CTS Corporation (NYSE:CTS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Ashish Agrawal: Yeah. So overall, Justin, you’re looking at the numbers correctly. We have taken short-term cost improvement measures for Q3 and for Q4. What you’ll also see is that R&D expenses were slightly elevated in the third quarter because just timing of different projects. So overall, when I look at operating expenses, excluding restructuring, we are expecting a slight increase in the fourth quarter compared to Q3, but not significant. And the increase is primarily because of that reserve release that I talked about for incentive compensation.

Justin Long: Okay. And is there a way to quantify the other temporary cost reductions? And how much longer those could last? Kind of what are the signs or the catalysts that you’re looking for to put those costs back in the business whenever demand improves?

Ashish Agrawal: Yeah. So, we are looking, Justin, in the second half of the year is our primary objective, and then we’ll keep reviewing things as we go further along.

Justin Long: Okay. Understood. And last one for me. The book-to-bill was close to 1 times in the quarter despite some of the demand challenges and macro environment that’s uncertain. Could you just comment on the order pipeline that you’re seeing today and your comfort level that we can continue to trend around this 1 times book-to-bill?

Kieran O’Sullivan: Justin, on winning new business in terms of that side of it, we’re doing very well. You heard me mention a new motor position, a sensor, that’s new market for us. It opens up an opportunity with a SAM of about $700 million, growing at a double-digit percent. We see great progress in current sensing. We’ve got a good pipeline of opportunities. And that’s just on top of what’s happening in medical and defense where we’ve been doing well. So, it’s a tough quarter, calling it what it is, but we feel like we’ve got good momentum going on winning new business. The book-to-bill quarter-to-quarter going forward is going to be kind of more of a steady improvement, but the longer term — medium to longer term, we feel good about the wins we’re getting.

Justin Long: Great. Thanks. I appreciate the time.

Kieran O’Sullivan: Thanks, Justin.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from [Hendi Susanto of CTS] (ph). Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst: Good morning, Kieran and Ashish.

Kieran O’Sullivan: Good morning, Hendi.

Ashish Agrawal: Hi, Hendi.

Unidentified Analyst: Yeah. Ashish, I have a question on the labor wage increase and then the raw material cost increase. Should we — like, is there any way where we can think about the magnitude whether those two account for, let’s say, single digit percentage of the cost of goods sold or like just to get some insight into the magnitude of the gross margin pressure on those two ends?

Ashish Agrawal: Yeah. So, Hendi, if you go back to the last two years, we were seeing some significant increases, which we called out and we quantified. The dynamic is improving. What we wanted to call out is that we are still seeing some areas of pressure. On the wage side, it’s in Mexico, it’s in some other countries that we operate in in Europe. The materials is improving, but there are some places, some specific suppliers where we still have challenges. So, that’s what we’re trying to call out. I wouldn’t be saying that it has a significant margin impact for our business. And, as I mentioned on the call, we are still working with our customer base to share those cost increases as appropriate just so that we are managing the overall margin impact.