Flex Ltd. (NASDAQ:FLEX) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Revathi Advaithi: Yes. The only thing I’d add is if the areas where we would be interested in the technology are tuck-in acquisitions would be in the place of power — embedded power, critical power-related to this which we have a really good sizable business and the products business would be focused around hyperscale and data center customers. So continue building out that part of our portfolio and the second would be around this continued growth in our value-added services business and things that add to that. So those are the areas we would be keen on and would be investing in as we look further. Like Paul said, but it comes second after buyback.

Unidentified Analyst: Thank you.

Operator: And our next question comes from Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Please state your question.

Mark Delaney: Yes. So thanks very much for taking the question. Starting on cloud market. As market you mentioned today is doing well. I believe Flex have been expecting about 20% growth in cloud driven by the multiple hyperscaler programs that have been ramping. Maybe you can talk a little bit more around how those are going operationally. Are you able to meet that demand? And how is growth in cloud tracking relative to your prior view of nearly 20% growth?

Revathi Advaithi: Yeah. I’d say, Mark, the cloud business is doing really well. It will be north of — well north of the 20% that we talked about earlier. And when we were previously talking about this, we were kind of hedging our bets to look at how the markets develop and all that. But overall, our cloud business for fiscal 2024, all said and done, would have grown well north of 20%. And I would say that we expect fiscal year 2025 to also be considerably strong for our cloud. And this includes not just our CEC business as you know and what we do there in terms of rack integration and all of that, but also our embedded power and our facilities power business sold. So pretty significant growth for cloud. Cloud will start to become almost as big as our — at some point as our enterprise IT business.

So it’s catching up to that. So really good growth coming out of cloud and we expect fiscal 2025 to be good. Operationally I would say doing well. We are very pleased with how the program ramps are going. And it is a very large-scale program and we have made considerable progress on it and going well. So I’m pleased with it.

Mark Delaney: That’s helpful. And my other question was just trying to better understand sort of mechanics in the fiscal 4Q guide. And in particular, it looks like the Company is expecting EBIT dollars in fiscal 4Q to increase sequentially to I think about $330 million at the midpoint up from I think the $315 million Core Flex did in the third quarter, even though revenue is dropping little over $300 million quarter-on-quarter. So maybe help us better understand if you could please what’s allowing EBIT dollars and margin to improve so much even as revenue is falling in the coming quarter for guidance. Thank you.

Paul Lundstrom: Yes. It’s a good question, Mark, and so give you a little bit of clarity on that. So first, just to kind of go back to the third quarter because your question was that of sequential. So third quarter, we did $6.4 billion for Core Flex. That was 4.9% operating margin. You’re exactly right. Our expectation here at the midpoint would be $6.1 billion of revenue in Q4. At $330 million, that would be 5.4% operating margin so nice certainly like the trajectory there. I would say it’s a couple of things. One, if you look at the revenue, it’s down sequentially. A piece of that, probably a third is just less recoveries. We talked a little bit about sort of the improving semiconductor market. We have less claims that are kind of going backwards that inflation pass-through effect that we’ve talked about now for probably a year and a half.

And so I would say a little bit less sequential revenue just from claims. The rest is volume and that does drop through. However, mix is improving. That’s a good guy. That would be one. Two, if you look at the tailwind we have from restructuring as we move from Q2 to Q3 to Q4, a lot of those programs that we talked about in the prepared remarks that $70 million or so were implemented as we move through the quarter. So you’re going to have more benefit in the fourth quarter than you have in the third. So that’s a good guy. And then the other one would just be, given sort of choppy end-markets and some volume contraction in some of our end-markets, we’re taking other cost actions. I think it’s just a prudent thing to do. So that kind of gets you to better margin mix cost-out restructuring tailwind.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Matt Sheerin with Stifel. Please state your question.

Matt Sheerin: Yes. Thank you. Good afternoon. Just relative to your outlook and you pointed out several end markets where there is a weakness, but a quarter ago, you took a very big cut to your forward guidance based on customer order cuts. So the question is, have things gotten materially worse, or in terms of any cancellations or inventory issues at customers demand issues? Have things stabilized because it looks like your guidance is sort of in line with what we had previously expected?