Federal Signal Corporation (NYSE:FSS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jacob More: Understood. Thank you very much.

Ian Hudson: Thanks, Jacob.

Operator: The next question comes from Chris Moore with CJS Securities. Please go ahead.

Jennifer Sherman: Good morning, Chris.

Chris Moore: Good morning. Congratulations.

Jennifer Sherman: It is a good morning.

Chris Moore: That’s right. Maybe just real quick, the great growth in Q3, roughly, how does that break down between price and volume? And then I’m just trying to understand, obviously, growth has been terrific the last couple of years, what a more normalized mix would be between [indiscernible] price moving forward?

Ian Hudson: Yes. So Chris, so for the quarter, if you look at the top line growth of $100 million, so that’s a 29% year-over-year increase. The organic component of that was about $80 million or about 23%, so then that would break down between volume was about 16% of the organic growth, and then price was about 4% and then chassis was about 3%. So those are the three major components of that organic growth. Going forward, the price is probably in the — typically is in the 2% to 3% range. And then obviously, the volumes with the backlogs that we have, we’d expect that to be certainly higher as we go into ’24 as we look to increase that production, as I just talked about. So we would expect that the volume, as we look to ’24, the volume will be probably the biggest part of that of organic growth.

Chris Moore: Got it. Very helpful. Maybe you talked a little bit on the EV side. So Ford is postponing like something like $12 billion in EV factory building, including a planned battery factory in Kentucky, the reasons given were just unwillingness of customers to pay extra for their electric vehicles. Just wondering if that has any carryover impact into the EVs that you believe ultimately are going to be a meaningful component of revenue. Any sense to this point in time if customers are wanting to pay much more for electric sweeper? I know it’s still early and just wondering, any thoughts there?

Jennifer Sherman: Sure. So as I kind of referenced in my prepared remarks, we — our assumption that adoption is going to be slow. We think it’s critical that we have products available. We are committed to helping particularly our governmental customers meet the ESG goals that they’ve established and our products can be part of that solution. With respect to chassis availability, we have very deliberately the strategy of working with a number of different EV chassis manufacturers. So we’ve got initiatives across our suite of products with multiple different providers, and we believe that, that gives us the opportunity to test different solutions and gives us flexibility as we move forward. With respect to customers’ willingness to pay for electric vehicles, our feedback has been there is great interest. We’ve done a lot of demos. And many of our customers are looking for additional government assistance in terms of the funding of those vehicles.

Chris Moore: Got it. That’s very helpful. I will leave it there. I really appreciate it.

Jennifer Sherman: Thanks, Chris,

Ian Hudson: Thanks, Chris.

Operator: The next question comes from Mike Shlisky with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Mike Shlisky: Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions.

Jennifer Sherman: Good morning, Mike.

Mike Shlisky: Wanted to start off on that comment about EVs that you just made. So in 2 months in California on January 1, no two axle truck can be sold as non-EV, so there are some very strong restrictions about selling ICE vehicles anymore in California. I’m curious if you have the contacts with our dealerships with the OEMs in California to start providing EVs from that point forward? Or are you a little bit worried about any disruption in deliveries within that space starting in the first quarter or the first couple of quarters of 2024 as that market adjusts to the new regulation reality over there?

Jennifer Sherman: Yes. So this has been something that’s been top of mind for both us and our dealers in California. We have a cross-functional team that’s led by our Chief Operating Officer, Mark Weber. We’ve met with the various chassis OEMs. So we’ve got EV products available to offer in California. And it’s not a coincidence that the orders that I referenced earlier in the call, some of those are from California. So we think we are very well-positioned to respond to this and continue to plan on working with those chassis OEMs to present a compliant product.