Applied Industrial Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:AIT) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Ken Newman: Understood. Maybe if I could just squeeze one more in here. You talked about the benefit of infrastructure spending and federal stimulus being a stronger secular tailwind versus prior cycles. Is there any way that you can help us size what the exposure is for AIT in those end markets today? And maybe what kind of benefit are you assuming, if any, in the new guide?

Neil Schrimsher: So, also, we would say it’s inclusive into what we think about into the second half. With that said, I think some of it’s just getting started into that side. So that will probably be for us more color in fiscal 2024, because I think it will still take some time to ramp. But if we think about our exposure to kind of some of these mid cycle, later cycle industries, the heavier industries, directly and indirectly, we’re probably between 30% to 50% in those industries, machinery and metals and aggregate and equipment and such that are going to benefit from this infrastructure buildout, and also the technology sector that will participate in that as well, be it 5G and data warehouse and storage and others. So, we think the underpinnings of that occur more late this fiscal year and really into the back half of the calendar year.

Ken Newman: Excellent. Thanks for the color.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Chris Dankert with Loop Capital. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Chris Dankert: Hey, morning. I guess congrats first on the near-term impressive results and on the 100-year anniversary to the whole team there. I guess kind of jumping in here, core organic growth in both business really accelerated versus the first quarter. I mean, that wasn’t in our expectation, I don’t think in your words either. You touched on some pieces, but can you just kind of maybe sharpen up what — the real driver of the outperformance in 2Q was on the kind of the core organic basis?

Neil Schrimsher: Well, I think there are a few things you take it across. And we think about on our Service Center side, break-fix demand activity stayed strong throughout the quarter. That was positive. We’re still seeing benefit coming from the cross-sell and the collaboration of those more advanced solutions is helping in that front. We think our industry position, service liability, the inventory that we have in place for some of those critical break-fix times and — plus our local presence, all help that Service Center side of the business performed very well. Within Fluid Power, we saw nice execution on projects coming in. We’ve talked about having a productive backlog in Fluid Power. So, the team were able to execute on a portion of that backlog as suppliers improved some availability of products or perhaps the availability of smaller componentry that was holding up a shipment going out.

The Automation team benefited from that and so organic growth into the 24% in that period, which was positive. And then, we’re seeing continued strength around Flow Control. And it’s typically a later cycle business. And so, we think that sets up well for the process flow control business and ourselves as we think about going into the second half.

Chris Dankert: Gotcha. So, it really is a lot of pieces all pulling together. That’s great color. Thank you. And just kind of a follow-up here. Inventory was up again sequentially, but days are still kind of well below the long-term average. Maybe how should we think about inventory positioning today and maybe working capital into the back half of the year here?