Motorola Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:MSI) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Ben Bollin: That’s helpful. I appreciate that. And then Jack, I was hoping you could take us through how you see K-12 developing. If you could speak to the significance of the deal sizes themselves, the nature of the project that you’re seeing, just any thoughts there would be helpful. And that’s it for me. Thank you.

Jack Molloy: So, well, K-12 is – there’s really two technologies. It’s video security and access control. And depending on the type of school district, we’ve seen an acceleration into our Alta, Avigilon Alta, which is cloud, but we’ve also got larger school districts that continue to buy Unity. But the K-12 education in general, we put the marker in that our video business is growing 15% K-12 and the EDU market is, is surpassing that growth level. It did last year, and it continues to grow through the first half of this year very robustly. And I think some of that’s the beneficiary of ARPA funding, but I think a lot of it is really much more – it’s much more secular around school security and that it’s getting prioritized over everything else.

Mahesh Saptharishi: One more thing maybe to add to that is just from a safety reimagine standpoint, we’re also integrating Rave along with Orchestrate and Rave. We now have integrations going into aware with a panic button. We also have the capacity to integrate weapons detection. We also launched weapons detection for the school’s market. So all in all, we have other headwinds come – tailwinds coming with us there to push the whole story from a school security standpoint.

Greg Brown: Good point, Mahesh.

Mahesh Saptharishi: Thanks, Ben.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Joseph Cardoso with J.P. Morgan. Your light is open.

Joseph Cardoso: Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for the question. Just one for me. And maybe this is just kind of a broader picture question. The God embeds sort of a normal seasonality in the back half, at least relative to pre-COVID era. However, at the same time you guys are staring at a much larger backlog now, can you just walk us through the puts and takes around that why you’re not seeing better seasonal trends as we kind of go through the back half and I guess particularly just given that you’re seeing better supply headwinds – or sorry, seeing supply handlings ease more broadly, just curious whatever thoughts you have on that. Thank you.

Greg Brown: Yes. Joseph, just – I’m sure Jason will jump in as well, but I remind you that, you’re right. Normally, this business is typically Q3 and Q4 weighted and seasonally dense. I think that’s unchanged. But remember, we’re guiding an increase in top and bottom, even with the $80 million of Airwave deferral in the back half and another $50 million of PCR light business model change. Jason can elaborate on that. So that’s $130 million of revenue growth that needs to be incorporated into the second half guide, but still informs and allows us to raise. And on the bottom EPS line we have an incremental $0.30 tax headwind, $0.50 for the year. We had $0.20 headwind, first half $0.30 of EPS structural tax headwind back half. So as you incorporate those ingredients into the blender, it shouldn’t take away or distract at all that the demand is strong, the raise is strong and the momentum is strong.

Jason Winkler: So business model change in low end PCR we mentioned in February, we’ve gone to a model where we only recognized the margin and the revenue in the product, no longer the COGS. So it’s OE neutral, but did change the revenue line. That was a way to focus our business on higher value efforts. So that’s something…

Greg Brown: And the choice, we…

Jason Winkler: Choice we did in February and it’s working out quite well. The other thing I’d point you to is the lead times from our key semiconductor manufacturers and the commitments they give us for getting us the products and the semiconductors we need, support the increased guide and continue to represent opportunity for us as we go forward. But we get commitments from them and we plan the business and how much revenue we can unlock out of backlog based on that.

Joseph Cardoso: Yes. Got it. Thanks. Appreciate all the color there.

Greg Brown: Thank you Joseph.

Operator: Next question comes from Keith Housum with Northcoast Research. Your line is open.

Keith Housum: Good afternoon guys and great results and impressive guide. Greg, as we look at your software and services margin sitting almost 37% this quarter. I guess the question is, is like, where can those margins go to and maybe some color on the incremental margins for every buck of business brought in? Can help us kind of clear the picture?