Well, good morning. Thanks for joining us. My name is Larry Smith . I'm on the machinery team here at Wells Fargo, and we're delighted to have Oshkosh presenting today. We have CFO, Mike Pack, and Pat Davidson, who heads Investor Relations. So we really appreciate you guys joining us on stage today.
Thanks for having us.
The pleasure is all ours. If you'd like to start with a couple opening remarks, and-
Sure. So I just thought I'd give a quick overview on Oshkosh. We have a lot of exciting things going on in the company, and just to level set before we get into the Q&A. But just to give you a little bit broader overview, if you look at the purpose of our company, our purpose is really to make a difference in the lives of people doing some of the toughest jobs in our communities. So think of construction workers or maintenance workers working at heights, refuse collectors, firefighters, soldiers, and the list goes on. And so our products are really purpose-built products that make those folks' lives safer and more productive. So that's really our purpose, which we view as a very powerful purpose.
Looking at our strategy, you can summarize it with three simple words: It's innovate, serve, and advance. And I'll talk briefly about each one of those. Think about innovation. There's not a single product line or segment in our business that we're not focused on electrifying products right now. You know, adoption's not gonna be overnight on those products, but we're, whether you're in our JLG business, where we make aerial work platforms and telehandlers, that business has been electrifying products for a couple of decades. But that's continuing to expedite and advance with really the conversion of lead-acid batteries to lithium-ion, as well as moving away from hydraulic cylinders to more linear actuators. So a lot of changes there.
We have electrification taking place in our Vocational segment, with both fire trucks and refuse collection vehicles. And certainly in our Defense segment, one of our exciting programs is the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle for the Postal Service, which 75% of those vehicles are gonna be fully electric. So a lot of exciting electrification initiatives, a lot of work around autonomy taking place in our businesses as well, as well as intelligent and connected products. So that's really the first pillar of our strategy of innovate. Next is really serve. So we're focused on taking care of our customers through the product life cycle.
So that's not only exceptional aftermarket parts and services, and extremely reliable equipment, but it's also, as we think about the twenty-first century moving into connected products, getting into new revenue streams with connectivity, and new offerings that will, over time, create more recurring revenue models, and new revenue streams. So that's a huge focus area. We'll talk a little bit about it more, but we're doing a—we just announced a couple weeks ago that we're doing an acquisition of JBT's AeroTech business and the airport support business. That's a business that we really liked. About 40% of their business is in that aftermarket space, so it's a lot of recurring revenue and resiliency through ups and downs of the economy over time.
So services certainly important, and we see more opportunities even in our traditional businesses to grow aftermarket parts and services over time. Then the last, and certainly not least, is advance. We look at advance a couple of different ways. Advance is really moving into new geographies and product adjacencies, and you can do that both organically or inorganically. Organically, we've the Postal Service contract is a great example. We're able to leverage our internal capabilities to really drive a new product category that was ultimately successful in the program. And we're very excited about that program ramping up really in 2024, but more so in 2025 and 2026. If you look on the inorganic front, we've been more acquisitive.
We, we recently announced, I mentioned the AeroTech acquisition, but we're interested in really acquisitions that can leverage technology that we're developing for our other products. AeroTech's a good example of that. A lot of overlap with electrification and autonomy initiatives we have. You think of products that are, again, create safety and productivity for people doing tough jobs. Again, AeroTech sort of checks that box as well. So that's another way, more the inorganic path, and we expect to continue to be active in that front as well. And of course, with acquisitions and even our own organic activities, we want to continue to increase our exposure internationally. Moving on to our segments, really operate in three segments. Our largest currently is Access Equipment.
Access is really in the aerial work platform, so think boom lifts, scissor lifts, telehandlers, that's really telescopic forklifts. Think about those products in that way. That's a business that has very strong demand dynamics right now, with aged fleets, a lot of non-residential construction activity taking place, including a lot of large mega projects. Moving to our Vocational segment, it's a newer segment for us. We previously had a Fire and Emergency segment, which was predominantly fire, fire trucks as well as aircraft rescue firefighting vehicles you would see at airports.
So we, we combined as well as our Commercial segment, we combined those really into a single segment, understanding that a lot of the trajectory from an innovation perspective with electrification, again, it's—there's a lot of overlap there and, and a lot of synergies. So we combined those really announced it at the beginning of this, this year. It's going well, and that AeroTech acquisition is really falling into that new Vocational segment. And last but not least, our Defense segment. I'd mentioned previously, Next Generation Delivery Vehicle rolls up under that segment. Our—a core competency of our Defense segment is managing very large programs with government or government-type customers, and so it fit really well into that, into that business.
We did see the other place that we're, that the predominant space that we've been in, in that business over time is in tactical wheeled vehicles. We certainly have seen a shift over time of, defense funding priorities going to more, weapons and combat vehicle, centric, investments, aircraft, and so on. So understanding that, that's one of the reasons we started getting into, that's fine, some adjacencies around, other product categories like Next Generation Delivery Vehicle. Thanks, Pat. So that's a, that, that'll be an area that you'll continue to see as a, a theme. We're, we're also in, in the combat vehicle space and a, in, in somewhat in adjacency now with the, Stryker MCWS program we won about a year and a half, two years ago.
So, a lot of exciting things happening in our Defense segment, too, even while defense, well, defense spending and tactical wheeled vehicles decline to that. Just real quickly before I turn it over to Larry, capital allocation, huge focus. We had Analyst Day, you know, about a year ago. We talked about our capital allocation priorities. A few big focus areas. We talked a lot about driving growth through both organic investments as well as inorganic. We expect to deploy about 65%-75% of our capital to those growth type objectives, and you certainly see that this over the course of the past couple of years. But what's also important is we view returning cash to shareholders as very important as well.
So that's gonna continue to be a meaningful part of our capital allocation strategy going forward as well. So with that, I'll turn it over to Larry, and we can hopefully dive into a few of these areas a little bit deeper.
Great. Great. Thank you, Mike. Now, the economy is top of mind for a lot of investors, obviously. And on your first quarter call, you mentioned that construction activity, industrial project activity has been, you know, fairly solid, pretty solid.
Yep.
Has anything changed since your first quarter? Any, any kind of rundown that you can give us in terms of what the landscape looks like?
Yeah. Demand continues to be very strong, and we see it really on a few different fronts. Number one, you look at non-residential construction indicators continue to be very solid, and that's certainly bolstered by the large number of mega projects out there. You think about the automotive manufacturers adding electrification capacity, battery capacity, chips capacity, a lot of the onshoring activities that are taking place throughout supply chains. So all those things are bolstering these mega projects, and there's a pretty significant portion of the fleet now is deployed to these large mega projects. And these aren't projects that are gonna be done overnight, and quite frankly, a lot of the infrastructure spending is not at full pace yet. So that's only gonna add to the demand picture.
So we see robust demand in that non-residential construction arena for the foreseeable future. And of course, you add on to it, particularly on our Access Equipment segment, fleet ages are quite aged right now. And even as we highlighted some of those metrics a year ago at our Analyst Day, it really hasn't improved over the course of the past year just because of some of the supply chain constraints and the high utilization rates that we're seeing of equipment.
Okay. Interesting. Now, you mentioned infrastructure projects. Have you, you know, have you seen that faucet start to turn on, or do you expect that kind of in?
I-
out years, later years?
It's started, and we don't always have 100% visibility to this since we're a step removed. But generally, what we're seeing is, yes, that activity is starting to pick up, but I would still say it's more at its infancy, that's still gonna be a growth driver. A lot of the projects taking place right now out in the industry had already started in a really, again, back to the sort of the, the onshoring and electrification initiatives and some of the warehousing that's been added across the country. That's really been the, the, the larger driver, but that's—we expect that infrastructure is gonna continue to be a growing tailwind in, in the mix of those projects with time here.
Okay. Interesting. Now, your non-defense backlog is about $8 billion as of 2022. Can you talk to the viability of that backlog? You know, there's been some obviously challenges in the industry with on-time delivery. Can you just talk to your backlog and the composition of it?
Sure. So within that, there's certainly, you know, we have strong backlogs in really all of our segments. Access is north of $4 billion as of the end of last quarter. So very strong demand in line with, you know, the comments I just made. And supply chain is still right now, if supply chain improved at a faster pace, we could deliver more equipment because demand really supports it. So, we expect the backlogs to stay quite robust. Now, I think as supply chains improve, you may not always have a if historically, you may not have a book-to-bill ratio of 1-to-1 every single quarter, but we expect that demand to continue to be strong.
You could, over time, as supply chains normalize, start seeing a little bit more normal order patterns in terms of times of the year. At this point, right now, we're filled for the year, and we're already booking, as we talked about on our last earnings call, into 2024.
... No real cancellations or order pushouts related to macro concerns or interest rates?
Certainly not. You know, you always have some gives and takes, but really demand is strong and, we're seeing that, and we're seeing that order activity follow suit.
Okay. And then, your expectations on price- cost heading into 2024, if you could talk to that a little bit.
Sure. So in Access, and I'll really break that down into our different segments. So in Access, we're largely price -cost positive this year, so price is really not a drag at this point. To the extent that we're not quite at - you look back to Q1, not quite back to our prior peak margins. It's really we're not producing at the same levels we were back in 2019 quite yet because of some of the supply chain constraints. But as we start seeing that supply chain continue to improve, we believe we can certainly meet and exceed prior peak margins. And so I think that's so cost prices and, you know, good shape there, but we're going to continue to monitor it.
As you know, over the course of the past year, we've, we've had done or we have done a fair amount of repricing of backlog, which is really a newer phenomenon for us that, you know, that, you know, we would expect to continue to monitor that and price, price accordingly going forward. If you look at Vocational, Vocational, because we can't reprice firetruck backlog, because of performance bonds, we have a lot of pricing that is coming online very late this year and into next year. So think double-digit prices from where we're at today.
So, even with prices, or excuse me, even if supply chain doesn't come back to fully normal by the end of the year, we expect that Vocational can be back into double-digit margins as a complete segment next year, just with that pricing dynamic of that additional pricing coming online that's currently in our backlog.
Yeah, you talked about 10%+ margins from the 8% or so you're expecting-
Correct.
With Vocational because of that pricing.
Yeah. Yeah, and it's again, it's a pretty notable step, and we've made some further changes in that business. We've really moved to quarterly price increases as we're booking backlog out into, you know, the later 2025, 2026 timeframe now. And we're very much, because there's more limitations on ability to reprice, we're really booking units in smaller chunks on a quarterly basis and then making those pricing adjustments. And that really, as we see the price coming online, you know, we see that being a solid double-digit business.
Great. And the supply chain, you mentioned it's still an issue. I mean, what are the expectations, you know, towards the end of the year and your parts availability, the components, you know, chassis and axles?
Yeah
... were a problem for you guys, you know, a couple of quarters ago.
Yep.
How is that shaping up?
Yeah, I would say that, as we talked about earlier in the year, that we expected that it wasn't going to be a light switch getting better and that we talked about in Q1, supply chain was better than what we had expected going into the year. I would say that it continues to improve at a not a rapid pace, but at a steady pace. So I think when, you know, as we get through this quarter, I would expect that our on-time delivery metrics, which we talk about typically on our earnings calls, for JLG, should be, and our other businesses should be, should see some progress.
You know, I think it's a situation where, if we continue to see progress, I think we're going to be—we exit the year in a much more normal place. Maybe not completely back to normal, but, much more normal than, where we entered the year. So I think it's, as we look out into the future, we see, you know, we have some optimism around 2024 and that steady progression.
Okay, great. Now, going back to the acquisition, the AeroTech acquisition-
Yeah
... you guys talked about in Vocational. I guess, talk to the interest of this acquisition and how it kind of fits into the new Vocational segment. You know, what are your expectations as the segment evolves, and-
Yeah
... any color there?
Yeah. We're, we're really excited about the AeroTech acquisition. It's, it's really a business that we've been interested in for, for a fairly long period of time. In fact, prior to becoming the CFO, it was really a business that, the segment president at the time, Jim Johnson, now the Vocational segment president, and I were very interested in, you know, call it four or five years ago. We like the business because it overlaps with, a lot of our focus areas so, so much. Number one, we're- we participate at airports, and while there's not always exact overlap of customers, we're, we're calling upon airports. We understand the environment, so there's, there's that benefit.
If you look at the products, we specialize in making purpose-built products that make work easier and more productive for people doing tough jobs, and it really fits the theme of our work, our focus and purpose as a company. A lot of the technology that's being implemented into their products, we're really on the same pace with what we're doing from a electrification, autonomy perspective, as well as connected products. So we expect to see a lot of overlap both directions, where we're able to leverage technologies they've developed on connected products. Vice versa, we can help advance some of the products that they've started.
So we believe a lot of technology, synergy and overlap, again, the customer and, it's just a, it's a great business and will fit well with our, with Vocational. The other thing we like about the airport space is it's not a, you know, minus the, the pandemic, which was sort of a hopefully a once-in-a-lifetime type event where air travel declined rapidly. All projections are that global air traffic is gonna continue to improve and grow. Same for global transportation of packages, and that all bodes well for, for the, the AeroTech business and airports in general. We also think there's an opportunity. There is, it's we have a pretty strong North American presence with that business or will. You know, there's an opportunity.
It is somewhat of a fragmented market, so there could be some opportunities for some bolt-in tuck-in acquisitions in that space over time as well.
Gotcha.... And a recurring revenue opportunity?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's, you know, I mentioned it earlier in that serve category, that you look at, at their business, about 40% of it is really—doesn't really necessarily go through their backlog. So you look at that business, it has about a 1-year backlog for their core products. But, about 15% of their business being aftermarket parts, and then about 25%, percent of it being recurring services on, on longer term service contracts, really creates a nice, stable revenue stream that—So again, all those things, it's just not a typically or particularly cyclical business, which we really like.
Right. And you mentioned adding tech and adjacencies via M&A. I guess, can you talk a little bit about the M&A pipeline today as you see it and, and,
Sure. So you look at. I think a good example of what we're interested in is really what we've been doing over the last, the last couple of years. So you look at, rolling back the clock about two years ago, we acquired Pratt Miller. We acquired Pratt Miller into our Defense segment because they had capabilities around electrification, autonomy, really leveraging a lot of their skill sets that they've developed through racing, automotive racing. And that's been a great acquisition. It was instrumental in us winning the Stryker MCWS program. They're already having a huge impact in helping our other businesses with our with some of our technology initiatives. So that's a good example of it helped us get into an adjacency, but also contributing technology.
You look at Hinowa, which we did earlier in the year, which is a long-time partner of JLG. It allows us to not only expand our presence in Europe with a really good business with solid margins, but it allows us to get into some adjacent spaces there. They have some products in the vegetation management space, as an example, as well as some smaller tractor vehicles and so on, which are some good products that really expand our capabilities that we see an opportunity to leverage more globally. So it's another example where, again, it's a very near adjacency, but also allows you to get into some other categories, and again, leverage some of our technology, and then most recently with AeroTech.
So you really see us looking at those themes of, you know, including or expanding aftermarket exposure, expanding or recurring revenue exposure, international, as well as, leveraging technology in those near adjacencies, that we're really looking at those on all of our acquisitions. So going forward, I would expect very similar themes, where we're looking at those acquisitions that we believe can drive strong value for our shareholders in those categories.
Okay. You mentioned your Investor day last year.
Yeah.
You issued 2025 targets. You know, has anything changed other than the JLTV recompete? You know, you guys are protesting that.
Yeah.
We can get into later, but, has anything else changed that it will alter your view on, on 25 targets?
Yeah. So, JLTV, we were not—it actually did come out yesterday that we were not successful in the protest. So that—so again, we've been planning that. Typically, with protests, it's odds are typically low, but as we've talked about, you know, we have so many growth drivers in our business that something—you're gonna have gives and takes when you have long-term targets. But, as John talked about on our last earnings call, we're still firmly committed to those, our Analyst Day targets with EPS really in that 11-13 range. So if you think about it, you know, certainly JLTV is a bit of a headwind. We talked about it. It's about $800 million-$1 billion of revenue.
Conversely, I'd say that our mix on NGDV is more electric, or BEV than what our previous expectations were. So that's a bit of a beneficial tailwind. And now, of course, with the AeroTech acquisition, that's gonna be certainly beneficial as well. So, we remain committed to them. You look at, you know, as we talked about Vocational returning to double-digit margins next year, and we look at what our Analyst Day targets are on that, we expect them to be sort of where we do for Analyst Day next, or really sort of approaching those levels. And we obviously see the good trajectory that Access is on.
And the big piece then is as we start ramping up the next generation delivery vehicles, which we'll start delivering vehicles at scale in the back half of next year, but 2025 is gonna be a big ramp up year. So that's gonna be a meaningful driver on top. So those are really the things we're looking at, and why we still remain committed to those targets.
Okay, great. Any questions from the audience so far? Yeah. No? Okay, go on. You're transitioning about 500 sq ft of telehandler capacity to your Jefferson City facility, and you're expanding capacity for the NGDV. Can you talk to, you know, the progress of those, those capacity enhancements, and are there any other opportunities for you with the other areas of your business?
Yeah. Yeah, very exciting just from a demand perspective. We talked about, first of all, on the Postal front, we're gonna be producing those units in about 1 million sq ft facility, in South Carolina. And that facility is in, it's Spartanburg area, so great area that, you know, BMW is located in that area, so there's a great supply chain in that area, and there's a great workforce. So we're very excited to be in that area. The facility looks great. It's largely complete. So very much on our ahead of track or ahead of plan to get the facility ready for production. So...
You know, the exciting thing with ramping up a lot of larger programs over time, we're able to—the individual that really ramped up our facility for JLTV previously was is really ramping up that facility. So we have a person that's stood up massive facilities routinely in the past, but really, really manages the risk of those types of standups. That, that—those are, those are great skill sets to have on board. So that's progressing well. Yeah, the other facilities in Jefferson City, Tennessee, former defense facility, we're transitioning that to telehandler capacity. So there's really a need for telehandlers, particularly as we continue to see opportunities to expand telehandlers more into the ag space in the United States. That capacity will be quite useful. So that, that's in the process.
We're just starting that conversion right now. JLG does have a couple of lines set up in the facility, and over the next, call it 9 months, the remaining portion of that facility will be changed over to telehandler production. Generally, the other capacity project that we have going on right now is related to our electric refuse collection vehicles in our Vocational segment, which we announced about a month and a half ago. So customer reception to those has been absolutely outstanding. A couple of our large customers talked publicly about acquiring those units. They'll be early adopters of it, which we're very excited about. So the plan there is that those will be built in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
The great thing there is it's about 1 million sq ft facility as well, and clearly, we have a long backlog on the fire side, so we're gonna leverage the capacity and workforce availability in that Murfreesboro, Tennessee area as well, to help our fire emergency or on the fire truck side benefit from some additional capacity. So a lot of exciting things happening on the capacity front, really, maximizing the leveraging of all of our facilities to make sure we're filling them up.
Right. I gotcha. Okay. Now, digging into the segments a little bit, you mentioned Access Equipment. You know, you mentioned the aged fleet-
Mm-hmm.
and the tailwinds there. Are there any concerns from rental customers, you know, rental customers have gotten a little bit more comfortable operating aged fleet, and they're a little more reluctant to, you know, replace that aging fleet?
Yeah, that, that's definitely not what we're seeing right now. We continue to see, and really there's not been... They've been sort of forced to operate at a little bit more aged fleets just because of equipment availability. But this is something that as we talk to our customers, they're highly focused on continuing to refresh fleets over time. And again, you look at all the other strong demand dynamics, and if you look at, in particular, look at these large projects, they want new equipment on the work sites, and so, so that certainly helps as well. So, you know, again, we believe that aging is just one more dynamic that's gonna continue to fuel the strong demand in the whole JLG space or access space.
Okay, great. And how much of your you're projecting low double-digit revenue growth for access this year? How much is that price versus volume?
Yeah, so the lion's share of that right now is price. And what we've said going into the year, you know, supply chain's was a bit unpredictable last year. I think going into the year, we expected to see more improvement in 2022. So coming into this year, our belief is that while we expect to see improvement, it's hard to say what pace that was gonna be at. So our approach was, is that we expect sort of slow, steady growth over the course of the year, and however, we stand ready to the extent that supply chain improves, that we'll deliver more equipment. And we did see in the first quarter, we did see stronger deliveries, a bit better supply chain dynamics than what we expected.
And I think the good news is that we continue to see progress on that front. So, you know, it's something that we'll continue to evaluate, but, I think right going into the year, our view of, with that uncertainty around the pace of improvement, it was more price driven versus volume driven.
Okay, great. Now your op margin guides about 11.5% for the year, and that suggests a pretty large incremental. How should we think about 2024 incrementals? You know, should we think about returning more to that 20%-25% range that you'd see in a normal operating environment?
Yeah, you're spot on. So what we'd expect is you're gonna see we're lapping some lower margin quarters in the first two quarters when we had the larger price- cost headwinds. Even in the back half of the year, you'll start to get to more normal incrementals. But I think you're spot on, really looking at it, going forward, as volumes added in 2024, I'd really look at it as where we exit this year, you would expect to see sort of that, sort of the, yeah, the 20%-25%.
Okay.
Again, a little bit dependent upon what mix ends up being, but in general, that's what we would expect.
Okay. Have you seen any evidence of new, or increased competition from lower-cost manufacturers?
You know, competition's always present. I think in the United States, we, as well as other competitors, banded together. We did see some unfair competition, so we're all for competition, but it's got to be fair. So there were some duties and tariffs on predominantly Chinese equipment being imported into the U.S. So that's really not, at this point, it's obviously something we'll continue to monitor. Again, there's particularly in Europe, and I would say in Asia, that competition's prevalent. Our focus, though, is you win by having superior aftermarket service and support and reliability and continuing to innovate. You stay ahead on the innovation curve, that's where that's really gonna drive the demand over time.
So that's really our response, and that's really what we do on all of our businesses. We don't really compete on a price basis. We're typically at or above where the competition is from a pricing perspective, and that we tend to attempt to offer more technology or capability with our equipment with higher resale.
Total cost of ownership, right?
Correct. Absolutely.
Yep. Gotcha. You mentioned the JLTV re-compete contract-
Mm-hmm.
You know, the outcome last yesterday that was announced. I guess, how are you thinking about kind of filling that void going forward and other— You know, you mentioned MCWS program.
Mm-hmm.
What other programs can, you know, that you're looking forward to in the future that can kind of mitigate the loss that-
Yeah, I think we're looking at it not just as a company in total. We're looking at it as a company in total. So I think there's certainly programs, adjacent programs like MCWS. There's programs like the Robotic Combat Vehicle that we're in the competition for, OMFV and so on. You know, we'll continue to look at those programs and pursue some of those adjacencies, and we've had, again, some nice adjacent wins. But I think, you know, first of all, we have the changeover in Jefferson City, Tennessee, so that's a piece of it. They were certainly building componentry for defense for the JLTVs, so that's really, that facility is being consumed. Then we have about a 350,000 sq ft facility in Oshkosh.
And if you think about the capacity needs that we've had as a business over time and some of the adds I just went through a few minutes ago, that's not a large facility for us to very productively redeploy. So I think we have a lot of options that we're gonna continue to explore. And certainly, you know, there's a great workforce there, and we have the ability to certainly leverage those. You know, Pierce is right up the road, in that Wisconsin area that we're located. So we see a lot of opportunities there, and we don't see by the time we get to 2025, that we'll have a fixed cost drag that we're dealing with at that point.
Any questions from the audience? We're almost up against the half hour. No? I guess you could talk about second quarter a little bit. You're kind of expecting flat sales and earnings sequentially because of supply chain and all that.
Yep.
Is that a little bit of conservatism? Because you did mention access in the first quarter, kind of supply chain loosened up, is a little better than expected. Are you guys kind of a little bit conservative in terms of that guide with what's going on with supply chain in terms of your expectations for a little bit, you know, loose, you know, more loose conditions there?
You know what? Again, we'll continue to still it's... You know, typically the last month of, of quarters tend to be pretty, pretty big, just in terms-
Right.
particularly this time of the year.
Mm-hmm.
So, certainly we'll, you know, we'll see where we end up. But I would just say in general, I go back to my earlier comments that, you know, I think in general, we've continued to see some slow, steady improvement in supply chain, and I think over time, that should benefit, that should benefit volume as we continue to progress through the year. So we'll, you know, it's something we'll continue to watch. We're watching those on-time delivery metrics on a daily basis.
Right.
So, again, I think it bodes well, particularly as we get into next year. I think we could be in an even much better situation versus sitting here today. So, you know, I think there continues to be progression there, I'd say.
Okay, great. With that, I think we'll leave it there. And thank you, Mike, and thank you, Pat-
Yep
So much for your participation. We really appreciate it.
Great.
All right.
Thanks a lot, Larry.
Thanks, Larry.