Graco Inc. (NYSE:GGG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Thank you. One moment for your next question. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Halloran from Baird.

Michael Halloran: Hey, good morning, everyone. And I so — maybe just then — I think you kind of gave us all the pieces there, Mark, but maybe just talk about where you’re expecting growth this year by segment and where you’re not? And where the pressure points might be? And then whether — then on a related basis — well, I’ll ask this as the second question. We’ll start there and I’ll keep them separate.

Mark Sheahan: Yes. So we didn’t really break out, as you can see what the outlook is by segment or by region for a lot of different reasons, probably the biggest one that our visibility isn’t that great, but I would say generally that we feel really good about product launches and channel expansion initiatives going on in the Process segment. As well as that particular group has a lot of backlog still from orders that we took, particularly in the semiconductor part of the business, which should really help them on a full-year revenue basis. So in that segment, things are — we feel like they’re in pretty good shape. On the industrial side, a lot of the growth that we saw here at the end of the year and really a lot of the growth in 2022 came from both our sealant and adhesive businesses as well as our powder equipment business.

And fortunately, with regard to the latter, they do have backlogs and they do have some better visibility on orders and how the year might play out versus some of our other short-cycle businesses. So when you put those two things together, again, I feel like we’re in pretty good shape with respect to being able to grow in industrial in 2023 without getting into details on regions and those types of things. And as you know, contractor’s sort of a wildcard. As we sit here today, orders have been okay. The pro side is better than the home center side. As you know, pro center — or pro side is more profitable for us than the home center side. So from that standpoint, if you had to have one that was weaker than the other, having a good strong pro side of the business should help us on the profitability front.

So hopefully, that helps. But all in all, when you roll it all up, I think we feel pretty comfortable with the low single-digit guide.

Michael Halloran: That makes sense. And then maybe talk a little bit about the cadence in that as you look through the year, some of the comments in the prepared remarks about a little bit of pre-buy ahead of some of the price increase in the fourth quarter, given kind of the time frame that tends to imply maybe a little more outflow in the front part of the year, visibility better front half versus back half? Is some of that reflected in guidance? Or is there an element of just relatively normal seasonality embedded in that outlook?

Mark Sheahan: Yes. I think we tried to do the best job that we could to factor all that in to give you the full year guide. There’s probably going to be a little bit of volatility in terms of order rates and those types of things. We certainly saw that in Q4, just from a comparison standpoint from a year ago. But we also raised prices in Q3 of this past year. So you might see a little bit more order volatility around that as well. All in all, though, I think that the guide that we gave this kind of low single-digit number for the full-year, we feel pretty good about it. David, do you have anything to add there?