Barnes Group Inc. (NYSE:B) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Julie Streich: Yeah. I — the primary driver was that was the order of magnitude of the interest expense disallowance that we actually hit. Once the final numbers came in and we got the full geographic impact, we are seeing what’s going with rates — going on with rates. That is the primary delta.

Lou Raffetto: Okay. Great. So that — your — when you say rate, you mean just the interest rate, not the tax rate?

Julie Streich: Yeah. Exactly. The interest rate environment. Exactly.

Lou Raffetto: All right. And then maybe just on taxes, I know you are not ready to guide to 2024, but can you help us just get aligned for what normalized tax rate should be as we kind of look forward versus what it is this year versus what the guidance was previously?

Julie Streich: So I would love to be able to do that for 2024. I just don’t know at this point in time that I am — we are ready to put a number out there. There’s a lot of moving parts and pieces at this point in time. So I apologize for that.

Lou Raffetto: Yeah. No. That’s fine. And then maybe just on the commercial OE, like you said, definitely good to see it strong for you guys and for MB. It’s causing some dilution. That’s understandable. But I just want to make sure, it does look like the guidance did come down. It was a strong quarter, but I don’t know if — did anything change, because I think you were looking for 20% plus guidance for the year and now I think it’s high-teens.

Julie Streich: Yeah. The biggest mover beyond that and Tom can build on my comments, was the change in our outlook for our Industrial forecast, as a result of UAW, as a result of ongoing challenges that we are facing in Chinese demand and also the softness Tom mentioned in our nitrogen gas products that flow through Motion Control Solutions. Our outlook for Industrial deteriorated also contributing to the full year guidance decline.

Lou Raffetto: Sorry, Julie, I was talking within Aerospace, commercial OE…

Julie Streich: Oh! Within Aerospace? I apologize. I heard that. I heard that. No. There’s no other performance expectations that have changed within the Aerospace market that caused it to decline. We are feeling very good about that business. It’s all an impact of the mix of the products that have come into the portfolio and then the amortization that we talked about earlier.

Lou Raffetto: Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Matt Summerville of D. A. Davidson. Your line is open.

Matt Summerville: Excuse me. Thanks. A couple questions. First, I want to talk about Molding Solutions and the order activity you are seeing there. Can you maybe parse that out a little bit in terms of what inbound orders look like in some of the more material end-markets to that business, like personal care packaging versus medical versus automotive, et cetera? And then I have a couple of follow-ups.

Thomas Hook: Certainly, Matt. This is Tom. Obviously, I am very close to Molding Solutions, having been the temporary President for the past four months. Personal care, packaging, medical, all strong and particularly for our mold sales. We are about 52 weeks lead time quoting on mold and delivery due to capacity limitations. So I find on the mold side we are very healthy. We have to increase capacity and capability to get more of the orders remitted off into the customers so we can continue to book strongly there. Our challenges have been in the automotive end-markets for hot runner systems, particularly in China, where we have been struggling with some of the shift from ICE derived customers to EV customers. We have not been successful in our commercial go-to-market strategies there to manage that position well.