Illinois Tool Works Inc. (NYSE:ITW) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Scott Santi: By you.

Michael Larsen: By me.

Scott Santi: Yes.

Michael Larsen: Yes, if I may say so. And I think total company, the Enterprise initiative impact ranged from 70 to 200 basis points by segment with Construction at the very high end of that at about 200 basis points impact. And then certainly, there’s still some catch-up on price/cost. Construction was a segment that was hit harder than the average in 2021 and 2022. And so price/cost did contribute in a meaningful way. We do expect that, just like we do for the rest of the Enterprise to begin to normalize here in the back half, like I said in response to Jeff’s question, but we’re still going to see positive price/cost impact, including Construction in the second half.

Jamie Cook : Thank you.

Michael Larsen: Sure.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Joe O’Dea from Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Joe O’Dea : Hi, good morning.

Scott Santi: Good morning.

Joe O’Dea : I guess I wanted to sort of extend that a little bit in terms of the comment around underlying demand being sort of stable to strong and sort of calling out Auto and Food Equipment. But anything from sort of a regional or end market perspective that you’re watching most closely on end market demand and sort of considerations on kind of prospects for slowing anymore?

Scott Santi: I think overall, it’s been remarkably stable. If anything, we saw some firming up in the second quarter based on some trends in the first quarter that we talked about relative to 25% of our portfolio. I think the one place we saw things continue to weaken was in Europe on Construction between Q1 and Q2, but for the rest of the portfolio, I think, at this point, the best description is pretty firm.

Joe O’Dea: Got it. And then also just the margin strength in the quarter and thinking about the back half of this year, I think, the midpoint for the full year would suggest something like a 25.5% margin in the back half. I think you’ve talked about sort of continued progress on Auto. Just anything else that you think to be the more notable contributors to that sequential improvement?

Michael Larsen: Yes, I mean the big driver continues to be the Enterprise initiatives. The work around eighty-twenty front-to-back and strategic sourcing efforts, we expect at least 100 basis points of contribution there in the second half. And then price-cost, we still expect a meaningful contribution as we talked about a few minutes ago. So, all of that means that as we look at kind of the second half, we expect margins to continue to improve sequentially from Q2 to Q3 and from Q3 to Q4, maybe somewhere around 50 to 60 basis points each quarter of sequential improvement. I think we talked in the past about 100 basis points of improvement year-over-year. That’s still looking very good. So, like I said in the prepared remarks, we’re really well positioned here in terms of our margin and profitability performance through the balance of the year and frankly into next year. So, I’ll leave it at that.

Joe O’Dea: Thank you.

Operator: And your next question comes from the line of Tami Zakaria from JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Tami Zakaria: Hi, good morning.

Scott Santi: Good morning.

Tami Zakaria: Thank you so much for taking my questions. So, my first question is on Food Equipment. I think I saw on your slide, it grew 3%, while services were up 15%. So for the Equipment portion, is that entirely pricing-driven? Was there any volume growth in the quarter on the Equipment side?