Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. (SWK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Great. Well, good afternoon. And for those of you on the webcast, welcome back to the Wolfe Research Industrials and Transit Conference. It's actually the Transit and Industrials conference, but when I'm on stage is Industrial and Transit conference. So we're going to transition from a bank of transports fireside chats to more of an industrial field. Very pleased to have on stage with me Stanley Black & Decker, a company I've covered for a long time. Chris Nelson, some of you all go back with a long way as with Dennis as well. So Chris Nelson, COO of Stanley Black & Decker, Inc.; and Dennis Lange, Head of Investor Relations. So it's a Q&A session, but Chris, I think you've got some remarks, and then we'll get into the Q&A..

Absolutely. Very nice seeing you again. I just wanted to start by talking a little bit, we were able to recently at our earnings release, talk about the positive results we had in Q1, which I think is Important to note, we're able to continue our progress in our transformation as we were able to post organic year-over-year growth as well as year-over-year margin expansion and continued above-market growth for another consecutive quarter with DEWALT, which is certainly important as we can then say that we're on pace for completing the transformation by the end of the year and have established a very solid foundation on which we believe we can grow in the future. Of course, that being said, we do certainly realize that in 2025, we're going to be obviously measured on our ability to adjust and manage to the current trade environment. And as it relates to that, just certainly, what I'd say is that we welcome the changes that we saw over the past couple of weeks. And certainly, we think that it's not only a step in the right direction overall for the direction and for the stability of the economy, but certainly for Stanley Black & Decker as a company. And specifically, if you think about when we went through our planning scenarios that we talked about at our last earnings release, we had highlighted approximately a $1.7 billion impact to the -- to our company based on the tariffs at the time. As we look now based on what was announced a couple of weeks ago, that now moves to a range of $500 million to $600 million annualized, which is obviously a move in the right direction, still a significant number that we have to manage, but certainly something that we feel is, like I said, represents progress. As it relates to the planning scenario that we laid out, and we talked about in the prior -- under the prior assumptions, it relating to approximately about a $0.75 headwind versus what we had given for our prior annual planning assumptions. Now with the changes, that is closer to about a $0.40 headwind, which would be plus or minus $0.10 from there. Dennis, I don't know, is there anything there you'd want to add?

Yes. I think if you think about that $0.35 or so, clearly, there was an impact to the second quarter as it relates to tariffs until we get the countermeasures in place. If you mark that originally, we had the second quarter a little bit better than breakeven, Much of that $0.35 would then benefit the second quarter. So we're in a little bit better scenario there. And then also, we talked a lot about cash on the call with about $0.5 billion plus. This change obviously gets us more on the plus side of those.

Yes. So I think that, that's -- we certainly -- we welcome the change. We feel very good about the strategy that we're following, which I'm sure we'll have more opportunity to talk to. But then the important thing is that when we look at the competitive environment structurally, our strategy remains intact, and our goals are intact. And we still -- we're on that journey to be driving towards the 35% plus gross margins continuing to pivot to and drive more of a growth culture. Certainly, we'll be able to use the foundation that we've set up through our supply chain transformation to drive the productivity that we believe we need in the business to be able to continue to funnel our investments more closer to the customer with our core brands, making sure that we're activating, we're putting salespeople in the field to be able to drive the growth that we believe is there to be had with the professional, making sure that we continue to drive more dollars to our innovation and research and development to make sure that we have the right products for our end users, and we're there to support them as well as with the way that we promote and advance our brands and strengthen our core brands. So we feel very good about our ability to manage the short term and certainly didn't want to lose track of the fact that we've been able to set a solid foundation for the long term as well. And the strategy to manage this year is very complementary to what we're trying to accomplish long term in the company as well.

Chris, that was a great way to set the table. And one of these years, we're going to have a year where we aren't going to talk about supply chains or recessions or pandemic.

I don't know what we'll do with ourselves.

Maybe you never know. You probably expect me to start off with some of the math there. But I want to step back. You've been saying now for, I think, just over 2 years, we're not mistaken. Maybe just talk about some of the changes you've put in place, the foundations you've referred to. How is Stanley today operating differently within that T&O business compared to maybe 3 years ago?

Yes. So I'd say there's a few things. I'll highlight 3 things foundationally. One is as I arrived, there was very clearly an opportunity for us to better integrate and centralize our supply chain in order to drive better productivity and benefits from our scale. So if we look at what we've been doing in the transformation with really driving more efficiency in the way that we source our products, making sure that we were able to think about better capacity utilization and shrinking our footprint. And then driving more lean processes into the business to be able to drive kind of more year-over-year productivity. I think that those things are capabilities that have certainly paid dividends to date, but they're just in their infancy, honestly of what we think we can drive for productivity going forward, which is -- leads into kind of the next portion of -- by and large, Stanley Black & Decker was a company that was assembled by acquisition. And as a result, a lot of the focus was on thinking about ways that we could take the product portfolio and put it in different brands to then think about how we can get increased levels of shelf space. So we're a very product-focused company thinking about individual product to product to product development. What we've now -- and I think as we went and talked to customers and to our end users and said, what is it that you need out of us and where are we missing the mark. It was really thinking much more in terms of brands that we, with our core brands with DEWALT, Stanley and Craftsman, we serve a customer set. That customer expects us to be able to provide them what they need to do their job end-to-end. If you're a carpenter, you need to have all the tools for your carpentry workflow, if you're a mechanical contractor, you need those tools. And we had a long way to go to think about the business that way. And ultimately, so that we could then start driving the demand and pull-through of those products and not just the placement of those products. So we've changed and organized the company now by brand. So we have brand business units with brand general managers that have the category managers, the product development and we think in terms of from the customer back, what is it that, that brand needs to be successful? What products do we need in the pipeline? What types of support do we need in the field, what types of activation resources, what types of salespeople working with our contractors to make all of that happen on a brand-by-brand basis because our end users count on us to deliver solutions for them in a brand. Because they like to have a battery platform, stay in that and make sure that they understand that they can be successful in the future going forward. So that was the second big thing, and I think that's had a material impact on the way we think about the business from an end-to-end perspective and even how we integrate better with the supply chain. And then thirdly, it was then saying how can we work to better accelerate and modularize our development, in that there is -- the company has always had a tremendous innovation engine. It was fairly diffuse in autonomous, then you have individual product managers working with individual engineers. And so they had a pretty complex product portfolio, not a lot of platforming. So we've centralized that engineering organization to two effects: one to say those brand organizations work to specify what we need and then standard processes and kind of making sure that we have the centralized capacity to get that done quickly. And secondarily, that, that allows us to go much more to a common platforming strategy, which ultimately will allow us to get even more leverage, more scale in our supply chain. So that then drives the loop back around to more productivity which we can reinvest. So it's been a lot of change in a journey where we have a great team that wants to win. I feel good about the talent that is there and that we've brought in. And I think that when we talk to our end user, and we talk to our customers, when we talk to our employees, people are excited about what we've seen and what we have ahead of us. And I think that we have some proof in the pudding by what we've been seeing with our progress on DEWALT.

Great. And of course, there's been a lot of talent brought into it, right?

Yes.

So Home Depot, your biggest retail partner, reported this morning. We've got Lowe's tomorrow. I'm guessing nothing that Home Depot showed this morning surprised you. I mean you would have known this when you reported your results. But they did refer to a commitment to retaining prices unchanged basically not sure how much of that was politics versus as we all know how sensitive this is for yours. But what is your view right now on pricing? Obviously, you scaled back the implied guide, the $0.40 implies that you're scaling back your price increases. So just maybe talk about that.

So I'd say that it's a very volatile environment. I think that would be an understatement. Probably one that's more volatile than anything I've certainly seen in my career. But we have since last summer, been working on this from a strategy perspective, what is it that we need to anchor on is what we're going to do. And I'd say we've been very consistent in that and we remain consistent in that. I think that's allowed us to be effective through this transition. We've been through this whole time, very open book and collaborative with everyone, all our large partners and partners in general. And that's been -- first and foremost, we need to make sure that we're there for our collective customers and we are not turning on and off sources of supply. We want to keep inventory flowing because we want to make sure that our service levels stay where they need to be, so we can service our end users because they need our stuff to be able to do their jobs. And I'd say in some previous environments, we weren't as dedicated towards that, and it costs us in the long run when you're not there to support your customer in a difficult time. So that was first and foremost. Secondarily, we wanted to -- we committed to continue our journey to reduce our exposure to China. It's been a path that we've been on, and I should say to reduce our exposure to China for U.S. consumption. We've been on that journey for several years. It was going back when we were talking about the previous time, we're at 40-ish percent. Now we're in the mid-teens, and we would expect to be effectively out of China for U.S. consumption within 12 to 24 months. So anchoring on that was really important as well, and then saying that our preference would be to continue to leverage our unique North American footprint, not just the production we have in the U.S., but we have a large facility and network that we've built in Mexico that we can continue to build out as well. So moving that production into Mexico and then working to make it USMCA qualified have been the bedrock. And then we've talked about how, obviously, we would be committed to our long term, as I said, 35% plus margin journey. Pricing will always be a part of that as a lever we can and will pull and we did put forth an increase as was mentioned in our last earnings release. As the environment is fluid and as it changes, I think we work real time with our partners to see what that means. For us, we know what our strategy is to make sure that we can deliver the mitigation we need to operationally. But we work very open book and collaboratively with our partners to say, what are the tools -- literally, the tools we can provide you that would be tariff-optimized. We have a very unique global footprint that allows us to say, to make it very specific in terms. We have these different 9 impact wrenches, 6 of them are made in Mexico, 3 of them are made in China, how do we anchor around the 6 that are made in Mexico and make sure that we build our plans and our portfolio around that together with our partners, and that's a form of mitigation. As the kind of environment continues to evolve, if we would need price, it's a lever we have. It remains -- I'm not going to -- it depends because things change so quickly. But obviously, if it were to be necessary vis-a-vis when we talked at earnings, it would be a much, much more muted type of necessity. But we're still working through those plans with our partners as we speak.

Okay. So it sounds like there's a toggle on the price versus the tariff. That's pretty clear. I don't want to get into the murky world of LIFO accounting, but it does sound like you still have a pretty heavy charge in 2Q, obviously, not as it was, but still reflect of the top.

You could see me backing up here.

Exactly.

Nigel, I think the best way to think about the 2Q impact is one, these mitigation counter measures that we've put in place, they're starting to layer into the P&L as we move through the year. The second piece is that eventually you get to 1 quarter of what the annualized tariff is. And we will see a step up in 2Q and have a portion of that bill and just keeping the back of your mind, too, I mean, we were paying higher tariff rates for about 1.5 months. And so there is an impact to that. That isn't a go forward, but it remains in place and will impact the second quarter.

We've seen a progressively weaker consumer through the year. Are you seeing that coming through on the POS on your DIY side?

We continue to see the relative strength of the professional versus the DIY, yes. And I would say that -- and we consider -- we continue to see our strength in the professional relative to even a relatively strong market. So we feel like we're doing a good job of gaining share there. As it relates to the DIY, it remains a little bit soft. And I would expect it to continue to be softer until we see more stability in the economy and maybe a more favorable interest rate environment that would allow there to be more turnover of existing homes, more R&R activity, people able to access and willing to access maybe some more of the home equity that they've built in order to kick off projects, but I feel like the steps that we're taking right now to shore up that brand and that product lineup will pay off because there will be an unlock there.

Sure. You mentioned reducing -- further reducing your China sourcing footprint in the U.S. consumption from where it is today to over the next 12 to 18 months. Maybe just talk about where that goes? Is that down to Vietnam, Southeast Asia, Mexico. Maybe just touch on USMCA compliance, I think it's about 1/3 as of 1Q. What are the measures you're taking to tick that up?

Yes. Okay. So I'll handle the -- so our preferred or primary route would be continuing to build out our Mexico footprint. That's not going to be exclusively the case. But for many of the products that we make, we have already dual-qualified SKUs, and it's a matter of turning off production in one place and turning on another in Mexico. And then in some products that we make in Mexico are similar but not the same as what we make in China, and it's a matter of just qualifying the new processes and bringing those new products up and running. And then some of them will be completely new products. So there will be varying time lines, but generally speaking, that is going to be our preferred route. Now if there is a trade-off that says, we don't believe that for some reason, we could absorb it in Mexico, a particular product line or it will be more difficult to become USMCA qualified, then we are -- we do have other areas of low-cost production we would potentially look at accessing, whether it's Vietnam or what we're doing to continue to build out our footprint in Pune, India. So what we want to move to is a strategy where we have larger hubs that have more flexibility and more diversity on a geographic and global basis. So think about Mexico, think about Vietnam, think about India, Taiwan, Thailand are all places we have pretty substantial scale, and we'll continue to leverage those as opportunities. But for this move, the primary route is going to be Mexico. As far as USMCA compliance, you noted that we're about a little less than 1/3 right now. The type of work that has to be done is on the spectrum of things, more simple than what would be an overall production move. We don't need to move production, what we need to do is change some bills of material and local sources for some components to be able to kind of cross the threshold for USMCA compliance. Of note, though USMCA has been around for a while, it wasn't especially relevant to our industry until recently. But the work to be done in order to become qualified is on the simpler side of what we have to do, and I'd say that when you think about that 12- to 24-month time frame, getting a higher rate of USMCA compliance would be higher -- closer to the 12 months than it would the 24 months.

Okay. And then just given that so much of the -- I guess, the value chain via batteries or Powertronics today resides in China, where do you think that can go? Where do you think USMCA compliance will go?

I think that people have talked about the kind of industrials being that 75% to 85%? I don't know right now, we're building out the plans, but kind of the lower end of that doesn't seem like it would be something that would be out of range for a target for us. But we still have a lot of work to do to figure that out. But what we do know is that we think that as we have the solutions, they will be fairly chunky in nature. Once you solve an issue for one category of products, it will be something that carries over to the other one. So we're working to develop that kind of time line as we speak.

Time is flying by. We've got 7 minutes left. So I want to make sure we get any questions from the room. Questions? At the end of the room? I guess the questions are great. So let's carry on. So Dennis, I think post quarter, when we were talking about the price increases and the -- obviously, the $1.7 billion of inflation, I think we were talking about exit rates of maybe 32% on gross margins. So in that kind of zone low 30s. Where do you see that now based on the current map?

Yes. I mean we'll have to -- we're not here to give a new framework or anything along those lines. We're trying to be helpful just with the changes in the policy. And I think the thing to take away from Chris' comments earlier and our comments today is that the goal of 35% plus is still very realistic. Nothing's changed in our mind with the events of this year that changed that goal. And it's reasonable to assume that we'll be on that path. Now how things unfold this year, policy-wise, countermeasures, et cetera, will make us smarter and being able to get more precise about where and when we get there.

Okay. With a try, wasn't it? Okay. That's -- so all of the movements on the supply chain, and these are the different moves. Is there a pickup in CapEx that's required here to -- and I know you're scaling back on CapEx this year, but is this like hundreds of millions of dollars of CapEx or...

I think where we're fortunate is that it's -- these are relatively capital light moves from the standpoint of we have the floor space and infrastructure that we need for the moves we're talking about in Mexico. We have a lot of the capacity of the large capital equipment that we would need for the moves in Mexico as well. As we're thinking about different tools and maybe assembly capabilities and fixturing, there's some investment that is needed, but it's not a large number. So I think we're very fortunate both from a speed and capital perspective there. I think that the bigger kind of emphasis we're going to have is making sure that we work closely with our suppliers so that they are in step with us to invest in the capacity and have the capital to invest that they need to drive following us as we ramp up and make that a larger part of our production base.

Okay. Inventory turns, obviously, you've got a lot more inventory today than you had 3, 4 years ago. So turns, I think, are running about 2.5x today. You're running 5x pre-pandemic. What is the scope to get back to those kinds of levels over time? Or are we running in a specifically higher inventory environment.

I'll let you start.

Yes, sure. I mean we think of it more in days. And so if you kind of normalize for the portfolio, look at a more even loading across the year. The tools in the outdoor business were more like 120 to 130 days. And we're sitting today in the low 150s. So clearly, there's still an opportunity versus that.

And I think that really, when we think of the levers getting to a simpler manufacturing footprint is a big part of it, and that's part of what we're accelerating now as a part of -- it's very hand in hand with what we're doing on our supply chain moves given the trade environment. That's a part of it. And then as we're going through and driving more of the approach to platforming, we're able to then think and our ability to plan with a simpler component infrastructure and take down our WIP is there as well. So the 120 to 130 is very doable. The only counterbalance to that is, as we are working over the next 12 to 24 months to do all these production moves, there are temporary, we're going to have to build buffers and move lines from plant A to plant B, so that may delay a little bit of getting some of that goodness, but all the underlying work that's required to drive down those levels is absolutely happening.

Okay. That's great, Chris. I want to get a couple of more questions, if I can, The outdoor -- in the spirit of the margin improvement strategy, the outdoor products group is still, I think, well below the average. When that came in, it was mid-single digits. So I don't know if you can comment on where those are today, but maybe just talk about the strategy to improve those margins.

Yes. I think it's a very similar strategy that we were working to simplify the product line for sure. We had a very complex product line that led to, I'd say, pretty high levels of cost and high levels of inventory in the channel and therefore, obsolescence as a result. There are the supply chain efficiencies that we need to drive on a sourcing perspective. And really, as we continue to streamline our footprint in the outdoor arena as well with a kind of a little bit of a modest volume improvement because that's been the -- that's really been the part of the industry that's been hit the hardest with a volume pull down. As we start to see that come down with a smaller footprint with a rationalized product line, we do see a path to improve margins. So it's a similar formula with probably a little bit more focus on the footprint aspect.

Okay. And my final question is on the portfolio. Obviously, a lot of work has been done already. You still have the fasteners on the industrial side. You talked about maybe $0.5 billion of sales within the Tools & Outdoor segment that's maybe not strategic longer term. Maybe talk about where we are in that sort of final stage of the portfolio cleanup.

Yes. I think that right now, as we've talked about, there'll probably be some activity -- small activity from a pruning perspective that really is going to be looking at something that's small and not necessarily core to what we do that would not only simplify the portfolio, but then also play an important role in the inorganic cash generation of $500-plus million to get down to our leverage target. So I don't know, Dennis, if you wanted to add anything to that?

No, I think that's the right zone, Chris. And that's been a part of our strategy that we laid out really throughout this period, but more notably in the fall of last year. And nothing's really changed in our mind around that being a component of it over the year plus or minus zone.

Okay. We're out of time. So we'll draw a line there. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Dennis. That was truly great share. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.