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

Ademir Sarcevic: Yes. I mean, a lot of CapEx, not a lot — some of the CapEx investments we have this year is probably more focused over growth than maybe in prior years. So, you would see us putting that CapEx to work and are targeting some of our fast and — fast growth and market opportunities, primarily in Electronics, some of this capacity expansion, et cetera. So, we do expect our CapEx to pick up in the second half of fiscal ’23 versus the first half.

Michael Legg: Great. Thank you.

Ademir Sarcevic: Thanks, Michael.

Operator: Our next question comes from Ross Sparenblek from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Ross Sparenblek: Hi, good morning, guys.

David Dunbar: Hey, Ross.

Ross Sparenblek: Hey. Just speaking of Electronics, can you maybe just kind of walk us through some of the puts and takes there? I mean, coming into the year, it looks like organic sales have been roughly flat to down, if you take out the deferred revenue. And I mean, looking forward, it kind of looks like third quarter guidance also implies organically — probably flat to down also year-over-year. So, I mean, this is all consumer appliance? I mean, how can we kind of maybe gel that with the weaker margin commentary too on the favorable mix? Because I mean the margin profile too — I don’t believe first quarter is supposed to be the high — or the low point for the year, but now it seems like we’re kind of decelerating here. So, I mean, if China starts coming back, I mean, does this does this revert? I mean, does this trend kind of start reflecting positive?

David Dunbar: Yes. Ademir and I can tag team on this one. So, if you look at Electronics, first you look at what — how the composition of the business, within Electronic, I think we said this year, we’ll have $19 million-or-more of sales that come from new applications, new business opportunities. We’re on track to deliver that. Nearly $15 million of our fast growth sales are in Electronics. Those continue to progress well. But there’s a large piece of the business that kind of serves the general economy. And we’ve talked in the last couple of quarters about slowness in appliance, China and Europe. And so, we got both of those things happening simultaneously. We got a little bit of slowdown in Asia and appliances, largely offset by these growth end markets.

I would say that in terms of Asia, we are seeing orders pick up in China. This activity after the Chinese New Year seems to be more promising. We think that the China reopening could help turn that business around. Ademir?

Ademir Sarcevic: Yes. No, I think, Ross, that’s right. Q2, Q3 is kind of — from an organic growth standpoint, it’s a bit of a softer quarters for us. But indications are with China reopening and some of our fast growth end market growth, I know that sounds kind of weird the way I said it, we expect Q4 to fuel — Q4 organic growth to be much stronger in Electronics than in Q2 and Q3. So, that’s — and this business has grown significantly in fiscal ’22. So, if you kind of look at our overall organic growth rate in FY ’22, we posted almost 15% organic growth rate. We are having a little bit of general economic impact primarily in Electronics in Q2 and Q3, we expect that it’s going to resolve itself over time and we’ll get back to our usual run rate.