Knowles Corporation (NYSE:KN) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Anthony Stoss: Got it. And then last question for me. John, you made a comment about your CMM business going to be pretty strong in Q4. Was there a different change in Knowles thinking on how much business you’ll take for the December quarter within, say, smartphones or just in consumer in general?

John Anderson: Just repeat…

Jeffrey Niew: I seen that we have some pickup…

John Anderson: Yes, we’ve seen the CMM business.

Jeffrey Niew: Yes. I’m not going to go in detail by customer, but we have seen an increase, we think, its share in the mobile business in Q4. And to the extent I would sit there and say the positive is, obviously, we get a lot better capacity utilization, we get more revenue. But incrementally, in the CMM business, the margins are not as high in the mobile portion of the business.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Tristan Gerra with Baird.

Tristan Gerra: Quick questions again on the PD business. You mentioned that the bucket of weakness was still industrial and industry, is it fair to assume it’s about 1/3 of your Precision Devices business? And what do you see in some of the other segments, including automotive, which I think in the past was maybe about 10% of your PD business? Is that slowing? Any additional color on the various end markets within that business?

Jeffrey Niew: Yes. I would just here to say, yes, the industrial distribution course of the business is probably a little bit less than 1/3 of the business, and it is — but it is down pretty significantly year-over-year. That’s the biggest we point I think we’ve talked a little bit about defense. It will be down nowhere near kind of what do you call have in industrial and distribution, but more on the timing of orders than anything else. Our automotive business still will be up. It’s obviously, from a small base, we’re — we had talked about $15 million to $20 million and $23 million of revenue. We’ll be firmly in the middle of that range for automotive this year with some nice growth year-over-year.

Tristan Gerra: Okay. Great. And then I know that you’re holding commentary on your CMM business, pending the review. Just what is the willingness to reduce the top line as you potentially restructure that or take any other actions relative to what would be a gross margin accretive event? And how do you mitigate which is what some other companies have done reducing production and as such incurring underutilization charges, but at the same time, avoiding inventory bill. Just trying to look at, at a high level how things could look like or how is your willingness to change the business model in that regard in terms of how drastic that could be in terms of top line and gross margin impact?

Jeffrey Niew: Yes. Let me just take the first point. If you remember back middle of 2023, we took some pretty significant action relative — I’m sorry, middle of 2022, some pretty significant actions in this business, taking out about $30 million worth of costs, a combination of both OpEx and cost of goods sold, taking costs out, fixed overhead. And so I think for now, we’re kind of where we want to be until — and we’re actually running pretty close to capacity in the back half of the year in this business right now. I think what we’re kind of hopeful for that we see is the opportunity in this business, obviously, we’re going through the strategic alternative processes is that the nonmobile portion of the business grows, which is significantly higher margin, the mix shift will help significantly over the next 12 months, 18 months, and we’ll naturally be able to take less mobile business as well be filling our capacity with higher gross margin business.

I really don’t see us taking any further action in this business until we get to the conclusion of strategic alternatives and what’s going to happen with the business.

Operator: And there are no further questions at this time. This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.

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