Mayville Engineering Company, Inc. (NYSE:MEC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jagadeesh Reddy: And just to reinforce the point that in October, even though that most of the month of October, the customer was not taking — or not running rather their production lines, we were able to offset our October volumes with aftermarket production, et cetera, that helped us continue to run our production lines in the month of October. So if it gets settled in the next week or so, right, I think we’ll be okay. But if it continues to drag on in the second and third weeks of November, then we will expect the impact at offline by time.

Operator: Your next question comes from Ted Jackson of Northland Securities.

Edward Jackson: So just a couple of questions. The UAW one you just answered was one of them, but I got 2 more. When you — first of all, when you talk about growth in 2024 that you’re expecting to grow as a business, are you a little confused? Is that organic? Or is that growth — are you talking about this growth, MSA, the whole combined thing, vis-a-vis, 2023? I mean are we talking organic growth kind of ex-MSA acquisition or normalized for it? Is that what you’re — or are you saying you’re just talking about the raw number?

Jagadeesh Reddy: Yes. So it’s a really good question, Ted. We’re expecting organic growth in addition to the lapping of MSA first half revenues.

Edward Jackson: Okay. Okay. I just — I didn’t want to assume that, but — I did want to assume that. Then just a little more color, if you would, on the commercial vehicle market itself. I know the macro outlook you provided previously was ’23, and now we’re looking at ’24. And I understand the dynamics with regards to the pull forward of demand as a result of all the regulatory changes for emissions. You also have some new product wins within the commercial market itself. Can you provide some, I guess, some color with regards to what — where you see that business going for you as you roll through ’24? I mean you’re saying you think you can keep it flat. I mean, so if I was to just take your commercial vehicle revenue for ’23 and as a baseline worst case scenario, given what you know today, you’d see no growth in that.

Would that — is that kind of what you’re saying with it? And if you were to see growth on top of ’23, is there something that would happen that would drive that? Is there something in your backlog or kind of your dialogue with customers and stuff that would make that a growth business for you? I mean it’s your biggest vertical, so a little more maybe discussion around it might be worthwhile.

Jagadeesh Reddy: Yes, that’s a good question as well, Ted. As we said, or ACT said, the commercial vehicle volumes will be down 18.5% in 2024. That’s our current expectations. Given our new program wins, including new tank production volume that’s going to come online in Q1 of next year and this outsourcing when we talked about. And then other program wins, we expect to be flat in our commercial vehicle revenues next year. That’s our current expectation. .

Edward Jackson: Okay. And then remind me, I mean, I’ve seen this before, but a long time ago. It’s not like this is the first time that we’ve had this kind of scenario within commercial vehicles where regulations change and you get a lot of forward buying. It happens every time that this kind of — every time the rates change. How long does it usually take for the market to kind of go back to normalized? I mean is it like a phenomenon then all else being equal, let’s ignore the macro, the economy and whatever, and that we get through ’24 and then we get back to kind of like a base market growth rate. How much for — how much demand gets pulled forward when the government makes those changes typically?