Rockwell Automation, Inc. ($ROK)

[Audio Gap] products have been outperforming the longer cycle business for several quarters now. So that's how you see ITD Deltin devices and software control continue to see good growth. And so in our most recent quarter, Q2, we saw good growth across many industries, still a lot of focus on smaller modernization projects, efficiency, productivity overall effectiveness of existing facilities. With that said, we did see kind of broadening of the demand and larger projects across a number of additional industries. And so when we talk about semiconductor, data center, e-comm and warehouse automation and parts of energy, that's where we saw a combination of brown projects, but also more larger projects. So that was certainly very encouraging. We increased our outlook for those end markets for the full year. And if you look at other industries, food and beverage, automotive, they performed well in Q2. We saw good activity but mostly tied to smaller initiatives, small modernization projects. And so we don't count on larger CapEx activity in those end markets for the rest of the -- our fiscal year. But overall, we do continue to see good growth, and we increased our guide to 7% for the full year.

And just that last comment kind of the rest of the fiscal year when we think about larger projects, what does the pipeline look like on the larger project side of things and conversations that you're having with customers right now.

Sure. Well, we can start with discrete industries. If you look at e-comm and warehouse automation, we continue to see good projects, could be large brownfield retrofits. There are a lot of warehouses and sortation facilities that are still pretty manual today, and they will continue to invest. Labor scarcity, labor cost continues to be a good driver for that increased automation need. And so we'll see that acceleration in that spend across different customer segments within e-commerce and warehouse automation, parcel companies, e-commerce players, traditional retailers, all of them are investing in their facilities. So we do see continued expansion there. data center, a lot of it is greenfields. We, of course, have an opportunity with retrofits as well, but with a lot of new data center build-out and the AI workloads that are driving the need for our offerings, including our PLCs, we do see continued durable demand there. And then semiconductor as well. We did see some pickup there, and it's both on the core setting with the legacy valves but increasingly also with the AI-related data center-related investments as well.

Got it. Yes, we'll get into data center a little more low single digit of percent of revenue, right, but probably 2 our discussion last night at that dinner. On customer spend and when we think about product spend versus larger project spend, what is the average spend for intelligent devices or software control versus something in life cycle services or configured to order. Is there a spend threshold that you're seeing customers not really willing to move forward on those bigger bill of material projects.

It's not necessarily a particular dollar threshold, but it's really what the customer is trying to do. So if you look at the dynamic of the smaller modernization projects, it's where customers feel -- they have a scope, they have a clear ROI and they can get it done, and it's going to drive that efficiency and it's going to effectively increase their existing production capacity by increasing their throughput, increasing the quality. What they're kind of holding off on is there's larger, longer ranging CapEx projects because trade uncertainty is still very persistent, right? We don't have clarity on use of CA. There's still a lot of changes on the policy front. Geopolitical volatility is not helping make -- get customers more confident with those decisions. But -- so that's kind of broadly what we're seeing. Now with that particular strength we saw in Q2 with bigger projects, if you think about data center, semiconductor, warehouse automation. Those are good products that come from intelligent devices and software and control segment, right? So we can talk about it later, but it's our Logix PLC, it's our control architecture. It's a cloud-native software. It's our variables because it drives, it's our sensors, it's an AMR portfolio. So it's really a lot of different pieces that come together. Now the reason Lifecycle Services as a segment is not seeing that uplift that ITD and Software & Control are seeing is just -- so happens that there's not a lot of solutions content that goes into the business of data center or e-com and warehouse. So there, we predominantly sell products and software and then someone else largely solutions it for the end user.

Got it. On the channel inventory side of things, just in terms of your assessment of how those inventories look but also how the tools have evolved that you use to track this and sort of help with that comfort level.

Yes. So we have much better, much better visibility into inventories out there than we had relative to prepandemic pre-pandemic we were primarily a book-and-bill business. So we didn't have as much attention into this space. But since then, we've kind of built out quite a few muscles to help us prevent and avoid to the degree we can any type of prebuy in excess inventory out there. So there's quite a few areas at Rockwell. We have -- we manage our distributor inventory. So we have a good understanding of what they ship and what they place on us so we can -- we have a good sense of the terms that they're operating with. We've also put in place controls around unusual order patterns where we evaluate based on historicals, and we probe for more details when we see something that's unusual. That's not just on the magnitude of orders but also in the composition of certain orders because we know how systems are generally composed. So we see -- if we see a significant mismatch between different parts of the system will also inquiry and evaluate and to be frank, in some cases, in quite a few cases. We've rejected and canceled orders based on that. While we don't have as much visibility into is into the demand that goes into our end customers like the OEMs and so on. So to compensate for that, we have been executing now for quite some time surveys that are against the proxy sample of customers and a proxy sample of industries where we evaluate based on their feedback. And so far, we don't have any indications that prebuys are any meaningful contribution to the results.

And then on Middle East, you did note that some activity in Lifecycle Services have been pushed out. just what you're seeing there? Any quoting activity, how do you think about the time line for folks to reengage?

Yes. As we mentioned on our Q2 earnings call, we do have some exposure, it's very limited to the Middle East. It's now even smaller with the dissolution of our sense joint venture. We do still have opportunity on the recovery and rebuilding. If you look at our portfolio, our ability to serve. It's more of a longer cycle business. So the impact will be really most likely in fiscal '27 and beyond. But we do have -- we do see opportunities in that region, but also broadly in energy. As we talked about, energy is 15% of our total revenue. You have traditional oil and gas, you have power generation, you have renewables including carbon capture and won solar. And we're well positioned to play there because our technology is used across the same technologies use across all of those different applications. And whether it's LNG, whether it's gas powered microgrids, whether it's building out infrastructure for data centers, whether it's energy resilience, right, closer to where we are. we're well positioned. And so -- and that's part of why we increased our outlook for energy as an end market for the full year. We expect to grow high single digits. And we do think there's opportunity there beyond that.

And then moving to pricing. I got I think 2.5% of price in the guide for this year. There's some tariff-based pricing tied to that. But just how the pricing strategy at the company has evolved different tools that you're using? Do you feel like you have more that you can do there on the pricing side?

Absolutely. Rockwell has been a premium price a supplier in the industry for quite some time. Historically, we've been realizing about a point of price. You need to look back many years. We -- certainly, during the last supply chain due to the supply chain crisis where we had a really kind of an inflationary chip environment. and it was important to increase prices very quickly. We have changed our methodology and we became much more agile. So we're putting different mechanisms in place, like, for example, moving from fixed contracts to fixed discount. So we're able to actually instantaneously increased prices across our customer base to respond to different things, that's been very helpful, right? So we become much more resilient, much more agile. We invested in software and optimization to give us more visibility into pricing by customer, by region, by industry, by application. So we can be much more surgical about how we do price and then, of course, driving more price discipline across our customer base so that when there are discounts, when there are negotiations, it's really for the customers in the areas and initiatives that make the most sense and increasing that yield. We certainly have had much higher price -- we had much higher price realization in fiscal '25 than we've had over the longer periods of time. This year, in fiscal '26, we're guiding to 250 basis points of price of which 100 basis points is tariff related, and then 150 basis points is underlying price. We think there's continued room to grow over the coming years. We have the differentiation. We have the ability to realize price. The current environment in terms of inflationary cost and tariff, certainly, it impedes our ability to continue driving higher underlying price beyond what we're doing. But we think broad the longer term, we're well positioned and pricing is a great lever, one of many levers for us to continue to expanding our margins.

And then just related to the chip side of things in terms of availability, any challenges out there as well as how you're approaching the pricing side of that?

Yes. We talked about input cost for us. We don't have as much exposure to commodities, raw materials, but we have some. The biggest really element for us is memory chips. And it just so happens that a lot of it goes into Matheus' business software and control. So as we all know, the cost for memory chips continues to increase. And we talked about expecting double-digit millions of headwind in our second half. So that certainly is inflationary and it continues to escalate. We have great mechanism in place to offset and mitigate these increases with price, as we've demonstrated over the last several years. The challenge is really the timing. As we mentioned in our Q2 earnings call, will offset this cost increase the price, but it's not going to necessarily align perfectly in any particular quarter. which partly explains why we expect Q3 margins and especially in Software & Control to not be as high as they were in Q2, but we feel like we have it under control.

And moving to Software & Control. And so let's just start a little bit of background in terms of what exactly it is the value that you're delivering to customers, why customers are choosing Rockwell over competitors?

Yes, yes. So there are quite a few vectors there of value creation. And I'll point to a few here. But I'll start with the -- today, what we do, we are 100% focused on production systems. So all of our employees every day. That's what they're dedicated to. And we have -- we feel pretty good. We have a full stack. There are no major holes in our portfolio. And that's important because increasingly -- the challenges that our customers face, they are system concerns, their system problems. So you think about things like cybersecurity, functional safety data even AI. So if you're coming into a system and you're only contributing to a piece of that system, you don't have as much opportunity to create value and differentiate. We are set to disproportionately benefit from that need across our customer base, and we have been continuing to win against some of the more niche smaller suppliers because of this trend. The other significant value creation we provide to our customers has to do with how we've approached and modernized our portfolio. So things, for example, the fact that we've been first to cloud in many of our offerings has allowed us to kind of incorporate technologies that create significant value for these customers, such as AI a lot earlier, literally months after they've been made available for consumption by us. We already had solutions out there that were creating value for these customers. So our speed to innovation has significantly increase because we put ourselves in a position where we can continue to grow there. The third piece is, especially in this region, we have the deepest relationships with the customer base. This is the place where the workforce is trained in our technology. This is the place where we are essentially providing the lowest risk for anyone making investments in this region. So the strength we have with our partnerships across not just the customer base, but our channel has created a significant advantage for this company and we're disproportionately benefiting from that.

And what about the go-to-market approach? How siloed is that approach within software control as opposed to partnering in Intelligent Devices and how you're doing that?

Yes. So it's -- we have one sales organization that approaches our customers as a system. And it's very common that in a system you have contributions from our segments, not just on one. So for example, a typical -- at a higher level, a typical automation system has input devices like sensors, like push buttons, things that are sensing what's going on in the system. All of those come from intelligent devices. Those inputs, they get fed into a control system that is actually processing those inputs. It's also exposing data and interfacing with operators, operator decision support and operator interfaces. The networking infrastructure that's there, it's -- all of that is Software & Control. And then once that's resolved, it gets reflected back into actual physics that have to be controlled and actuated. So things like motor control, robot control, output devices, power distribution, all of those are back into ITD. And then obviously, we have our service organization that partners with these customers, sometimes in the delivery of those solutions. We're happy to partner with others that deliver the solution themselves. And then we come in at the -- after this solution is installed to manage and support that installation with life cycle services. So it is very common that a particular system includes all of our offerings.

And then you're offering both software and hardware. I've heard in the past, Logix's around 50% of the mix. Talk about that other 50% and the software and hardware that sits within that.

Yes. So specifically in the Software & Control segment, the majority of our revenues are coming from hardware the hardware includes a significant amount of embedded software. A lot of the differentiation comes from what the hardware does and what the hardware does is governed by the embedded software that's there. But the majority of that gets delivered as hardware integrated with that embedded software. And then, yes, we do have a meaningful software business. And as I mentioned before, full stack when it comes to a production environment. So today, our software part of our portfolio is used to design production systems, so things like digital twins, things like how you program the automation. And then once the automation is in place, you have software that's used, as I mentioned, to support the operator. So visualization systems, human machine interface, operator interface, decision support there. On top of that, you have software that's used to execute production, things like our MES, they take orders, they execute and orchestrate the utilization of resources in any particular production system. And then we obviously have software that is used to maintain these systems. So things like disaster recovery, our CMMS on how we manage work orders for maintenance organizations and not just reactive maintenance, but increasingly on preventative and predictive maintenance capabilities. So we feel pretty good about the full stack software capabilities across the spectrum there.

We'll talk about the opportunities the day I present for you, but also to address the potential challenges or threats that are out there. And so what is it that you're watching out there in terms of that software stack and what new entrants could potentially even have an opportunity at?

Yes. We -- AI is a tremendous opportunity for automation. But just to address first your point on some potential concerns there. We feel pretty strong about very durable moats. And I'll point to 3 here. The first is, as I mentioned earlier, a big part of our software portfolio is deeply integrated with the embedded system, okay? So it's highly integrated. And there are many reasons for that, including the resiliency in cyber concerns and safety concerns. So you use AI, but it has to go through our software, okay? So that's 1 strong moat that we have there. Another part of our software is software, as I mentioned earlier, that is running production. It's executing orders and orchestrating resources. Those are deterministic systems. Those are systems that are applied in regulated industries, they need performance and they need consistency. It is not acceptable in manufacturing for you to have outcomes that are approximately right. It's not acceptable for you to build cars or to create drugs or food are approximately right. And they have to be consistent over time. So inherently probabilistic outcomes are unacceptable, not just not desired. They just -- they play not useful. And then the third boat we have is open source software that has existed for a long time. And the reality is in automation, you need a tremendous amount of domain to be able to understand what software needs to do, how it gets used. And then on top of that, the real cost in software used in production system is not much to do with the creation of the software itself, but it has to do with the life cycle management of that software. So those are pretty strong durable moats that have sustained. But just to touch quickly on the opportunity, AI is a tremendous opportunity to do many things across the stack of an automation system. But the biggest opportunity really is in simplifying what it takes for people to consume automation, consume in the form of designing, operating and maintaining. The single largest barrier to more automation density is complexity, is the complexity of deploying and maintaining and supporting an AI with these virtual workers, if you will, are there to help you lower that barrier, so more automation can be used in more production systems over time. So we feel very, very good about AI as a tailwind and has a significant propelling of more automation demand across the industry.

What are you seeing in the cyber threat environment in terms of an acceleration of instances of threats, higher sophistication as people are using AI in that realm, what you're doing with your business to defend.

Yes. So there is -- we have been investing for a very long time in the resiliency and the robustness of our products. It's a significant part of our spend. It's also why I say what I said before that increasingly, these are system concerns. The reality is the cost to play in automation continues to go up. I wouldn't be surprised if you see some degree of consolidation because not only you can compete if you're just a little piece of the system, but for you to sustain and a good example of that is what's about to come online in Europe with cyber resiliency Act, where there are specific requirements for what level of security strength, your system needs to have for you to just be able to supply in an automation system. So we welcome those because they disproportionately benefit Rockwell, we built capabilities not around just the strength of our products, but also as you've seen capabilities around our Lifecycle Services organization and security assessments, including acquisitions we've made to enhance our ability to support our customers and frankly, bringing resiliency. We expect that certain industries will see higher pressure to strengthen their industrial systems earlier, things like critical infrastructure, food and beverage, life sciences, and we expect that will continue to propagate and we see that as a good thing.

And then to touch on data centers. You've talked about hyperscalers increasingly adopting the industrial Logix platforms from traditional shift from traditional kind of DTC type of controls. Explain to us kind of what that shift means for those customers, what you're able to provide and what the revenue opportunity is like for you?

Yes. I mean this has been a very good business for us and frankly, no brainer value proposition to our customers. the shift is strong from traditional controls. DDC controls have been designed primarily to manage general buildings. These are things like this particular building that we're in today. And that's okay. But data centers are increasingly more critical, mission-critical operations, more like factories where you care a lot about the availability of the system. So with our system, we have an order of magnitude greater availability. So what we call Logix runs today 5.9, so 99.999% availability. And you can imagine what the cost of downtime, we've always dealt with cost of downtime in any type of production system and in data centers. The cost per minute is significant. So just on the merits of availability, Logix has been easily justified. But there are many other reasons as well. One of them is cyber. A lot of these traditional systems, they use networks that are relatively old that don't employ capabilities like encryption even in their communications. There's also an element of performance. The certain data centers and server racks can swing in the magnitudes of megawatts in the span of a minute and you need response and you need some degree of real-time control there. And there's also a component of longevity because these industrial systems are designed for longer life than commercial technology out there. So there are many, but -- and we'll continue to see growth there.

And I think the way you framed it is data center today is a low single-digit percent of revenue for rock in the not-too-distant future, it could be around 5%. When you think about that growth path, is that more on the software and control side? Or is that more with something like Cubic on the ITD side?

Yes. So today, you can think about there's a few offerings that we provide. One of them is what I just described, Logix being used to manage the infrastructure, the building. The other strong vector we have is with our acquisition of Cubic. Cubic has a fairly innovative a modular system that is used to package gear, essentially switch gear packaging technology to be completely transparent. We made that acquisition way before this data center boom. And we have a line of motor control centers that we participated in the market for a very long time, and that's innovative technology that has also helped us modernize and innovate in motor control center but it's strongly it's a great fit for data center technology there, and we've seen good growth. And then obviously, because Logix is also there in controlling and managing the building that are -- there are certain parts of the equipment used in building management, like things like chillers and fans and pumps that also leverage ITD technology like our drives that are used to control those systems. So it's a good amount of scope there.

Then on software and control margins, you reached 35% in the second quarter. I think the guide embeds that it's not going to stay at that level as we move into the back half of the year, but talk about that progression as we move forward and some of the puts and takes on the margin side.

We had a stellar quarter in terms of margin performance for the whole company and of course, in software control specifically. The biggest driver for the company for this segment was really volume. So you have volume, you had really good price cost inclusive of productivity and all the work we've been doing to drive structural cost out, whether it's on a direct cost to produce, whether it's our logistics mode, manufacturing efficiencies across our operations that are helping every segment. So good productivity also in SG&A, in our functional spend. So we saw a good contribution from that and mix even within Software & Control, we saw good growth in Logix as we talked about over 20% and high single-digit growth in Software. So those are higher-margin offerings within Software & Control. So it was a complex of a lot of great things that had happened and it was a great quarter. As we look to Q3 and Q4 and specifically Q3, we talked about increasing input cost inflation, specifically on memory chips that does disproportionately impact Software & Control. And so while we do expect to offset and mitigate those cost increases with price, over time, as we mentioned, it might not be perfectly aligned in any particular quarter, especially in Q3. And so we do think it's prudent for us not to expect that same level of perfect storm of everything going right for us in Q3. So we expect sequentially margins to be slightly lower. But for the full year, still expecting Software & Control margins to expand several hundred basis points year-over-year. So we're really on a good trajectory there.

And going through a multiyear history where there was a period of stocking and a period of destocking and now in an environment where you're comping against some of that. But moving forward, the comps will get tougher think expectations out there for something like mid-single digit, high single-digit organic growth in Software & Control as we move into the back half of the year. Does that roughly align with the guide? Anything that you observed in that, that you would call out?

We talked about our expectations of low double-digit growth for the full year in Software & Control. So that implies sequential moderate sequential growth, and we'll see where we are. But yes, low double digits. So certainly the fastest growing segment for the company.

Yes. The -- at the Investor Day last year, the company outlined a $2 billion investment plans over a multiyear period of time. talk about software and controls kind of role in that. What the opportunities are? Do you see a higher percentage of that spend as the company is looking at the multiyear investments?

Yes. yes. So yes, we did communicate that indeed. The majority of that investment is in CapEx. And frankly, the -- a lot of that is in the U.S. and that includes investment in our people, investment in technology, we're ourselves transforming our operations into more autonomous systems. And frankly, also brick-and-mortar. So we're building a new capacity as well there. From -- the reason we're making that investment is largely in the service of continued margin expansion in customer service. We feel very strong about achieving the targets that we have already communicated. You talk about Software & Control. We have this margin a corridor of 31 to 34. We have already been in that corridor for the last 4 quarters, if you will. We haven't put the full fiscal year yet in that, but we feel pretty strong of doing that independent of this investment. And we have, obviously, our enterprise operating margin target of 22%. So all of this is in the spirit of fueling further margin expansion beyond that and indeed, transforming manufacturing for ourselves, so we can continue. And to your question around all of the self-help initiatives we've put in place, including our productivity, all of those items, including what we do in sourcing, what we do in transportation, logistics, what we do in more automation and reducing our cost to produce all of those are directly applicable to Software & Control just as much. So both -- frankly, all 3 businesses, including Lifecycle Services because we have solutions that include panels and things like that, that we construct. All of the 3 segments benefit from those quite strongly.

I think maybe time to squeeze one more in, but really on capital deployment and opportunities there because you talked about there could be pockets of the market where there's an opportunity for consolidation. Rockwell has said back in the game in terms of M&A. But then also Software & Control spends a high percentage of revenue on R&D, right? And so it's the organic opportunity versus the inorganic and where are your priorities?

Yes. So R&D is the lifeblood of the company. We have full intentions to continue to innovate. I know we run at about 8% of revenue as a company. And as you stated and correctly so, software and control, as you would expect, is higher than that in the teens and low teens and we'll continue that investment. And in terms of acquisition, absolutely. We are very open and interested in series about continuing to evaluate opportunities that fit in our channel, but we'll likely focus on profitable acquisitions that we can, if not accretive, that we can make accretive in a reasonable amount of time. And also acquisitions that help us continue to propel and expand share gains in, frankly, in regions where we may not be as strong.

Perfect. Well, I think that brings us to the end of our time. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.