All right. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. My name is Mig Dobre. I'm the Baird analyst covering machinery. It's my pleasure to introduce Astec Industries to you all today. As you probably know, Astec is the technology leader in the asphalt paving industry, with a decades-long focus on product innovation. Joining us today, we have President and CEO Jaco van der Merwe. I hope I didn't-
That's perfect.
I didn't kill. I mean, I tried. Rebecca Weyenberg, the CFO, and Steve Anderson from Investor Relations. So, Jaco, I'm gonna turn it to you for some intro remarks, and then we'll do some Q&A.
Yeah. No, thank you very much, Mig, and, thank you everybody for for joining us today. We really appreciate that. So, you know, obviously, we have the safe harbor statement, which you guys most probably know better than me. But, just quick introduction, for those of you who don't know the company, you know, last year, our revenue was about $1.22 billion. And, you know, we're based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. We have about 4,000 employees now on a global basis. And, we primarily do business in two segments. And obviously, Infrastructure Solutions being the biggest side, and then, Materials Solutions making up, about a third of the business.
A big part of our business here in the U.S., about 80%, and then internationally, we have about 20% of our business. From a product portfolio point of view, I think, you know, I look at it this way: one way or another, all of us came here either by car or by plane, and anything that you drove on, anything that you landed on, one way or another, potentially went through the equipment that Astec produce. So you know, truly, I have a good rock-to-road product portfolio, and, you know, a portfolio that positions us very well to service customers in the construction and adjacent industries. Now let's talk a little bit about Astec and, you know, what we as a team are working on.
You know, if we go and look at our history, I think one of the opportunities Astec have in the future is to become a company that's much more stable and predictable with regards to the results we put on the table. You know, as a team, we've identified those levers that we wanna pull and, you know, personally, I come from a background where the parts business is extremely strong and, you know, we wanna make sure we drive that for our business as well. You know, today, we are in that 29%-30% of our total sales is parts, but we believe that that opportunity is significant for us in the future, not just here in the U.S., but around the globe.
Now, you know, from my point of view, having a strong parts business not only gives you stability in your organization, but it provides you the opportunity to touch your customer on a daily basis. And I think if we do that successfully in the future, you know, customers will reward us for that and buy capital equipment from us as well. The teams have done a really good job over the last few years, expanding our channel around the world. When you look at what we had in our earnings release, we showed the map of just internationally how we've expanded and the same year in the US.
And on top of that, we have now the best, I wanna say, coverage from a direct point of view as well for our asphalt plant and concrete plant businesses than what we've ever had. You know, the next thing that is really important for us, and it's very much in line with the legacy that Astec was built on, is new product development. And you know, our teams over the last three to two years have now developed a really structured new product development process, and we're starting to see the benefits of that. You know, this year during Q3, we launched an upgraded wood grinding equipment, which is a really good product for us today, but we believe it will be much stronger in the future.
Then during Q4 and Q1 of next year, we will launch a new milling machine used in road construction and in the paving and road construction. Both of those units are attacking the single biggest market that we have in the milling market and the paving market. So exciting for us. You know, it's a technology that we know, it's customers we know, and now we will have a product that really compete with the largest players in the market. Next thing, operational excellence. You know, as a company, historically, we were very focused on new product development, very focused on servicing our customers, and those things are still very important for us. But I will say today, we have the strongest operational team than what we've had in our company's history.
You know, historically, manufacturing was one of the areas that, you know, the teams did the best that they have available, but they didn't really have management that understood operations. There was not that much investment and, you know, that's my background. A lot of our leadership today comes from that, and we have significant opportunity there, and I'm amazed every time when I walk through our factories to see the transformation that's happening. Cost is obviously something that we always focus on, and we have multiple levers there that we need to pull.
You know, now that we have our procurement, for instance, under the one Astec umbrella, we're really starting to see benefits of working across our groups and across our companies to get the best synergies from a procurement point of view, from a capital investment point of view. But also from, you know, the way we run our businesses from a central, you know, accounts payable, payroll, those type of things. So as we roll out Oracle, we should unlock a significant benefit for the organization long term. And then lastly, you know, federal funding is starting to flow. We've seen it. In the earnings release, we talked about the 12% year-over-year improvement in funding that flows through. You know, when I speak to customers, they all have strong backlog.
They have a lot of work for next year, so we feel that the market is pretty confident right now. You know, obviously, you have some concerns around interest rates, and that's something that we're watching very closely. But, you know, together with the highway funding, the focus on parts, the focus on new product development and our channel, it really gives us a good opportunity to mitigate any negative effects that we have from a macro point of view. So, you know, as a company, we have a lot of work to do. But I will say our team is aligned as or as much aligned as I've seen it in my seven years with the company.
And, you know, there's a lot of good things the teams are working on, and I'm super excited to be part of this organization for the next few years, for sure. So, so once again, thank you, everybody, for joining us today, and Mick, over to you.
Yeah. No, I appreciate the intro comments. Just as a reminder, if you'd like to join in the discussion, please email me at sessionfour@rwbaird.com. I guess maybe, maybe the place to start is with a backwards-looking view, right? When you, when you kinda look at 2023, what are some of the things that surprised you in, in your business? Whether it's positive or maybe less so... And I'm curious, maybe you can comment on customers, maybe you can comment on your operations as well.
Yeah, let me start with the customers, and you know, it's been 10 months since I took over, and I will say I've spent a lot of time with customers and a lot of time at industry events, and you know, a couple of things. People wanna do business with Astec. They know us. They see us as a trusted partner. We have a really good product portfolio that customer our... that covers our customers' needs across the segment. And you know, they have strong backlogs, and they have a lot of work. So you know, but they depend on us to provide them good service.
I will say, you know, coming into this year, we definitely had some challenges on parts availability in two of our product lines. And, you know, as a team, we've done a really good job improving that, driving down the backlog, and then improving our fill rates. So, you know, I almost wanna say the loyalty that customers have towards the Astec brand, in some cases, is surprising. But it's also very comforting that they truly think of us as a partner. You know, as a business, as a whole, you know, the one thing that I did when I started, I went to visit all our facilities, and I had interviews with employees at all levels of the organization.
And I know a lot of companies say that, you know, they have great people, but I truly believe we have a lot of good people. We actually have a great product portfolio, and you know, if you put that together with the customer support, you know, if we execute well in the future, you know, we should be doing very well.
So on that point, maybe a bit of an operational update, and that might be a question for you, Becky, as well. In terms of some of the changes that the company has done. You know, it's you've been on a drive to sort of centralize a little bit. You're also. You talked about Oracle. Let's get an update on that. And at what point in time would you say that you're fully optimized is maybe not the right term, 'cause I understand it's a journey of continuous improvement, but at least to the point where you would consider yourself to be operating well relative to your benchmarks or peers? You know, is that six months out, a year out, or maybe further into the future? I mean, I don't know.
I think it's a great question. And I think it would start, I'll even go back. One thing that Jaco didn't mention, when you look back over the year, when we went to CONEXPO this year, first time I got to go because when I started, COVID hit-
Mm-hmm.
and so it kinda didn't happen, the event. It didn't happen. But it was the first time we went to market in our new branding as one Astec. The booth looked fantastic, and we had customers come up to us repeatedly and say, "I did not know you made all these things." And so we've been awkward to do business with because we had... I think of it as like a holding company, and we had all these subsidiaries, and they all worked independently. So if a customer wanted to place an order, they place it on whichever entity they needed to. They get an invoice from that entity, they got shipping, they had to talk to eighteen different people if we have eighteen different sites. And so we were hard to do business with.
So starting with the branding, I think that opened our customers' eyes to say, "Hey, this, this Astec has got quite a, quite a rich portfolio. Now, how can we do business across, across the portfolio?" So also, when I joined, we had, we had quite a few deficiencies. We had a lot of material weaknesses. So as part of that, we remediated all that in the first year. But then we said as part of that, because a lot of it was also in IT, and, we told the street, we told our shareholders and, and our board that we would put in a system that would give us controls, which we are in the third year of a five-year program. We've rolled out more than just an ERP.
We've got a customer relationship manager, we've rolled out the human capital management system, and we've gone live in corporate as well as one of our significant manufacturing sites. We're doing a little more design work, a few more enhancements, and then in 2024, we'll roll out to the infrastructure solution segment, and then in 2025, we'll finish with material solutions. That's gonna be-
You're in pilot now, basically?
Yeah, a little bit more than pilot. They're stabilizing, so there's a few reports and things that they say, "It's eight clicks, I want six." Whatever. You know, but our next sites also have engineer to order versus configured products, so we also have to design in that, that functionality for engineer to order. So we have a couple different work streams with that. And if you think of engineering BOMs, we don't have common engineering BOMs, and that's a requirement. So we've got the engineering teams are working quite heavily on updating all of that information and getting it into a standard format. So this, this project is touching every single function and aspect of our, our business. What that'll give us in the future, while we're working on parts, we'll be able to expand that because they'll be able to see.
Today, we don't have common part numbering in any two locations, so we'll have that. We'll have a shared service center. I mean, most companies did this in the 1970s and 1980s. We're gonna have that opportunity in front of us. We've already done that with payroll already this year. And so there's a significant benefit that we'll get the first full year of in 2026.
This is great detail, by the way, so I really appreciate it. Have you framed it in any way in terms of what that's gonna do to your cost structure or to your margins or anything of the sort?
We haven't shared that yet. I can tell you it, it is a double-digit significant millions of dollars, and we'll roll, we'll roll that out in our investor day that we're gonna have in June of 2024. But yes, I mean, we haven't talked, but it, it's, it's more significant than the cost. So it's a $150 million program, and the benefits are larger than that. It definitely has a great return.
Operationally, can we talk a little bit about what this does? You know, it's not just cost, it's about how you run the business.
It's how we have access to data. We'll have more analysts and less people. I know in finance, alone, I have twice as many people as I should have, but everybody's independently doing these things at each site. So we do a lot of transaction. Paperwork is everywhere. During COVID, we saw that we had sites that they couldn't work from home. They had to come in because they are so manual and so paper-dependent. And it just, it's just not sustainable, and you can't build on that foundation. So it's gonna turn the corner for us on multiple fronts. Engineering drawings, sharing them across locations. Today, we are building cross-sites, but they have to send them drawings and then say, "Okay, how do I read this drawing?" You know, it's all gonna be...
We're digitizing our company-
Yeah.
and that's gonna be the platform for growth.
So, the hope here is that we're reaching that sort of improved state, if you would, sometime in 2026.
Maybe if I can just add some more color to that, Mick, before you go on. You know, obviously, as every site gets online, you know, within a six months period, that site will start to, you know, deliver results.
Yeah.
It's not, it's not all at once.
Well, you anticipated where I was gonna go.
Yes.
Right.
So it's-
Right
... it's every, you know, I will say within six months of every site rolling on, we'll start to see the benefits. So, from, you know, Becky talked about the consolidation, the back office, but, you know, if you look at it from a manufacturing point of view, and, you know, at the end of the day, we're a manufacturing company. You know, various of our sites today don't have the ability to run proper MRP, to run, you know, proper capacity planning and things like that. All of that is manual today. So, you know, the system is not just replacing old technology, it's bringing so much functionality to the table. And our manufacturing guys, especially the operation teams that we brought, you know, on board, they, I mean, they are dying to get their hands on that product.
So, you know, I think we're gonna see significant improvements, just the way we can schedule production, the way we can plan it, think about raw material, inventory levels, how you can optimize that. So, you know, getting that benefit from a manufacturing point of view, I think is gonna be significant.
You know, the thing that's been remarkable across the entire machinery landscape has been the price-cost dynamic that all of you and your peers have gone through over the past couple of years... huge initial lag-
No.
'cause you have a backlog business. We flipped it to a tailwind.
Mm-hmm.
When you sort of look at what's in your backlog, when you look at the way you're quoting new product, how do you see that spread continuing to evolve? Because it, to me, it seems that the, the benefit has started to narrow.
Mm.
But the question is, does this benefit eventually kind of go to zero? Does it go negative? I mean, how do you sort of see it?
Yeah, no, good, good question. I will say the first thing is I think all of us have learned a lot of lessons as part of this ramp-up in inflation and reacting to that. So, I feel pretty good about the pricing we have in our backlog today. You know, on parts, for instance, we now update parts pricing as we get changes from suppliers.
Mm-hmm.
It's real time. You know, and that's a big piece of our business today. But we've already, you know, included pricing for products that we will deliver in 2024. All new quotes, you know, already have that pricing built into it. Now, of course, we've made assumptions on, you know, inflation, raw material pricing, and things like that. We feel that we've got it covered with the data we have today. But if steel doubles again from here, you know, there will be challenges, but I think we've seen a much more stable environment now. If you look at our EBITDA bridges that we have in the earnings calls, the last three or four, you're absolutely right, that gap between price and cost is getting smaller and smaller.
But I think it's getting to a point now where you know, any pricing that we can put into the market will have potentially an upside opportunity for us, and any negotiations we can do to drive cost down will have a potential upside. You know, if the market drops significantly, obviously, then you're in a different dynamic where you know, pricing overall will be under consideration. But you know, right now, I don't expect that in the near term. I mean, our customers are busy. They have a lot of backlog, so.
Your bridges, the margin bridges, are super helpful. So thank you for, by the way, for adding that, Becky, and I'll give you credit for it.
You're welcome.
But that, you know, that's a relatively recent introduction.
Mm.
We do not have the history to be able to sort of evaluate how they changed over time. And maybe you don't know the answer to this question, but I wonder if Astec has been a business that has been at least neutral from a price cost standpoint through the cycle, or is this a business that historically has run behind and had to make up for it through some other means?
Yeah, I will, I will say, Mig, I mean, if you, if you look at the steep curve that prices went up, raw material prices went up, I mean, you know, all of us were behind, you know, two, three quarters.
That's why I'm asking the question through the cycle-
Yeah
... right? Because I'm trying to get at this notion that if you are putting through real tools-
Yeah
... that allow you better visibility on what your costs are, hopefully, better visibility as to what your pricing is going to be, is there a real argument to be made that structurally your business ought to be more profitable than in the past, just on this dynamic alone?
Yeah, I think there's-
I think it's fair.
... a real opportunity for that.
Yeah. It's anecdotal. We don't have the answer to the past, but we've heard enough people say it that we kinda believe it's true, our people that have been here through these cycles. Generally, pricing just kept up with labor inflation. I mean, that was kind of the model that they ran, and Don Brock himself would tell them what the price was gonna be.
Mm.
It wasn't necessarily done through a systematic analysis. It was, "This is what we're gonna sell it for," and they would sell it for that.
Yeah.
Because they didn't have necessarily all the corporate structure required of a publicly traded company for many, many years-
Mm
... it didn't keep up, and we were caught flat-footed, and we certainly know that.
Yeah.
I think our customers and dealers maybe saw it because they're not exclusive dealers, so as they started getting price increases from their-
You see it from every-
... other equipment manufacturers, then they hurried up and put all the orders in on us because they knew that once it was in, they're price protected.
Mm-hmm.
I think we learned a lot through this-
We did
... this whole effort, that it's not gonna happen again.
Yeah.
I mean, we're so much smarter coming out of it, but the systems and tools we're putting in are also gonna give us greater visibility.
Yeah. You know, just a small example of that, historically, for instance, in our parts business, we never had pricing analysts that will do work on what market pricing is. You know, now we have some of those people. And that's their full-time job, is to understand, what is the market price? You know, are we high? Are we low? And, you know, to the credit of the team, you know, there was opportunities that we were high, and we fixed that, and there were opportunities that we were low, and we fixed that. But those are resources that we never had, in our organization. So I think we're better positioned today to react on pricing but also be the price leader in the market.
Well, not to create work for Steve, but, you know, it would be very interesting as part of your investor day, to get a slide that addresses this issue because I think that's something that I'm sure a lot of your shareholders have wondered over time about. With the time we have left, I wanna pivot to talking a little bit about demand. And look, there's no real way to say it other than to say this: Your order intake has been, has been weak, and it has been weak for a few quarters relative to where it's been, it's been running in the past. I think I've asked you this question on an earnings call. What does normalized demand look like? And I'm gonna ask it again.
As you're looking at the amount of orders that you have had this year, does that feel like the normal amount to you? And if not, why not?
Yeah, I mean, if you look at the order intake for the first three quarters, if we just- if we analyze that, if that's the level of business that we have, you know, next year is gonna be a really tough year. So I'm with you. I mean, if you just look at the last three quarters, for sure. I do believe that, you know, the spike that we have, you know, up to that nine hundred and, what is it, sixty million dollars, was so steep, and some of that was buying because of long lead time, fear, you know, infrastructure. So, you know, I think there's enough in the backlog, Mick, that will support us for a good year next year, even if we have the run rates that we have now.
I do believe that, you know, backlog is a function of demand and lead times, and as we drive down our lead times, if the demand stay the same, we'll see backlog coming down. And as I've mentioned to you before, we are very deliberate on driving down our backlog, especially on parts. You know, any spare part that I have on backlog, that's not good. And the teams have done a really good job with that. We will continue to do that. But Q4 will be telling. I mean, we need a strong Q4. This is traditionally the quarter that our asphalt plant customers place orders for the new season. I mentioned on the earnings call, you know, October was pretty good.
Since we're on a public call here-
Yeah.
How is Q4 looking this year?
Yeah. I mean, like I said, on the, you know, in the earnings call. October started strong for, you know, asphalt plants and concrete plants. It started strong for our parts business. So, you know, that's a good indication. On the material solution side, you know, we mentioned that the material solutions dealer writing will take place this year in the fourth quarter, where last year it was in the third quarter. You know, the last two years, that was in the region of, you know, $70-$75 million. All indications is that we're gonna be in line with that this year. So, you know, as far as I'm concerned, is this Q4 is gonna be telling in terms of bookings, on what we can expect next year, so.
Then, with the two minutes or thereabouts that we have left, let me follow up with sort of this question. You talked about infrastructure funding, and we all know it's there.
Yeah.
But, the way the infrastructure funding flows through activity in terms of miles of road paved-
Mm.
-versus the way those contractors buy their own equipment, those are two very different things.
Yeah.
I'm wondering, from your perspective and experience. I remember years ago talking to Dr. Don Brock on this issue.
Mm.
Like, how does equipment get bought-
Mm
... in a, around a highway bill, right? So I'm, I'm curious to get your perspective on this. You know, does equipment move, purchases move linearly with, with, with infrastructure funding and, and highway spend, or is there a different cadence to it?
Yeah. You know, maybe just my overall view on the infrastructure bill. So, you know, you guys drive on the roads on a daily basis, and you know that our infrastructure today is older than what it was last year and the year before. So irrespective of the infrastructure bill, you know, the U.S. government has to continue spending on infrastructure. Otherwise, we'll have bigger problems than just, you know, what happens at Astec. But, so, you know, typically, customers will... The moment they know that there's a bill, they will get their plans ready, start buying. I think this time we actually saw some buying even before, due to uncertainty we had with COVID. And then, typically, year two and three is the strongest, and then the fifth year is the slowest.
I will say the good thing for us is, you know, we have significant opportunity to grow our parts business, new products that we bring to the market, and then the channel expansion that we've created. You know, those should be opportunities for us to, I almost wanna say, balance out any negative macro situations that we see. But we have to go and get it, and this quarter will be telling, you know, from my perspective, so.
Well, this is probably a perfect spot to end. Please join me in thanking Jaco and the management team for their presentation.
Oh, thank you very much.