AAON, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAON) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Rebecca Thompson: Yes. Those factors are included in the Q4 guidance. So we have talked about some of these investments we’re making for long-term growth for back office, like technology and automation. Some of that was more heavily weighted to the second half of the year. So that is why you’ll see our guidance for Q4 as a percent of sales is up a bit.

Julio Romero: Okay. Really helpful. I will hop back into queue. Thanks very much.

Operator: And your next question will come from Jon Braatz with Kansas City Capital.

Jon Braatz: Good afternoon, everyone. Gary, maybe going back to the refrigerant question. You have historically seen periods where there’s been disruptions going back ways. And I guess maybe to quantify it for us in if the market was going to deliver you maybe x percent volume growth next year, how much of that might be because of the gaining market share because of the – sort of the disruption in the industry. I’m trying to better sense as what the opportunity for you in terms of driving market share might be?

Gary Fields: Well, it’s early. I haven’t yet seen – because none of these states can take that new equipment yet. They’re preparing for it. Some of them are very near-term. I thought that it was not going to happen until January 1, 2025, all along. Well, that’s where most of it is done. But there were some states that were very aggressive, no surprise, California, for instance, trying to pull everything forward as far as they could. They want to be the leaders in global responsibility. And so they’re pulling a lot of things forward. And the industry responded when it comes to chillers, I think they’re well prepared. When it comes to packaged rooftops, it doesn’t appear to be so much. So that’s our strong point is we don’t build chillers.

We build packaged rooftop units, and we’re way far ahead of everybody with being ready with the new refrigerant. I think a lot of the reason that we’re ahead is that they had to develop, they had to allocate a lot of their resources to the 2023 energy standards. And then by the time they got that completed, then they began the refrigerant changeovers kind of the way it’s been told to me. Well, we were way ahead of both because we had that 2023 energy standard captured three to five years back. So we were able to get a lot earlier development on this new refrigerant. So I don’t know what percentage it is, Jon. I will tell you that we’ve got a lot of market drivers that are in our favor for us to take market share. I think next year of our total revenue gains there will be some pricing, but I believe it will be – our revenue gains will be more weighted towards volume than they will be price.

That’s my opinion.

Jon Braatz: Okay. Great. And then secondly, maybe for you, Rebecca, the strong gross margins in the quarter, 37%. Sometimes, everything that can go right, goes right in the quarter and vice versa. But I think it’s obviously a lot more than that. But having said that, was there things in the quarter that just were unusually positive and it’s difficult to repeat and maybe generated those higher margins?

Rebecca Thompson: Well, I didn’t say they’re unusually positive. I will say the increased revenue and our operational efficiencies that we’ve been seeing has led to better overhead absorption. So sometimes that is a factor that when you get into some of our seasonality, you have less absorption and the margins might dip just slightly. But I would say there was nothing out of the usual for the quarter.

Jon Braatz: Okay. Thank you, Rebecca.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] It appears we have no further questions at this time. I’ll turn the call back to our presenters for any additional or closing remarks.

Joseph Mondillo: All right. I’d like to thank everyone for joining on today’s call. If anyone has any questions over the coming days and weeks, please feel free to reach out to myself. Have a great rest of the day, and we look forward to speaking with you in the future. Thank you.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for attending.

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