Celestica Inc. (TSX:CLS)
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M&A Announcement

Oct 10, 2018

Operator

Good morning. My name is Kelly. I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Celestica Acquires Impakt Holdings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Paul Carpino, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Paul Carpino
VP of Investor Relations, Celestica

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today to discuss our acquisition of Impakt, as well as the increasing of our target margin range and the accelerated full payment of proceeds associated with the sale of our Toronto facility. As a reminder, we are in quiet period. We will not be providing any information associated with the third quarter or broader outlook information beyond what we have provided in our release today. As a reminder, we will be reporting our Q3 results on October 24th. On the call today are Rob Mionis, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mandeep Chawla, Chief Financial Officer. Rob and Mandeep will provide some comments on the acquisition. We'll open up the call for any questions. During the Q&A session, please limit yourself to one question and a brief follow-up.

During this call, we will make forward-looking statements within the meanings of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian security laws, including those related to the Impakt transaction and its impact on our business. Such forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions, which are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from conclusions, forecasts, or projections expressed in such statements. For identification and discussion of such factors and the material assumptions on which such forward-looking statements are based, as well as further information concerning financial guidance, please refer to the company's various public filings.

These include our most recent MD&A and annual report on Form 20-F, including the risk factors section therein filed with and in reports on Form 6-K furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and as applicable to Canadian securities administrators. Please also refer to our cautionary statements regarding forward-looking information in such filings and in today's press release concerning the Impakt transaction. Our public filings can be accessed at sec.gov and sedar.com. In addition, during the call, we will refer to operating margins non-IFRS measures. Non-IFRS measures do not have any standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other public companies that use IFRS or who report under U.S. GAAP and use non-GAAP measures to describe similar operating metrics.

We refer you to our Q2 2018 press release and financial statements, which are available at celestica.com under the Investor Relations tab for more information about this and other non-IFRS measures. Unless otherwise specified, all measures to dollars on this call are US dollars. Let me now turn the call over to Rob.

Rob Mionis
President and CEO, Celestica

Thanks, Paul, and good morning, everyone. As you saw in our press release this morning, Celestica has signed an agreement to acquire Impakt. Impakt is a leading vertically integrated capital equipment manufacturer, providing advanced engineering and manufacturing services to the display and semiconductor capital equipment markets. We believe it to be an exceptional company with capabilities well beyond traditional contract manufacturers and will represent a very strong fit with Celestica's strategy. Impakt has a 40-year track record serving leading global capital equipment OEMs across multiple end markets, including the world's largest manufacturers of display and semiconductor capital equipment. They are strategically located in the U.S. and South Korea near key display and semiconductor capital equipment providers and have an extensive range of vertical integration capabilities enabling end-to-end product lifecycle solutions.

Impakt's business has high barriers to entry and is attractive to Celestica based on the long-term nature of contracts in their business, highlighting the strategic role they play with their customers. We both enjoy strong relationships with industry leaders in capital equipment manufacturing, and Celestica is also gaining new customers through this acquisition. In addition, Impakt has a differentiated position in the capital equipment market. Thanks to its specialized expertise and long track record of quality and performance, customers trust Impakt to provide final tested and complete systems that are accepted by semiconductor OEMs directly at Impakt's own career facilities. This allows Impakt to consistently achieve excellent lead times and responsiveness. They have built a business in key capital equipment markets that we could not easily grow organically, nor could we replicate the decades-long track record with its customers.

We also like the long product lifecycle nature of Impakt's business and the new capabilities they bring to the table. We anticipate that their capabilities will allow us to further grow our end-to-end business solutions across multiple markets. Importantly, we anticipate this to be a bolt-on acquisition with minimal integration risk and with long-term growth synergies. The acquisition of Impakt is also aligned to our strategy of augmenting our ATS business through diversifying the segment's revenue mix and by adding higher value add capabilities. Clearly, we feel that this acquisition will continue to differentiate Celestica in the eyes of our customers and also accelerate our well-defined growth, diversification, and profitability initiatives. Beyond Impakt's capabilities, we are excited with what this team of 450 experienced employees will contribute to our growing and diversifying ATS business.

Our ATS business currently represents approximately $2.2 billion in annual revenue, and we continue to target to operate this segment in the 5%-6% margin range. Within ATS, we have established the industry's leading position in A&D, and the acquisition of Impakt would further solidify our industry-leading position in capital equipment manufacturing. Impakt will enable Celestica to broaden its solutions across a diversified set of markets, including displays, power, and industrials. To provide some additional transparency on our revenue mix, our capital equipment business is our second-largest end market in ATS, with semiconductor equipment and now display equipment, each representing just a single-digit % of total company revenue. While our overall capital equipment scale makes us meaningful to our customers, it is also nicely balanced within our total revenue portfolio.

We believe that with the addition of Impakt, our expanded capabilities and scale will be attractive to customers and should allow us to participate in what we view as the strong long-term dynamics of the key end markets this business supports. For example, we believe that Impakt's strong position in providing capital equipment to current LCD and emerging OLED display markets will represent an additional future growth driver for the company. In addition to Impakt's current strong position in capital equipment for the LCD market, recent industry projections estimate the future OLED market to be valued at $35.5 billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of approximately 10% between 2017 and 2022. Some of the key factors driving this growth include the rapid adoption of OLED displays across a variety of applications, including growing investments in technology and manufacturing facilities.

We believe that this market opportunity, combined with Impakt's strategic in-region presence in South Korea near key customers, should provide Celestica an attractive opportunity to participate in another next-generation growth stream in the coming years. Let me turn the call over to Mandeep to provide some additional financial color on the transaction. Over to you, Mandeep.

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

Thanks, Rob. The purchase price for Impakt is $329 million, subject to specific adjustments set forth in the definitive agreement, and will be financed by a combination of the company's revolver and term loans. We expect that the transaction will be accretive to EPS, non-IFRS operating margin, and ATS segment margin upon closing. More importantly, the strategic actions we have announced over the past year to drive improved margins are showing progress and giving us the confidence to raise our future target consolidated non-IFRS operating margin range. As you read in our press release this morning, we are increasing the consolidated non-IFRS operating margin target objective for Celestica to 3.75%-4.5% over the next 12-18 months, compared to our previous objective of 3.5%-4.0%.

The anticipated increase and accelerated timetable of these objectives is a result of the positive traction we are seeing across a number of our transformational initiatives, including the continuation of our proactive CCS portfolio review, where we are targeting and better aligning the investments we make in programs to support our strategic and financial priorities, our CAD 50 million - $75 million restructuring program, which is scheduled to run until mid-2019, and the ongoing expansion of our ATS segment revenue portfolio, which has been growing organically as well as through strategy-aligned acquisitions such as Atrenne and Impakt. Attaining this level of margin performance is what we intended the company to achieve when we started our transformational journey three years ago.

We like the dynamics of purchasing Impakt now based on our view of the current cyclical moderation of this industry and the positive trends that we see longer term, such as growing electronic content, connectivity in all industries, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence. Accordingly, we have reviewed the transaction on a risk-adjusted basis. In addition, this transaction is aligned with our strategic growth initiatives and consistent with the capital allocation strategy we have previously communicated. It exceeds the internal financial thresholds we have set forth for an acquisition, even when evaluating through a lens of heightened conservatism of a more cyclical industry. Consistent with previous acquisitions in ATS, we expect to generate a return in excess of our cost of capital in the first three years.

The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2018, subject to receipt of applicable regulatory approvals and satisfaction of other customary closing conditions. As you also read in our press release this morning, we now anticipate all cash proceeds associated with the previously announced sale of our Toronto facility to occur upon closing. We continue to expect this closing to occur late in the fourth quarter of 2018 or in the first quarter of 2019. Through an updated agreement with the purchaser, the company will now receive the full outstanding balance of CAD 122 million or just under $100 million upon closing. Celestica's balance sheet remains strong, and our capital allocation strategy remains unchanged. As such, the acquisition of Impakt does not alter our commitment to complete our current NCIB stock buyback program.

We are thrilled to have the Impakt team and their customers join the Celestica family. Their customers and employees will become part of the largest capital equipment manufacturing provider in our industry, and we look forward to growing with them in the coming years. We are approaching an exciting time in our transformation journey, and Rob, I, and the entire team at Celestica is motivated at the opportunity to achieve improved operating and financial performance levels. Let me now turn the call back to the operator. Rob and I would be happy to take your questions.

Operator

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, please limit to one question and one follow-up. Your first question comes from the line of Ruplu Bhattacharya from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Ruplu Bhattacharya
Analyst, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Hi, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Mandy, the first question for you is, you raised the midpoint of your 12 to 18-month operating margin target by about 40 basis points, from 3.75% to about 4.13% at the midpoint. You talked about three things, the CCS portfolio, ATS portfolio, and restructuring as the three things leading to that. Can you help us quantify how much improvement is coming from each of those areas?

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

Hi, Ruplu. It's Mandy here. We're not breaking it out between the three. It's really a combination, and we've been working these various streams in parallel for up to a year now. As we talked about in the prepared remarks, we're seeing good traction on the restructuring program. As you know from the last quarter, and we'll provide an update in a couple of weeks on the third quarter year-to-date, we have been taking restructuring charges along the way, but we still feel that the $50 million-$75 million program is the right program for us. On the CCS portfolio review, we announced it at the end of last quarter. Those activities are going to continue going into 2019, but we're starting to see some traction there as well, and we believe that that's going to benefit the company from a margin perspective.

The Atrenne acquisition is well integrated at this point and is performing to its management case, so we're seeing benefits there. ATS continues to grow, and as you saw from our guidance for the third quarter, we were expecting to see strong organic revenue growth in ATS. Then when you add on Impakt as well, it just continues to add to the ATS story. When you put the three together, it allows us to go from, frankly, what we were targeting in the fourth quarter as you know, 3.5% margin, to closer to the 3.75%-4.5% range near the end of 2019 or into 2020.

Ruplu Bhattacharya
Analyst, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Okay. Thanks for all those details. Maybe for my follow-up question for Rob, with respect to the acquisition of Impakt, how many people are you taking on, and are you acquiring all of their seven facilities? If you can give us some estimate of how you think about integration and what level of effort is required to integrate it into the Celestica maybe back end, and how should we think about OpEx going forward with this acquisition integrated?

Rob Mionis
President and CEO, Celestica

Hi, Ruplu. From a people perspective, it's about 450 people across all their facilities. Yes, we're purchasing all of Impakt. From an integration approach, we're going to be integrating their business into our capital equipment business, and as such, expanding our overall capital equipment solutions across a number of different industries. Moving forward, we'll have a display business, a semiconductor business, a power business, and industrial business, and that will all be under one leader. We do view this as somewhat of an integration light approach. We don't view it as overly complex or overly disruptive. From an OpEx perspective, it's not really driven by synergies per se. It's really a capability play. We're thinking that OpEx is about 3%.

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

3% of revenue, Ruplu. We don't expect it to alter our company target of 1.5%-2% CapEx.

Ruplu Bhattacharya
Analyst, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Okay, great. Thank you so much for the details.

Rob Mionis
President and CEO, Celestica

Great.

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

Thanks, Ruplu. Next question, Kelly?

Operator

Your next question comes to the line of Thanos Moschopoulos from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thanos Moschopoulos
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Hi. Good morning. Rob, could you provide a bit more color on the display markets in terms of new market for you? Is that a market in which customers still have a lot of stuff insourced? Has outsourcing been broadly adopted? Is that a fragmented market competitively? What does that look like?

Rob Mionis
President and CEO, Celestica

Yeah. Thanks, Thanos. We're very excited about the display market. It's somewhat fragmented right now, and we think that Impakt has somewhat of a unique position in this business as being vertically integrated. It does everything from engineering to manufacturing to sheet metal to cleaning, anodizing, powder coating, all the way through modules, all the way through final test and integration right at their facilities. It's somewhat of a unique position. They do both LCDs and also with the secular trends moving towards OLED moving forward and the growth of OLED, we think we're getting in at the right time to take advantage of future growth potential moving forward. I think it's an opportune time to kind of buy into that market and take advantage of growing trends.

From an insource/outsourcing perspective, there are a couple of leaders from our customer perspective in this space. We're aligned with those leaders. They have adopted an outsourcing strategy. We're partnered with them to help them grow into the future.

Thanos Moschopoulos
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Then on the semi equipment side, can you speak to customer overlap? Does this get you into some new customers, or does that further increase the penetration of existing customers that you have?

Rob Mionis
President and CEO, Celestica

Both. There is some overlap. We also are picking up some new customers. From a customer concentration perspective, it doesn't materially change our top 10 list, if you will. It does allow us to participate in future growth opportunities as a combined entity because of our vertical integration capabilities and also the global presence that Impakt has specifically in region in Korea.

Thanos Moschopoulos
Analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Great. Thanks.

Paul Treiber
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Great. Thanks, Thanos. Next question, Kelly.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Todd Coupland from CIBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Todd Coupland
Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets

Hi, good morning, everyone. Are you going to be providing any guidance on how to model the financial impact of this acquisition?

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

Hi, Todd. Good morning. It's a private company, and for that reason, competitive reasons, we've stated the amount of disclosure that we're prepared to share at this point. What we can say is that it fits in well into the overall ATS portfolio. The ATS portfolio, to reiterate, is now a $2.2 billion business. It allows us to still stay within that 5%-6% range. If anything, it helps us move higher up into the range. From a deal financials perspective, we're pleased on a number of fronts. From an ROI perspective, it exceeds our cost of capital in the three-year time window that we've set out for ourselves. It's immediately accretive to EPS. It's immediately accretive to company margins as well.

From a purchase price multiple perspective, as some of the characteristics that we shared about the industry are, there's higher barriers to entry, the product life cycles are relatively long, and the relationship strength that you need with key customers is paramount, and the deal checks all of those. At the same time, we typically see those types of characteristics in the A&D space, and we're happy that we're able to purchase this business for a multiple that is much more attractive than what you would see in a typical A&D deal.

Todd Coupland
Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets

Okay. I guess we'll see the revenue impact and margin impact when you guide Q1, assuming you include it closing Q4 or something like that, right?

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

That's correct, Todd.

Todd Coupland
Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets

Yeah. Okay. Just secondly, just to give us an idea on the OLED market, should we think about this in terms of TVs or smartphones or everything in between? I think you mentioned this in your prepared remarks that they were in fact aligned with the largest player in the South Korean market. Did I hear that right? Thanks.

Rob Mionis
President and CEO, Celestica

Yeah, that's correct, Todd. They support all those markets. Take rates for OLEDs are supposed to increase in both smartphone and TV markets. Because they have very high manufacturing costs, OLED displays still come at somewhat of a premium, but those premiums are coming down, and they're quickly taking over share from the LCD market. From that point of view, we see LCD coming down and OLED coming up, and Impakt participates in both of those markets. The OLED market, however, is characterized by much higher CapEx investment, which is good for Impakt and good for our business due to the retooling and the higher capital-intensive nature.

Todd Coupland
Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets

Do you see outside growth in your funnel in 2019 while assuming this business closes?

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

Yeah. Todd, from an outlook perspective, we took into account the fact that the cycles right now are in a period of retrenchment, that was factored into our modeling. Yes, absolutely, the business has a very strong growth profile attached to it, and there is an opportunity for us to see some meaningful growth in the coming years.

Todd Coupland
Analyst, CIBC Capital Markets

Okay, great. Thanks. Appreciate the call.

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

Thanks, Todd.

Rob Mionis
President and CEO, Celestica

Thanks, Todd.

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

Thanks, Todd. Next question, Kelly.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Gus Papageorgiou from Macquarie. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Gus Papageorgiou
Analyst, Macquarie

Hi, thanks. Just a couple of questions. Again, just on customer overlap, can you just talk about total customer overlap across all of Impakt's business, not just in semiconductor? Secondly, it looks here like they are involved in solar solutions. Can you just discuss how meaningful solar solutions is to their revenue and what markets they're involved in?

Rob Mionis
President and CEO, Celestica

Sure, Gus. From a solar solutions, it's a very small, de minimis portion of their revenue. From a customer overlap perspective, we're picking up a couple of 5, 6, 7 additional customers. The top 2 customers that they have overlap nicely with our portfolio. We think we'll be able to kind of expand our solutions to those customers based on having in region, i.e., Korea, manufacturing presence. Also have a lot of those vertical integration capabilities that I mentioned as well.

Gus Papageorgiou
Analyst, Macquarie

Just a quick follow-up. Can you just discuss their customer concentration? Would it be similar to yours, or would they be more heavily concentrated?

Rob Mionis
President and CEO, Celestica

In terms of our semi cap business, it would be similar to ours in terms of concentration. The semi cap market and the capital equipment market is usually characterized by a couple of market leaders. We're aligned with those market leaders. You could make an analogy to aerospace in which you have Boeing and Airbus, 2 major market leaders, and if you're anybody from anybody, you're doing business with those 2 OEMs. Within our capital equipment business, we're aligned with those market leaders.

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

One thing to add to that, Gus, though, is that although the outsourced TAM is relatively concentrated with a few main equipment manufacturers, the number of programs that we do with these customers are numerous. So we do have a diversification across the program set.

Gus Papageorgiou
Analyst, Macquarie

Great. Thank you very much.

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

Thanks, Gus.

Rob Mionis
President and CEO, Celestica

Thanks, Gus. Next question, Kelly.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Paul Treiber from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Paul Treiber
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Oh, thanks very much, and good morning. You mentioned that the return on the acquisition is expected to exceed your cost of capital. Could you just elaborate on that a little bit? Just what's your estimated IRR in the acquisition, and then if you can remind us again what you're assuming for your cost of capital?

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

Yeah. We look at the cost of capital right now as being between eight and nine percent. The filter that we've been using, it's one of numerous filters, but one of the filters is that we want the IRR to be above that rate within the three years. This deal achieved that, similar to what we saw on Atrenne as well. It's important to note, though, that we took quite a risk-adjusted view on this one. There is a lot of upside within this business and within this industry. We've been in at least the semiconductor space now for almost 10 years, we have a very good feel on the nature of the business. We've taken a very risk-adjusted view when coming up with those ROIs.

Paul Treiber
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Secondly, you mentioned that the purchase multiple is less than what you've seen in the A&D space. How would it compare against other acquisitions that you've made in the semiconductor space, like Brooks Automation or D&H?

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

What I can share is, I don't have the D&H multiple at my fingertips, Paul, but what I'll say is it was a single-digit multiple. It's the nature of the types of deals that we look at. We were able to get an exclusivity on this type of deal, similar to the exclusivity that we got on Atrenne. We were able to ensure during a very detailed due diligence process that it met our value drivers. Again, we wanted to make sure that we got good value. We were able to do that on Atrenne, which we indicated was a high single-digit multiple in a space that typically sees low double-digit multiples. On this acquisition, it was favorable even to Atrenne, even though it has some similar characteristics.

Paul Treiber
Analyst, RBC Capital Markets

Thank you for taking my questions.

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

Thanks, Paul.

Rob Mionis
President and CEO, Celestica

Next question, Kelly.

Operator

If you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Tim Yang from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Tim Yang
Analyst, Citi

Hey, this is Tim Yang, calling on behalf of Jim Suva. Can we know that will you have any new over 10% of customers because of this acquisition? What's the tax implication after you close this transaction? Thanks.

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

Yeah. Hi, Tim. Good morning to you, an early good morning to you. In terms of the customer concentration, no, this acquisition will not lead to a new top 10 customer. We don't see that impact. As Rob also mentioned, we don't see a very material change in our top 10 concentration from this acquisition. From a tax rate perspective, the company's target rate of 17%-19% continues to be the right range for us, even with this business integrated in.

Tim Yang
Analyst, Citi

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Mandeep Chawla
CFO, Celestica

Thanks, Tim.

Rob Mionis
President and CEO, Celestica

Next question, Kelly.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Rob Mionis for closing comments.

Rob Mionis
President and CEO, Celestica

Thank you very much for joining the call at this early hour. Appreciate the support. We're very excited to have the Impakt team join the Celestica family, and we look forward to updating you further on the transformational progress at our earnings release in a couple of weeks.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.