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

Mike Shlisky: Okay, right. Thank you for that. I wanted also to follow-up on the margin targets. They look great for ESG. Is what’s in your backlog now, is that a positive mix that kind of get you coming out of the gate at the higher half of that range right out of the gate year 2024, or do you feel you’ve got a lot of 80/20 or other things to kind of implement to get yourself to the higher end of the range at a very early stage here.

Ian Hudson: Yes. I think, Mike, first of all, these are multiyear targets, similar when we introduced them in 2017. I think we’ve been offering, as we talked about on the call, we’ve been operating above the 14%, which is the midpoint of the prior range consistently for over 5 years now including during the pandemic. If you look at this year so far, our EBITDA margin is year-to-date is 16.4%. And that’s despite a seasonally softer Q1 as we typically see. We had a strong Q3 that was a record level from a margin standpoint, but Q3 is typically strong from an EBITDA margin standpoint with the strength of aftermarkets. But with all of that said, in Q3, we weren’t, by any means, firing on all cylinders. There was still some supply chain disruption at our largest facilities.

So we think there is room to grow, and we feel that now is the right time to increase the targets, realizing that conditions aren’t –are still not optimal. So yes, we think 80/20 is going to be a piece. We think there’s going to be meaningful impacts from increased operating leverage as we increase production with the capacity expansions. We think there’s some additional contributions from the recently acquired businesses, which can add some accretion to the margins. And also, we think about the growth of the aftermarket business. And so those are the primary factors that we think gave us the confidence to raise those margin targets.

Jennifer Sherman: Yes. The one thing I would add too is kind of more normalized buying patterns with respect to our chassis supply, as we talked about earlier on the call. And then I would also add, as I mentioned earlier, we believe that a chassis become more available, earlier, we believe that its chassis because more available, there is pent-up demand in our dump truck businesses.

Mike Shlisky: Okay. Okay. I appreciate the discussion. I will pass it along. Thank you.

Ian Hudson: Thanks, Mike.

Jennifer Sherman: Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from Greg Burns with Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead.

Greg Burns: Good morning.

Jennifer Sherman: Good morning, Greg.

Ian Hudson: Hi, Greg.

Greg Burns: You mentioned the improvement in unit production rates at some of your facilities. How far below like full production capacity are you? Like how much more room is there to improve those rates of production at Streator or maybe some of these other facilities?

Jennifer Sherman: Quite a bit. As we’ve talked about before, we did a 40% capacity expansion at Streator. We bought the building at Elgin. We are doing a number of productivity improvement initiatives, a number of 80/20 initiatives at our Elgin facility. We are very focused on what we call BMT, Build More Trucks. And we believe that given the backlogs we have, there’s a lot of opportunity to improve going forward. And it’s one of the foundation pieces that we relied upon in terms of our decision to increase the EBITDA margin targets.

Greg Burns: Okay. And then in terms of the strong order growth that you’re seeing around safe digging, is that just a function of the market becoming more aware of those types of solutions? Or is there any specific demand driver driving the order patterns this quarter?