Standex International Corporation (NYSE:SXI) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Michael Legg: Wanted to dig a little deeper into the — wanted to dig a little deeper into the Procon sale. Was that — were you approached — I mean, you obviously got a nice price for — over 2 times sales. Was that something you had put up for sale or were you approached by the buyer?

David Dunbar: Well, I’d say just if you step back a little bit, the divestitures we’ve made in years past were troubled businesses. We really needed to divest, so we could focus on the better businesses. Now with the divestiture of Refrigeration, all the businesses we have are good in their sectors. They have competitive advantage. They perform well. And so, for those that don’t have the long-term prospects in our portfolio, our approach to divestiture has been to pick and choose the time when — either when the opportunity presents itself, we think the market is healthy. So, with respect to Procon and other businesses, we regularly receive inbound calls from companies that are interested in the acquisition. And we thought we were in a position this year that we could make a divestiture, given the strength in our other businesses.

So, we just kind of compared the prospects for the different businesses. We saw good opportunity here. We knew there were interested buyers out there. We did run a process. There was good participation in the process. And we’re very happy with the outcome. We think we found a long-term home for that business that will really emphasize the capabilities the Proton brings and the competence of the management team. So, everything aligns to make this good timing and a good deal.

Michael Legg: Okay, great. And then, I want to talk a little bit about the M&A pipeline. Now that — once you close Procon, you basically had net debt at zero.

David Dunbar: Yes.

Michael Legg: Can you talk — it almost makes me feel like you kind of — this was a great opportunity, because maybe you have some nice opportunities on the M&A front ahead of you clearing your balance sheet. Talk about now that you have all this firepower to go after M&A, what the M&A pipeline looks like, please?

David Dunbar: Well, even without that divestiture, we have a plenty of — we have $300-some million of available liquidity had we needed it. So, we didn’t feel constrained. So, there was no pressure on that front. But if you think about through the five or six dimensional problem in moving these portfolios, we do want to put capital to use in a relatively rapid order and we want to continue to make progress in our sales and growth progress. So, we do have an active pipeline. There are a few opportunities in there that could be actionable in the coming months. We’re relatively knock on wood. You never know when these things will come together. But there are good opportunities we think are actionable. We’re trying to get them over to finish line, and put those proceeds to work right away.

Ademir Sarcevic: Yes. And Michael, we are on a pretty disciplined process on M&A side as far as to look at opportunities. If you look at our track record, we are pretty pleased with how most of our acquisitions played out since David became the CEO. So, you can expect us to continue acting in a similar manner and be disciplined allocators of capital. And to David’s point, we have a very active M&A pipeline.

Michael Legg: Great. And now just one more question, I’ll get back in the queue. The CapEx, you’re still projecting $30 million to $35 million for the year. It’s obviously not been at that run rate. Can you talk about what’s in the works for CapEx for the second half of the year?