for being here. It's my pleasure to have next, nVent, Sara Zawoyski, Chief Financial Officer, Tony Riter in Investor Relations. So thanks very much, both of you, Sara and Tony, for being here. I think, Sara, you've got a couple of comments to make, so please, go ahead, and then we'll get into Q&A.
Great. Thanks, Julian, for having us, and good morning, everyone. Just got a couple quick highlights here on nVent. First, nVent, we are a leader in connection and protection in the electrical space. We believe we're well positioned amongst the secular trends: sustainability, digitalization, and electrification. Just a couple of quick highlights on our full year 2023 results, which we're very proud of. Another record year for nVent from a financial performance standpoint. Sales reaching $3.3 billion, up 12%. That's on top of 18% a year ago. Strong return on sales, both from an absolute basis as well as from a year-over-year margin expansion, all dialing into an earnings per share, up 28%, and that's on top of 22% of a year ago.
We generate a lot of cash at nVent, and cash flow reached $465 million in 2023, up 32%. Importantly there, we also invested meaningfully in our CapEx. That was up over 50% in the context of 2023. Maybe just a quick highlight on the bottom verticals. Infrastructure is now 25% of our sales. One of our key growth strategies around high growth verticals, that was in sort of that mid-teens when we first spun in 2018, and now it's roughly 25% of our revenues. From a strategy standpoint, this has been consistent since we spun back in 2018, you know, really centered around 4 growth levers. Relentless focus on high growth verticals, a lot of focus around new products and new product innovation.
Our vitality now sits at 22%, and we see new products adding roughly 2 points a year to our top line growth. Global growth, we're predominantly a North America business, but we continue to see opportunities for us to grow faster than the market outside of the U.S., specifically, and then acquisitions. You know, we've completed now 6 acquisitions since spin, 2 in the last year, in 2023, including our largest acquisition yet, ECM Industries. And lastly, from a strong value creation, we're really focused on creating that value for our customers, for investors. And you see here across, it starts with that strong, financial track record. We have industry-leading positions, you know, across the segments and the categories for which we play.
And again, we believe we're very well positioned with these strong secular trends I mentioned, but also around infrastructure, with infrastructure now being 25% of our overall revenue, including the government funding, which we believe will continue to ramp here in the back half. And lastly, we continue to see a big opportunity. We're a $3.3 billion-dollar company in a $90 billion-dollar space that's fragmented, and we're gonna continue to pursue that M&A that fits within our M&A flywheel to continue that value creation. So just to sum it up, 2023 was a record year for nVent, and we believe that we're well positioned for another year here in 2024 of strong sales growth, strong earnings growth, and we believe our future is bright. So thank you.
Fantastic. Thanks very much, Sara. So maybe first off, on sort of the near term, I think last year, particularly sort of second quarter onwards, you had some destocking elements, you know, channel partners, I think, inventory and so forth. Where do we think we are in that process? I think you've guided for some volume growth in the current quarter, so it suggests you're past that destock largely, just sort of the, the conviction level around that volume optic.
Yeah. So we guided to organic growth in that 2%-4% range here in Q1.
Yeah.
and that channel level inventory adjustments, we really saw that again in earnest, I would say, in Q2 of a year ago. That continued Q3, and saw that a bit, you know, in Q4, and we believe that that channel inventory is largely stabilized.
Yeah.
Why we saw that channel level inventory adjustments was really in regards to that supply chain, where we had some parts of our products that had lead times of 26 weeks, that in more normalized environment was 1-2 weeks. So with those lead time adjustments, you know, as we expected, those channel level inventory would also adjust accordingly. So as we sit here today, we believe that those channel level channel inventory level adjustments-
Mm-hmm.
-are largely behind us. Our backlogs were up year-over-year, you know, in Enclosures as well as Thermal Management, and we continue to see infrastructure being a strong vector of growth for us here in 2024.
Fantastic. And I, I think that, you know, most companies at this conference are sort of guiding for that, you know, whatever you want to call it, back-end loaded year or acceleration in year-on-year growth as you move through 2024. nVent is, I think, unusual, and it's not really in the financial plan for this year, it's sort of steady-ish growth, even though the comps get easier. So maybe help us understand, I guess, why even with these comps, we don't get that better year-on-year optic in the second half. Is it just conservatism, something around pricing? Any sort of broad thoughts on that?
Yeah. So I would say, you know, for our Q1 guide, you know, that's organic growth in that 2%-4% range.
Yeah.
While the full year guide is 3%-5%. So there is some acceleration, you know, from a Q1-
Yeah
perspective to a full year perspective, but I would say it's early in the year. You know, if we just zoom out from the perspective, infrastructure, you know, being a strong vector of growth. Industrial, you know, again, we continue to expect to see growth as well in that vertical, largely driven by the reshoring trends. Commercial Resi is where we expect to see more modest growth, modest growth on the commercial side, and then expect the data to be jumped. So we do expect some acceleration from that 2-4, that full year of 3%-5%. But again, I would say it's early in the year.
I think, you know, pricing or electrical in general, saw outsized price tailwinds across the board. I think every electric supplier globally have seen that for a couple of years now. So a lot of thought exercises by investors around what does the normalization of price look like? Does it go to more pre-COVID? Does it go negative? Does it stay high because of lead times in certain product categories? Sort of what's your assessment of the pricing durability for nVent for the sort of year ahead?
Yeah. I would, I would start by saying we do expect 2024 to be another inflationary year, largely driven, you know, by labor, labor rates, wage rates.
Mm-hmm.
So that's our starting point.
Yeah.
Number two, you know, I think our teams have done a tremendous job of managing, you know, that price cost equation, you know, especially over the last, you know, couple of years. And I think it starts with, being excellent on our customer deliveries, you know, as well as having, you know, a strong, you know, value proposition, along with great innovation. I think that, you know, coupled with two-thirds of the revenue goes through distribution, you know, that we're gonna continue to execute and execute well on the price side of the equation. So again, you know, our guidance to 2024 really embeds, you know, positive price,
Yeah.
but we do expect volume to be a bigger contributor to that overall organic growth.
Yeah. And do they have, sort of, whether it's on verticals, maybe it just goes with sort of the volume growth assumption in each vertical, but areas we should think about sort of stronger or less strong price across the whole nVent portfolio? Is it more regional in nature? Any thoughts on that?
I would say there's nothing necessarily to call out-
Yeah
- specifically. You know, we talked a little bit about this on our earnings call, that that positive price, you know, view, has some of the carryover effects as well as some of the pricing that we would have already communicated to our customers.
Yeah.
And while it's gonna vary, you know, that does cover, you know, across the regions as well as the product categories.
Perfect. I thought, you know, looking into the, the sort of company itself now in a bit more detail, you know, NVIDIA had numbers overnight, so we should probably start with the, the Data Solutions, exposure. You know, maybe just remind people the sort of, you know, scale of that business in 2023, how much of that is, you know, liquid cooling as opposed to other products? And maybe just, I think, worth reminding people, what are the, the products in the data center that are sort of most strong in terms of customer supply?
Yeah. Let me try to frame first that Data Solutions business for it. So in 2020 over $450 million, and we expect here in 2024 to, for it to be, you know, over $500 million. And this compares when we first spun for it being roughly around $100 million. So we're really excited about the Data Solutions. It's been growing for us, you know, organically, strong double digits. It's also a place where we've done multiple acquisitions to really broaden out that product portfolio.
Mm-hmm.
And maybe just to touch on this a bit, Julian, as you articulated, this just help explain some of those product sets. When we think about that Data Solutions business, well over 40% of that is really gonna be centered around liquid cooling and power distribution units. We believe that to be growing some of the fastest from a product category standpoint, and especially liquid cooling, you know, as part of that overall Data Solutions. But we also have other parts of that business, like cable management trays, leak detection, you know, that's also growing nicely, you know, overall. So we're really excited about, you know, the Data Solutions, you know, growth and that potential. We've more recently discussed, you know, doubling our liquid cooling, you know, capacity.
Yeah.
That should be coming online, you know, more the middle part, you know, of this year. Really, you know, believe that nVent is well positioned when you think of the years that we've been sort of honing our technical expertise around solving those problems for those hyperscalers, as well as the ability to scale from a manufacturing standpoint, and do that very quickly, along with the innovation that we bring in terms of how to best solve across that cooling continuum in those data centers.
Thanks very much. And on the sort of customer side of it, is there any, you know, hyperscale versus colo versus the old on-prem, any sense of kind of where nVent is strongest or highest penetration? People ask about, you know, dollar content, square footage in a data center. Any sort of color around that from the customer point?
Yeah, we don't necessarily look at it from a dollar per data center per se, because this is, you know, new, rapidly growing, you know, technology within the data center space. So as we think about it, it really is more around the next-gen of chips that are here and upon us, you know, because of AI and the level of computing and the requirement for that heat dissipation is requiring more and more liquid cooling. And so we're really focused on, and where we're seeing a lot of the growth sitting here today, is with those hyperscalers, you know, from a rapid adoption standpoint. And so we're focused on, growing with these hyperscalers, expanding those programs, and importantly, developing those liquid cooling solutions, that are somewhat unique, you know, to each one of those hyperscalers.
Now, over time, and what we're also focused on, is taking that know-how around that liquid cooling technology and really expanding that to a more standard or modular offering.
Mm-hmm.
You know, because our belief is that that will transcend and move into, you know, more of those colos, more of those maybe smaller, edge computing, type construction and setup, and expand that over time into those standard offerings, as well as some of those adjacencies beyond the large data centers and hyperscalers.
Perfect. And the liquid cooling aspect, and as you said, it's a fairly nascent technology in recent years. I'm sure the kind of competitive step and what you're seeing from investment from rivals is sort of flexing a lot at the moment. How would you characterize sort of nVent's competitive strength in liquid cooling? Any sense of the. I imagine it's a very fragmented market, maybe just how you see traditional kind of competitive dynamics?
Yeah. I mean, I would characterize it as very strong. This is something, and Julian, you know this, that we've been working on and talking about, for years.
Yep.
We've got over a decade of experience in the liquid cooling technology, not necessarily as it relates to data centers, but more on the-
Mm-hmm
... telecom space, IT telecom space. And so this is something natural for us to, you know, bring that expertise, build upon that expertise, and really, you know, help solve the tougher hyperscaler data center problems. So when we think about, you know, our competitive positioning, if you will, you know, we believe it to be very strong, in part, because we have, you know, over a decade of knowledge within this liquid cooling space, but also that technical expertise and that problem-solving that we've now been working with prototypes and building up lab capabilities and building up our manufacturing supply chain now for, you know, going on roughly 4-5 years.
Yeah.
Specifically more to this data center space, and really building upon that innovation as well as that manufacturing scale capability.
Perfect. When you think about your product suite within the data center, kind of are you interested in broadening it out? Do you think with what you have now, you know, liquid cooling, power management, cable trays, distribution with the data center, there's enough there in terms of share gain potential and market growth?
Yeah. Well, look, I would say that the product set and solution that we have today, you know, really builds around, enclosures, liquid cooling, cooling, you know, technology capabilities-
Mm-hmm.
power distribution, you know, but also cable management and tech protection. So we believe that's a very, you know, strong suite, you know, of products and solutions. But we're always gonna look for, as things progress, you know, are there additional things that we can be building out, you know, capabilities, product sets, et cetera, you know, to build upon that. And more, you know, over the last three or four years, you know, part of our acquisition strategy has been further building out, you know, our Data Solutions offerings with power distribution units. That was part of our CIS Global acquisition.
Mm-hmm.
The cable management was part of our, you know, WBT acquisition around FY '20, and that was specifically geared towards, you know, the data center vertical.
Maybe stepping away from just data centers, but I think, you know, you're one of the very few companies who, a year ago, you tried to size kind of stimulus tailwinds across the US as well as Europe. How is that sort of playing out versus as you laid out at the end of the day? You know, do we see an acceleration in tailwinds for nVent, or it's more of a steady state from-
Yeah. So as we looked at that, you know, $1.3 trillion of funds and really mapped, you know, those categories in which those funds were flowing, you know, to our product categories, we estimated that, you know, roughly $250 million-$500 million over the next 5+ years, you know, really, benefits nVent from creating demand for our products. And that runs, you know, anywhere from clean energy, you know, solar, wind, you know, biofuels, as it relates to electric transportation, as it relates to infrastructure in terms of building airports, roads, you know, that really benefits-
Mm-hmm
... some of our Electrical and Fastening Solutions business. We believe that in addition, you know, to these secular trends that we've been really focused on, even prior to this funding, around sustainability, electrification, digitalization. When we think about it, you know, from a fund flow perspective, it's flowing. But these things take time.
Yeah.
And we really think that begins to ramp really in the back half of this year and into next, and see that as creating, you know, additional demand for our overall products.
Perfect. And then I think one other push, sort of top-line wise from the company in recent years has been, you know, get the emerging market exposure up, you know, reinvest in that a little bit more versus the prior... ownership of the structure. And what's the progress on that, and how do we think about profitability levels, you know, in that business versus the sort of North America mix?
Yeah. So today, we still sit as predominantly a North America company, with roughly over 70% of our revenues here in North America. When we buy a great company like ECM Industries, which is primarily North America, obviously, that adds there. But look, I would say that, you know, Europe today sits at roughly $650 million of our overall nVent sales, and we continue to see that as a great growth opportunity for nVent, and we believe we can go, you know, faster than the overall market.
Mm-hmm.
And we think about it in the context of, you know, adding products to that. TEXA Industries is a great example of that. You know, we just purchased an industrial cooling company in Europe. When we look at our Enclosures and the attachment rate to those industrial cooling units, we have plenty of runway to go in Europe when we compare to that, to the same, you know, framework here in the US, is just one example. So we're gonna continue to look at Europe as a key growth region for us, but really focused on those high-growth verticals where we believe we can win and really expanding that product portfolio and continuing to grow, you know, via that one nVent distribution channel strategy overall. You know, from a margin standpoint, it's gonna vary, you know, by region-
Yes.
by product category, but nothing real meaningful to call out there.
And then on that point on margins overall, you know, I guess a couple of things to say. One is you're running ahead in, you know, two of the three divisions of the 2025 margin plan. You're already past that, in a way. And then two, your sort of financial framework for this year doesn't seem to embed much in the way of margin expansion. So maybe just kind of frame those two things. Is that just conservatism, helping to do it? Well, the margins have moved up so much, there's less room to know, reinvestment needs. Any of those main drivers when we think about margins this year, and then where do they go afterwards?
Yeah. So we'll have to revisit-
Yeah, sure.
-some of those, medium, longer-term margins, you know, because we do believe, you know, over the longer term, there's plenty of runway-
Yeah
-for continued margin expansion. You know, really, I would start with growth, you know, innovating new products with higher margins, which we're focused on, as well as just secular trends accelerating the growth. And we, you know, typically, you know, get very good incremental, you know, from an overall drop through. So growth's gonna play a role in that. You know, I think supply chain excellence will play a big role. When you think about the last 2-3 years, productivity overall has been challenging against a very challenging supply chain backdrop. And even as that productivity improved for us in 2023, a lot of that was driven by material productivity, logistics productivity.
But when we look at just that core overall productivity, we still have plenty of runway of improvement here ahead of us, even to get back to what I would say more normalized pre-2019 levels would be in terms of-
Yeah
productivity overall. In the current year, we do expect more modest margin expansion. A big piece of that is just the level of investment in new products, which that's gonna, you know, ramp over the course of the year. But also specifically, which I mentioned earlier, is just our liquid cooling.
Yeah
Added capacity. And while we believe that to be temporary, you know, we do expect an impact here as we bring on that new capacity and ramp that volume over time, and we think that's gonna impact, in part, those Enclosures margins. Maybe one other thing to call out is just-
Mm-hmm
You know, we had a couple quarters there, but what I would say, you know, uneven EFS margins. So we had a mixed health there that we're gonna lap. And while ECM is additive and accretive to overall nVent margins, it does dilute, you know, that very high-margin business, EFS, as well. So overall, we believe strong one way for continued margin expansion at nVent, but see here in 2024, a bit more modest margin expansion here, given the level of investment.
On the sort of, you know, cash flow front, you mentioned very good cash flow last year. That will continue, I'm sure, this year. The uses of cash, you know, nVent's done a number of acquisitions. It's been... Generally seems to have gone very, very well, larger or smaller. So as we think about that and just the growth of the company, should we expect sort of larger acquisitions, perhaps, on what you've done in the past, or will we maintain the mix?
I mean, I think we're looking at both big and small, you know-
Yeah
or I would say medium size.
Mm-hmm.
You know, from an M&A standpoint, we've done six acquisitions since then.
Yeah.
We did two in 2023. ECM is our largest, but, you know, I always like to point out, while we levered up to 2.8 times at the time of the acquisition-
Yeah
... which was May of last year, by the time we exited the year, we were back down to 2.1 times. And I think that just shows, number one, the strength of the underlying nVent free cash flow, but also the type of deals we do, and the EBITDA that came, you know, with that acquisition. So we're gonna continue to look at, you know, M&A as a key growth-
Yeah
Strategy and priority for nVent. Like I said, it's a $90 billion fragmented space, and we believe there's plenty more, you know, opportunities out there, and believe our funnel's in very good shape.
... Given, you know, how much your own margins have gone up in recent years, you know, does that create any sort of gating factor where you're cautious about bringing in acquisitions with much lower margins than the base? Or not really, 'cause with cost synergies, you can get those margins up quickly, you think?
Well, I think the M&A framework that we use as we look at, you know, companies is, you know, one, it's gotta have great products, great technologies. That's, you know, table stake. And then two, has to have exposure to these hybrid verticals. As we think about just continuing to strengthen and elevate, and in many cases, our acquisitions, you know, that we've acquired over the last, you know, four years, five years since then, they're growing at even elevated growth rates from the broader nVent portfolio. And the last thing is, you know, the requirements and the ability to scale. And that's very important because it could have great products, and in a hybrid region or vertical, but if we can't get it to scale, you know, it doesn't fit our overall criteria.
So even something, you know, like an Eldon, that was our first acquisition that we did, that didn't have maybe the margins of our Enclosures segment. We said: "You know what? We have a belief that we can get it there-
Mm-hmm.
-,"you know, with scaling that product set." So that's gonna come into that, you know, equation, whether it be cost synergy or whether it be on the commercial sales synergy side. We have to have that view of ability to scale, and sometimes that is gonna be that roadmap, you know, to get those elevated margins overall.
You know, I suppose, again, to your point, the market's very fragmented, so there's a lot of room to keep doing smaller deals to push your scale up and expand the TAM.
Yeah. Yeah, we like... You know, I think ECM is a great example that we can do larger deals.
Yeah.
You know, we're very focused on the execution side. You know, we had a dedicated institute to have a dedicated integration team there to ensure that we're executing on the business financials, as well as on all the important integration activities, starting with our people and our customers.
Last one, quickly, just, you know, you've been running at mid-single digit annual sales contribution from acquisitions, I think, the last five years. Any reason that run rate doesn't continue?
Yeah, we laid out in our investor day a greater than 1 point contribution from acquisitions.
Yeah.
Julian, as you point out, you know, we've been running ahead of that. And it really isn't a matter of the size of the opportunity that we see, because we continue to see a big opportunity to continue to, you know, create value, both from a growth and return perspective for shareholders via acquisitions. I think the one, you know, factor there is just always the timing.
Yeah.
That's something we don't necessarily control, but continue to see M&A as a big growth driver for nVent going forward.
Fantastic. Well, I think now we'll switch to the, audience response survey questions. So if you could grab those, gray boxes. First question around co-ownership, of the stock. So a mix of no and, and overweights. Number 2 is around sort of general, disposition towards nVent, right now. Very positive. Third one is around, through cycle earnings growth versus the sort of multi-industry average. So generally above peers. Fourth question is around excess cash, usage. So generally, bolt on M&A, it's very consistent. Next question is around the sort of valuation, of the stock and kind of year one, PE. So sort of high teens to 20 times. And then the last question is a sort of what's the main gating factor or reason why someone doesn't own more, shares?
So a mix of organic growth and margins. So fantastic.
Thank you.
Well, thanks so much, Sara Zawoyski and Tony Riter, for being here.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, guys.