Step in our two industrial double header is nVent. With me on stage is Sara Zawoyski, CFO of nVent, and Tony Riter, Head of IR. Sara, I know you've got some slides, so over to you.
Thanks, Nigel. Good morning, everyone. Happy to be here, thanks Nigel for having us. I've just got two slides here to kick things off. I would just start with a quick overview of nVent. nVent, we are a leader in connection and protection. We've got leading positions, leading in North America, as well as globally. Strong brands. Importantly, we believe we're well-positioned with the electrification of everything, the sustainability trends, along with digitalization. We ended the year last year at $2.9 billion of sales. We will tip that $3 billion mark, you know, here in 2023 with our organic sales and the ECM acquisition that we just closed last week, that I'll talk about in a moment. We delivered strong results, have been doing so for the last two years.
We delivered organic growth last year in 2022 of 20% on top of 18% the year prior. You can see across the bottom here, we operate in three segments across a variety of verticals. Maybe one point out that I would make is that infrastructure as a percentage of sales is now roughly a quarter of revenue sales for nVent. That was in the mid-teens when we spun, so that's been a really area of focus for us from a high-growth vertical standpoint. From a geographic standpoint, we're largely North America. We believe that's a good place to be, with global growth still ahead of us. From a macro trend perspective, we believe these macro trends provide positive tailwinds for nVent.
You know, when you think about sustainability and the investments in renewable, that's driving demands for our energy transition and heat tracing capabilities within our Thermal Management business, for example. When you think of electrification of everything, anything electrical, anything electronic needs to be protected with enclosures. That's providing some strong demand for our enclosures business, but also in our Electrical and Fastening solution business as well from a low voltage, protection connection with our ERIFLEX brands. Digitalization. When you think of everything that needs data, needs more data, more computing, generating more heat because it's in these more condensed spaces, that's providing great tailwinds for our Data Solutions business. That was roughly $100 million when we spun roughly five years ago. We celebrated our five-year anniversary on May 1st of this year.
Now that sits north of $370 million for us here, that's been consistently growing double digits. Last, but certainly not least, is infrastructure. This also provides some nice tailwinds when you think of all the dollars going in to build out, you know, airports and roadways and rails in rail and transit. Anything that has electrical or electronic components, we play a role. As the world is electrifying and changing, we believe it's providing more and more opportunities for nVent. Our strategy, it's been consistent since spin, we continue to execute on elements of this strategy, in particularly more and more revenue in these higher growth verticals, as well as acquisitions and partnerships.
We believe this execution of this growth strategy is really helping to change the growth trajectory of nVent from where we spun to where we've been over the last three years or so. High growth vertical opportunities, more specifically, when we look at the places where nVent plays, and this has been an area of focus for us organically and inorganically, is increasing the revenue mix of these high growth verticals. When you think of industrial, and specifically industrial solutions and the more and more need for industrial automation as well as onshoring, that's creating more demand for our products. Commercial resi, I always say you can't just look at the big bucket of commercial resi, you gotta look on what's in it and where our products are being applied.
Specifically when you think about smart buildings or power and data infrastructure, that's providing more demand for our products. Infrastructure, we talked about that a little bit, as well as energy. Energy, while it's only 5% of our sales today, that's really transformed from where it was five years ago. We see more and more opportunities ahead as it relates to energy transition. We believe that greater than 60% of our overall nVent revenue portfolio is exposed to these strong secular trends. The acquisition of ECM Industries, again, this has played a pivotal part in our overall growth strategy for M&A, or for nVent as part of M&A. We announced the closing of ECM Industries. We couldn't be more excited to welcome the ECM team into nVent. It has a very strong complementary product fit.
When you think of what we do today in our Electrical and Fastening Solutions, for which this will be part of, you know, we are all about exothermic connections, and this broadens that connections to mechanical, connections as well as compression connections. The other thing that it does is we are very intimate with our contractors around our nVent CADDY product. Today we do not sell in tools and test and measurement. When you think of those on the site, you know, on job requirements of what they need to have within their bag of tools, we think this is highly complementary to the nVent CADDY products that we sell in today. You see here it'll add over $400 million of revenue to nVent on a pro forma basis.
It's a highly profitable business, 25% EBITDA margins that'll be accretive to overall nVent. We're excited for what that does in terms of our overall electrical portfolio and exposure to some of these high growth verticals. I'll wrap it up before I send it, hand it over to Nigel here to say that we had a strong year in 2022. We were off to a good start here in 2023, where we posted 8% organic growth and over 30% earnings growth year-over-year here in Q1. Expect to be on a good way here for another year of strong sales and margin expansion. Couldn't be more excited to have the ECM now formally into the fold of nVent.
That growth and that trajectory is here in front of us and continue to believe that we're well positioned in the electrification of everything, sustainability and the digital trends that we see here today.
Great. Thanks, Sara. I've got a few questions, but again, you guys are smarter. If you've got any topics that we're not covering on stage, put your hand up and we'll cover that. Sara, ECM, you kind of raised revenue guidance on stage here, like $3 billion plus now for this year. I guess mathematically that's true. How do we think about accretion? I'm thinking about accretion this year. Obviously, you're not raising guidance, but just mathematically it seems like $0.20-$0.25 of cash accretion from ECM. What are the offsets to that? What about the integration expenses, et cetera, you might be absorbing, you know, in the first six months?
Yeah. We talked a little bit about kind of the pieces before, but I'll help kind of work the math component of it. Getting right to the punch line, we think that on an adjusted EPS basis, we expect ECM Industries to add roughly $0.08-$0.10 to earnings this year. What that includes is, you know, that's a highly, you know, profitable business that is folding into the mix of nVent. You know, offsetting that, you know, we have the higher interest expense. We said that that was an estimate, roughly $60 million on an annualized basis. We would also expect a slightly higher tax rate. The tax rate here, because it's largely North American, would float in at roughly 25%. That'll provide a bit of an upward pressure to the overall nVent tax rate.
We would also expect, you know, to have some of our investments flow in two specific areas. You know, because where we see a lot of the synergies is not just on the cost side in that three-year run rate that we talked about in $10 million-$15 million, but the sales synergies. To get started on that, you know, we really got to think about, you know, what does, you know, the opportunity look like to take these products globally. That will require some investments from a spec perspective, to take, you know, these products, you know, globally, across. 'Cause the business today in ECM is predominantly North America.
Yeah. ECM also brings in, you know, some interesting handheld test and measurement metering devices, connections, obviously, as you mentioned, connectors. What is the ability to maybe grow these verticals and because connectors, I mean, that's a very fragmented market. I mean, what's your desire to maybe grow in those areas?
Yeah, it's significant, and I think it's a couple fold. You mentioned, you know, that both from a product set, it's highly complementary to our connectors that we have today. That we have very intimate relationships with our contractors, so it gives us great insights to provide more innovative products. We also bring, you know, a very strong distribution channel presence. While ECM is roughly 55% sales sold through distribution, nVent is roughly 2/3. When you look at nVent, we have a very, you know, strong position across our preferred distribution channels. We're typically in the top 10 here in the U.S. and the top 15, you know, more globally.
One of the areas that we are excited about is to take these products and be able to, you know, sell them more broadly, you know, through distribution, not just here in North America, you know, but more globally. The other area is really on the tools and handheld test and measurement side. You know, again, we've got great relationships, you know, with our distribution partners. But again, we have these contractor loyalty groups. When we think about providing needed product, you know, for them on the job site, nVent CADDY, cable management, et cetera, you know, this is a natural expansion, you know, within their tool bag of opportunities. We see it an extension of the products that we offer today. We see opportunities to grow that through channel.
We actually also see opportunities to take some of the nVent products and take it into channels that we may not be as strong and present in today, for example, in specialty retail, and e-commerce. You know, the areas that we're excited about is not just the complementary product coming into fold, but the sales synergies and opportunities we see ahead.
Yeah. Great. Moving back to, you know, 1Q, very strong performance, good, you know, really good quarter, excellent margins. A little bit of noise around orders, a little bit of noise around maybe some inventory patterns in the channel. Maybe just recap on what you saw and maybe how that's progressing as we go through the 2Q?
Yeah. I'll start off by saying it was a strong quarter for us.
Yeah.
You know, organic growth of 8%, earnings grew 34%. Orders were flat, and we had anticipated that the pace of orders would not sustain as the supply chain improved. We were lapping Q1 of a year ago 28% order growth. In many cases, because the supply chain and lead times, and frankly our lead times of our own products were elongated because the challenges we were seeing in supply chain. What we were seeing from our customers is that some people that were ordering typically three months ahead were ordering six months ahead. We had anticipated that as the supply chain would gradually improve, those order rates would come, you know, more in line.
With that being said, I would say that more broadly speaking, we saw that supply chain improve a bit quicker than what we would anticipate. You actually saw that coming through for nVent from a financial performance on the productivity side. With that, you saw the ordering rates come down because two-thirds of our end revenue goes through distribution, and with those distributors looking at those lead times going from sometimes quarters to months or months to weeks, you know, they were going to, you know, adjust that ordering pattern to adjust their inventory levels. That's what we saw in March and what we expect to see here in the second quarter, and that was reflected in our Q2 guidance.
With all that being said, we said this on our Q1 earnings call, the end demand and sell-through, you know, looking at the data points from our distribution channels, was strong. You know, we continue to see that end market, you know, end demand, you know, strong, but the ordering rates, we would expect that as the supply chain improves and lapping the 30% orders of a year ago, that those ordering rates year-over-year would be adjusted as the distributors adjust their inventory levels.
If they're moving from They moved from a three-month cadence to a six-month cadence, going back towards the three-month cadence. Should we expect this to be maybe a one quarter and done adjustment process? Are we talking here about a bit of something a bit longer?
Yeah, we estimated it was really kind of the first half of this year. We saw it on the tail end of Q1 and into Q2 is what we would expect, you know, just based on, you know, what we see from an end demand standpoint as well as those inventory levels overall.
Okay. The 3%-5%, you mentioned the sell-through was very, very healthy. The 3%-5%, how much roughly would that inventory headwind be costing you? Is it one point, two points?
I don't think we've quantified it, you know, per se, but I would say, you know, coming off of a Q1 being more in that 8% range, I mean, you can see the, you know, impact going from kind of that 3%-5%, you know, range year over year from an organic growth standpoint. Clearly it's coming into the fold, not only from an order standpoint, but we do see that, you know, baked in a bit here in Q2 from a revenue standpoint. The last point I would make, 'cause we got some questions as well on our Q1 call on this, is just backlog. We don't tend to be kind of a heavy backlog business, but no doubt, you know, we're carrying more backlog than what we would customarily carry.
That was, you know, roughly flattish, you know, from Q4 to Q1. I would say that we're largely healthy, you know, from a past due perspective, but still have pockets of areas that we're not satisfied with. We know we've got to make these capacity investments going forward, particularly around enclosures, to ensure that we can get those, you know, delivery levels up and service our customers well.
Sure. You mentioned obviously sell-through very healthy. I think you called out residential, shock horror, is weak. Any other pockets of weakness you wanna call out? I mean, are we starting to see any softening in parts of the commercial construction market, industrial markets? Anything else you'd call out?
Well, we called this out on our earnings call, I would just say overall, even coming into this year, we said we would expect overall commercial resi to slow. All combined, it still grew in Q1, up low single digits. It slowed from that strong, you know, growth that we've been seeing over 2022 and the year prior. We saw enclosures in EFS was stronger on the commercial side. They have less resi. Most of our resi business, which is only 3% of our nVent sales, sits in Thermal Management. That's where you were seeing, you know, more of the weaknesses just on the resi side in Thermal Management and a bit of commercial on the Thermal Management business as well. Infrastructure, like I said, it's 25% of our sales now.
That continues to grow strong from a double digit standpoint. Data solutions, that's been consistently a strong contributor of growth for overall nVent. Power utilities is another piece of that overall infrastructure business, overall small. I would say just broadly speaking, the industrial and commercial resi where we see, most of our distribution sales, if you will, you know, that's where we expect to just see the ordering patterns phenomena and that distributor inventory level adjustments, bleed through, if you will.
Data centers. I was with one of your competitors, last week, and it's very clear that liquid cooling is gonna be a pretty, a pretty hot area. I mean, no pun intended. Remind us where you play in the data center, how big it is for you today, and kind of what you see, how would you frame the liquid cooling opportunity going forward?
Yeah. We're very bullish in Data Center Solutions. I mean, it's been $100 million. You know, we started out as a new company when we spun in April 2018. It was roughly $100 million of sales. I would say largely what we did in that space was enclosures and some cooling, but I would say more legacy cooling than more liquid cooling. We've made a very intentional effort, you know, to focus capital allocation, both organically as well as inorganically, to build out that product offering, especially on the cooling side. When you think of liquid cooling, it can be immersion cooling, it could be cooling in the back door, Cooling Distribution Units, cooling directly at the chip.
We believe that in the new technology with the new chips, it's gonna really require, you know, liquid cooling. When you think of more and more data being computed in more and condensed spaces, cooling is a meaningful part of the overall equation. We think nVent is well-positioned in building out and carving out this space within this data solutions because of the broader suite of offering, not just the enclosures, but especially the cooling side as well as power distribution. That came with the CIS Global Management acquisition that we did roughly 18 months ago, as well as cable management that's in our Electrical and Fastening Solutions business.
Do you think this is mainly an organic strategy, or is there room for more acquisitions here?
I think it's both.
Yeah.
It's been both for us since we spun. Again, it's been a strong contributor of our overall growth. Maybe one other interesting data point. If you look at just the data center space today from an install basis, roughly 95% of that installed base is cooled by way of air, but it can be very inefficient. And what's growing and growing exponentially is the liquid cooling, you know, part of it, because what it can do by way of cooling and cooling more efficiently, as well as getting more directly, you know, at the source. It's an area that we're gonna continue to invest in and focus on both organically and inorganically.
Okay, great. I'm gonna take one more question, then we'll see if there's any questions in the audience. Thermal, just wanna touch on thermal quickly. How strategic is this to the vision of nVent going forward, number one? Number two, when we think about the performance in one Q, we saw some headwinds. You talked about residential, but there's also some other headwinds there. How do those headwinds play out over the balance of the year?
Yeah. I would say Thermal Management, today, I mean, it's got great margins. It's got leading, you know, positions when you think of Raychem and what it does in that heat tracing solution space. It generates a lot of cash. We talked about energy transition upfront in terms of the mega trends. We believe that the Thermal Management business is well-positioned to capture this opportunity and this growth in energy transition. When you think that's anything that's process-based that has to be kept at narrow temperatures in a particular viscosity, that's where the heat tracing solution plays. It plays in LNG, biofuels, carbon capture, and we believe that growth is largely ahead of us. You know, from a Q1 perspective, you know, there's a couple different plays, things playing into the current environment for Thermal Management.
One, we talked about commercial resi already. I think the other piece I would point out is that this business is our most global business, and we're not yet seeing China to growth. That's, you know, maybe oversizedly, if you will, impacting Thermal Management versus the other businesses that are a bit smaller in that APAC region. The other piece is just kinda winding down, you know, on the, on the Russia side. I think the global impact not yet getting to to growth on China, that'll be a positive going forward as well as energy transition.
Yeah.
The last point maybe I would make, Nigel, is from an M&A standpoint, we've always said that where we're gonna allocate those M&A dollars is more so on the enclosures and the Electrical and Fastening Solutions business. Just we believe that, you know, the scale that we have and the size of that opportunity, that's where the best returns will be overall for nVent and shareholders.
Thanks, Sara. All right, guys, any questions? Okay, good. We'll carry on. Your margins were exceptionally strong in enclosures in the first quarter. When you look at your guidance, you clearly assume that doesn't continue. You clearly have some margin headwinds through the year. Just help us think about what changes from 1Q through the year from a margin perspective.
Yeah. enclosures margins were fantastic in Q1. They were at 21%. I think that, you know, if you wind that back maybe a year ago, 18 months ago, we were having the opposite conversation. That team has done a really nice job of getting that price-cost equation in the right spot. Number two, I would say that just from a price-cost spread perspective, we would expect that to narrow over time during the course of 2023. The third big thing I would say is the investments. We continue to believe that, you know, data solutions has tremendous growth opportunity in the area that we're gonna wanna continue to invest in organically as well as inorganically.
With that, we talked about, you know, building out that Data Center Solutions business from a people perspective, but also there's some additional capacity investments that we need to make here in the current year as well, particularly around, you know, cooling that we're going to invest in. It really is more of that price-cost spread narrowing over the course of the quarters here, as well as the investments that we're gonna make in Data Center Solutions.
Is that enough, though, to offset You know, the quite profound seasonality you typically have in EFS, Thermal is always higher in the second half of the year just because of the weather? I mean, is that enough to offset that seasonality you typically see?
Yeah, it's a good question. I think we got this on our call too. I would say, beyond the price cost narrowing and the investments, the other thing that really has not changed since we provided guidance in February is the back half and baking in some of those macro uncertainties. If you literally look at the updated guide that we gave in Q1, it really was a function of our Q1 outperformance, as well as some of that flowing through in Q2, and we really left Q3, Q4 unchanged, which really reflects some of those, you know, just general market, macro uncertainties, that we alone are not the ones, you know, facing.
I think, our view has always been, you know, managing those expectations, making sure that we've got, you know, good visibility, and then executing accordingly.
Seems very rational to have some macro hedge in the back half of the year, with PMIs where they are. How would you say that's playing out, though? You know, compared to where we were in April, you've got this hedge in the back half of the year, who knows what's gonna happen. Where are we today versus what you expected?
I would say not necessarily in a different spot, maybe a little bit to the better. I mean, You know, we raised our guidance pretty meaningfully, right? Based on our Q1 performance. I would say a couple things. One, I think the supply chain got a bit better faster. We were always calling for more of this gradual improvement, so we were even able to take our lead times, you know, from X to Y more significantly, more meaningfully, more faster, you know, for our customers. I think that was a piece, and I think the price cost performance too, you know, was better. We continue to believe that it's going to be an inflationary environment, you know, here in 2023. You know, for us, wage inflation is the most significant factor of that, you know, more globally.
With that, you know, we're gonna continue to need to be vigilant on that price cost equation as we've done over the last, you know, two years for nVent, staying very front-footed there from a price cost perspective.
Inflationary environment doesn't feel like there's a huge amount of pressure to give back price, but I know that there are some businesses where there is some commodity index, correct me if I'm wrong, but are there any pockets of price give back across your portfolio?
I would say that's a very, very small portion.
You know, that's sort of indexed there. If you look at kind of nVent's past performance, you can see that the pricing has been relatively sticky. We like to say that, you know, 2/3 of our revenue goes through distribution, so we have a very grooved process in terms of how that pricing is executed. Many of our distribution channel partners don't like pricing to go down because that resets their inventory level. Look, it's something that we're gonna have to continue to manage, and we will continue to manage from a price cost equation like we've done over the last several years.
The price remains very solid.
Price, yeah, price was a big portion of our overall Q1 performance as well.
Great. The ECM acquisition's taken out a huge swathe of my questions on cap allocation, so, thank you for that. Look, the message here is delevering back towards two times. Is that the key message that.
Look.
Maybe some small bolt-ons, but nothing major on M&A until we get that leverage down.
I would say. Maybe I'd start off a couple things. One, you know, our pro forma net debt to adjusted EBITDA is roughly 2.7 times when you fold in ECM. Our targeted leverage range is two to 2.5 times. We believe, you know, with a strong cash generation of nVent, that we still have some optionality and flexibility. You know, what we've said is that we expect to get back within that range of two to 2.5 times by end of 2024, and that allows for, you know, continued capital allocation aligned to our strategy, which includes the pay down of debt but doesn't exclude, you know, the right, you know, bolt-on acquisition, and continuing to execute on our overall capital allocation priorities.
ERICO was a chunky deal. ECM is a very chunky deal. Two, I mean, I think ERICO went very well, and it seems like a home run. If ECM goes well, is that sort of indicative of perhaps larger deals are the way to go or back to bolt-ons from here?
Look, I think larger deals were always kind of in the, in the portfolio of nVent M&A. We knew that coming out of the gates, being a newly spun company, first we had to set up our own company. That probably took, you know, the first 12 months or so, of our focus and our attention, and we knew we had to go and execute and prove that we can execute those well from a bolt-on standpoint. ECM, we're excited to have this into the fold, and I think we're gonna continue to look at large, you know, deals as well as bolt-on deals. You know, we often say that we operate within a $75 billion market, and we're only, you know, roughly $3 billion of that. There's...
It's fragmented, and there's a lot of opportunity where nVent, as an electrical player that really focuses on these components and these solutions that are very core to what we do. We've got the application expertise, we've got the channel presence, we've got the innovation. There's a big runway for us from an M&A standpoint ahead.
That's great. Well, we've got, maybe 30 seconds, guys. Any last questions? One here, please.
Could I just ask the go-to-market strategy in data center, how do we make sure nVent's technology makes it into the next generation data center with the hyperscalers? Who do you sell through? You know, who are you working with? Thanks.
Yeah. I would say even today, we're working with some of those big hyperscalers as well as, you know, through channel. One of the areas, I think of our expertise of why, you know, we're being sought out for those data solutions opportunities and specifically on the cooling side is, one, you know, we've been doing cooling for decades. We've been doing liquid cooling, just on a different scale, for a very long time. You know, two, we have the ability to scale.
You know, some of these, you know, newer players don't necessarily have the ability to scale. When you deal with these large companies that want, large quantities of units over a multi-year period, they wanna work with somebody that's been there, done that, and they can rely on to provide that level of scale. I think the last thing I would say is the IP and the people. This is something that, you know, we believe we've got particular, you know, intelligence around from an IP perspective and the application expertise that we're able to come in and, you know, solution solve for our customers, I think is unique to nVent.
Perfect. We're out of time. Thanks, Sarah. That was a good conversation.
Thank you.
Thanks for your time.
Thanks.