The Timken Company (TKR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Jefferies Industrials Conference for the 7:30 fireside chat with The Timken Company. We're here hosting both Phil Fracassa, Executive Vice President and CFO; as well as Neil Frohnapple, Vice President in Investor Relations. So I'm Chirag Patel, I cover the machinery sector here with Steve Volkmann, just going to kick us off here. I think Phil has got a few overview slides to start with, and then we'll jump into some of the questions.

Yes, sure. Thanks, Chirag, and good morning, and thanks to everyone, for joining us. I thought I'd start out first. One of the things Chirag wanted me to cover was the Timken's evolution over the last 10 years. And what's the high-level points to keep in mind as you think about the company today. So -- and again, we appreciate the opportunity to be here. Timken is an industrial technology company dates back to 1899. So we're celebrating our 125th anniversary of the company's founding this year. Which as an introduction to the company and really give you a sense for the transformation and how to think about the Timken company today, I'm going to walk through sort of 5 high-level points, if you will. First would be I'd like you to think about the highly engineered product portfolio across both bearings, which is what we're best known for as well as adjacent industrial motion products and services. Our products are generally mission-critical in the applications where they sit, think of applications where performance counts, where the cost of failure is high and where premium is the only option. So [indiscernible] wheel bearings where Timken is the market leader in that segment of the market. We serve leading OEMs as well as a global network of distributors around the world. These are long-standing deep customer relationships that many of which date back to, frankly, the founding of the company. And to elaborate a little further on the Industrial Motion strategy, if you will, that you see on the slide since it was a big part of the transformation and a big difference between the company of today versus 10 years ago. Let me provide a little bit more detail starting on Slide 10. And actually, we have books available in the front, if you don't have one, raise your hand and Blake can get you. But the genesis of the strategy around Industrial Motion was to deepen and broaden our presence in attractive markets and sectors. So through acquisitions and subsequent organic initiatives, we've grown the Industrial Motion segment to close to 1/3 of our revenue today with platforms that include you see them on the slide, linear motion, automatic lubrication systems, drive systems and services, belts and chain and couplings, clutches and brakes. These products complement one another very well, and they complement the bearing portfolio incredibly well. They're all engineered products, they generally sit in the same applications as our bearings, require much of the same technical and system knowledge, sold through the same OEMs oftentimes and served through the same channels in the aftermarket. Second point would be our attractive market mix, which we focus on our core industrial markets like off-highway and rail as well as other more specialty markets like automation, aerospace, marine and renewable energy, which you can actually see on Slide 5, the pie slice of all of our markets. We also have a high percentage of our sales from the aftermarket mix with over 40% of our revenue going through the aftermarket, which is recurring revenue and attractive margins and highlights the benefit of having that installed base to serve in the aftermarket for decades after the initial sale. And what you see on this slide is a growing presence that we have in so-called newer markets, which we've got on Slide 7 here, which we define, these are markets we really weren't in 10, 15 years ago. And these are all markets with strong GDP plus growth potential, deep profit pools and in many cases, different cyclicality profiles. So these are markets we entered through both organically and through M&A and markets where our technology is winning. And as you can see, food and beverage, automation, robotics, renewable energy, passenger rail, marine, among others. We think our market mix, which Neil if you can move to Slide 5, our market mix is the most attractive in the industry and more aligned with secular trends than ever before. Third point would be our differentiated strategy and business model. I'm proud to say that our strategy, which is summarized on Slide 16, hasn't changed much in the last 5 to 10 years because it's working. It's a proven 3-pronged strategy, designed to deliver top quartile performance and returns for our shareholders. You can see the 3 prongs, if you will, first, driving organic outgrowth in the targeted markets and sectors I talked about earlier. We do this through innovation and product vitality. And we differentiate based on product technology, performance, best-in-class service, both before the sale with application engineering, after the sale in the aftermarket and then we service as we service the product through the life cycle of the equipment. Second prong would be operating with excellence. We've always been good operators of our businesses, and this is our relentless focus on getting better at everything we do and operational excellence, continuous improvement initiatives to protect margins, expand margins and enhance returns. And finally, we talk about deploying capital to deliver highest returns for our shareholders. We've been really thoughtful and disciplined about capital allocation, across CapEx, dividends, acquisitions and share buybacks while maintaining a strong balance sheet. We had a record year for capital allocation in 2023, allocating $1.1 billion, including $700 million towards M&A, and we're still only around 2x levered today. And this year, we're off to a great start. We raised our dividend for the 11th year in a row and we announced the acquisition of CGI, which is an exciting company that primarily serves the attractive robotic space, precision drives going into medical robotic applications. So very excited. We should close on that later this month about $45 million in annual revenue at margins above company average. And share buyback remains an attractive option for us going forward as well. We execute our strategy following the Timken business model on Slide 17. This is the how that guides kind of how we do it, where to play, what to target, how to execute, et cetera. Next point I'd make is the results. Everything I talked about has driven that transformation that Chirag wanted me to hit on, and the numbers speak for themselves. Here's our 5-year summary, 2019 to '23, which is a -- which was an array of economic environments during that time. This is my favorite slide because it really shows the consistency in earnings power of the new Timken Company, revenue records for the five years, growth CAGR of 6%, strong operating margin performance, an average margin of about 19%, including 19.7% our EBITDA margin record last year, we're targeting 20% over the cycle. So we still got opportunity there. But the 19% average for the last five years was about 300 basis points better than the prior 5-year period. So our margins have gotten better, and they've also gotten tighter over the period as well. Earnings records, EPS records for the last five years, that's about a 9% CAGR over the period, also generated strong free cash flow and despite the capital we've allocated to M&A, last year, ROIC was close to 14% compared to our cost of capital, which is about 9% to 10%. And the final point before I wrap is we feel like we're just getting started. We feel like we have a lot of opportunity ahead of us, strong balance sheet, capable management team. We've got a CEO succession underway. It was well planned, and we look forward to welcoming Tarak Mehta as our new CEO later this week. Macro trends around infrastructure, onshoring, near shoring, automation and clean energy are supporting our business now and should for years to come. And we have these long-term targets on Slide 35 here, which would represent that next step on our journey of success. These are 5-year targets we put out in 2022. And I would say we're on our way to hitting these targets. So that's sort of the Timken story at a high level in a nutshell, and I'll turn it back to Chirag for -- to take us through the rest of the questions.

Excellent. And so I guess the first thing I kind of wanted to hit on is just the broad way of end markets that you had covered in the slides here. Where are we currently in those end market trends? What are you seeing? What has kind of transitioned and changed? Can you give us a current update on what you're seeing in the world?

Yes. I think probably, but let me -- before I do that, let me give you just an overall update on the quarter, how we're trending so far this quarter, and then we can dive in deeper into the end market. So we performed well overall in the first half of the year. Despite the soft demand environment, we delivered 20% adjusted EBITDA margins in the first half on lower year-over-year organic revenue. We were down about 8.5% organically. About half of that attributable to a significant decline in renewable energy that we've talked about on our calls, but our performance in the first half continues to demonstrate the strength and resiliency of the portfolio, and again, the success of the strategy. But as we're sitting here sort of September 4, I would say the environment remains challenging, to be sure. And 2 months into the quarter, I would say revenue so far is trending a bit below our midpoint expectations from our guidance back in July. Obviously, we need to see how September develops because September is typically the strongest month of the quarter. But through August, as I said, we're seeing revenue that's tracking below our midpoint expectation. So think of that as pointing us to the lower end of our full year guide as opposed to the higher end.

And I guess on that point, is some of the customer extended shutdowns impacting you? How is -- are there dynamics within the industry that aren't Timken controllable, that are kind of pushing in that direction?

Yes. I would say in terms of Timken controllable, we're certainly running our playbook around managing to the demand environment, cost reduction initiatives, operational excellence initiatives, accelerating the integration of our recent M&A, including the 6 deals we did last year. So doing what we can to protect the bottom line. From a demand standpoint, I wouldn't see there's anything that's standing out significantly from a market standpoint. So I said we're trending a little bit below midpoint expectations, that's mainly capital goods. So think off-highway, construction, agriculture, industrial distribution as well. One thing I would point out is renewable energy, which we've talked about with investors for the better part of a year now that's been in a pretty significant decline for the better part of the year now. I'm speaking specifically wind energy and primarily China, that's stable. So we did see significant declines in the first half of the year. But that part of the business is stable, performing in line with expectations. We don't expect further declines. And again, we'll provide a more fulsome update after we have the benefit of September when we release third quarter earnings in early November. But again, we're performing well in this environment, but the environment remains challenging, certainly from a top line perspective.

Understood. And then I guess one of the things that's been on investors' minds, just with the idea of how much inflation we saw over the last couple of years is the deflationary potential. Can you kind of walk us through the pricing strategy, the ability to keep price and kind of what are your early thoughts are around that?

Yes. Certainly, our strategy has been to -- we value price. So we certainly want to keep up with inflation and price for the value that we provide to our customers in the marketplace. And we certainly got caught in 2021 with the hyperinflation we saw. So '21, we took -- we were catching up a little bit, margins took a little bit of a hit. We made that up in '22 and '23. I feel like we've recovered most of the inflation that we need to recover. So from here, our strategy is really to hold price, to get additional price in the marketplace. So for 2024, we are guiding to positive pricing, likely will be less than 100 basis points for the full year, but positive pricing. And when you think of our business, as I said before, we've got 40% of our revenue through distribution, where we have the ability to price as needed with notice, and we're continuing to push price and distribution typically annually. With OEMs, those are contractual arrangements, either one year or multi-year and our strategy there is continue to get price where we need to get it. So a customer is on a multiyear deal. And it's just now coming up. We've got to recover for some of the cost increases in the last couple of years. We're going to continue to do it. And then probably the third piece will be there are -- some of our contracts do have index givebacks, if you will, for commodity prices. Some of those have flipped back over as steel prices have come down and it has resulted in some giveback, but that is a minority of our pricing activity. And quite frankly, it's embedded in the positive price outlook for the year for '24. And as we're sitting here today, I would expect a positive outlook for pricing in '25. And we're not seeing costs come down materially. Labor has sort of stuck as everybody knows. And certainly, steel has come down a bit. Logistics has run up recently in recent months or recent quarters. So obviously, we haven't gotten much relief there. So I think if inflation stays above historical levels, we'll continue to price, and I think we've proven over our history that this is a portfolio that's highly engineered, makes a difference to our customers, our customers need us. And as a result, we can get the pricing we need in the marketplace.

And I think that's an important factor is the idea of stickiness on that pricing front. Can we talk a little bit about the competitive dynamic and what makes a customer stick with Timken over the longer period? Is there some dynamics in there that can be attractive?

Yes. I mean, I would say what's great about our product is, as I said, highly engineered, but a relatively small cost in the overall system, if you will, the overall machine -- piece of machinery or equipment typically less than 5%. So when you think about the role that our products play, particularly our bearings, oftentimes can be the linchpin in the application from carrying the load, managing the toric, handling the friction, changing bearing suppliers in the positions where we sit, not easy, it's not cheap. It takes time. It takes money. It takes testing, prototyping, et cetera, et cetera. So all else equal, customers tend to stick with us, particularly if the product is working well. And as we've always said, pricing is more of an art than a science. We certainly want to protect our customer relationships, make sure that we're competitive in the marketplace but at the same time, getting paid for the value that we provide. And in many of the positions where we sit, you think of aircraft landing wheels, the value that we bring there in terms of just the thought of failure is almost unthinkable quite frankly. We are able to get the pricing we need in the marketplace, and then in the aftermarket, more importantly, it's pretty sticky. So when you think aftermarket once again, small cost to replace, the model we normally see is a kind of a read and replace model, if you will, the product comes out. It says, Timken, Timken goes back in. And I would say, on average, you see retention rates in the aftermarket that are north of 70%. So you're in the -- particularly in the industrial markets, it can be higher in aerospace, maybe it can be lower in on-highway, for example, but in the core industrial markets quite high. And again, that's a testament to the stickiness, the engineering and the risk of failure.

And I guess on that idea and the idea of the aftermarket and how much of that -- is there a margin profile that's variance between the two sides? How much of the business is aftermarket? What's kind of the longer-term target for that as well?

Yes, sure. Oftentimes, it really depends how the aftermarket channel is served as most of you, I'm sure, know, oftentimes, that can be the OEM managing its own aftermarket channel. Think of the Caterpillar dealer network, John Deere dealer network as an example. A lot of the aerospace players manage their own aftermarket. But by and large the more fragmented industrial markets which is more and more a bigger part of our business, tend to get served through independent distributors. And that does create a, quite frankly, a better margin opportunity for us in the aftermarket. And we've talked about this many times, that the margin differential between OEM margins and margins through the independent distribution channel is hundreds of basis points could be up even more than that, quite frankly. And that's just the dynamic of independent distribution. And the key for us in distribution is to be strong partners to our distributors, support them with our application engineering expertise, make joint calls with them out to customer sites, their customer sites were needed to solve problems in the field. And as a result, we keep that high retention rate in the aftermarket.

Yes. And maybe the only thing I'd add is so aftermarket drives over 40% of our annual revenue. And frankly, that's probably a little bit below where it typically runs historically. And the reason is we're so new in renewable energy. We've seen such significant growth, and most of that is still OEM business today. So we would expect certainly upside as that renewable energy market becomes more mature. That's a big opportunity in the next decade as those wind turbines is we've been in that market for 10 to 15 years, call it. And so as those installations continue to mature, there's a big aftermarket opportunity that will evolve and be a bigger part of the story. So we should see naturally that aftermarket mix rise over time.

Yes. I mean historically, it's swung 50-50 to 60-40 aftermarket, 60-40 OE where it sort of is today because of renewable energy as Neil said. So that's kind of the sweet spot for us. Investors will ask us do you want it to be 100% aftermarket? No, we've got to keep seating the installed base. We've got to keep kind of planting that next generation of installed base for us to serve in the aftermarket. And so that's sort of where we'd like to be, again, more skewed OEM right because of the recency of the wind growth that we've seen.

And part of that is also the idea of removing some cyclicality in the business as certain end markets mature, you get the replacement cycle and whatnot. Can we talk a little bit about where we are in that cycle for you guys, where across the broad array of end markets that you're kind of serving right now?

Yes. I think the diversity of the market mix has definitely made Timken more resilient through cycles. I'll probably never stand up here and tell you that we're not cyclical because we serve capital goods sectors and even some of the -- even renewable energy as we're finding as you see it goes through a cycle, automation goes through cycles, robotics goes through cycles. But the diversity of the portfolio is creating, I would say, natural hedges in there as some of the markets we're in, geographies we're in, sort of cycle at different times. So hard to go market by market because we're in so many different markets and even geographies within markets can differ. But I would say, as we're sitting here today, certainly closer to -- much closer to trough demand level, certainly than peak. Keep in mind like several of the bigger sectors you see here like renewable energy and some of the off-highway sectors, ag, mining, construction, they began to decline in the middle of 2023. So more than a year ago, we believe that these markets are closer to trough levels. Europe started to decline, quite frankly, in late '22. So we're almost two years of soft market conditions in Europe, which would be quite long. And it's hard -- no cycle is the same in terms of depth or length, et cetera. But when we look at where we're at today, the second quarter would have been our fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines. If the revenue trends continue, I think as we get to the end of the year, we'll be down 6 quarters organically in a row. And if you take pricing out, probably closer to 7, so that would be long as cycles we'd go and historically speaking for Timken. So it's too early to talk about '25, but I think it would be atypical, frankly, if we didn't return to growth in '25 just based on historical cycle performance, obviously, too early to talk about it. We need the markets to help us to be sure. But I think we're in a great position to return to growth in '25. And then speaking to renewable energy, in particular, with 9% of our sales in '23. So it's a big market for us. It's one of those newer markets I talked about. We feel really good about the market long term and the aftermarket Neil talked about, but it is going through a deep cycle right now, as I said, stable but at a pretty low level. And I do believe we're in a good position to return to growth in 2025 and then continue to benefit from those tailwinds of new installs, number one, where we're continuing to gain share and grow and then also serve the aftermarket or if we do it the way we've done it in other markets, overserve the aftermarket, and that would be a nice tailwind for us as well.

I was going to open it up for the audience if there's any questions or I can always keep going. Anyone? All right. In that case, the overall portfolio as it sits right now, can we talk a little bit about the M&A pipeline? Where are you seeing opportunities? Just valuations in general. What are you seeing there currently?

So M&A is a big part of the strategy because I talked about we really believe in the value of diversification across products, markets, geographies what it does not only to the top line, but what it does to us from a cyclicality standpoint in the bottom line. So M&A is still important. The balance sheet is strong. We closed the second quarter with net leverage about 1.8x. We target 1.5 to 2.5x over the cycle. That's an investment-grade balance sheet. We're investment grade by both Moody's and S&P. So the opportunities are out there. What's great about the industrial motion space, while the bearing space is more concentrated and quite frankly, we're as large as we need to be in bearings, not to say we won't look for bolt-ons here or there. But the industrial motion space is far more fragmented, more opportunities out there, and CGI is a great example of a company that manufactures precision drives that sit in robotic applications, primarily surgical equipment -- automated surgical equipment, $45 million in revenue, but a business that we think has a nice growth trajectory in front of us, a company that Timken can help grow and quite frankly, with the other products we have in the portfolio, a company that potentially CGI can help Timken grow as well. So M&A remains a big part of the strategy. We continue to look at opportunities as they come along, both reactive and proactive and while we've only done 1 deal this year, I'd be disappointed if we didn't do at least 1 more before the end of the year. And the strategy remains kind of focused on small- to medium-sized acquisitions that we can integrate, drive value, stay within our leverage target and then generate strong free cash flow and then continue to sort of repeat the virtuous cycle, and I would expect that to continue.

Is the -- when you're looking at a company, are you looking a little bit -- are you also looking to broaden the geography that you're currently set up with? Or is it primarily product? Is there one versus the other?

I would say both, but more than targeting a specific geography, we tend to target companies that have the ability to sell the product globally. So we're sort of -- Rollon is a great example. Most of the manufacturing footprint for Rollon and Nadella is in Europe, Western Europe, a very competitive manufacturing footprint. That product is sold globally and it's globally competitive. So we're a little -- we're agnostic as to where the asset is. We've not done any acquisitions in China for -- there's obvious challenges there, but we've done an acquisition in India. We've done several in Western Europe. Obviously, the Americas has been the probably the bulk of our deals. And so a little location agnostic as long as it's a product that we can take global.

Excellent. And when you're also looking at these companies, is it important for them to be margin accretive right away? Or is it a longer-term strategy? What's kind of the framework for that?

It's primarily value creation that can be synergies, that can be margin accretive, but I would say a strong bias for companies. In the spirit of the newer markets I talked about earlier, strong buyings for companies that will enhance Timken's growth rate, so companies that can grow organically at a GDP plus type rate that will enhance our growth rate and in companies that will enhance Timken's margins, if not immediately, certainly over time. And that's been a big part of the margin improvement story. It's been both mix as we've targeted a richer mix organically. And then the M&A we've done has mixed us up as well. And frankly, the acquisitions we did last year are coming in at around 30% EBITDA margin right now. So immediately accretive, which is the best of all worlds.

With that, we're at the top of our time here. So thank you guys for joining us. Phil, Neil, thank you guys.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you, everybody.