Acuity Brands, Inc. (NYSE:AYI) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Joe O’Dea: Thank you And then just a question related to outlook, both this year and next. I think this year, the earnings outlook, sounds like maintaining that but it’s $1.50 range. And so any anything that you would talk to in terms of what’s most likely within a narrowing of that band? And then as you think about a ’24 guide in a few months, Neil, just what are sort of the most important watch items for you over the next few months to sort of inform how you’d be thinking about that outlook?

Neil Ashe: Yes. So let me contextualize first and then I’ll dig in to answer the specifics of your question. We – as we’ve said consistently, our plan is to provide annual guidance and not update that guidance through the year. We felt it important to identify for you that we weren’t going to meet the lower end of our net sales guidance for the year. But we still are in the adjusted EPS range that we gave at the beginning of the year. And to be transparent, we’re proud of that. So this has been a — our teams have done really hard work to deliver the results that we’re delivering this year to maintain dollar profit margin on lower sales, to increase margins, et cetera. So we feel really good about that. As we look forward to ’24, as I said, we’re going to take this one quarter at a time for right now.

So we’re not going to get too far ahead of ourselves on predicting ’24. Our general indications are that the rest of this calendar year feels like it’s going to be similar trends that we’re having now, that could change. And we’re confident in our ability to continue to grow the ISG business and then some of the growth initiatives that we’re planning for ABL going forward. So our priority, as we’ve said through this environment, is to tear in margin, which we’ve demonstrated that we’re doing. Whether or not we have sales growth, we’re trying to layer in margin. We’re trying to continue to deliver free cash flow, and we’ve delivered a ton of it, and we’re going to continue to grow the Intelligent Spaces Group.

Joe O’Dea: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Ryan Merkel with William Blair.

Ryan Merkel: Hi, thanks. Good morning, everyone. I wanted to pick up on the orders again. Just so we’re clear, it sounds like orders are tracking sort of down mid-single digits, and you mentioned lead times and the macro. Can you just unpack those a little bit more? Is it distributor destocking? Is it tighter credit? What are some of the factors that are impacting the order rate decelerating a little bit here?

Neil Ashe: Yes. I will take a shot at that and, Karen, fill in any gaps that I leave in the explanation. So first, just to reiterate the bigger picture here. So looking back to last year, we had a combination of longer lead times and a price increase environment, which basically pulled forward a lot of orders. So we had a swelled backlog and we’ve been working through that backlog through this year. And through this quarter, it’s starting to be back to about normal. So which means that in any period, we will basically ship what’s ordered. So over the long arc of time, obviously, we will. But in a normal quarter, we will ship generally what’s ordered in that quarter and a little bit from the quarter before. So we’re starting to get to kind of more normalized levels there.