Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. (NYSE:SWK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Nigel Coe: Thanks. Good morning and thanks for the question. Don, on the inventory reduction, I think you’re still going to be carrying $5 billion of inventory at year-end. So just wondering why not be even more aggressive on that inventory reduction? And is there a risk that, that this could carry forward into 2024? And maybe just address the dividend. We’ve got a few questions this morning. Just is there any scenario you look at/or any scenario where you might have to revisit the dividend this year? Thanks for asking the questions.

Don Allan: Sure. I think on the inventory part of your question, I feel like going after $1 billion, $750 million to $1 billion is the reasonable level that we should pursue given where our business model is today and our supply chain is today. Could we, over time, over the next 12 months, get to a number above $1 billion? Yes, that’s possible. It probably wouldn’t be dramatically above that number, though. Now as you go into 2024, I don’t think there’s a need for another major step down in inventory. I think what we’re going to see, if things go the way we would like them to go in 2023, we’ll get a substantial chunk of inventory out in the first half of the year, a lot of that probably in Q2. We’ll do some more at the end of the year in the fourth quarter, which tends to be part of the normal routine of our company.

And beyond that, I think it’s just going to get back to managing and optimizing the supply chain to maximize the efficiency of it. And we’ll continue to drive down inventory. But it won’t be at the — having an impact on our production. It will be more managing it efficiently, looking at how we do certain types of activities that drive reductions of $250 million to $500 million each year for maybe the subsequent two years, more in that magnitude. And I think that’s the right way to look at it. I really would like to get production levels back to normal in the back half of 2023. That is our goal. We think it’s achievable based on our base case right now. And we’ll continue to look at that. Obviously, Corbin articulated at the downside case, if we saw demand being even worse then the production levels would have to stay lower probably through the remainder of the year.

But in our base case, I think there’s a good chance we can get production levels back to normal in the summertime of 2023. On the dividend, very good question. Thank you for asking that. The dividend continues to be a very important part of our capital allocation strategy. We believe that it’s a necessary thing for us to maintain the level of the dividend that we have today. We’ll continue to evaluate that through the remainder of the year, but there’s no change in that strategy at this stage. Obviously, buying back stock is not an opportunity for us given the leverage we have on our balance sheet. And so therefore, returning value back to our shareholders, the main lever we have today is our dividend.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mike Rehaut with JPMorgan. Your line is now open. Mike Rehaut with JPMorgan, your line is open, please shut your mute button.