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

John Stauch: Yes. So, I’ll start and then Bob can bring some more in. I think first of all, the price that we’re anticipating is actions that have already been taken. And we feel good about the decisions we’ve made and we feel like we have, as we said, stickiness in the channel. I do think it’s fair to assume that as we get through the year, we have to anticipate that there might be ideas from the channel to participate in rebates or discounts. We’ve assumed a little of that in our guide. But we’re hopeful that our balanced view of the revenue projections that we have don’t encourage us to think that we need to do significant discounting to achieve our expectations.

Julian Mitchell: And you’re seeing sort of competitors acting in a disciplined fashion to — for the time being?

John Stauch: I don’t know about that. I mean, we don’t have any information to the contrary.

Operator: The next question is from Nathan Jones with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Nathan Jones: Good morning, everyone.

John Stauch: Good morning.

Nathan Jones: Appreciate all the detail in the presentation this morning. I’m going to ask about Pool. You talked about in the prepared comments Bob, 2019 through 2023 double-digit growth in Pool, what’s in the guidance for ’23. I think historically that had been more like 7% or 8%. Can you talk about what was price versus volume in that? How much higher was price than you would normally have? I’m just trying to get an idea in a sense of, are we kind of back to a normalized volume growth? If you take that period from ’19 to ’23 where we pulled forward demand early, we’re giving some (ph) and now are we kind of back to that normal trend line?

John Stauch: We think if you looked at it, Nathan, on a sell-through basis, we’ll be normalized from a volume from a sell-through basis. Obviously, we got a little disconnected on the sell-in versus the sell-out. But overall, we believe we’re tracking to historical volume levels with where we end up. So, you should assume that we’ve had a significant price benefit over the last four years that we’ve realized.

Nathan Jones: Okay. That makes sense. So, on a volume level, we’re back to normalized. That’s good to know. With the change in the reporting structure, is there a change in the way you’re managing any of those businesses? And if so, how do you think that benefits the customer experience of buying to Pentair? Just any color you can give us on the change in reporting strategy if there’s a change in the actual business management structure?

John Stauch: Yes. We’ve committed a lot of effort and resources to run at what we call the category level, which is the products that go to the market and serve the customer streams. So that’s our focus. And the new segment line-up allows us to be aligned. Pool for pool, and then, we’ve been able to split the Water Solutions businesses to the residential and commercial where we have the varying go-to-market channels, and IFT remain the same. So, we feel really good about our customer-centric efforts both on sales, marketing and NPI. And we’re very encouraged on how the new segments will help enable the focus on the growth journeys of these three different areas.

Operator: The next question is from Brian Lee of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Brian Lee: Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions.

John Stauch: Hi, Brian.

Brian Lee: Maybe just shifting — hey, back to the margin outlook here. I appreciate the update of you through ’25. I guess just sort of drilling into ’23 a bit here, you mentioned the 100 basis points from the Manitowoc. When I look at just Slide 19, can you kind of give us a sense of if that’s your sort of entire transformation contribution in ’23? Or maybe just walk us through some of the pieces, including how much of that 100 basis points from Manitowoc is embedded in the ’23?