Hillenbrand, Inc. (NYSE:HI) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Kim Ryan: Yes, so what we’re hearing from customers is just a slowness in decision making on their side, whether it’s, I mean, there’s a variety of factors that are entering into that, whether it’s interest rates or just general concern about resources. There are just a whole variety. There’s not one silver bullet that I could point to that — yes that will solve the issue. What I will say is that historically when we’ve seen any kind of downturn, what you start seeing is [courts] (ph) drying up, you start seeing test labs drying up, you start seeing our short cycle business, specifically parts of service drying up. We’re not seeing any of those things. The test labs are full. The court pipelines are still very active in all regions, candidly.

We’re also seeing our service business, as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, our service business hit record quarters both on the MTS side and the APS side. So there is nothing that were the typical canaries of hey, we’re heading into a slow period that would indicate that we’re seeing a repeat of that here. The other thing that I would say though is relative to backlog, and I think I’ve mentioned this several times on calls, there is a level of backlog that becomes pretty unruly to manage, and we were certainly there, the number of touches you have to have, the number of — the amount of work it takes to manage a very large backlog, and I had indicated previously that backlog is this is a more manageable level for us here and so we’ll — we will expect as lead times come down with a better supply chain you will expect to see some fluctuations in that backlog, while still seeing healthy performance in the business on revenue.

Daniel Moore: That’s perfect. Thank you.

Kim Ryan: Thanks.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matt Summerville with D.A. Davidson. Please proceed with your question.

Matt Summerville: Thanks. Maybe just starting with MTS, just a little more color, Kim and Bob, if you can. Are you seeing any divergence in trends with respect to hot runner versus injection molding demand? And maybe add a little bit end-market color there. You also referenced some incremental weakness in North America and on the slides you talk about price-cost maybe moving in the other direction so can you kind of address I know that’s a lot, but can you kind of address all of that?

Kim Ryan: Yes, I think relative to the demand environment, I mean, I think the divergence between our injection molding and our hot runner businesses are really kind of the geographic footprint, and that is that the injection molding business really does not have a major footprint in China. Their footprint it is in India. That has continued to be stable. In most markets, there is some weakness obviously in automotive or things like that, that everyone is seeing. But we do expect those things to kind of work their way out. I would say that the hot runner business has really seen softness in China. And while it has been sequentially slightly better, it has not returned to former levels. And we continue to — but we do continue to see a pretty robust pipeline there and are hoping that we’ll continue to see some continued recovery in China while also seeing some expanded demand in India in future periods for the hot runner business.

Hopefully, that gives you some color on kind of where we’re seeing the differences. North America. North America was just generally whether you look across any of the end markets, North America saw some weakness in kind of the current status. We expect over the next 12 months, while we expect some continued weakness in certain end markets, we expect stability to start to return in other end markets and more so globally in those markets as well. So I’m going to turn it over to Bob then relative to your question.

Bob VanHimbergen: Yes. But on pricing, Matt. So we did exit ’23 with 100% price cost coverage. We expect to maintain that throughout ‘24 as well. But yes, we are seeing pricing pressure in the MTS side of the house. With that being said, I’d say two things we’re really focused on. One is our global supply chain management team, actively looking at where we’ve seen price increases in the past over the last, call it, 12 to 15 months and going after those same costs as those come down to achieve those savings. And then the other area I would say is just really focus with our value-add engineering, both with customers and suppliers and trying to find value where we can maintain those margins.

Kim Ryan: Great. And the last one I’d make is just the Hillenbrand operating model. These are the times when that skill set in that muscle is at its most important level. And dedicated resources in all of these facilities, whether it’s on the APS side of the equation or MTS, there are dedicated resources that are working on productivity initiatives and driving those as quickly as we can and creating that kind of a maximum amount of flexibility as we continue to see some pressure in different areas of the organization. Those productivity initiatives are particularly important to making sure that we can respond to up and down volumes.

Matt Summerville: Got it. And then just as a follow-up, I was hoping you could provide a little bit more detail around the scope of the recycling project, the $30 million order you received. Talk about maybe what assuming it was a competitive bid what sort of differentiated you versus others, but maybe bidding on the project? And how does the go-forward funnel look specifically with respect to recycling? Thank you.