Good day, and welcome to the ESAB Corporation third quarter 2022 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press star zero. Finally, I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Mark Barbalato to begin the conference. Mark, over to you.
Thanks, operator. Welcome to ESAB's third quarter 2022 earnings call. This morning, I'm joined by our President and CEO, Shyam Kambeyanda, and CFO, Kevin Johnson. Please keep in mind that some of the statements we are making are forward-looking and are subject to risks, including those set forth in our SEC filings and today's earnings release. Actual results may differ, and we do not assume any obligation or intend to update these forward-looking statements except as required by law. With respect to any non-GAAP financial measures mentioned during the call today, the accompanying reconciliation information related to those measures can be found in our earnings press release and today's slide presentation. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our President and CEO, Shyam Kambeyanda.
Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today. I'm on slide three. ESAB delivered another solid quarter of revenue growth, margin expansion, and cash flow. This quarter, we made great progress towards shaping ESAB into a faster-growing, higher margin, and less cyclical business. Organic sales increased 10%. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 40 basis points to 16 points. 6% as EBX initiatives continued to gain traction. We continue to shape our enterprise towards our long-term strategic goals by introducing exciting new products, making bolt-on accretive acquisitions, and using EBX to expand margins and improve cash flow. I'm proud of our team's effort and execution against these three goals. Moving to slide four and focusing on organic growth. Our vitality index continues to be robust at 27%. On the left of the slide, I've highlighted some of our exciting new products.
You will note on the slide that we're focused on developing industry-leading products that are eco-friendly, efficient, and digitally connected. These new welding equipment and gas control products will shape ESAB towards faster organic growth and higher gross margins. Let me start with our gas control products on the slide. The new MediVital product has enhanced safety features and is digitally enabled. We also launched an upgraded GCE medical gas system, which is the most innovative medical central gas system on the market with the highest flow rates and the best precision control. These products increase safety, reduce maintenance, and most importantly for our customers, reduce gas leakage and waste, resulting in significant cost savings for our customers. Moving to FABTECH. Let me first talk about the Warrior Edge.
This new product offers best-in-class pulse wave technology with enhanced digital connectivity and provides a market-leading power source for robotics and automation. Next is our new Renegade ES, which further builds out our light industrial offering, providing our customers a product with lower energy consumption and a best-in-class user interface. Both the Warrior and the Renegade provide ESAB a scalable platform for our equipment growth globally. Moving now to slide five and continuing the conversation about our evolving equipment portfolio. Let me introduce a category-defining new product, our battery-powered welder, the Renegade VOLT. This product was developed using our EBX process of open innovation and in partnership with our friends at Stanley Black & Decker. This product will create a whole new category in the welding segment. The Renegade VOLT leverages DEWALT's industry-leading FLEXVOLT battery technology, which is interchangeable with other DEWALT products.
The battery is rechargeable, recyclable, and noise-free, making this product the most environmentally friendly welder in the market. The new battery-powered welder improves transportability, allowing users to bring a welding machine to remote and hard-to-access areas. The Volt also opens exciting opportunities for ESAB to continue to reach new customers and channels. The Renegade VOLT is a fantastic addition to our equipment brand, and alongside the Warrior and Renegade, allows us to shape our business to a higher equipment mix and, as a result, expand our margins. Moving to slide six. I've spoken to many of you about our gas control business. Let me take a moment to calibrate all of us. Gas is an integral part of welding and cutting, and gas control is critical to a successful weld, making it a natural adjacency to our core business.
We acquired Victor in 2014, which included a leading mission-critical industrial gas control business. Then in 2018, we acquired GCE, a leader in industrial and medical gas control in Europe. These acquisitions provided ESAB with access to faster-growing, higher margin, and less cyclical end markets. The gas platform today is about $350 million, with gross margins greater than 40%. This platform also generated an annual growth rate above our base business with accretive gross margins. As we move forward, we'll continue to focus on strengthening our gas control business. That brings me to slide seven and our exciting acquisition of Ohio Medical. I'm thrilled to welcome the Ohio Medical team into the ESAB family. This acquisition strengthens our position as a leader in gas control technology and continues to shape ESAB into higher growth, less cyclical, mission-critical, and higher margin businesses.
With Ohio Medical, we now have a $400 million global gas control platform with gross margins north of 40%. Ohio Medical is a leader in oxygen regulators and flow meters, providing our gas control business with a strong presence in the attractive North American market. When combined with our existing gas control platform, there are significant opportunities to cross-sell given our complementary geographic footprints. In addition, we will use EBX to accelerate innovation, improve efficiency, and drive productivity savings. There will be more to come on this front, and I will look forward to sharing more updates with you as we continue on this exciting journey. Moving to slide eight. As an enterprise, we're focused on growing organically through introduction of new innovative equipment like the Renegade VOLT and the Warrior Edge, supported by our InduSuite and robotics workflow solutions, improving our mix and margins going forward.
Bolt-on acquisitions like Ohio Medical and EBX driving margin expansion and improving cash flow. We are confident in our ability to achieve our long-term strategic goals of greater than $3 billion of revenue, 20%+ EBITDA margins, and 100%+ cash conversion. Turning to financials for the quarter on slide nine. Sales grew organically at 10%. Europe continues to show resiliency. North America performed as expected, and our businesses in India and the Middle East outperformed. New products continue to generate excitement with our customers. We continue to cover inflation with price using our EBX process. The teams are executing well, expanding EBITDA margins by 40 basis points year-over-year. Moving to slide 10. Americas had a solid quarter. Sales rose 10% organically, and we continue to run our playbook, which is aimed at lowering our cyclicality and rationalizing our product lines.
As I mentioned earlier, our North America business performed in line with expectations. South America continues to strengthen and is performing well sequentially, but was faced with a difficult year-over-year comp as a result of post-COVID buying patterns. EBITDA increased 9% and margins expanded 10 basis points in line with what we expected. Moving to slide 11. Our EMEA and APAC business had a strong quarter. Our third quarter sales rose 9% organically. This segment was negatively impacted by a strong U.S. dollar, and despite the FX headwind, EBITDA margins improved 50 basis points year-over-year, reflecting strong execution of our EBX process to reduce cost and improve efficiency and productivity. With that, let me turn it over to Kevin for slide 12.
Thanks, Shyam. Good morning, everyone. ESAB had a strong quarter for cash flow. Free cash flow was up 26% versus the prior year, and cash conversion was greater than 100%. Supply chains continued to improve in the quarter, allowing us to flex inventory and drive improved cash flow. As Shyam already discussed, we announced the Ohio Medical acquisition, and we have been able to fund this acquisition with our year-to-date cash flow. In the fourth quarter, we expect another strong quarter of cash flow generation and expect to end the year with a net leverage of 2.8 turns or less, well within our 2-3 times targeted leverage range. As I spoke earlier in the year at our Investor Day, we still have significant opportunities to further drive higher cash flow.
We are embracing new technology and our team continues to focus on improving our processes using EBX and delivering our long-term goal of consistent annual cash conversion of greater than 100%. For 2022, we remain on track to deliver greater than $210 million of free cash flow. Turning to slide 13, we provide an overview of our updated 2022 guidance. Our guidance numbers exclude Russia from the second quarter of 2022 and 2021. Total sales guidance has been reduced, which reflects approximately $30 million of additional FX. Organic growth remains unchanged, with market conditions remaining in line with what was expected last time we spoke. With one quarter to go, we narrowed our adjusted EBITDA guidance, which includes an approximately $4 million impact from FX.
Adjusted EPS guidance has been raised to $4-$4.10, reflecting improvements in our operating performance as we continue to use EBX to expand margins and from lower interest expense due to the favorable financing we secured last quarter. We expect another strong quarter in Q4 and look forward to exiting 2022 with positive momentum. With that, let me hand back to Shyam on slide 14 to wrap up.
Thank you, Kevin. To summarize, we delivered another solid quarter as we shape our business towards higher growth, less cyclicality, and higher margins. We are introducing game-changing innovative new products to the market, and these products will increase our mix towards equipment.
We are positively shaping our portfolio with accretive acquisitions like Ohio Medical. We continue to drive EBX across the business to reduce our operating costs and deliver strong free cash flow. We're off to a good start in Q4, and we're well on our way to shaping our business to deliver long-term shareholder value. Thank you again for joining us. Operator, please open the line for questions.
Thank you all speakers for the presentation. 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, and we will pause for a moment just to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Tami Zakaria from J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question . Hi Shyam. My first question is, it seems like pricing in North America was up 9%, and it's lapping almost 20% plus pricing from last year. As comps get tougher on pricing, how are you thinking about price realization maybe in 2023?
Yeah. Thanks for that question, Tami. A couple of things for us. I sort of mentioned this before. We have three different processes for pricing within ESAB as part of our EBX process. The first one was associated with inflation, and you've seen us do a really strong job on that, so price-based inflation. I would expect as we see the markets develop over the next 12-15 months, we'll see what inflation does. Pricing on that will continue to be very disciplined. There's two other processes that we have in place that I think will play a larger role as we go into 2023. The first one is value-based pricing based on the new products that we're coming out with.
We've done a really strong work with our teams around our stage gate process as we develop products, and we feel that these products are gonna be value priced and the market rates continue to drive margins to a better spot. Then the last piece is this piece around product line simplification and rationalization, where we think there's, again, opportunity for us to go out to the market with some targeted pricing going forward. I expect pricing to continue to be positive. Kevin and I continue to work on 2023. We'll have probably more detail as we finish out the year and give you some guidance sometime in Q1 next year.
Thank you so much. That's actually very helpful color. If I can ask a follow-up. We've been hearing about a lot of noise in Europe, demand moderation in different end markets. From your perspective, any comments on what you're seeing with regards to order trends in the EMEA region?
Thanks for that question. Tami, we have a very strong European business. We've talked about the strength in our European business, our team, our ground game in Europe. As I mentioned earlier in my call, Europe continues to be resilient. We've started Q4, you know, well, in the continent. There are. You know, obviously, we read the news, we understand what's in the press, but there are a few factors in my view that could be in our favor as we go through the next 12-15 months. We think agriculture spending in Europe is gonna continue to be strong. We think renewable energy, which includes wind tower and possibly nuclear, will continue to be a strong sort of investment opportunity and growth opportunity in Europe.
We also believe that oil and gas investments of some sort will continue to sort of make their way in Europe with maybe possibly LNG port investments, et cetera, that'll drive welding product needs. ESAB is well equipped on all those three fronts. You know, when you look at our ICE technology for the wind space, the certified products that we have for the nuclear space. Then also as I talk about oil and gas, we have some phenomenal products there. The last piece is defense. We think that defense will continue to sort of make its way forward as the European economy spend a little bit more of their GDP on that particular line, and ESAB is well positioned to take advantage of that.
We think that there are some negatives, but there are also some positives that could moderate the impact on ESAB, as we go over the next couple of years.
Great. Thank you so much.
Your next question comes from the line of Mig Dobre from Baird. Your line is open.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone.
Morning.
Morning, Mig.
I wanna follow up on the discussion here with Tami and maybe since we're kind of talking about the growth outlook, volumes clearly slowed in the business relative to where we were earlier in the year. From your perspective, what is going on in terms of end market demand? Is this a function of comparisons and, you know, sort of like channel dynamics like you highlighted in Latin America? Or is this more about just a tone and momentum of the business? Should investors at this point sort of expect a decline in volumes, especially as we're contemplating 2023? How do you think about managing your business within that context?
You know, we've just started our process for 2023, so we'll sort of talk about that sometime in Q1. What I can say to all of you today is that we started Q4 well. I don't see anything that sort of would make me wanna say to you that we're seeing any downward trend in volume that sort of has us concerned. Our orders continue to be at a strong rate. We continue to work our growth bridges. Our team continue to be excited about the possibility of driving share gain. The one thing, Mig, that we're really thrilled about is the new products that we're launching in the marketplace. We think that that's gonna drive new customers, drive new channels and opportunities for us in all geographies.
I think that's the exciting part about what we're doing. The other piece of that is also the acquisition that we made of Ohio Medical. We think that the geographic opportunities for us to cross-sell our products, whether it be GCE products in North America or the Ohio products globally, we think that there's a real opportunity there for some volume growth, and build out and strengthen our gas control portfolio that again drives high growth, better margins, lower cyclicality, and better cash flow for the business. All in all, as the team at ESAB sits here, and we finish out Q3 and go into Q4, there's sufficient amount of optimism. Just like anything else, you know, we're strong and seasoned leaders. We're making plans for everything that could come at us.
As we sit right now, markets are resilient. Markets are performing as expected. There's as much opportunity for growth as there is sort of in the newsprint on things that could go the other way. We're very excited about the products. We're very excited about the acquisitions that we've made, and feeling really good about where the business is positioned for the long term.
Okay. Fair enough. You know, in your discussion from a moment ago on pricing, the way I was sort of interpreting your commentary is to really. It was really pertaining to the equipment side of the business more so than consumables, things like value pricing and so on. I am wondering, though, as we're kinda looking at raw material costs pulling back, do you think it's reasonable for consumable pricing to remain flat or better in 2023? Or is that going to start manifesting as a potential headwind?
Yeah. Mig, the way that I would ask you to look at this is in the past, what has happened is that we have seen, you know, commodity prices drop, and we've held on to some of the price on the way down. You know, we're very quick as we go out with pricing to the marketplace, and we sort of are very deliberate on the way down. I think that's an expectation that we continue to have within the business going forward. The second piece that I would say to you is that there's other inflation out there that continues to sort of justify pricing to be where it's at or possibly move north as we go into 2023.
The team, as you know, we have a very disciplined process of understanding all inflation. As a team, we review net price on a monthly basis, within the business and in every region and with all of our sales teams. As a result, we know exactly where we're at any moment in time, reasonably where our cost position is, no matter if it's a commodity space inflation or other inflation that the business sees, within the month or the quarter. I'm very comfortable with the process that we have, and the process is geared to sort of focus on net price and the impact on the business, driving margins forward. That's really where we're focused as a leadership team.
All right. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Chris Dankert from Loop Capital. Your line is open.
Hey. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess, you know, forgive me if I missed it, but, you know, thinking about EBX in the quarter, any update just kind of on the product line rationalization, what's going on that front?
Thanks for that, Chris. You know, we continue to make progress on that particular front. The view that we have is that we're just early innings on that particular piece. We expect that initiative of ours to sort of move on to different geographies as we go through 2023. As a result, what I'd say to you is EBX continues to drive that piece. There's another piece right behind it that's footprint rationalization that we've continued to kind of drive forward, and then OpEx reduction within the business. We're sort of looking at three different pieces, the product line rationalization, continued sort of improvement in our footprint, and then OpEx transformation within the business. We're working all three, early innings on the product rationalization piece.
Seeing some good progress, actually, encouraged by what's sort of ahead of us in 2023.
Got it. Well, that touches on something else I kinda wanted to ask you about. I mean, on the footprint rationalization, is it fair to assume, you know, we're in the planning and evaluation stages here, that's probably like a 2024 benefit for the most part?
You know, I don't think we've given out a specific number on benefit, but expect to hear from us sometime in Q1 as to what the restructuring or footprint benefits would be as we go into it. It's something that we continually do within the business as we ratchet up our performance and ratchet up the expectations within our team. The view for us would be that there's gonna be something in there. We're just not ready to talk about it. Kevin and I are going through our budget processing for next year, and so expect to hear more about that in Q1.
Understood. Thanks so much for the color.
Your next question comes from the line of Nathan Jones from Stifel. Your line is open.
Yeah, good morning. This is Adam Farley on for Nathan.
Hi, Adam.
I appreciate the detail on the new products in the pipeline and vitality index. They all sound really interesting. I was wondering if you could provide a little more color on, you know, maybe how many products are you expecting to launch in 2023. Have you had any difficulties from maybe supply chain on launching new equipment? Maybe are there any technology product gaps that ESAB might go after inorganically?
Yeah. Thank you for that. Really appreciate the question around innovation 'cause we're really excited about what we've done over the last couple of years with ESAB. As you know, we started off with 24 products. Today, we're at 110. The bigger piece for us is as we've made those innovations, what we've done, and something that I talked about also on the call, is create scalable platforms. The view for us is when you look at the Renegade, the Warrior, what you see are platforms that are now scalable. What you see is design integrity. You see designs sort of that are now part of the foundation. As a result, what we have is a better supply chain, a better production efficiency as a result of it going forward.
Not to mention the Renegade VOLT, which was absolutely game changing. It's something that we're really excited about. You'll see us talk about it at FABTECH. We're gonna be launching it in a big way here next week. This was the first time that we've talked about it publicly. It's a device today that performs as well as any other product that's out there for the applications that are needed for remote welding. It has interchangeable batteries, so if somebody has a power tool that belongs to DEWALT, they can use that exact same battery to run you know the welding equipment. So really excited about that piece. To your question on will we keep up the pace, the short answer is yes.
The number of innovations may sort of slow down a bit only because we're focused on some specific platforms, some specific foundation. I've talked about equipment, but we continue to also innovate on the filament side of our business, also on the torch side of our business. All in all, what we're doing is rationalizing the number of product lines, rationalizing the number of SKUs, creating truly innovative products that start on a foundation and a platform that can then be built upon for consistency and simplicity of our supply chain. Really exciting stuff that, in my view, will continue to pay dividends in terms of margins and customer satisfaction over the next 3-5 years.
That's really, really helpful. I did wanna ask another question on the forward outlook for growth. You know, we've heard from some other companies in our coverage of this divergence between industrial and consumer markets. I'm wondering if maybe you're seeing that in your end markets. Is industrial holding in stronger than maybe more your retail-oriented markets?
You know, our story is a bit different on that particular front, partially because we're new to the retail market and you'll see us sort of talk about this with another announcement that should come out in the next couple of days, our move into retail. We're new to that space. As we move into that space, especially in North America, it's really all growth for ESAB. We're actually seeing positive momentum both on the retail side because of some share activity. The industrial side for us has actually held up, you know, it's been resilient is the best word to use on that particular front, both in the Americas and also in Europe.
I sort of mentioned to you, India and the Middle East have sort of been the out-performers, as we looked at Q3 and we're off to a good start in Q4 as well.
Thanks for taking my questions.
This is the final call for any questions. If you do have a follow-up question, please press star one now, and we will pause for any final questions. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Mark for final and closing statements.
Thank you for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking to you on our next call. Have a good day.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.