

Third is around through-cycle earnings growth for Parker versus, say, the multi-industry average.

Yes. Keep in mind, we just did 13% EPS CAGR over the last 3 years. Those have been tough 3 years externally. I would answer number 1 here.

Follow-up question is around excess cash usage.

That's right. I kind of gave the answer on this one, but I think we have a nice balanced capital allocation policy. We love our dividend record. We are investing the right amount in the business, and yes, we love M&A.

So definitely, M&A a lot more popular than other names today. Fifth question is around the PE multiple, where should Parker trade?

Yes. I have some ideas on this one, too.

In line to premium to the S&P. And then the last question is sort of what's the main kind of gating factor or hold up stopping people owning more?

So you're surprised.

Great. Well, with that, thanks so much, Todd.

Appreciate it. Glad to be here.