ESAB Corporation (NYSE:ESAB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Shyam Kambeyanda: Yes. So a couple of aspects. And I sort of ended my call by stating that we are exactly where we wanted to be positioned to invest in the things that we believe creates long-term value for all of our stakeholders. So 80/20 as an initiative, as you know, takes a bit of time to gain traction. Nathan, you’ve been around this a while but really thrilled about what the North America team was able to do as we finished out the year. And the biggest portion of that exercise is that it’s not just a pruning exercise. It’s also a growth exercise as to where you want to see your business grow, where do you want to add value to your customers and where you see yourself creating a significant amount of efficiency within your shop floor and your facilities.

So what I’d say to you is that we’re in the early innings on that particular front. I expect us to be in the mid-innings as we go through 2023 and really drive significant value as we get into 2024. So as we sit here today, we’re very confident about the goals that we set of creating a 20-plus EBITDA percentage business at ESAB. We think 80/20 is a big part of it, along with the mix change that we talked about, to gas control and equipment as we go through the next couple of years. We know exactly what we need to do. We’ve been talking to a few people that have done this in the past. We have a road map to get there. And so for us, it’s about reaching the task of 20 and then taking it up a notch from there.

Nathan Jones: Great. My follow-up question is going to be on price/cost. Can you talk about where you ended the year on price/cost from a dollar basis and I assume price cost was probably dilutive to margins. So if you could give us the impact for that. And then the outlook for ’23 where you expect to be on price/cost as we go forward here.

Kevin Johnson: So yes, Nathan, as we’ve talked about before, we’ve built some very strong processes around the management of price and showing that we’ve got a good visibility of what’s happening on the inflation side. So we’ve continued to play that playbook during 2022. As we exited the year 2022, we are price/cost neutral. As we stepped into 2023, we are continuing to see inflation across the world. We are in certain pockets, continuing to go after price to cover that inflation. And our assumptions in the 2023 guidance are that we will be price inflation neutral.

Shyam Kambeyanda: Yes. I think, Nathan, on that front, one of the things that we’ve proved to ourselves over the last 3 years is our execution skills on it, whether it be related to inflation or FX. And so I think that stays solid within the DNA of our business and really strong EBX process. And as you know, as we look out into the horizon, we always expect to be price/cost neutral. We’ve got some activities that could end up being — showing a bit of favorability but otherwise, very confident in how we’ve set the business up.

Nathan Jones: And Kevin, when you say price/cost neutral, you’re talking on a dollar basis, correct?

Kevin Johnson: That’s correct, yes.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Mig Dobre from Baird.