TriMas Corporation (NASDAQ:TRS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Scott Mell: Yeah. I mean if you look at the margin profile for last year, it was around 4%, 4.5% if you exclude some of the onetime items. I look at what we’re giving outlook for this year. We’re going to be sequentially stepping that margin up. But to Tom’s point, while the top line is growing, we do have mix issues. We haven’t seen the wide-body volume come back. And we’ve added some new businesses, which are kind of in the process of being integrated and ramped up. RSA has a big program that’s going to be coming in. So that margin profile is going to improve quickly. Obviously, the Weldmac acquisition takes us some time to integrate these businesses and get those margin profiles to the place where we need them to be. So for me, this feels like a bit of a transitionary year for our Aerospace business, and we expect to see those margins start to creep back closer to kind of where we are running historically.

But I mean, just to be clear, I mean, it’s a bit of a different operating environment today with the high demand, the level of inflation and the fact that our aerospace team is really investing in some key functional capabilities to meet what we expect to be high demand for the next few years here. So that’s all ingrained in the outlook for 2023.

Kenneth Newman: Understood. Maybe if I could just squeeze one more and then I’ll jump back into the queue. I just want hoping to clarify the first quarter guide a little bit. Maybe could you help us frame how the sales are expected to trend sequentially from the fourth quarter across all the segments? Specifically, I’m curious if you — if we should think that packaging sales are down sequentially from 4Q levels? And then any help on the margin expectations for those segments would be great as well.

Scott Mell: Yeah. So yeah, and we do expect for packaging sequentially Q4 to Q1 to be relatively flat. And historically, we would have a nicer pickup there as we would ramp up into the New Year. And then for some of the other businesses, aerospace, some seasonality that would be having those businesses flat to a little bit up.

Operator: . You have a follow-up from Ken Newman with KeyBanc.

Kenneth Newman: I do want to ask about the incremental color on the M&A pipeline. Obviously, Weldmac seems like a decent deal here. Curious if — are you still prioritizing packaging deals or should we take Weldmac to signal that your — there’s maybe some better opportunities in that sector instead?

Thomas Amato: No. Definitely, we have a higher priority. If I look at our corp dev internal resources, we’re investigating and spending a larger share of our time on packaging deals. And particularly, we’re focused in not only expanding in the area of beauty, which Aarts is a great example of that but also where we could add in our Life Sciences platform. The Weldmac opportunity was opportunistic, and I think it’s going to be a great company for us. There’s a lot of work to do. Like I mentioned in my script, it was acquired out of a trust and the owner had passed a number of years ago. And we think as part of the TriMas Aerospace Group, the customer base will really appreciate the stability of it, and we think there’s great opportunities with that.

But that was more of what I would call not only a very great add and a compelling fit, but also an opportunistic purchase. And Ken, I just wanted to come back to your earlier question. We do expect packaging in Q1 to be up slightly versus Q4 where we exited, which also is an indicator — will be an indicator as we start to see orders come in into Q2 and the rest of the year.