Knowles Corporation (NYSE:KN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

If you look at some of our hearing aid customers, they’re starting to report, they’re basically pointing to 1% to 3%, 1% to 4% full year growth in Hearing Health market, weighted heavily towards the back half. So they’re expecting the first half to be down. So we’re dealing with the first half being down in that business, the end market, but also inventory in the channel. And so, but I would, as I said, what I kind of see in this business is we are already fully booked for Q1. So the numbers that we’re thinking in our guidance, we’re already fully booked, which is probably a little earlier we expect. If we go in Q2, we’re already starting to see bookings that are stronger than kind of margins 15% to 20% sequential growth. So I think I feel pretty good about that business, going into Q2 and in the back half the year.

I think the biggest wildcard is the microphone business. We’re not seeing anything is recovering in Q1. Q1 is a very challenging quarter. We’re running, sub-50% capacity utilization. We are expecting some sequential improvement in Q2. But I would say it’s not a reduction or inventory coming down. It’s just some recovery in China from what I would say, Q4 and Q1 being extremely low. And so, as I said, I’m cautiously optimistic, that this business can return to growth year-over-year in the back half of 2023.

Christopher Rolland: Okay. I guess, first following up on that, I guess, maybe I don’t totally understand if you’re fully booked. I believe you’re still implying a sequential drop into Q1 for MEDTECH. Why would that be the case, if you were fully booked out?

Jeffrey Niew: Well, it’s fully booked out to that lower expectation. But I would say it’s skewed toward the end of the quarter that the shipments are going to happen.

Christopher Rolland: Okay, Okay. And then my second question is around inventories. I mean, if we have this very large increase in June, I guess there’s two things there. First of all, I’d love to understand the full industry dynamic perhaps you can quantify even, how this inventory dynamic looks? Maybe revenue out there in terms of inventory that needs to be burned threw in March in order to get that strong seasonal June. I assume, that that’s why June is so strong here because of this, this inventory dynamic overall. And then, just to add one more things to that, I apologize. But for your largest customers, I think they’re still your largest customer. A lot of people are guiding for a weaker June than we would have expected. And do you anticipate that in your guidance, or is it now at the point where it’s not meaningful?

Jeffrey Niew: So, I mean, there’s so meaningful customer, but we’re not going to make any comments about our shipment specifically to them. But here’s what I’d say is, if you look at the sequential growth that we expect from Q1 to Q2, it is the vast majority is with between PD and MSA. So PD and the MEDTECH and specialty audio, I would say on an absolute basis, it’s incremental that we’re expecting sequential growth in Q2. So it’s not a huge amount of sequential growth. Secondly, as far as inventory goes, I mean, we’re following a lot of same things you’re following in terms of mobile phone shipments, in terms of PCs. So let’s give you one example. We just got the data for January sales on handsets in China, it was not good.

I mean, it was not good. And so we’re still not seeing the inventory come out of the channel that is there in terms of finished product. And I would sit there and say for PCs, we’ve talked to the customers. But we’re also looking at what industry saying is, and most people are saying that the inventory won’t be cleared out till the end of the second quarter.