Teledyne Technologies Incorporated (NYSE:TDY) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Joe Giordano: If I could just sneak in one last one. If I think about your oscilloscope business, I know that’s growing very quickly now on delivery of backlog. But if you think about where orders have been all year, and let’s say, we don’t — like absent an inflection in near term in orders, is that a business that likely declines just given where your backlog is and what you’re delivering this year, if I think into ‘24?

Robert Mehrabian: No. I think — we feel very good about our T&M business. First, remember, as you said, part of it is oscilloscope, part of it is digitizers and very fast-growing part has been our protocol analyzers where we’ve just made the acquisition, Xena acquisition. The book-to-bill in that business is between 0.94, 0.95 at this time. By the way, in protocols, we don’t really see declines. What we see is a little push out because new standards are continuously evolving in our protocols are at the forefront of those standards. So, people will be adapting those. But while those have softened a little bit, oscilloscope, because we are also offering new products, are doing fine. I know that market may not look as exciting now that it has known before, but it is for us. It’s very exciting.

Operator: We will go now to Greg Konrad with Jefferies.

Greg Konrad: Maybe just to level set the guidance for the year in terms of revenue. I mean, you mentioned industrial automation and laboratory instrumentation softening. But, can you just remind us where FX is the biggest headwind given you said that was half of the impact? Just kind of thinking about the segments for the rest of the year.

Robert Mehrabian: Yes. The FX that I mentioned is versus what we were looking at in July, and things have tightened and it’s costing us about 1%. And it’s mostly focused in our Digital Imaging and Instrumentation businesses. Having said that, overall, if you look at year-over-year, we do get a little tailwind. But it tightened significantly from our July meeting to today. We’ll deal with it, like we deal with any market softening here and there. I mean, basically focus on getting products up where there’s a good market, cut costs where we don’t have the market, improve our margins, and if we can do what we just did, beat and raise.

Greg Konrad: And then, the operating discipline definitely comes through. Given those two markets that you did say were deteriorating, how does price play into this? Just thinking about maybe what you’re able to capture does that kind of change the pricing equation at all thinking about into year-end?

Robert Mehrabian: Yes. I think what we have been able to do is increase prices successfully in businesses that are doing well, like on our Aerospace and Defense businesses or certain parts of our environmental. And for example, marine where we have a really strong market at the present time, we’ve increased prices. That offsets prices that we have not been able to increase in the environmental area. So, it changes across our portfolio up and down. But generally, we are successful in raising prices across the board, we have been this year versus let’s say last year. And we think that sustainability that’s happening for our businesses will allow us to increase prices but more modestly going forward than we have aspirations for. But if things turn around, we’ll do it.

Operator: And next, we’ll go to Andrew Buscaglia with BNP. Go ahead, please.

Andrew Buscaglia: So maybe — you guys mentioned, or Robert, you mentioned your book-to-bill is just over 0.9, which is not too inspiring, heading into 2024. But you talked about some optimism in some areas, like Digital Imaging, some of those markets coming back. I’m wondering, can you comment on your expectations heading into the new year? Last quarter, you talked about backlog possibly or defense backlog converting into Q4. And you’re sounding more optimistic around new awards as well materializing. So, I’m just wondering, can that book-to-bill change on us heading into the new year, or how are you feeling going into January, February?