Kimball Electronics, Inc. (NASDAQ:KE) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Tim Moore: Okay. No, that’s fair enough. And I know it’s far out. I just — I’m just kind of curious about it, maybe you probably go into that may be more in an Investor Day later on, but, well, thanks a lot, Jana and Ric, and that’s it for my questions.

Jana Croom: Thank you.

Richard Phillips: Thank you.

Operator: Thanks, Tim. The next question comes from Anja Soderstrom from Sidoti. Anja, please go ahead with your question.

Anja Soderstrom: Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. And I also want to start with expressing my sincere condolences for the passing of Don. In terms of the supply chain, what are you seeing there now in terms of headwinds for the quarter and how should we think about that going forward?

Jana Croom: You know, thankfully, this was the first quarter in probably two years that supply chain challenge didn’t have an impact on revenue, right? So negligible impact in our ability to convert and ship and we haven’t seen that in a long time and so that 52-week lead time that we kept talking about, right, it’s finally here and so the parts are showing up and we’re actually able to deliver to our customers. And so we feel good about where the supply chain is now. What I think you’re going to see, right, and we keep an eye on it was the backlog of open orders, et cetera, is making sure that the signal on the supply chain is clean, right? So you don’t have any of the double counting or some of the gaming that you might have seen people try to do related to trying to get parts, so the fact that the supply chain is functioning better, it’s good for everybody.

I would like to remind everybody that we’re still on in CNR, right, so non-cancelable, non-returnable, which means, if our customers make an order and we do inventory purchases on their behalf, the inventory is there and they understand that contractual obligation that they have with us. But happily, the supply chain is — it’s still longer lead times, right, and so we still have longer lead times that we’re working through, but we are able to get all the parts that we need to service our customers.

Anja Soderstrom: Okay, thank you. And in terms with the guidance for fiscal 2024, how should we think about the cadence, given the ramp-up of Poland especially?

Jana Croom: Yeah, so Anja, we made a solemn vow that we were not going to use the words bifurcated or stair-step, we’re going to erase all of those words from our vocabulary and hopefully yours too. Obviously, Poland is not nearly as big as Mexico and so we would expect the impact due to its absorption to be muted versus what we saw last year. Our endeavour as we continue to grow is that each new facility has a more and more muted impact versus what we saw in previous year, and so that’s — we hope that the quarters are closer together.

Anja Soderstrom: Okay, thank you.

Jana Croom: The one thing that I will add, we saw some seasonality in AT&M in Q4 and we noted that in the script that we were working on a high-margin program for them over the course of the year that ultimately shipped in Q4 and that contributed to the margin that we saw. I don’t know if you remember, on the Q3 call, I alluded to the fact that I thought Q3 margins this year might have been better, it was because of the timing of some of that work, and just the way it happened to shake out this year. So I would not also expect that Q4 next year would be another 6.3% margin here, we’re expecting the quarters to be much more even.

Anja Soderstrom: Okay, makes sense. And then, it was also the sort of second quarter you’re talking about this large Medical customer that have the FDA recall, how should we think about the timeframe for that and is there a backlog building up that might help you with a guidance or your guidance dependent on that front through fiscal 2024 or?

Jana Croom: We made the decision in partnership with that customer that we were not going to have expectations for FY’24. As you know, it takes a while to work through these things. There is a consent decree, et cetera and so we really need to allow that customer the opportunity to work through that at a pace that’s not determined by Kimball, right, and so we want to be good partners. We’ve enjoyed a long-lasting relationship with them. We consider them a key customer and key relationship partner, and so we’re just going to hold while they work through things and then we will give you an update on longer term in future years, but for FY ’24, it really is just a pause.

Richard Phillips: Anja, it’s Ric. What we’re encouraged by is outside of that customer, some of the opportunities and growth that we’re seeing is partially offsetting that in the near term.

Anja Soderstrom: Okay, thank you. That was all from me.

Operator: Thanks, Anja. The next question comes from Max Michaelis from Lake Street Capital. Max, please go ahead with your question.

Max Michaelis: Hey, guys, congrats on the quarter, and condolences to Don’s family from everybody here at Lake Street. I just want to dive into my first question here. I was wondering if you guys pull forward any demand from Q1, ’24 into the Q4 revenue number just given the sizable beat on the top line?

Jana Croom: We did not. There is no pull forward in Q4.