Pentair plc (NYSE:PNR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Bryan Blair: Just to confirm, your 2023 guidance implies mid-single digit core growth in commercial water solutions. Is that correct?

Bob Fishman: Yes. Yes, it does.

Bryan Blair: Okay. And having owned Manitowoc Ice bit longer, any update you can offer on the commercial synergies that you’ve seen to date or what’s expected between Everpure, Manitowoc and KBI?

John Stauch: Yes, we’re really pleased with the start. I think these all come together nicely and I think we continue to see significant opportunities for our customers to benefit from the end-to-end solutions that we now provide in commercial water solutions.

Bob Fishman: And just to provide a little more detail, the Water Solutions does have commercial (ph) approximately 40%, residential down approximately 10%.

John Stauch: Right. He was asking for core though, and I was giving the core of mid-single digits.

Bob Fishman: Got it.

Operator: The next question is from Mike Halloran of Baird. Please go ahead.

Mike Halloran: Hey, good morning, everyone. First, a follow-up to Joe’s second question. Just what kind of volume assumptions are embedded in those margin targets, if any? Or are those exclusive volume expectations over the next few years? In other words, is there a level of revenue or volumes you need to get to be able to achieve these targets?

John Stauch: Well, I mean, we’re making significant impact in 2023 even with the down volume. So, I think the jumpstart in 2023 reflects the aggressive efforts to get the labor in line with the volume and also to recover those inefficiencies. As we go forward, we’d be looking at the normalized growth rates of each of the segments being included in our efforts to get to the ROS targets that we implied.

Mike Halloran: Okay. That makes sense. And then, just from a guidance perspective, could you help with the cadencing a little bit through the year. When you think about normal seasonality and there’s a lot of moving pieces particularly in Pools, some of the destocking, how are you guys thinking about what the normal seasonal cadence looks like by segment within the guidance?

Bob Fishman: We are starting to move back to a more typical seasonality where Q2 is typically our largest quarter followed by Q3. I would say that we expect to see slightly less than 50% of our EPS in the first half, primarily because interest expense is a little bit higher in the first half and transformation initiatives play out a little bit more strongly in the back half. But we are returning to more traditional seasonality than what we saw during the COVID years.

John Stauch: And I would just add that you should assume that most of the residential channel challenges will come through Q1, Q2 and Q3, and we have easier comparisons in the back half of the year as we look at what those year-over-year impacts would be.

Operator: The next question is from Julian Mitchell of Barclays. Please go ahead.

Julian Mitchell: Thanks. Good morning. I just wanted to understand your sort of conviction level around the price tailwinds. You had 5 points of price dialed in for this year after sort of low teens ending last year. So, maybe sort of give some more color on the price confidence and how you see the sort of needed inventory liquidation in a lot of pool products perhaps weighing on that?