Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

An example of that would be distributors that would have stage in-store inventory in their inventory. So that would be where contractor or a distributor or project would have bought earlier than normal on their Lighting and Lighting Controls, and they would have done that for any number of reasons, but the two most obvious would be to ensure that they have the product when they needed it, number one, and two, they might have bought ahead of some price increases as their – so that they could capitalize on those lower prices. So we expect that to – the combination of those things to impact demand over – kind of over the next several periods. We don’t know exactly how much and when, but we expect those to affect us. But net-net, we’re confident in our ability to continue to take share in the industry and our – through our product vitality and our service levels, which are tools that we did not have in our toolkit the last time we faced an economic environment like this.

Joe O’Dea: That’s great. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question, please. And our next question will come from Christopher Glynn from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Christopher Glynn: Thanks. Happy Monday, everybody. So on the improving lead times and getting some backlog out. Karen did a little bit of drill down into ISG with the margins there. Curious, as pertains to ABL, are you seeing a pathway to have more predictable level loading of the factories that might be a little gross margin opportunity as the year goes on?

Neil Ashe: Yes, thanks, Chris. It’s Happy Monday and Oxymoron, so I wanted to check, and thank you all for showing up at 8 o’clock on a Monday for this call. Big picture, yes, we are moving – we are trying to move towards more level loading of our facilities on the ABL side. So to take two steps back on the electronic component supply. So obviously, and I mentioned earlier, we bought OSRAM now – I referred to as OPTOTRONIC for three reasons, one, to control the technology in our luminaires, the second, to expand our exposure to the OEM market, and the third is to take greater control of our supply chain. So over the course of the last year when the – kind of the market was – when we had just bought it and the market was bouncing around, we prioritized OEMs so that we could demonstrate to the market that they were – we were serious about being in that business.

We believe that, as we go forward, we have now have the opportunity to take greater control of that electronic supply chain. So that is, obviously, the pacemaker items have been on the electronic component driver side. So as we start to take more control over that, we think we will have more control and the ability to have greater level loading over time. The level loading won’t be perfect, obviously, because that’ll be balanced by lower absolute levels of backlog as we lower lead-time to get more – in a more normal operating rhythm. But yes, we believe that, net-net, we are in a position to better level load our facilities going forward and be us taking greater control of our electronic supply chain.

Christopher Glynn: Great. Thanks. And on the follow-up, it’s pertains to Sunoptics and some of the Winona discontinues. What’s the associated revenue and cost savings with those? And should we be considering those in our annual model or does it just kind of dovetail with the guidance framework that you laid out last quarter and reiterated by reference today?