Good morning, everyone. Our next presenting company is Kimball Electronics, which is traded on the NASDAQ under the symbol KE. For some quick background, Kimball is an electronic manufacturing services provider to customers in the automotive, medical, and industrial industries. Here to present and to tell you guys some more about the company is company CFO Jana Croom. Jana?
Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Gateway, for the invitation to the conference, and we'll just jump right into it. Company overview. So here's our safe harbor statement. Our IRO requires me to flash this for all of you. You know the risks. Kimball Electronics. We are a global, multifaceted solutions provider for electronics manufacturing services. We've got a diversified portfolio that includes three verticals, automotive, medical, and industrial. We are celebrating 10 years as a publicly traded company this November. You know, we are a company that specializes in long-term customer relationships, growth as our customer grows, and focus on high-quality, durable electronics manufacturing. So what does an EMS provider do, and what is our value proposition to our customers and in the supply chain? So it's really a soup to nuts approach to supporting our customers, providing end-to-end solutions and support.
It begins with design and development all the way through aftermarket support. I will say that once we engage with a customer on a specific program, the time from initial conversation to revenue is anywhere between 12-18 months, as we're working on design, development, and prototyping to the new product introduction. We will typically manufacture for a customer for anywhere between five to eight years, and then we will go into end-of-life support, and aftermarket. Kimball has a rich history, and while we've been publicly traded for a decade, the company's been in existence for over 60 years. We actually started off making organs, so think pianos.
And the company very quickly became two distinct business lines, a woodworking and furniture business, think about the external part of the organ, and then an internal electronics manufacturing, so think of the internal guts of the organization of the organ. And so what happened is, in 2014, the company made the decision to split off into two distinct companies, Kimball International, which became the furniture side of the business, and Kimball Electronics, which is the business that's still with us today. And this is just a history of the work that we've done. It is notable that in the last two years, we've had three facility expansions, one in each of our unique geographies, so one in Asia, one in North America, and one in Europe.
Recently, actually, as recently as just a few months ago, we divested our automation test and measurement business. We did this strategically because we wanted to focus the organization on our core business, which is electronics manufacturing, solutions, and partnership. So let's talk a little bit more about our global footprint. We have nine locations, and we are in three major regions of the world, North America, Europe, and Asia. Our world headquarters is in Jasper, Indiana, and we've got roughly 6,600 employees. Our flagship, the biggest manufacturing facility that we have is in Reynosa, Mexico, which is in the maquiladora, just outside of McAllen, Texas. So just a little bit about Kimball, our mission, vision, and values, and our guiding principles. Our guiding principles really summarize the strategic focus and execution of the company.
They are, very simply, The customer is our business, the people are our company, the environment is our home, and my favorite as CFO, profits are the ultimate measure of how efficiently and effectively we serve our customers. We are a June 30th fiscal year- end. We just completed FY 2024. Highlights include $1.7 billion of net sales. This was the second highest year in company history, followed by FY 2023, where the company grew roughly 35%. Adjusted operating income of 4.3% of net sales, or $74 million. $73 million in cash generated from operating activities, and $112 million in inventory reduction. For those of you familiar with Kimball or the EMS space specifically, what you saw in the previous year was a run-up in inventory coming out of the global supply chain challenge, right?
So everything's a pendulum. It always swings too far. In one way or another, we saw a supply chain shortage where we couldn't get enough parts to a supply chain glut. We're now entering a period of more normalcy, which is not the 65 days that we saw previously, but something more in the 75-80 day range, which would include safety stock for our customers. Earlier, I spoke about a diversified portfolio. Kimball specializes in three verticals, automotive, medical, and industrial. Here, you'll see the MMI rankings. For our space, we are number six in automotive, number seven in medical, and number 22 in industrial. Our focus is to even out the verticals over a longer period of time so that they are roughly equal in size.
Although I will tell you, our reputation in the automotive sector for doing durable electronics is very, very well known, and so we continue to win very big awards in the automotive space. What we've always said is we wanna do this smartly, and that does not include turning down unprofitable revenue in the automotive space. It just means we have to work harder to hunt and grow the medical and industrial verticals. So let's talk a little bit about each vertical and the spaces and subverticals that we play in. So Kimball Electronics is heavily concentrated in chassis control applications, right? So steering, braking, suspension, ECU. Electronic braking is a relatively new growth area for us. We started that a few years back. We followed into electronic braking after we saw its tremendous growth in electronic steering, right? So steer-by-wire, brake-by-wire.
If you think about what your car did 10 years ago in steering versus what it does today, the amount of components in your printed circuit board assembly required to make that happen is what fueled a lot of growth in automotive. So autonomous driving, lane departure, self-driving, et cetera, all of that comes out of your steering column. And by the way, the steering column didn't get any bigger in your vehicle. We now have to fit all of those electronic capabilities within the same framing and space, which is why design engineering capabilities are so critical important, and we do that exceptionally well. I am sad to say that we experienced a setback. We actually lost one of our larger braking programs that's been contemplated in the guidance that we provided for FY 2025.
It was not a Kimball-related issue, but unfortunately, we were impacted by it. We continue to have braking programs launching globally, and fully expect to, you know, restore back the business that we lost over a period of time. Moving on to medical. We like the medical space for a couple of reasons. Automotive tends to be very condensed and deep. Medical has a much wider breadth of opportunity and space for Kimball to participate in. So the demographics of an aging population, affordability and access to care globally, connected care, decreased device sizes, right? So it used to be if you had to go have an MRI, you had to go in this big space and have it done. Now, MRIs are portable.
Now, the surgery that you have done is a surgical system guided by a robot, and your surgeon, by the way, may not even be in the same room with you while you're having the surgery done. And so the way that electronics manufacturing is supporting the ever-evolving movement in medical care and quality of care for patients globally is something that Kimball is benefiting from. Our focus for growth opportunities in medical is. It centered around a few things. I'll just take a moment and talk about them. Higher-level assemblies. So Kimball moving from being just the printed circuit board assembly provider to the final and full assembly of the finished product, which we will ship out the door to our customers, slap their label on it, and move it out for broader distribution.
Recently, we were awarded a TOW, a transfer of work, from one of our largest customers in the healthcare space. We will be their sole supplier of respiratory care, final assembly, and HLA business. We expect the transfer to commence in calendar 2025 , with production impacting our fiscal 2026 results. In addition, our expertise in selected drug device, such as auto-injectors, is a differentiator because, in this case, we can do not just the electronics manufacturing, excuse me, but also the plastics manufacturing for the complete device capability, which is something that no other EMS provider can do. And that actually came through an acquisition that we made to get into the contract manufacturing, the CMO business via plastics capability.
And industrial, which we often refer to as green and clean, and it's really about clean energy and innovation in the way that Kimball can participate, particularly with ESG goals being in demand and also just goals for better stewardship. So we're looking for a longer-term return to growth in the market. It's been particularly challenging in Europe, but we are starting to see some bright spots of growth returning, particularly in North America. We have diversified in this space to additional subverticals, moving beyond climate controls and smart metering into other areas of green energy, including EV charging stations, energy storage, industrial control, et cetera. We're also in the early stages of exploring off-highway equipment market, which is actually in the industrial space, but very adjacent to the work that we do in the automotive space.
Fiscal 2025 is really about controlling what we can control, and this is very much an extension of what we saw in FY 2024. For those of you familiar with the EMS space, you will note that FY 2024 was challenging across the board. We saw customers who had an excess of inventory that they had built up, work that inventory down, and the way that that moved throughout the supply chain for the EMS companies. Short term, cost structure, margin levels, working capital management, particularly inventory, AR and AP, and managing CapEx. But over a longer period of time, what we know is that controlling what we can control has to extend beyond just these measures and focus on a return to growth of the top line.
Recent pressure on the demand trends has been more significant than originally anticipated, and it's had longer and deeper impacts. Having said that, our relationships with our customers are still incredibly strong. We continue to hunt new business, and we are pleased with the verticals that we participate in. So what does this mean for Kimball? There comes a time when you need to recognize that you have to cast the net a little bit wider, moving more deeply into new markets that our core manufacturing capabilities will support. We are doing that strategic work now. I will remind everyone, companies who make short-sighted, knee-jerk reactions to temporal market trends often get it wrong in the long run.
So this is something that we will be very thoughtful about, that we're exploring strategically, with some really good partners, but we're gonna do things that are very sensible. Our guidance for fiscal year 2025. Net sales in the range of $1.44 billion-$1.54 billion. That's a decrease compared to FY 2024 of 8%-14%. Again, it's driven by a general global malaise and also the loss of two significant programs, one in automotive and one in medical. Adjusted operating income of 4%-4.5% of net sales, and beginning in FY 2024, we are gonna conform to the industry practice of excluding stock comp expense from the calculation of this metric. We are doing that because we were the last company in the EMS space to make this exclusion.
We heard from our investors loud and clear, they need us to be an apples-to-apples comparison with our peer group. And so, we made this adjustment.
I'm sorry, could you repeat that again?
So we are excluding stock comp expense from our adjusted OI margin, and it's because everyone else in the EMS industry also excludes it. We were the only company who didn't. I personally am not a big fan of it because stock comp expense is real expense, and so I feel like it should be included in margin. We were the last holdout. I grudgingly had my arm twisted, and we exclude it now. So it'll be out. CapEx expenditures of $40 million-$50 million. Maintenance CapEx runs at approximately $35 million, and so we're balancing our maintenance needs with the growth of the business as we go through a bit of a decline for FY 2025. And of course, always a focus on operating income margin.
Capital allocation. So w hat you will see from this chart very clearly is that Kimball is really focused on organic growth and return of value to shareholders via share repurchase. Over the last five years, we've repurchased about $90 million worth of shares outstanding. We do have a share repurchase program in place currently. The last acquisition that we made was back in FY 2019. That was the automated test and measurement business that we actually divested yet this summer. And if you look at the right side of the slide, what you'll see is the program life cycle, and I really like this. For people who are unfamiliar with the EMS industry, it helps you understand the profitability and the global portfolio of an EMS company.
Again, from the initial investment, design and development phase, through end-of-life product, this is about a 10-year journey represented on this slide. That's the presentation. If you have any questions, I would be more than happy to take them.
Um, sure.
Yeah.
Maybe you said about $25 million of growth CapEx. What is that going to?
So the growth CapEx for FY 2025 specifically is going into new program introductions and launches. So it's not gonna be brick-and-mortar CapEx because we've done the global expansions, and we're pausing on those for now. So think surface mount technology, the big lines that we have to put in place to produce the printed circuit board assemblies for our customers, is the primary focus of our CapEx, along with some automation, and measurement equipment that we have to do as we look to move from manual and optical inspection done by humans to optical inspection design done, for greater accuracy by computer.
It looks like you're building up a pretty big cash position at this point.
Mm-hmm.
What are the thoughts on what's the use of that cash?
Yeah, so primarily, the first use of cash is I need to pay down debt, and so I've got cash across the globe that I'm actively moving now, that I'm gonna use to reduce my North American debt level, which is where my primary revolver is. Beyond that, it's a mix of return of value to shareholders via share repurchase, and then you have to keep enough dry powder in place that should something come across my desk, that is a great opportunity for Kimball for inorganic growth. We've got the capability to do that.
How much of your debt is North American debt?
So the credit facility right now is about $250-ish million.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay. What's your interest expense?
High six.
Okay.
Yeah.
Jana, can you spend a minute or two talking about the competitive landscape and how Kimball stacks up to other companies in the EMS space, like a Jabil or Flex?
Yeah. So I'll actually go back to the slide that says where we rank because it's interesting. Automotive was the first business of Kimball. We rank number six. Then we entered medical. We rank number seven. Our latest entry has been industrial, where we're number two. We hope to grow into the top 10 ranking for industrial over time. That's our goal, to be, you know, top 10 in all of them. In the automotive space, we participate in areas of the market that many just choose not to go into, which is the parts of the car that impact your life, right? So your Apple CarPlay goes out, you're annoyed, but you're not gonna die. Your steering goes out, there are serious ramifications to you and your person.
And so we choose to play in the areas that require high durability, high quality. We talk about the five nines, right? So 99.999% accuracy, without failure. Those are the areas that Kimball specializes in. We've got long-term relationships with those customers, and their growth really becomes our growth. We actually haven't taken on a new automotive customer in probably five years because the growth that we have in the automotive space with our existing customer base is rock solid. In the medical space, again, and it's just breadth and depth of the opportunity. The medical is vast, much more so than global automotive. We continue to expand relationships with new customers. Right, so Kimball has probably 75-80 customers in our portfolio of, you know, $1.5 billion of net sales forecasted.
Our goal is to increase our customers by four to eight a year, and at the same time, prune existing customers that we have where we're not growing because you need to be of size for it to make sense from a margin perspective, and we are very, very deliberate about where we wanna hunt. It has to be an area that's gonna experience solid growth, where the customer has an opportunity for proliferation in the market and global geographic expansion, and we compete really, really well against the big boys. You know, I mean, if you talk to a Plexus or a Flex or a Jabil, they will tell you that Kimball is a formidable competitor in the space.
What's your view of the economy? What are you making your assumptions on in terms of order sales and things as you set your expectations?
Yeah, that's a great question, and it's something that we spend a lot of time on. I will tell you candidly, we were caught a bit flat-footed by the rapid change that we saw in Europe, and you know, the question is, Should we have seen it coming, and so now we're looking particularly North American autos, right, and what's gonna happen with that space because you've got really two important things happening. First, you've got a glut of inventory that the automakers had as they went from no cars on the lot to lots of cars on the lot. We've seen what's happened with the EV market in terms of what they thought customer demand was going to be versus what customer demand is actually going to be.
Interest rate environment, I wish I could read Powell's mind and know what he had, and then the upcoming election, right? So if you ask me what keeps me up at night, I feel like the medical space globally is doing well and is a little bit macroeconomic proof. I think a lot about North American autos and what we're gonna see happen over the next six months, and do we have a slow at the same time we're working through inventory, and how does that shake out? And then I think about industrial, particularly in terms of climate controls. What happens to the housing market? Do we see people maybe not purchasing homes, but still investing in existing homes? And what does that mean? We really need to get past the election, and then time will tell.
And so, you know, you looked at our guidance, and you said, Wow, down 8%-14%. It's because it contemplates the loss of a fairly significant program, and then on top of that, about a 3% just top-line decline that's represented in the slowing that we're gonna see. Longer term, you should see a more normalized rate return, so FY 2026, growth, not great, and then FY 2027, a return to normal. But, I mean, honestly, you might as well, you know, pull it out of the sky. A lot of data points, several of which are conflicting, and so that is also the challenge. Love your thoughts if you.
Thank you, Jana. I think that ends the Q&A session, so thank you very much for.