Zebra Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ:ZBRA) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Bill Burns: Yes. I mean, Keith, it’s Bill. I think that overall, the Q1 performance was continued to impact by soft demand across all of the regions. So I think we start there. I think that as we’ve said, the relative outperformance was really in mobile computing and we saw some bright spots in services and software clearly in the quarter. I would say the regions pretty much look the same, except Asia was, as you said, impacted probably more through the declines in China. I would say that we see Asia overall having China continued to a longer recovery for the China market. We’ve seen some bright spots again, in retail, again, in larger orders in Australia and New Zealand. So that was a positive for the Asia market. I think we continue to see opportunities outside of China.

So Southeast Asia and India with the investments in manufacturing there. We continue to see Japan as the longer-term opportunity for us as we’re making investments there and we have lower share there than other places. But I think we expect that China continue to remain a challenging moving forward.

Keith Housum: All right. And just as a follow-up, Nathan, in terms of adjusted EBITDA, a little bit decline in the guidance you’ve given for 2Q versus 1Q. Sequentially, how should we think about the moving parts and the reason for a little bit lower adjusted EBITDA margins in the second quarter?

Nathan Winters: Keith, as you mentioned, our Q2 guide slightly above 19%, so down from the 19.9% in Q1. That’s entirely driven by the seasonality of our retail software business which you probably recall but is seasonally higher in Q1 at accretive margins, just given the timing of retailers when they’ve performed their cycle counts and physical inventories which is where that platform really focuses. So that’s the adjustment from Q1 to Q2. And the way I’d characterize it is the Q2 guide is fairly in line with how we’ve structured the full year going into it. I think Q1 was benefited by some of the cost actions coming in earlier, giving us confidence in the remainder of the year as well as some of the benefits in just a bit of — a little bit better mix and revenue start of the year. So — but then Q2 in line with where we expected the year to play out and the sequential decline is entirely driven by the seasonality of our retail software business.

Operator: The next question comes from Tommy Moll with Stephens.

Tommy Moll: You’ve given us some context on the omnichannel retail and e-commerce end markets but I wanted to ask for any other detail you could provide. In particular, on the e-commerce side, there are some anecdotes regarding finally hitting the end of this absorption phase from some of the overbuilding in years past. Are you seeing any signs of that on your side?

Bill Burns: Yes. I would say that overall, retail relatively outperformed, as we’ve talked about already. And we’re seeing encouraging signs, right? We saw some modest year-end retail spending across Q4 and Q1. Some customers clearly have absorbed the capacity and it begin to buy again, as you’ve kind of referenced, Tommy. We’ve also seen some of the pushouts that took place in last year and really over the last 18 months or so, begin to come back. So we’ve seen those projects as we expected and we talked about for a long time, those projects will come back. What we’ve seen mostly is initiating of really Phase 1 of those projects and the customers not quite ready to commit to the full deployment. So we’ve seen deployments that in the past would have been larger, even larger orders and full rollouts immediately, now a more conservative, let’s start with that project but roll it out over time and complete the deployment kind of later in the year.

So we have confidence that there’ll continue to be a recovery. I think we anticipated retail would recover first, followed by T&L and manufacturing and health care and we’re seeing that play out. And we also anticipated, it would be mobile computing first as well and that’s what we’re seeing. So the bright spots are really mobile computing and retail, retail and e-commerce. That capacity is being used off, retailers are beginning to bring those projects back but they’re doing it in a very measured way. And I think what we want to see is, retail, T&L, manufacturing, more of the vertical markets come back and more of that order activity, even more than we’re seeing today and the uptick in orders before we call a broad-based recovery.

Tommy Moll: That’s helpful. As a follow-up, I wanted to ask about the channel inventory levels. It sounds like there really wasn’t any noise from a destocking perspective in the first quarter. But I’m curious what’s your view on how many days on hand in the channel currently? And if you think historically, do we sit today below what that historic level is? And does that imply at some point there may need to be a restock?

Nathan Winters: Yes, Tom, I think ending the Q1, somewhat to exit in Q4 that the global channel inventories measure that on a days-on-hand basis is normalized to support the current demand. So I’d say within the range that we’d expect on a global basis, there’s puts and takes if you go by region and product families. So I think a nice improvement from where we were just 6 to 9 months ago. And as you said, I think, no meaningful impact in the quarter or assumed in the full year guide in terms of changes — relative changes in the distribution inventory levels.

Operator: The next question comes from Brad Hewitt with Wells Fargo.

Brad Hewitt: So you just talked about a return of some of the project deferrals from last year. I guess, how would you describe your pipeline and sort of overall visibility versus 6 months ago? It kind of feels like visibility across the space has been generally trending in a positive direction but just any color on how your visibility looks relative to history would be helpful.

Bill Burns: I’d say that overall, we’d expect orders — customer orders that continued to resume overall. I think that as I just talked about with Tommy’s question, we’ve seen customers absorbing the capacity that’s previously been built out. That’s been more, again, focused on retail and e-commerce as opposed to the other verticals so far. I would say that the macroeconomy, kind of the uncertainty around that abating will certainly help as well. We’re viewed as a trusted partner of our customers and we’re staying close to them across each of the verticals as we would see this order momentum picking up across other verticals as we progress through the year. We’ve got a large installed base, right? We’re growing solutions. So we’re continuing to work with our customers as well.