That all, that's why I'm saying we're back to where we were, is you have now higher confidence in offsetting it all inside of calendar year 2025.
The only thing that's changed is, you know, we're still price cost neutral, dollar for dollar, for the full year. The thing that's changed is the potential $0.50 of contingency is now gone.
Correct.
That's out of the framework.
We said we were targeting zero, and now I'm saying stronger.
Yeah.
Stronger than that.
Okay. Okay. That's great. I mean, I think one thing that maybe got missed with all the noise of the earnings was the fact that orders in, in infrastructure, utility infrastructure was up double digits in, in the first quarter. Sounds like that's continued in April as well.
It's a good pattern on the bookings, and we're pleased. That just shows to me, you know, that we don't have to use the word destocking or have me come up with a euphemism called inventory normalization or something like that. That's just evidence to me that we're, you know, we're back to booking and shipping at the install rate, right? That's a really nice inflection point.
Yep.
Of basically the last six quarters, basically.
You've got good data from the, I mean, the problem hasn't been the distributors, it's been the customers, right? The customers have been destocking.
It was both, but what made it prolong was the end customer. I think the distributors reacted faster, a little bit easier for them. They're used to booming and busting and right sizing, and utilities are not in the business of how much inventory do they need, right? So.
Yeah.
They sorta stepped into a slightly more challenging situation and taken them, I think that's what prolonged this phenomenon.
Yeah. I think, you know, some of your sort of partners in the utility space have struggled to try and dimension how much inventory's been held by the utilities. So what gives you confidence that we're now beyond this period? Is it just the order rates or is there something else you?
Yeah. I mean, my, our dialogue with them is first. I'd say second, Dan and I and, and some others inside of Hubbell, we spent a very decent amount of effort building a model that I wouldn't say was SKU by SKU, but product family by product family. And you have to make some assumptions in that modeling about what the install rate was versus what our ship rate was. And you saw a six quarter period where we outshipped install rate and a six quarter period where that reversed. Each one of those product families was different.
Some started a little earlier, some ended a little later, some were steeper, some were shallower, but it was very instructive to us to do that and realize that we felt this was the quarter where that was coming to an end analytically, but there are assumptions that only make that as good as the assumptions. Now you get the anecdotes from the customers saying, "We're at normal levels," but I'd say most powerful yet is the fact that the bookings have picked up.
Okay.
I'd say all three of those matter to me, but the bookings are more, I'd say, what I hang my hat on.
Yeah. Yeah. If we're beyond this destocking, how much would you say of the weakness has been caused by some deferral of MRO spending or project push? 'Cause there was a bit of that as well, wasn't there?
Yeah. I do not think a ton. I mean, we think distribution's been growing throughout this timeframe. I think transmission substations certainly on the stronger end, and I think outgrowing the distribution side. Throughout this, I think distribution markets have been growing solidly. I think there has been more certainty and clarity on rate cases, right? We highlighted that in the earnings call, and I think that has taken a more constructive tone in the last six months or so. There is probably some of that as well, but I think throughout this, the distribution markets have been healthy.
Yeah. The rate case renewals, I think, is huge, right? Because that, that we're getting repriced and getting, you know, the ROI on the higher inflation basis is important. Do you have any sense on what proportion of your customers have had that rate rebasing in the last couple of years?
Yeah. I mean, it's a good chunk of them. I think, again, typically utilities operate on a three or five year capital budget and certain will come up in certain timeframes. I think, again, there's a good grouping of them that, you know, late last year sorta went through their rate cases, and that's about the time that they do it annually, right? Again, it's gonna be different utility by utility, right? Some are growing well above the average and some still below. I think it's an ongoing dynamic, but it's, again, a good chunk of the utilities typically revisit it every year.
Yeah. Thanks, Dan. So is it too ambitious to assume that volumes in utility infrastructure could be single digits in 2Q, or is that more the second half, sort of run rate?
I think you'll see it picking up and then coming to that level. I don't think that's unrealistic.
Okay. Okay. Transmission still remains the strongest part of that?
It does. You know, there's confidence there because, again, there's a book, and the lead times are a little slower there. You know, it's project-based, and they want the material on time to complete the project. It gives you some confidence that that's there.
Okay. So the backlog's in place for that. And then, telecom, I know telecom's small, but it's, you know, when something's down 30%, it has an impact.
Yeah.
I think we had growth, if I'm not mistaken, in the first quarter.
It did not grow in the first quarter year over year. It grew, it grew sequentially.
Yeah.
It did, it did decline.
Yep.
Kinda double digits again, but compared to the 30% and 40% declines, we were.
Yep.
You know, it's, it's, you could see it, and the sequential, you know, started to look, you know, much better. Now the bookings support, you know, much better than seasonal recovery there, even though there is a seasonal ramp up traditionally. I think it's gonna have a second half growth story that's gonna be, show that it's really through its destocking process as well.
Yet, you're not expecting telecom to be up stronger, but it's, you know, you, I think you've been more measured in your assumptions.
Yeah. And frankly, the way we wanna run it, I don't, I don't want it, I don't wanna chase, you know, the cheapest volume just to get our sales back up. I sorta wanna make sure we come back, good pricing, good margins. The margins, you know, a year or two ago, been really attractive part of our portfolio. And as it's shrunk, when you lose attractive margins with lost volume, the decrementals are difficult, but it's still attractive where it is, even despite steep decline. I sorta wanna turn it back into a predictable growth, margin expanding, not, not chasing the, you know, the frothy, kind of volume that might be there. I hope you see us just build it back constructively, and do that at really nice margins.
Yeah. Thanks, Bill. Just touching quickly on the communication side, the meters, that was down mid-teens in the first quarter. I think it was down 15% if I'm not mistaken. How does that look for the balance of the year? You had very tough comps in the first half.
Yep.
And then second half, obviously much easier. Do we flatten out in the back half of the year? Just, just.
Yeah. The lens, I think we gotta pull the lens back a little bit to understand it. A few years ago, there's no chips available, they can't ship, and so you build up, you know, multi, you know, couple of years' worth of backlog, satisfy that backlog, and those, some of the more significant projects rolled off at the end of 2024. Now you saw, yes, year over year that decline that you mentioned, but sequentially you saw essentially flat. Now you look at the bookings and they're at that flat level. I would make, you know, my insight would be, I think they're prepared now to have a 2025 at a durable level that's based much more on gas and water customers and munis and co-ops.
What I would call maybe smaller customers, but bread and butter, you know, they've been, they've won several competitions in the last month or two. I know they're competitive and winning, but at this kind of small base, and that feels like a good expectation for the balance of 2025, which should, because of comps, result in some growth by the end. I think of that as the seasonally where it is and, you know, the meaningful growth from here would come from any large investor-owned electric utility. That's really where, you know, they could have a $500 million-$800 million project. I'd say it's at a nice sustainable level right now and wait for something like that to be a growth catalyst. Yeah.
Great. Thanks, Bill.
Yeah.
Any questions from the audience? If so, put your hand up. One here.
The question was around transformers. We don't make 'em, so I don't have a great point of view, but it just sounds from the industry like the lead times are gonna stay at a year for a while. I think it's still a long pole in a lot of project tents.
Yeah. That's the one thing you don't do, right? Transformers.
Yes.
Moving to margins, maybe before we turn to margins, in electrical solutions, anything within the end markets that's moving around here? 'Cause, you know, non-res does feel like there's pox of weakness there. So anything you call out in terms of the end markets?
For us, the commercial is the softest. I'd say light industrial feels good. Heavy industrial feels good. You know, you see steel prices up, so that should be good. I think, as a horizontal theme across those vertical markets, data centers continues to actually be a big driver that we see across that. I think our electrical segment story, so we've had, you know, in the mid-single digit growth rate there, there's been a little bit of price in that, so that's not all units. I think we still have margin opportunity there as we take what had traditionally been three businesses run as three silos, and we've been, you know, Mark Mikes came from his career in our power systems unit, kinda knocking those silos down and creating kind of a compete collectively across that utility franchise.
He's doing that again on the other side of our house, and he's being really constructive and really successful, and he's got still a ways to go. I think with, we had some lighting businesses inside of there, both on this commercial industrial side as well as resi. We may be obscured for you all that the electrical segment has actually got a really attractive piece to it. Now that we've sold those two, I think we're showing, you know, mid-single growth rates with multi-year margin expansion. That's just, you know what I mean? That's self-help. That's not even incrementals on the growth, you know? I think, Nigel, that's, we've got a kinda solid, repeatable, nothing crazy, right, kinda story on electrical that's gonna play out over the next couple of years.
Yeah. So I haven't done the math on, you know, what the sort of revised tariff stroke pricing algo looks like, but it seems like the guide for 6%-8% looks more like top line organic looks maybe, I don't know, 4%-6%, 5%-7% in that range.
Yep.
You talked about margins for both segments will be down. Does, is that still the case now with the revised sort of?
Yeah. We'll have to, I think we'll have to revisit that formally when we report next. The, I think what you're pointing out is the reason they were down is because if all you do is offset a dollar of cost with a dollar of price, that is margin dilutive. We had a fair bit of that in what we showed you. Now that that's moderating, I think you got a better chance. If we looked at it just kinda organically, there's margin expan—organically. I don't know if that's the right word, but XA artificial cost and price environment, there was margin expansion. We're getting, I think we must be getting back closer to that.
I think it's about 50 basis points, of maybe benefit from that mathematical.
Was that $500,000?
It was about a point of impact under the prior construct. Again, you did the math. It's probably not, it's probably still more than half that. You're getting that range.
Yeah.
Okay. Okay. So you'll come back to us with that. And then coming back to the electrical margins, obviously with the lighting out of the equation, margins are a lot better, but you're still kinda lagging some of the electrical peers there. So if you look at, say, the Grand or, you know, even Eaton's electrical segment margins, you're still well below that. So I'm just wondering where you think you can get these margins to over the next three to five years.
Yeah. I think there's, first of all, we burden our electrical segment with corporate segment, which not all of those that you mentioned do. I would say there's, you know, hundreds of basis points of just cleaning up redundancy. You don't need, you know, everybody doesn't need the full finance team. You don't need the full HR team. You don't need, you know, the Salesforce has been reorganized to be segment-based rather than single product underneath that, much more efficient and effective. SAP company codes, which sounds, you know, somewhat tactical, but you don't need as many transactions. You don't need all the staffing. It's remarkable. Mark's had a good career run doing this before, and he tells me, you know, he still has points to go, not basis points. He has points.
We think it's gonna look, you know, on a comparable burdened basis a lot like some of those franchises you're talking about. We think that's a solid electrical segment that we have. Yeah.
It seems like well north of 20%.
Yeah.
Yep. Cap allocation. You know, the message from the, the IDE, which was last June, I think it was.
Yeah. Yeah. About a year ago.
June, June 2024 was larger deals, which I think is like $100 million plus type deals, maybe a little bit more than that. Where are we right now in terms of the M&A pipeline? What was the, what kind of multiples you've seen out there?
Yeah.
Conviction in deploying capital here?
Yep. Maybe to remind everyone on the basis of Nigel's question, we're thinking that for 2025, 2026, and 2027, when you think about operating cash flow, less CapEx, less dividends, less share repo, there's more than $2 billion of cash that's deployable. That actually ignores, you know, Nigel, the fact that the balance sheet would have incremental leverage capacity if you wanted to stay at two times, for example. That would suggest a good amount of acquisition activity. As Nigel says, if you did $100 million deals, that's a lot to try to do. I think it does suggest some bigger. I would say right now, the portfolio, we're active looking at the pipeline. We're in a number of discussions.
There's everything from a $100 million, as you say, to $1 billion, which we've done in the past and everything in between. You know, it is a pyramid. There's more of the smaller size than there are the bigger. I would say we are very intentional about finding growth and margin in our acquisitions. That's causing us to be intentional in transmission and distribution space, data center space, and anything in utility that lets us sense data, communicate data, and control the infrastructure. We think those areas are really interesting. We are looking to be acquisitive for sure. We think the balance sheet's positioned for that.
I'd say, as I think about it and how much cash that is, I think I'd also expect, if you studied our capital allocation, you'd see share repo in many, many years over the last 14 or so, you would've seen about $40 million as an anti-dilutive amount of share repurchase. I would expect that to be higher annually, you know? A slightly richer mix of share repo and an increased level of acquisition. That's all. In other words, capital deployment, there's more to deploy. I think both levers will probably be used.
Yep. I think you did a pretty big buyback in 1Q, $125 million.
Yep.
Is that sort of one and done this year, or do you think you can do more buybacks this year?
I think we'll keep looking at that.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's, I guess that's my point is I think we'll be, I think we'll be relying on that lever really more than we have in the past.
Okay. I think we're getting hooked here, but maybe one more. Systems, system control, obviously control house within the substation utilities. We've seen a number of deals. NV5's done a couple of deals. Eaton just disclosed one as well. What is going on that's making these control house assets more, more valuable?
I think the fundamental is, what the solution does is it takes labor out of the field, which is subject to weather and availability, and it brings it into a factory environment. It is just much more controllable. You can control costs. You can control timing better. Fundamentally, I think those examples are all taking advantage of the same trend, which is much more reliable. In substations, often delivery time, you know, matching the project when it is ready becomes an incredibly important part of the value proposition. We can just do that better, out of a factory environment. It appears to us, as we have worked with customers, they start with us, then they do a few more, and then it grows to become part of how they do their substation work.
Now that it's on our platform with our breadth of relationships, we have the assumption that we'll start more clients at that modest starting point and grow them to be how they do substation. We are very excited about what it can do. We are prepared to invest in it and add to its footprint and grow because the dialogue with customers has been really good. I think we are not the only ones who have that same thesis.
Okay. Bill, we'll leave it there. Thanks for the discussion. That was a, that was a great overview. Thank you.
Thanks for hanging in, everybody.
Yeah.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.