Lennox International Inc. (NYSE:LII) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Nigel Coe: And then my follow-on is on inventories. You built inventory into 4Q versus 3Q, quite unusual from a perspective. But I’m curious, was that planned or were there some issues that caused that build?

Alok Maskara: I think the inventory build was very planned. We wanted to make sure of two things. One is that we have sufficient high end products in stock, even though that’s not selling until the summer season given the challenges we had. Second is given the SEER change, we wanted to make sure that we have sufficient inventory of the new SEER product as we went into the new year. So I think that was planned. I think where we fell short, honestly, was more appropriate forecasting and where we landed up on some of the raw material side where I think our supply chains normalize, we should have opportunity to convert more of that inventory into cash. So at this stage been complete with inventory build.

Operator: And we’ll go next to Joe Ritchie with Goldman Sachs.

Joe Ritchie: Alok, can we just maybe just talk about the Commercial business for a second? It sounded like pretty positive comments on the hiring front. I guess just where does production stand relative to normal levels? And then maybe just talk about how you’re seeing that business from a share gain perspective. It sounds like you’re starting to recover some gains or recovering some share that you may have lost previously.

Alok Maskara: So first of all, we are pleased with the recovery in Commercial and remain committed to $100 million EBIT improvement in Commercial over the planning period. We had a strong Q4, as you saw from numbers slightly better than expected, and that was kind of the prime driver of why we came to the higher end of our guidance. The recovery was driven by very stable levels of staffing. I mean at this stage, we’re hiring as much as we are losing and that’s kind of back to normal levels. I think the team has done a good job making sure that the output has come back up compared to the lows of the year, but we are still not back to normal. I would say we are probably still about 20% below normal on factory output where we could get there just with this factory even before the next factory comes online.

So we remain pleased with the efforts in Q4. Q1, that’s going to go through SEER transition. And obviously, that’s something we are very excited about given the change in product lineup. So net-net, excited about the new Commercial segment. We will continue delivering and focusing. And even as we take a step into ’24, ’25, the new factory will give us more productivity, more capacity. And the last question you have is, yes, we did lose share in Commercial despite all the things I said earlier. Most of that was earlier in the year. Towards the end of the year, we started recovering shares and we did a little better. And we think that trend will continue because the industry lead times remain extended and ours are now getting to very competitive levels within the industry.

Joe Reitmeier: And just to elaborate a little bit on what Alok mentioned, where we lost share was in the emergency replacement segment of the market. And as productivity and output improves, it’ll enable us to replenish our distribution channels with that stockable product and then you should really see the share gain gain traction. Once again, we’re able to reengage in the emergency replacement side of the market.