Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Eaton third quarter earnings call. At this point, all the participant lines are in a listen-only mode. However, there will be an opportunity for your questions. If you'd like to ask a question on the call today, please press one, then zero on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by repeating the one-zero command. If you should require any assistance during the call, please press star zero and an operator will assist you offline. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I'll turn the call now over to Mr. Yan Jin, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Thank you all for joining us for Eaton's Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. With me today are Craig Arnold, our Chairman and CEO, and Tom Okray, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer. Our agenda today includes the opening remarks by Craig, then he will turn it over to Tom, who will highlight the company's performance in the third quarter. As we have done in our past calls, we'll be taking questions at the end of Craig's closing commentary. The press release and the presentation we'll go through today have been posted on our website. This presentation includes adjusted earnings per share, adjusted free cash flow, and other non-GAAP measures. They're reconciled in appendix. A webcast of this call is accessible on our website and will be available for replay.
I would like to remind you that our comments today will include the statement related to the expected future results of the company and are therefore forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from our forecasted projections due to a wide range of risks and uncertainties that are described in our earnings release and the presentation. With that, I will turn it over to Craig.
Thanks, Yan. Hey, we'll begin with the highlights of the quarter on page three, and I'll start by noting that we delivered another very strong quarter and have again posted a number of all-time records, including adjusted earnings per share of $2.02, which is up 15% from prior year. This, despite negative impact of FX and the divestment of the hydraulics business, which took place in August of 2021. Our organic revenue growth also continued to accelerate in the quarter, up 11% in Q2 to up 15% in Q3. I think encouragingly, we had strength across all of our businesses, with exceptional growth in Electrical Americas, in Vehicle, and eMobility.
We also posted all-time record segment margins of 21.2%, up 130 basis points over prior year, and above the high end of our guidance, with incrementals of 38% in the quarter. I'd also note that our team continued to manage price effectively, more than fully offsetting the impact of inflation. As noted here, orders continued to accelerate in the quarter as well. On a rolling 12-month basis, electrical orders increased 27% versus 25% last quarter, and our aerospace orders increased 22% compared to 19% last quarter. You know, this order strength, I'd say, also led to another quarter of record backlogs in electrical, which were up some 75%, and our aerospace backlogs increased by 17%. Lastly, you know, we did start to generate positive momentum in our cash flow results.
We had a strong year-on-year performance, with operating cash flow up 29% and a 30% increase in free cash flow. Our free cash flow as a percentage of sales was 15.6% in the quarter. As expected, we're starting to see improved cash flow from both higher earnings and improved working capital performance. Moving to page four, and before I turn things over to Tom to go through the quarterly results, I want to highlight a few of the key themes that are really underpinning our confidence in our long-term growth outlook. As noted here, we continue to benefit from the three secular growth trends that we reviewed earlier, electrification, energy transition, and digitalization. While still in the early stages, we booked some $700 million of new wins in the quarter that are directly tied to these trends.
Within electrification, you've all read the announcements of the very large number of manufacturing projects in the U.S., that include new semiconductor facilities, big investments in new electric vehicle manufacturing plants, new EV battery investments, and investments in EV charging infrastructure. In fact, you know, there's been some $1.3 trillion of new projects announced this year alone. The impact of the stimulus bill has yet to show up in these numbers. These incentives will point towards large, investments that are tied to improving electrical infrastructure and will deliver significant benefits over the next few years. The next large growth driver is energy transition, the move away from fossil fuels to renewables that's taken place for a number of years now, and this trend will only accelerate. With every renewable resource addition, it requires electrical infrastructure.
It's not just, I'd say, connecting power to the grid. It's also investments in technology to keep the grid stable, to manage different sources of electrical power, investments in batteries to store excess energy, and these are all products and services that we naturally provide. Beyond renewables, we're also seeing an increase in investments relating to improving grid resiliency, which has become a priority due to extreme weather events and really the demand for a need for energy independence. Lastly, our emerging digital society will drive higher selling prices as we add intelligence to our legacy products.
We'll sell new value from data and insights and create new software solutions, all of which require data centers, an important growth segment for Eaton. These, I'd say, are just a few of the reasons why we remain confident in our electrical businesses and their ability to deliver higher levels of organic growth for some years to come. As slide five reflects, we have a number of attractive growth drivers in our industrial businesses as well. You know, I'll begin with the most notable one, vehicle electrification. Here, you know, the outlook for EV penetration continues to accelerate with new announcements coming almost every week. And I'd say here, not just in passenger cars, we're also seeing increasing need for electrification projects in commercial vehicles, some for the entire system, but often for a subsystem of the vehicle.
I'd also note here, the opportunities we're seeing tied to the acquisition of Royal Power are much larger than we anticipated, and our eMobility pipeline continues to be very robust. Just as a point of reference, you know, our opportunity per vehicle on an EV is some 18 times higher than the opportunity that we have on a traditional internal combustion engine. You'll recall, we expect our eMobility segment to become $2 billion-$4 billion in revenue over the next number of years. The next growth driver is tied to what we're doing in our legacy vehicle business, which is finding new applications for existing technology. We're seeing a number of new opportunities for our commercial engine brake technology, for our mechanical gears that are used in electric vehicles, and for our advanced valve train actuation technology.
In all three cases, we've already booked significant new wins here. Third, we're benefiting from the aerospace industry growth cycle, which over the next several years, will continue to accelerate. Commercial passenger growth is continuing to improve, and it's translating into significant growth in commercial aftermarket orders, which by the way, were up some 40%, year-to-date. Commercial OEM build rates are forecasted to grow some 15% over the next four years. Lastly, I'd note that, with our acquisitions of Souriau-Sunbank and Cobham Mission Systems, we expect to see even better growth given our position on high-growth platforms and as we begin to realize sales synergies. You know, overall, just stepping back, you know, from this particular set of initiatives, we've delivered some $250 million of wins in industrial.
When added to what we noted in electrical, we delivered almost $1 billion of growth tied to the secular growth trends in our markets. With that, what I'd like to do at this point is turn it over to Tom and ask him to walk through the quarterly results.
Thanks, Craig. I'll begin with noting a few key points regarding our Q3 results. Our revenue was up 8% with organic growth of 15%, partially offset by a 4% foreign exchange headwind and a 3% unfavorable net impact of acquisitions and divestitures. Related to the acquisitions and divestitures, the acquisition of Royal Power increased revenue by 1%, while the sale of hydraulics reduced revenues by four percent, sorry, for a net of 3%. With total revenue growth of 8%, we posted solid operating leverage with 15% growth in both operating profit and adjusted EPS. It's worth noting that the foreign exchange headwind of 4% had a $0.08 impact on adjusted EPS, which was larger than our 3% guidance estimate.
Further, growth in Adjusted EPS of 15% would've been 22%, excluding the $0.08 impact from FX and the $0.03 net impact from acquisitions and divestitures. All in, stronger organic growth and higher margins enabled us to report Adjusted EPS of $2.02 that was above our guidance midpoint. Finally, as we did last quarter, we continue to raise the bar with all-time records in Adjusted EPS, segment operating profit, and segment margin. Moving to the next slide, Electrical Americas had another very strong quarter. We set all-time records for sales, operating profit, and margin. Revenue growth accelerated to 18% organically, driven by strength in all end markets, with particular strength in commercial and institutional, residential, industrial, and utility end markets.
Operating margin at 23.5% was up 180 basis points versus prior year, benefiting from higher volumes. With respect to price, we continue to manage price effectively to more than offset inflationary pressures in the segment. In addition, our demand continues to remain very strong. Orders on a rolling 12-month basis accelerated sequentially, coming in at 36% year- over- year versus 29% in the prior quarter. Our orders were strong across the board, with particular strength in data center, utility, and industrial end markets. These order growth translated into another record quarter of backlog, up 97%. On a sequential basis, backlog is up 14% versus the prior quarter.
In addition to the robust trends in orders and backlog, our major project negotiations pipeline more than doubled year-over-year. Driven by especially strong growth in manufacturing, data center, industrial, and utility end markets. Turning to page eight, Electrical Global results were also very strong, generating a Q3 record for revenue and all-time records for operating profit and margin. Organic growth was up 13% with an 8% foreign exchange headwind. Notably, this is the sixth quarter in a row of double-digit organic revenue growth. We saw solid organic growth in all regions with particular strength in our global Crouse-Hinds and B-Line business and solid growth in both Europe and Asia-Pacific. We posted record segment margin of 20.6%, up 50 basis points year-over-year.
Similar to Electrical Americas, higher volume was a margin tailwind versus the prior year, and we continue to manage price effectively to more than offset inflationary pressures. Orders were up 14% organically on a rolling 12-month basis, with strength in commercial and institutional and industrial end markets. Backlog growth remains strong at up 22%. Before moving to our industrial businesses, I'd like to briefly recap the very strong results of our combined electrical segments. For Q3, we posted accelerating organic growth of 16%, incremental margin of 33%, and operating margin of 22.3%, with 130 basis points of year-over-year margin improvement. We also generated orders and backlog growth of 27% and 75% respectively, with more than doubling of our negotiation pipeline in the United States.
We remain very well positioned for profitable growth in our overall electrical businesses. Our aerospace segment results are captured on the next page. Aerospace also generated records in the quarter with an all-time sales revenue record and a Q3 operating profit record. Organic revenue increased 8% with 5% foreign exchange headwinds. Organic growth in the quarter was particularly strong in our commercial aftermarket and commercial OEM markets. Encouragingly, military aftermarket grew in the quarter. Operating margin of 24% was up 200 basis points from the prior year, benefiting from volume growth. On a rolling 12-month basis, our order acceleration continued, now 22% versus up 19% last quarter, including military OEM markets that were also up 22%.
We saw order strength in all end markets as travel continues to accelerate within commercial markets and military orders strengthened consistent with our expectations for increased defense spending. Backlog remained strong with a 17% increase over prior year and up 5% sequentially. Moving on to our vehicle segment. Organic revenue grew 19%. We also experienced a 3% headwind from FX. We had strength in the North America, South America, and EMEA markets. Our North American light motor vehicle business was especially strong with nearly 25% organic growth, while our South American business was up more than 35%. Operating margin of 16.8% was down 120 basis points versus prior year, primarily due to manufacturing inefficiencies. However, it's important to note improvement in our ability to offset higher inflationary costs with price.
This is reflected in sequential margin improvement of 150 basis points from Q2. Incremental margins on a sequential basis were up nearly 50% with solid volume growth and continued progress on price costs. Moving to page 11, we show results for our eMobility business. Revenues grew 63%, including 17% organic growth, 49% from the acquisition of Royal Power Solutions, and 3% foreign exchange headwind. We continued the trend of narrowing the operating loss on a year-over-year basis. This quarter, operating margin improved 800 basis points driven by organic volume growth and the impact from the Royal Power Solutions acquisition. We are seeing continued momentum to achieve our $2 billion-$4 billion revenue target with new platform wins for power protection solutions, including additional braking torque wins. Our opportunity pipeline remains robust for innovative power distribution, conversion, and protection solutions.
On the following slide, we have a summary of our guidance for the year. As noted on the chart, we are reaffirming 2022 organic growth and operating margin guidance in total. Further, we are reaffirming both metrics for all segments except eMobility operating margin. More specifically, we continue to expect organic growth in the range of 11%-13% and operating margin from 20% to 20.4%. Turning to page 13, we show the balance of guidance for 2022. We're not making significant changes to our full year outlook. We tightened our adjusted EPS range of $7.51-$7.61 per share from the prior guide of $7.36-$7.76.
Consistent with the foreign exchange headwinds that we mentioned throughout the presentation, we increased the unfavorable translation impact to $600 million from $450 million in our previous guide. Our full year expectations for the other items are unchanged. With respect to cash flow, orders and backlog have grown significantly more than our expectations. In addition, we have been and will continue to prioritize customers and profitable revenue growth at the expense of cash flow. Therefore, while we have good cash flow momentum in Q3, we have work to do to achieve our objectives. Shifting to Q4. Highlighting a few key points on our Q4 guidance. We expect Adjusted EPS to be in the $2.00-$2.10 range, organic growth to be between 13% and 15% and operating margin to be between 20.5% and 20.9%.
Comparing to the prior year, adjusted EPS and operating margin guidance at the midpoint represent over 19% growth and a 140 basis point increase respectively. Now I will hand it back to Craig to walk us through a market outlook and wrap up the presentation.
Thanks, Tom. Hey, turning to page 14, we provide an early look at our end market assumptions for 2023. Let me begin by saying that we are expecting to see a typical mild recession next year, but don't expect it will have a significant impact on our growth given the secular growth trends, the strong orders and the record backlog that we're sitting on. Within electrical, data centers, industrial facilities and the utility market are all expected to see very good growth. Together, they account for approximately 40% of our total revenue and quite frankly, have some of the strongest orders and backlogs in the company. As a point of reference, industrial projects announced this year so far are up some 300%, so you can see really strong momentum in this, in these segments of the business.
Commercial and institutional, as well as machinery, are expected to see more modest growth. Of note, orders in C&I continue to accelerate in the quarter with significant strength in government and institutional. This is a segment where you'd imagine we expect to see significant benefits from stimulus spending. The one relatively weak segment is expected to be residential. While we've not seen a downturn yet and our orders are up some 23% on a rolling 12-month basis through Q3, we do expect this segment next year. I would, however, note that resi only accounts for 7% of the total company sales and that residential new build market will be somewhat offset by the renovation market. The renovation market accounts for some 40% of our residential sales.
I'd also note that we'd expect to see higher electrical content per home, which is what we've been seeing over the last number of years. Within our industrial sector, we're expecting it to be a big year for electric vehicles. Increasing government regulations and incentives and the large number of new EV introductions will keep this segment strong, quite frankly, for years to come. In commercial aerospace and light motor vehicle markets are both expected to see a cyclical recovery. The need to rebuild inventories will support vehicle markets and the aerospace aftermarket growth and the ramp up in commercial OEM production will drive aerospace markets higher next year. Lastly, we expect commercial vehicle markets to be flat, but quite frankly, at quite healthy levels. In total, 85% of our markets are expected to see positive organic growth next year.
We'll naturally provide more details on our specific organic growth assumptions during our February earnings call, but we did want to share our preliminary thinking and let you know that we expect 2023 to be another good year of growth for the company. Lastly, on page 15, I'd like to close with maybe just a few points here. First, you know, I'd say I'm pleased with our Q3 results, particularly with our strong margins, our earnings and our orders growth. We continue to manage the business well and delivered record profits despite ongoing supply chain challenges and inflationary environment, significant FX and interest headwinds. The transformation of the portfolio has delivered what we promised, higher quality company with higher growth, higher margins, and better earnings consistency.
For the balance of the year, we remain on track to deliver our commitments, including record operating margins, adjusted earnings per share. We're doing so despite offsetting, once again, the significant headwinds that I talked about around FX, pension, and interest. These headwinds increase in Q4. As we look into next year, we remain optimistic despite our recession expectations. We do expect a slowdown, and we'll be prepared in the event of a more significant downturn. We know how to flex our costs and deliver attractive decrementals. As we said, we have good reasons for optimism. Secular growth trends are driving strong momentum in our businesses, and we have a growing pipeline of opportunities.
We're going into next year with strong momentum, with record backlogs, and with an expectation that many of the operational inefficiencies and supply chain disruptions will get materially better next year. We feel great about the quarter, great about the outlook. With that, we'll turn it back to you, Yan Jin, for Q&A.
Hey, thanks, Craig. For the Q&A today, please limit your opportunity to one question and one follow-up. Thanks in advance for your cooperation. With that, I will turn it over to the operator to give you guys the instructions.
Ladies and gentlemen, just as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press one then zero on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question at any time by repeating the one zero command. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. Our first question will be from Nicole DeBlase with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Good morning, guys.
Good morning, Nicole.
Good morning.
Maybe can we just start with you know, going through expectations for 2023 incrementals. I know it's a bit early, Craig, to be giving guidance, but you were kind enough to walk us through the end market outlook. I'm just curious if you think that it's feasible to kind of be at your long-term guidance for incrementals, at least as a starting point. Let's start with that.
You know, I appreciate the question, Nicole. As you can imagine, we're working through our 2023 proper plans right now and have lots of activity going on in and around the company to get prepared for that. I would say that as you think about, you know, next year, I think kind of a 30% incremental margin would be kind of the right place to be thinking about, you know, running your models at this point. We'll naturally be in a position by the time we get to the earnings call for Q4 in February to give you a more specific read on that. We think 30% is probably a good planning number at this juncture.
Got it. Thanks, Craig. I guess what surprised me the most this quarter was just the huge acceleration in Electrical Americas orders. Definitely encouraging to see that even as comps get difficult. Maybe if you could dig a little bit more into what drove the Q-on-Q acceleration.
Yeah. You know, as we talked about and shared in some of the outbound commentary, we've had pretty, you know, broad-based strength in orders in our electrical business. I mean, in the Americas specifically, you know, data centers were extremely strong. Industrial markets, very strong. Utility markets, we had, you know, orders up some 60%. It really was broad-based. Even in the resi market, you know, on a rolling 12-month basis, you know, even there, we had orders that were still up some 20%. It's tough at this point to really call out any particular market in the Americas that I'd say that was weak, but we had really, really strong strength.
I'd say a lot of it really is tied to these, you know, big trends we talked about. Obviously, you know, the utility markets in general are certainly benefiting today from some of these investments in not only energy transition, but, you know, grid resiliency. Data centers, you know, and I know there's been lots of debate about that market and which direction it is headed in, but we're really continuing to see really strong strength in the data center market, even to the point where customers today are looking to place long-term commitments and basically hold a slot in our production plans out into 2024. We continue to see, you know, very strong strength in our Americas business, once again, tied to these trends that we've been talking about for some time.
We're absolutely pleased to see it, you know, showing up in our orders, and that will obviously convert to revenue as we have the ability to ship, yeah, and we resolve some of these supply chain issues that we continue to deal with.
Yeah. Just to amplify the data centers in the Americas on a quarter-over-quarter basis up almost 40% and on a trailing 12 month, over 50%. We've been hearing noise on that of slowdown. We're not seeing it.
Thank you, guys. I'll pass it on.
Next we have line of Josh Pokrzywinski with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, guys.
Hey, Josh.
Craig, on this order surge that you guys have seen, you know, anything that you would attribute to timing around stimulus or lead times or, you know, anything else, maybe a chunky order in there that we should think about as we look out? 'Cause, you know, we are gonna continue to see some tough comps here. I know that with the rolling 12, it's kind of hard to parse out maybe some of the quarter-to-quarter volatility.
Yeah, no. We tried to provide a little bit of color because I know there's this question around whether or not, you know, what kind of growth are you seeing in orders in the quarter, which is why we try to share that not just in the rolling 12, but actually in the quarter. We're seeing significant strength. Those numbers that Tom quoted were actually in the quarter-over-quarter numbers, despite, to your point, tougher comps. You know, I'd say in terms of the order surge question, you know, as I mentioned in my opening commentary, there have been a number of very large projects announced.
I'd say as you think about, you know, whether it's reshoring or investment in in you know, grid infrastructure or it's investment in new battery facilities, there are today, perhaps different than some of the other cycles that we've been through, a lot more very large industrial projects that tend to be more electrical intensive as an application that we're certainly seeing in our backlog, and that's certainly helping us. That also gives us a lot of confidence as well, because these tend to be big multiyear projects that will go on for some time to come. Stimulus, to your question on stimulus, not yet. We certainly would anticipate that at some point down the road that we'll start to see a meaningful impact from stimulus.
Most of those programs, you know, are still probably, you know, six to 12 months away from really having a meaningful impact on the company. Once again, that's just another one of these, you know, vectors that we think will continue to give us a multiyear growth story that's pretty compelling. As you know, a lot of those stimulus dollars are going directly into the markets in which we participate. It's about building out the electrical infrastructure. It's about grid resiliency. It's about energy transition. It's investments in efficiency. It's specifically to the point where they actually specify upgrading your electrical panel as particular parts of the program that qualify for these investments. It's just another one of these things, Josh, that gives us confidence in the long-term outlook of our electrical business specifically.
Yeah. Got it. That's helpful.
Just a little more color on the major projects in the US. You know, manufacturing in the quarter, negotiations up over 300%. Data centers up over almost 170%. The year-to-date numbers are equally strong. Just really strong numbers on the major projects.
Got it. That's helpful. Then just quick follow-up on the stimulus piece or I guess, you know, broader infrastructure spending that you guys are tracking. I know there's some big dollars there. Obviously, not all of that is electrical, but as you touched on a lot of things, you know, sort of get into Eaton's backyard at some point. How would you think about, you know, what those do to your addressable market here as those start to enter? Is that like a 5% increase, a 30% increase to addressable market? Like, any sort of ring fencing would be helpful.
I'd say it's maybe a little bit early for us to be able to put a handle on, you know, how it's gonna impact, you know, specifically the relative opportunity or the relative growth. As you know, they are very big billion-dollar programs directly targeted at electrical infrastructure. So but I would just say that at this point, Josh, we would hope to, at some point down the road, give you a better indicator of that. But it's just, quite frankly, today a little bit too early to see how this is gonna all play out. But it's all gonna be good. I mean, it's all gonna be, you know, things that are gonna help us continue to accelerate our growth, not just in the next 12 months, but quite frankly, these stimulus programs will help us accelerate growth over the next three to four years.
Yep. Agreed. Thanks for the detail. Best of luck.
Next, we'll go to Andrew Obin with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. How are you?
Hey, Andrew. We're doing well. Thank you.
Great.
Yeah. Good morning. Just a question. Can you please give us your thoughts on data centers? I know you've been very positive, but just maybe talk about different verticals within the data center market.
Andrew, we're getting some background noise. It's very tough to hear you.
We heard data centers, Andrew, but we were.
Hold on. Give me one second. Just give me one second. Let me try this. Is this better?
Much better.
Much better.
Yeah. Just on data centers, if we could, just focus on different geographies and different verticals within the data center market. It's just, there's a lot of noise regarding this market. What are you guys seeing? I know you're bullish, but just as I said, more color by geography and vertical.
I appreciate the question, you know, Andrew. We certainly, if you think about geographically, we're clearly seeing the strongest growth in the Americas market. Very strong growth in the Americas market, very strong growth in hyperscale, but also in colo and on-prem. If you know today, I mean, you know, I guess some 40% of the market would be hyperscale, but this really is broad-based strength that we're seeing in the data center market, you know, certainly in the Americas. We're seeing good growth but not as strong growth in Europe and in Asia, two markets that are also growing. This is, once again, the IT channel to really distinguish that from the broader data center market.
We have seen it tend to be a little shorter cycle, and we have seen a little bit relatively slower growth. Still good growth, but relatively slower growth in the IT channel, relatively slower growth in single phase in markets like Europe and Asia. Once again, we're still seeing growth in those markets.
Great. Thank you. Just on capital allocation, you know, as interest rates have gone up, you're clearly cash generative. You're more of a strategic buyer. How has the market landscape changed from your perspective? Does it make more likely or less likely to see a deal from Eaton in the next 12-18 months?
You know, I would say that, you know, what's going on in the interest rate environment, you know, needs to at some point translate into, you know, seller expectations on valuation. I'd say there's always, as you know, a fairly significant lag between the realities of, you know, the market changing and companies' expectations of what their value is. I'd say in general, in these kinds of environments, you know, you would expect you know, asset valuations to come in a little bit and that would therefore increase the likelihood of us doing transactions. I would say today, it's early, and we really have not seen any material change at this point in valuations or expectations.
We continue to be, you know, out on the hunt looking for opportunities and still think that's the right priority for the company. Having said that, as we've said in the past, you know, we will not overreach. We don't intend to overpay. We've been very disciplined buyer, and we'll continue to be a very disciplined buyer. You know, in the event that, you know, asset valuations don't come in line with our expectations, we'll certainly use that as an opportunity to buy back our stock.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Next we'll go to Nigel Coe with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning.
Hey, Nigel.
The 2023, you know, end market outlook, it looks like, you know, if you had to kind of pick a number, you'd say 5%-6% type blended growth rates. The one I guess I'm surprised by is the C&I market, where you're looking for modest growth. You know, it seems like the leading indicators there are really healthy. You know, we've got some stimulus money coming through. Just wondering, you know, what's driving that view? Is it some, you know, collateral damage from residential? Is it Europe, Asia Pacific? You know, any color there would be great.
You know, appreciate it. We tried to kind of unpack that a little bit in my opening commentary, but, you know, we're still seeing good growth in the C&I market. You know, orders on a rolling 12 month basis, by the way, globally were up 23%. In the quarter, they were actually up 27%. Actually a very strong quarter with orders actually accelerating in the quarter. I'd say on the commercial side, you know, we're seeing growth, but we're seeing the biggest growth in what we call institutional and government. As I noted in my commentary, that's really where you would expect to see some of the, you know, early, you know, indications of some of the government dollars and government spending in and around institutional and government.
That market continues to do extremely well, and we really have not seen any signs, particularly in that market, of a letup. I think more generally speaking, you know, the Americas as a region tends to be the strongest region in the world, really across most of these end markets. We had a very strong quarter in Europe as well in the C&I market.
In Asia also. Asia was very strong in commercial and institutional. Actually, all the end markets grew quite strong on a quarter-over-quarter and the trailing 12 months. I mean, Europe was particularly strong in commercial as well as government on a trailing 12 months as well as on a quarter-over-quarter.
I mean, so, you know, at some point, I mean, as somebody mentioned earlier, we're gonna be anniversaring some really strong growth numbers, and we do expect these growth numbers to slow and moderate someplace in terms of the order intake. But also keep in mind, we're sitting on record backlogs that are up, you know, in some cases of, you know, more than 100%. Even if you have a little bit of a slowdown in some of these end markets, which, you know, you'll likely see some of that, you know, our backlogs today, you know, are giving us visibility into, you know, almost 60% of next year's demand. That number is about 2x what we normally see.
Right. Yeah. That's it. I mean, it all sounds great. Just wondering what changes in 2023. My follow-on question is on free cash flow. You know, we got a pretty big fourth quarter lined up in the plan. You know, growth rates remain really strong. Just wondering, you know, kind of the confidence on what needs to happen to drive that free cash flow.
Yeah. No, appreciate the question. We tried to touch on it in the prepared remarks. We had a very strong Q3. Cash conversion cycle, we improved by seven days. Days on hand went up four days, payables up another two days. So we felt really good about that. I think what we wanna get in terms of the prepared remarks is to let you know we're going to prioritize taking care of the customer and protecting the orders and organic growth. Recognizing that, we've got work to do to hit our free cash flow objective, no question about it.
Okay, thanks.
Next, we'll go to Scott Davis with Melius Research. Please go ahead.
Hey. Good morning, guys.
Morning, Scott.
I don't think I've heard a specific price number and not asking for anything particularly precise, it can be a range. Of that 15% core it's been running typically kind of a little bit more than half in price. Is that about the same this quarter?
Yeah. Scott, you know, as you'd know, what we said in prior calls is that we haven't given out a split specifically between price and volume, largely because there's such a huge variation depending upon, you know, the markets, the customers, you know, the various commodities that we're selling. We haven't given out a number. I would say that within that 15% growth, we had healthy growth in both volume and price.
Okay. Price sequentially is still going up?
Throughout the year, we've seen strong growth in volume as well.
Yeah.
Do you guys have a sense of. I mean, your customers, are they trying to build some inventory ahead of anticipated demand in 2023? Are they trying to get ahead of some price increases? What is the incentive? Or are they just paranoid they're not gonna be able to get product? You know, I'm trying to just get my arms around the incentive to really, you know, order above the actual end market growth, cause it's certainly your growth rates are above, you know, global GDP levels by quite some-
Yeah. No, I would say, first of all, I'd say our end markets are doing very well, and so a lot of what we're seeing today is in fact a reflection of, you know, just heightened industrial activity, heightened investments in manufacturing. You know, we talked about these big investments in things like semiconductors, you know, new plants for building EV factories and new factories for building, you know, batteries and investments in grid hardening. In many cases, the markets that we're participating in, you know, are really strong markets right now. You know, having said that, I would say that our customers would like to build some more inventory, and today they're not, and we're not seeing any evidence at this point at all, more broadly of overstocking the distribution channel.
There is some nervousness in the marketplace today around, you know, I need to get a place in line. As we've mentioned before, we're probably getting orders a little bit earlier in the process than we would normally get an order, so we're getting more lead time. In general, you can see it, you know, in some of the distributor data as well, you know, our distributors, their sales out, you know, are very strong. If you look at some of the big, you know, electrical distributors and the numbers that they've reported.
Yeah. That's really helpful color. Best of luck. I'll pass it on. Thank you, guys.
Thanks, Scott.
We'll go to Julian Mitchell with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. I think you know, just firstly, wanted to focus on the fourth quarter for a second. It looks like you're assuming kind of flattish sales sequentially and margins down maybe 50 basis points or so. It seems like that's very concentrated in the aerospace division, where there's kind of a big margin reversal versus what you saw in the third quarter. Maybe just clarify that please on aerospace and if there's anything else kind of going on sequentially on margins in the segments.
Yeah. I mean, as you know, Julian, we had a really strong quarter in Aerospace in Q3. As you know, from this business, so much of how you perform in aerospace is really a function of the mix of your aftermarket versus OE sales. In any given quarter, you can have a very different mix that certainly will push your margins around one way or another. The margin levels as implied and, you know, are still very strong in aerospace and very much in line with our guidance for the year. You know, in any given quarter, you can in fact see a little bit of difference depending upon how much OEM business you're shipping.
With the ramp in OEMs and some of our major customers, you probably, you know, embedded in that numbers are probably more OEM shipments than we would typically see or certainly we saw as a mix or as a percentage in Q3. By and large, the business, you know, is doing well. Backlog is growing. Profitability is doing well. Team's executing well, and so we have no concerns about aerospace. We think the business is in great shape.
Thanks very much. Then, just my follow-up, I suppose would be around kind of volume growth. As you said, it's been healthy in the third quarter. You know, so assuming it's up, you know, let's say mid-single digit. You know, as you think about the backlog from here as supply constraints ease, do you think we see an incremental kind of acceleration in backlog conversion into revenues? And so your volume growth, you know, could accelerate in the next few quarters, even as sales slow down. You know, maybe just help us understand kind of that work through of orders into revenue volumes as supply chains are moving around.
You know, I appreciate the question and it's what we've been chasing really, Julian, for at least the last 12 months, where we, you know, quite frankly, you know, we need a little bit of a slowdown, quite frankly, in orders just to catch our breath and try to deal with some of these backlogs that we're building in the business. I'd say that, yeah, it's absolutely possible that you could have a scenario where, you know, just working off the backlog and the past dues gives you the ability to continue to grow your business despite, you know, what could be, you know, a bit of a slowdown in the marketplace. That's entirely possible.
Quite frankly, we need the ability to take a little bit of a breather to execute on some of this backlog. To date, as you saw in our results, I mean, the orders keep coming, and they keep coming fairly broadly in the marketplace. We think these secular growth trends that we're playing into are gonna go on for some time. The way we're responding to that is we're investing. We're investing in capacity and capability and doing things in our supply chain to ensure that we're in a position to deal with these higher levels of economic activity, this higher growth, and support what we think is gonna be higher growth for these businesses for some time to come.
Great. Thank you.
All right. Next, we'll go to Joe Ritchie with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks. Good morning, guys.
Morning, Joe.
Yeah. Really, I guess maybe two clarification questions, follow-ups from what others have already asked. The first one, just going back to, you know, M&A portfolio. You guys have done a lot, Craig. I'm just curious. You know, what kind of leverage target would you be willing to go to in this environment? You know, clearly, like, your backlog's in really good shape, but I know that there's a lot of concern around the uncertainty for 2023, and concern around higher leverage levels across, you know, the broader multis. I'm just curious, you know, for the right deal, what would be your expectation on leverage?
I mean, as you know, Joe, you've been around the company for some years, you know, we have in the past levered up for the right strategic deal. As an organization, as a company, we tend to have very good, you know, cash generation. For us, I would say that for the right deal, you know, we'd be perfectly willing to lever up and go to the same levels that we've been at historically. You know, I will tell you that, you know, those deals are not right in front of us today, and I just I don't want to set an expectation around some near-term transaction that's gonna require that we lever up.
What you're likely to see from us are deals that are very much consistent with what we've done recently in terms of, you know, kind of bite-sized transactions that we can fund largely out of cash without the need to lever up and do larger transactions. That's just a reality of the marketplace and the type of deals that we'll likely do. At the same time, if we could find a bigger, more strategic one, we certainly would be willing to lever up in order to do it.
Yeah. Just to amplify that a little bit, I mean, to baseline everybody, we're at 2.1 net leverage, so we've got a very strong credit rating, so we've got a large capacity to go up, to Craig's point. Especially with the supply chain constraints starting to mitigate, our cash generation will get even better going forward. We'll see a lot of flexibility.
Got it. That's helpful. Maybe just my follow-on question, I know Julian was trying to get at this as well, so maybe I'll focus my comments on the Electrical Americas business. It's hard to, like, get our head around, like, your backlog doubling year-over-year at a time when, you know, you're growing call it mid-teens this year in this business. It seems to suggest that for 2023, you've kind of set yourself up for another year of double-digit organic growth. Just maybe just help us kind of contextualize that, or frame it just for the Electrical Americas business.
Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, your math is not, you know, not wrong necessarily, right? That certainly given the strong negotiations won, as you heard Tom talk about, you know, even our negotiations, you know, largely before we get an order, negotiations continue to be very strong into these, you know, secular trends that we're dealing with. Orders are strong. The backlog is strong. We would expect, you know, that to translate to revenue growth next year, even in the event of a slowdown. We're not in a position to give you a number for next year. We'll do that, as we mentioned, in February.
Your math is not terribly wrong that says we should expect good growth in the Americas next year, even with a little bit of a market slowdown. That's kind of what we tried to do by providing some indications of the various end markets that we're in and how those end markets are likely to perform in 2023.
Yeah. I think the end market forecast coupled with the secular trends chart at the beginning of the presentation, you know, these secular trends are real. We are seeing order flow and backlog consistent with that. You know, I think we're primed for a good run here.
Yeah. You know, the big challenge really is, you know, to date has been we just don't have the capacity, our suppliers don't have the capacity to deal with, you know, this growth that we're seeing. I mean, obviously, our growth in the quarter, in Q4 would be much higher if we had more capacity in place to deal with this demand. That's what we're addressing right now, not only in our own facilities, but also in the supply chain to make sure we are in a position to convert on these great growth opportunities.
All sounds good. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Next, we'll go to John Walsh with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, everyone.
Morning.
Hey, I apologize. I'm gonna try to come at this volume question again just 'cause I think it's really important. Are you seeing accelerating or have you seen accelerating volume year-over-year growth as we've gone through 2022?
Yes. In one word, yes.
All right.
Yes.
Perfect. That's great.
Each quarter, John.
That's what I wanted to hear.
Yes.
I just wanted to confirm that. Then, you know, you talked about top line and incrementals. We've had a couple of companies remind us about pension sensitivity, asset returns, tax already this season. I know it's early, but just anything to call out, below the line as we think about next year?
Yeah. I mean, that's a great question, John. I mean, there's a lot of moving parts. Let's take pension first. You know, we've got asset returns, discount rate, shape of the yield curve, just to name a few. We're going through our plan for next year. Wouldn't be surprised if we had a headwind associated with that. We're trying to assess how big that headwind is right now. As it relates to interest expense, you know, it's the same type of dynamic. You've got swap interest income, you've got FX income, you've got CP balances and increasing short-term rates. We've managed that very effectively this year and on a year to date basis, will look good.
As we indicated in our prepared remarks, we'll see more of a headwind in Q4, and we're working through what's gonna happen in 2023. I guess what I would stay focused on is we had all those headwinds this year, and we were able to deliver what we said we were going to do. You know, we'll be focused on doing that next year as well.
Just to maybe just add this, in offsetting, you know, some of these headwinds that will be, you know, real and Tom articulated is that, you know, this year we have just an enormous number of operational inefficiencies that we've had to offset as well. We do expect, as I mentioned in my opening commentary, that many of these operational inefficiencies, many of which are driven by supply chain constraints, we expect those to get better next year.
Yeah.
We think we're gonna have, you know, an offset to a number of these because our facilities will run more effectively and more efficiently in 2023 than they have in 2022.
Great. Thanks for the color. I'll pass it along.
Thank you.
Next we'll go to Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
Morning, Deane.
Deane.
Hey, one of the inefficiencies in the supply chain that's been nagging everyone has been the semiconductor and electronic component situation. You guys thought it might get worse in the second half, so how has it been playing out?
No, what I'd say is I think what we said, as a part of our Q2 earnings call, is that we didn't expect it to get better. In fact, we didn't expect it to get better until sometime, you know, probably in the second half of 2023, and I'd say it largely played out that way. That we've seen. You know, we saw, you know, some improvements in, you know, metal-based commodities, copper, steel, aluminum. We saw improvements, obviously, in resins. Logistics got better. But semiconductors and almost anything electronic related continues to be a challenge. That's a challenge we dealt with in Q3 and a challenge that we think we're gonna end up dealing with probably for another, you know, almost 12 months or so before we probably see any material improvement there.
Semiconductors continue to be a challenge. We're working through it. We are seeing improvements in other commodities.
That's good to hear. Then just to follow up, and we've touched on this before a bit in the answers to Joe's question. Craig, you've been around the company a long time, so you'll appreciate the spirit of this question is, in prior cycles, you would see that the company was so much more exposed to non-res and the non-res cycle, and we'd be asking you about starts and permits and value in place and so forth. But the portfolio today and the end markets, whether it's in secular drivers, data center, electrification, all of this has served to minimize the non-res cycle. Just, I wanna make sure that's correct, and should help elongate the cycle in terms of the demand given your backlog and so forth.
It's, you know, part of this is the question of how you position better in a downturn and less dependent on non-res, and just any color around that would be helpful.
Yeah. What I'd say, maybe just to clarify a couple of points, Deane. First of all, we agree with your conclusion, by the way. The conclusion is the portfolio moves that we've made have positioned the company to be less cyclical, to be more long cycle, no cycle, and that is absolutely true, and therefore we're absolutely convinced that the company will perform very differently in the future in the event of an economic downturn. As I mentioned in my commentary, we think there'll be a mild one next year, and yet our company and our markets, 85% of them will continue to see strong growth. Just the term non-res, you know, the term non-res means everything other than residential. Today, for us, as we said, 7% of the company is residential.
Non-res or 10% of electrical is residential. 90% of everything that we do in data centers, in utility, in industrial markets, the term non-res really covers a lot of these other end markets that are certainly doing extremely well right now. We've tried to get, you know, more exposure to the secular growth trends tied to really growing end markets, and that's what we've really done in terms of the portfolio moves that we've done. Your conclusion is absolutely correct that the company will be much less cyclical on a go-forward basis, and we'd expect the company to grow even in the face of a recession.
Yeah. Just to, again, I mean, we've talked about this, but just to put a couple more numbers on this, just to amplify what Craig was saying. I mean, utilities, your orders on a year-over-year basis growing about 50% on a trailing 12-month basis, about 40%. Data centers year-over-year, about 25%, and on trailing 12 months, about 35%. These are big non-res numbers, to use your words, Deane.
That's great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next, we'll go to the line of Chris Snyder with UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and appreciate you squeezing me in. I wanted to follow up on some of the prior commentary around 2023 incrementals in that 30% range. I know that matches kind of the targeted or more normalized levels to get to the 2025 targets. You know, I guess my question was it feels like the price cost is still in the company's favor. You guys mentioned earlier that productivity efficiency would return next year, so you know, that has a margin tailwind as well. Are there any kind of offsets there, you know, that kind of push the incrementals back just down to that 30% or so? Thank you.
You know, I appreciate the question, and I'd say that, you know, the other side of that equation is the investments that we're making inside of the businesses. As we talk about, you know, some of these big growth trends that we're facing into, and quite frankly, we have a need to invest. We would intend to do that to prioritize, you know, growth and putting more feet on the street and investing in technology and the likes to ensure that we're in a great position to take advantage of this growth that we see there. We still think 30%, we think from a planning standpoint. We'll give you more details around perhaps a better number when we get to February next year.
We still think at this juncture, you have these, you know, countervailing forces. You know, Tom mentioned a number of them as well around whether it's interest or pension or the like. We still think all-in 30% incrementals is still the right way to position kind of your models for now, and we'll update that as we know more next year.
Oh, thank you. Really, really appreciate all that color. Then just a quick follow-up on the reshoring announcements and the $1.3 trillion of planned investments that you guys highlighted, you know, matches a lot of the data that we've aggregated as well. You know, can you talk about how much of this is already coming through? Clearly, manufacturing construction's been very, very strong. Then also, you know, what kind of visibility does this provide? As you know, these are very large, generally, you know, kind of slow-moving projects. Thank you.
Yeah. No, I think to your point, and then you hit on kind of what we think is an important one, where we've not really seen today these $1.3 trillion of announcements. We've not seen today the impact of most of this or hardly any of this in our order book at this point. In some cases, it could be in the negotiation pipeline, which Tom indicated is up dramatically. But it's not reflected today in our order book and certainly not reflected in our sales. Just another one of these things that gives us a lot of confidence around the future growth rate of our electrical business.
Thank you. Really appreciate that.
Thank you.
Next, we'll go to Joseph O'Dea with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to circle back to the negotiation pipeline in the U.S. and talking about that kind of more than doubling and just a little bit more detail on kind of what, you know, what you use to kinda determine or what qualifies as a major project. You know, typically what you see from the timeline that goes from negotiation to order and then the timeline from sort of order to revenue generation.
Yeah. I'd say, I mean, the negotiation pipelines today, you know, I'd say it's, to your point, it's large, it's generally large projects. There's a lot of stuff that's going on today that's out in the distribution channel that we don't necessarily have, you know, great visibility to, but we do track large projects where we tend to be involved in specifying the application. So these projects, we have historically tracked them and have great visibility to them. As we mentioned, those numbers are going up, you know, dramatically. I'd say, you know, from, you know, in the cycle between a negotiation and order, I mean, it can vary. I mean, it can be, you know, on the short end, 90 days, it can be, you know, six months.
It varies depending upon the project. From an order to a sale, it can, once again, be as short as 90 days. It can be, you know, 18 months. You know, it varies quite widely depending upon the project that you're actually supporting.
Got it. On the distribution side of things, could you just talk about the mix of product and distribution that might be more kind of commoditized or off the shelf versus the mix that's more spec'd in? Anything that you could be seeing in terms of differing sort of inventory management trends, whether you know some of that more off the shelf, if you're seeing inventories come down there at all, as opposed to what would be more spec'd.
Yeah. I'd say, I mean, to answer maybe the second part of your question, you know, today, we don't really have almost any part of the business today where our distributors are saying, we have more inventory than we need or want. I think that's just a reflection of the broad-based strength that we talked about in our end markets. You know, some markets are growing faster than others. All of the markets are growing. For the most part, we have distributor, you know, challenges around supporting their demand almost across the board today. Now, to your point around, you know, commoditization, we don't really think we sell anything that I would call a true commodity.
If you think about, in the electrical space specifically, or even in our industrial businesses, most of what we do is highly specified. You know, you go from application engineering to designing a particular solution to getting an order. You don't tend to find that you can trade stuff once you win a job or you win a project. You tend to deliver that project because it really is engineered into the solution. If you think about what we're doing in the electrical business, essentially, we're protecting assets and people. What we really think that we sell, we sell a highly engineered solution, and not much of which is what I'd call commodity.
On the commodity side, you may have, you know, some wiring devices or the like that could be sold through, you know, our distributors or in some cases could be sold through, you know, one of the big box retailers. For the most part, most of what we do in our businesses are highly engineered and highly specified.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you.
We'll go to David Raso with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you. In your mild recession scenario for next year, in Europe, do you see in that scenario where Europe remains in positive growth throughout the year? Obviously, the secular trends, I think in North America for a variety of reasons, there's obviously, you know, more credibility in the ability to outgrow the market that much, you know, a recession scenario. Do you see the same dynamic in Europe? Again, does it stay positive in your base case throughout the year?
Yeah, I mean it, you know, it's a great question, David, and it's one that we obviously haven't fully modeled out. You know, clearly, the range of possibilities around what happens in Europe is much wider than perhaps any other region of the world, given what's happening today in the Ukraine, given the uncertainty around energy and energy resilience. There's a wide range of possibilities in Europe that, you know, you could certainly imagine a scenario where the orders that we're currently seeing continue to be held up well. We are also building backlog and have built backlog in Europe, but that could change quickly, you know, depending upon, you know, whether or not you have gas flowing, you know, into Germany.
I think the range of possibilities in Europe are quite wide, which is one of the reasons why I said that, you know, while we're anticipating really good growth across the board, but we're gonna be ready, and we will take a regional view. If we need to flex in Europe because they end up dealing with a more severe downturn than we're anticipating right now and more severe than the rest of the world, we have a plan ready to deal with a scenario where markets fall perhaps more than we anticipated.
Would you mind sharing?
I think it's important.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, I was just gonna add, I think it's important to note that, you know, in the quarter, we did see order growth in Europe, and in some of the end markets, fairly strong, for example, in commercial and in institutions. You know, we do see some slowing, but we're still seeing growth there.
Well, you answered one of my two follow-ups there in the sense of you're saying orders were still positive in Electrical Global in Europe in the quarter. If you'd share with us any sense of how large the backlog is in Europe Electrical on a year-over-year basis?
I mean, I don't have that number at hand. I believe our backlog on a rolling 12-month basis in Europe is up 27%. I think the number is I have, so the backlog is still.
27 is what I have as well.
Okay. 27% is the backlog in Europe.
Yeah. Global is up 22% overall. Yeah.
Okay. It's actually up more than the global number. Europe's even higher.
Yeah. Exactly.
I think we're just trying to figure out how much coverage do you have if you can avoid cancellations into 2023, in Europe in particular, to let you know, let Electrical Americas and Aerospace kind of drive the global.
Yeah. As you can imagine, for us, I mean, Europe, you know, it, as a percentage of our revenue, I mean, they're relatively smaller. So Europe today would account for what? Roughly 9%-10% of the company sales. If you know, if you think about, you know, yeah, we could certainly absorb, you know, a bit of a slowdown in Europe and not really have an outsized impact on the overall company's performance, given its relative share, you know, within the organization and our mix.
I appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next, we'll go to Brett Linzey with Mizuho Americas. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Hey, did a lot of ground covered. Appreciate the additional thoughts on 2023 markets. I guess if I work through the weighting of those arrows, I get something, you know, kind of mid-single digit 5%-6% range for market growth. But then I imagine you have some carryover price and perhaps some outgrow. Just curious how you would, you know, maybe dimension those other pieces.
You know, I think I'd say it's early for us to kind of give you the insight. We'll do that in February. Clearly there's gonna be carryover price. I mean, you wanna know that price is generally in the market data as well, by the way. When you think about a market index, there is some price built into that as well. You can debate how much is built in, is it more or less than what you're assuming, but there is price built into that data. It's just early at this point for us to give you any particular company-related growth numbers. I mean, markets are gonna be good. We would expect, you know, generally to do better than markets, and so that would be a fair assumption, but it's just early to give you any more detail than that at this point.
Yeah. No, understood. Just one more on the backlog, obviously very robust, but just curious if you could share some color on the margin profile of the orders being booked looks like relative to what's being shipped. I would expect there would be, you know, some favorability as material prices have come off highs. Anything you can share in terms of, you know, mix or price cost there?
You know, I'd say that, and as you know, we've talked about on prior calls, I'd say that, you know, we took, you know, some pretty unconventional steps early on and in many cases went out and repriced the backlog. I would say today that our backlog today, you know, and the pricing and the margin of backlog is not terribly different than kind of the way the business is performing today, the underlying profitability of the business today. You know, certainly there's a question around the future direction of commodity prices, you know, and if, you know, whether or not we see more or less inflation or deflation, that can change it. The profitability in the backlog, I would argue, is not terribly different today than what we're seeing in our business. All right, great. Appreciate the insight.
Thank you.
We'll go to Phil Buller with Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi. Thanks for taking the question. There's just one from me, please. I appreciate you don't break out price, but do you feel as though you're at or approaching a ceiling anywhere on price? You've clearly explained and are convicted about the demand side outstripping supply in most areas, which we can see pretty clearly in the order figures. Are there any areas where you're now seeing price elasticity kicking back in? Or have you managed to increase the price intra-quarter in a pretty uniform manner across the different businesses? Thanks.
No, I appreciate the question, you know. The first thing I would tell you is that if you're thinking about, you know, our industries and over a long period of time, you know, pricing tends to be sticky in this industry. Prices, you know, once you get a price increase, they typically, you hold it. I think one of the big advantages we have is because it goes through distribution. Price is obviously good for distributors. But more broadly than that, I'd say that, you know, we really today are not seeing our overall costs come down either. Because on the one hand, some of the major commodities that we buy, you know, have come off of some of their peak levels.
What we're really seeing today in the business is we're seeing, because of supply and demand, not just our supply and demand, but with our suppliers, we're seeing labor-related inflation. We're not today really in an environment where we're seeing deflation necessarily in our costs either on an all-in basis. I think the bigger message is, you know, price does tend to be sticky. The idea of, you know, a ceiling, I think a ceiling is really a reflection of what happens to your input costs. At this point, we do think that the worst is behind us in terms of inflation in aggregate.
We think labor will continue to see inflation and perhaps at an accelerated pace. That'll probably offset some of the deflation that we're seeing on some of the major commodity inputs that we have. In aggregate, we don't anticipate, you know, to go into a deflationary cycle.
Okay, thanks a lot.
With that, no further questions in queue. I'll turn it back to the company.
Hey, thanks, guys. We have reached the end of the call, and we do appreciate everybody's question. As always, Chip and I myself will be available to answer any follow-up questions. Thank you for joining us. Have a great day.
All right. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.