Great. Well, thanks, everyone, for being here. It's my pleasure to have up next, Stanley Black & Decker, Chris Nelson, President and CEO, and Chris had been COO for a couple of years and became Chief Executive several months ago. Congratulations on that, Chris. I think Chris has a couple of prepared remarks, and then we'll go into the questions.
Well, thank you very much, and first of all, welcome to everybody, and thank you for the invite. Yeah, it's kinda interesting. I was talking to a few people earlier, and it seems hard to believe that it's been almost three years. Time has flown since I've joined Stanley Black & Decker. But, you know, the thing that I've been certainly talking to everybody about every, you know, since I've, you know, moved into the CEO role, is that, you know, our story and our kind of our go-forward mission is pretty straightforward, and that is, you know, we need to certainly be what...
You know, be there for our customers every step of the way and provide to them the solutions they're looking for, and do that by first and foremost, you know, activating our core brands with purpose. And I think we've seen the progress there with the growth we've seen on DEWALT and, you know, this year coming with a lot of the product launches and new activation on STANLEY and CRAFTSMAN. I think we're gonna continue to see that progress as well. Secondarily is, you know, really driving operational excellence across the entity.
And while we finished our transformation cost out program with $2.1 billion being taken out of the cost structure, I would say that, you know, we're still in the very, very early innings of what we can accomplish to drive productivity and operate as a world-class brand of industrial. And between what we see from a lean capability, as well as changes in footprint, as well as what we can do with platforming and material productivity, you know, our ability then, and on an ongoing basis, think about how we drive 3% gross productivity out of our COGS every year is very much a part of our plan because that then fuels the ability to invest in the brands and drive that growth going forward.
And then the third key thing is making sure, you know, the beauty of this industry, it's an industry that rewards innovation with growth and enhanced margins, and we have set a course to make sure that we can accelerate our pace of innovation, and we've seen progress there. We took out 20% of the cycle time last year from the beginning of program to product, production, and that is allowing us to now see many more incremental new product launches this year, coming in this year, which helps with the first in activating the brand. You know, it's a fairly simple formula, and, you know, we've seen a lot of progress, and we're very confident with what we see in front of us.
And, you know, we have a lot within our control that we will continue to control this year and execute as we have been over the past 24+ months.
Fantastic. Thanks for that, Chris. And maybe, you know, just set the stage for us on the kind of demand environment. You know, the self-help seems to be firing on all cylinders, but how is kind of the demand outlook there and, and sort of volume trends and that type of thing?
Yeah, I think, yeah, our most recent earnings conference, we talked about the fact that, you know... Just let me take a step back.
Mm-hmm.
We had, as everybody knows, a pretty large shock in the industry last year with tariffs, and we took the approach of wanting to be very proactive on how we mitigated those tariffs and saying that we wanted to be able to be dollar-for-dollar cash neutral as quick as possible to maintain our margin journey, as well as our ability to invest in the long term of the business, as well as invest in our customers. So we came out, and we did two sizable price increases, working with our channel partners. And that was great. It went very well, and I think you've seen with what we saw with only one backward step on a margin quarter, how that helped us continue the story.
Now, what I'd say is very, very kind of predictably, now we're working through how we continue to, tweak and dial in those pricing levels, and we saw a little bit of a, I think, a combination of a weaker consumer, as well as some price sensitivity on some opening price points that we're gonna be, you know, calibrating as we move into 2026. And, you know, I would say that we feel good about, that, the underlying opportunity there. You know, certainly, we're thinking that this year is gonna be much more of a, you know, on a relative basis, much more stable and predictable. It'd be difficult to, you know, think about it being more, volatile than last year. So we think about it as being much more of a stable operating environment.
And then similarly, we think that the story, as it relates to pricing, has... You know, it hasn't fully been told yet, and we've seen, you know, even coming into 2026, in the past month or so, other competitors now taking price as well, and kind of everybody's getting on a similar playing field, which is encouraging to see as well.
Got it. Have you seen any shifts in terms of market share within the industry, say, in the Tools & Outdoor business, amidst all the gyrations around tariffs and everything else?
I don't think structurally we've seen anything change. I think if anything, we've seen you know you know the entire industry you know kind of facing a similar challenge with similar types of playbook to reacting to it. Now, I'd say in the short term, as all the volatility with different approaches and timing and pricing actions play out and how people decide to what to do with promotions, et cetera. You know, there will be blips and changes as people kind of you know as it kind of reaches its equilibrium. But you know we feel you know we feel very encouraged by what we're seeing on our progress in our professional channels. You know, I think we feel fairly confident that we continue to pick up share there.
And then it's a matter of, you know, and what we're seeing, as well in, you know, in the investments we've made in our, in our international businesses, specifically some of the things in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, you know, the progress we're in those professional markets picking up share as well. And then it's just a matter of, you know, where on the opening price point, things that we're working through right now, those handful of SKUs in the retail world for the DIYer. Obviously, the DIYer has not been as healthy, for a while now, and I don't think that that's something that's gonna...
You know, we don't have forecasts as recovering in 2026, so we gotta make sure that we're dialing in the pricing there appropriately for those types of price-sensitive items.
Perfect. And if you're looking at the industrial side of the house-
Yeah
... kind of how are you thinking about volumes there? You know, CAM's doing well now-
Yep
... but then it will be sort of out of the portfolio in a few months. So how's that base industrial business looking?
Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, you know, we're very excited about the CAM transaction.
Yeah.
I think it was, it's just, it was, it's a, you know, how much a great buyer, and I think that, that, that business is going to a, a great owner, and we're excited for the team, and we're excited from our perspective of looking at what that's gonna allow us to do for our balance sheet, and I'm sure we'll, we'll touch on, on that a little bit later. When we talk about the two businesses that remain, that being auto and the industrial part of Engineered Fastening, you know, it's interesting 'cause I, I, I get a lot of questions about what is that, you know, what do we think about that business? What do we think about that for the long term? I- they're great businesses that we think we can add a lot of value to.
Actually, the businesses and the playbook is very similar to Tools & Outdoor . You're talking about, you know, two businesses in the industrial automotive that are really—they're tools and fasteners businesses that provide solutions to drive productivity for their end users. The only difference is that, you know, in the automotive world, you're doing it in automotive factories to be able to drive productivity on the lines, and in the industrial world, you're doing it in key high-growth verticals. You think about, you know, in one of our focus areas in solar, you know, that's what are their biggest issues when you're putting out the solar field? How can I assemble and fasten things together in a remote environment? That's cordless tools and solutions and fasteners.
It's a similar thing that we do in the Tools & Outdoor business. We like the businesses, we like the fundamentals. What we're doing is we're really investing in sharpening our go-to-market to be able to have the application engineering resources that are tailor-made for the verticals that we're focusing on. 'Cause ultimately, those businesses, you succeed or fail based upon your ability to work with those line engineers and design engineers to provide the solutions to take cost and time out of their processes. We're doing that with key focus verticals in the industrial business, and then auto, really making sure that we continue to grow, share, and bolster our share position, which is a very nice position in North America and Europe.
Fortunately for us, with our product line, we are actually, you know, we're agnostic to internal combustion or EV. We just need to make sure that we're providing the fasteners that those automakers need in order to provide more output at more efficient levels. So we're not trying to figure out and bet one way or another, and I think that we're very excited about what we see as organic volume growth for this year in those two businesses.
Great. You know, switching back to tools for a second, how is kind of the price elasticity of volume demand playing out? As you said, there had to be some price-
Yeah
... hikes and then a sort of recalibration now the tariff storm is dying down.
Yeah, I'd say that it's, like I said, we went quick, and we were aggressive for a reason.
Mm-hmm.
I would say that what we're seeing now...
Yeah
... is, it's anticipated, right? You know, what there's a little bit of softening that we saw, or an increased level of elasticity above the 1.0 that we planned on, in two specific areas in Q4. And that was, as I referenced earlier-
Mm-hmm
... it was in those, you know, kind of opening price point type of-
Okay
... entry products where you've got... And a lot of people have talked about it in the consumer world, where you're getting a lot of trade down happening, where it's a decision between a branded or a private label, and making sure that we have those handful of SKUs at that entry price point appropriately priced. And that, you know, we saw a little bit of a sensitivity there that we were working on tweaking. Nothing, I mean, it's nothing material, but-
Yeah
... we're tweaking those prices, and they're kind of going in on those entry products in the next month or two. The second area where we saw, and it's once again not surprising, and it's kind of a little bit normal course of business, but when you're coming off of such a large change structurally in the amount of pricing that went in, how we think about our promotional calendar. So, in Q4 saw a higher level of consumer and end user buy on promotion, which is not surprising given the state of the economy and what we see right now. It was a little bit higher than what we anticipated, but nothing, once again, nothing material.
Where we're making our—and once again, these are a handful of categories—where we're making our modifications going forward this year would be in a handful of select categories where we decided, just I'll make up numbers and say that last year, this category, we promoted at $229, and for this long, and, you know, as we thought about Q4 last year, we decided, well, with the price increases, we think we're gonna be able to—we're gonna put that promotional level, once again, making up the numbers, at $259.
Yeah.
And that you always have to kind of figure it out and get the sensitivities, and what we saw was, you know, on a couple of, you know, couple of categories, we probably needed to adjust down, you know, in this instance, maybe to-
Mm-hmm
$249.
Got it.
So we're this year, now we're kind of redoing some of, you know, those targeted, very surgical points on promotion in Q3 and Q4, 'cause we have, there's a lead time to getting that.
Yeah.
You'll see those kinda come through in the back half of the year. We saw the sensitivities in places that it made sense. They're very manageable and narrow, and if we think about, you know, repricing tens of thousands of SKUs—
Mm-hmm
... is what we did, we're talking about handfuls of SKUs that we're getting dialed in.
I see.
It's what you would expect in any normal course of business, and I think that the only difference is because of the scope and scale of what we did from repricing, we just have probably more of them to sort through in a tighter window than we would normally as a course of business. But you know, that's kind of what we saw in Q4-
Mm-hmm
... and how we're thinking about, you know, what it means going into this year.
Great, and DEWALT has been a real success story on the market share expansion effort and getting kind of sales growth situated. How do we think about the timing of kind of rolling out what happened there with some of the other brands-
Yeah
- in tool and outdoor?
Well, listen, as I mentioned earlier, it's coming up on three years that I've been here, and, you know, one of the first things we did was when I took the job in the COO role, is thinking about the brand portfolio, where were we gonna make our bets for investment as we kind of honed in on where we're gonna focus our resources. It didn't take... You know, I'm not a rocket scientist. It didn't take much to figure out, hey, DEWALT's, you know, it's a big brand, it's got a lot of momentum, it serves a, you know, it serves a very attractive market segment. So we put a lot of our initial focus into the market activation, the sales force support, and the product development, and the focus on that brand out of the gate.
We've seen the progress as a result. From there, and over the past couple of years, what we've done next is we tackled, and I'll talk about them in this order, Stanley and CRAFTSMAN®. Stanley is a brand that I'd say had been largely untouched for a number of years from a product perspective. It didn't have a necessarily well-defined end user segmentation, so who they were going after, and, you know, there was a lot of opportunity to invest in the go-to-market.
So over the past couple of years, we've undertaken what is the largest revitalization of that product line that I think it's seen in I don't even know how many years, where we've changed the visual design language, the portfolio of products to more well align to its target segment, which is a small Res/Com construction contractor. And then the tiering and visual design language in each, and a lot of the packaging that goes with it. So that was starting to roll out last year, and the meat of that will roll out over 2026 and 2027. So really exciting new refresh-
Mm-hmm
... to that product line. And then, couple that with the fact that, you know, Stanley, just for background, is the majority of it is a European business, so it's-
Yeah
... roughly call it two-thirds European. And in that business, and largely a hand tool, or in that market, and largely a hand tool business, that goes through wholesalers, where our brand awareness is off the charts, but what we were missing was the feet on the street to make sure we're working with the wholesalers, to be merchandising, to own the wall, because essentially, you branded arrays, and it kind of sets up a little bit of a vending machine type of approach.
Mm-hmm.
We didn't have the feet on the street to set up those vending machines, so we've gone back to dedicated resources in Europe for Stanley, and I think by the end of, you know, by the end of 2026, we're gonna be kind of approaching 100 folks that are kind of dedicated to that. The results of that targeted approach to what the brand stands for, making sure we understood our end user, getting the products lined up, refreshing it, and then investing in the resources to take it to market, we started to see the inflection there. I think I'm optimistic that we'll continue to see it. I'm sorry, Craftsman's a little bit different story, and that was, you know, in all honesty, that's been the heaviest lift.
Okay.
So when we acquired that, that business, and it was a great acquisition back a number of years ago, we essentially acquired a brand with no product.
Mm-hmm.
So the first thing you wanna do is get product for your brand, which makes perfect sense, and that was the decision that was made. But what was not done is we didn't do a good job of saying, what segment are we going after?
Mm-hmm.
So it was kind of somewhat professional, a little bit DIY, it was a little bit... It wasn't well-
Yeah
...well articulated or defined. And then we took what is more of a professional-grade product and put it into more of a DIY type of price point. So it was, the product wasn't specified correctly, it was probably over-performance, and it was higher cost than it needed to be. So that not only creates a growth issue, but it creates a margin issue.
So, a couple of years ago, we kind of put a stake in the ground and said, "This, you know, CRAFTSMAN is a DIY brand, and we need to make sure that we design the products accordingly." Meaning that if you think about the workflows that we think about for the professional user with DEWALT, that being a carpenter, a mechanical, electrical, plumbing, et cetera, in the DIY world, we need to make sure we have the right tools for people in their garage, in their yards, and in for their projects, and really redefine our product line that way. And then, probably even more importantly, say, "What does the performance of those products need to be?" Because that defines what your cost position is going to look like, and therefore defines what your margin structure is going to look like.
So through that process, and over the past couple of years, we have now been designing those DIY-specific products, and this year we're going to be launching. I'll just use an example. We're going to be launching a, you know, a five-tool suite of products that is kind of like the, the power tool, five essential power tools that every DIYer needs. You know, you got a recip, you got a circ saw, you got a drill, impact, et cetera. And it's all off a new platform with new electronics, new transmission-
Mm.
New battery technology that is then driving at the right performance level, at the right cost point.
Okay.
So we'll be able to fill out that product line and then drive the growth at an accretive margin level. And that just comes from really kind of going hardcore into how we want to segment this brand and getting our cost position in line with that. And, you know, I'm very optimistic. This will be the largest, I believe, the largest product launch year for the CRAFTSMAN brand since we acquired it. I mean, obviously, we launched a bunch of products when we first acquired it-
Mm-hmm.
because there were no products to... So
Yeah.
But since then, you know, this is-
Mm-hmm.
Now we're kind of getting that prime the pump primed again, and that, once again, gets back to the importance of how it's so vital that we've been able to accelerate the rate at which we innovate and take that 20% out of the cycle time and look to take another 20% out, because that is really the lifeblood of this business, as we get everything kind of moving in the right direction. And I would expect, to kind of finish the swing on that answer, I would expect, you know, CRAFTSMAN to-- for us to see that inflection point towards growth kind of towards the end of the year, this year.
Great. And, you know, Chris, as costs of, of reinvesting in these things, so maybe sort of help us understand the confidence in the gross margin trajectory, you know, not assuming a big volume upturn and, and assuming these ongoing kind of costs of reinvestment.
Yeah. So, I mean, the margin story is, I have, I have a great deal of confidence there. You know, not only have we been able to, you know, demonstrate and execute, and I give a lot of credit to the team of being able to execute some very aggressive plans in a very difficult environment last year, but we've built, we've built the muscle memory to be able to continue. And, you know, our, our margin expansion really comes from, you know, I'll call it, you know, year-over-year, three key things. First and foremost is going to be, just taking the necessary capacity actions that we're taking at the beginning of the year as we've adjusted for the volumes that we saw in Q4. So there's a little bit of the hangover, the under-absorption. We've adjusted accordingly.
Kind of, that's just-
Mm-hmm
... done. That's a thing you do. Secondarily, then we have the continuation of what we're going to do to drive that every year, 3% type of productivity. Now, we built a lot of muscle as a part of our transformation program, but a lot of that was, really the majority of it, was driven by pure sourcing activities. And now as we layer on what we can do for driving existing facility productivity through lean, combined with the opportunity that we have to reduce our footprint as we go forward, and that's, that's an area that we haven't moved as far as I would have liked to at this point. There's a lot of, a lot of opportunity there.
I think the reason is that, you know, last year, when you're trying to move production all over the world, it's very difficult to concurrently rationalize your footprint.
Yeah.
We need to get to the point where we're in equilibrium.
Mm-hmm.
So you combine that, and then the third thing is, as we now get to more maturity on how we can have our productivity driven through design, engineering, and ultimately platforming and how we're seeing that continue to progress, it's just it becomes... It, it's just a way you run the business, and it's every year you have a pipeline. We're not waking up January 2nd and saying, "Oh, my gosh, you know, we need to get things moving.
Mm-hmm.
We have an ongoing muscle and process that we have that pipeline that we've built. So that's kind of the second part. And then the third is going to be our tariff mitigation, and that is a combination of optimizing our location of production.
Mm-hmm.
And we've been public about saying that we're going to be, you know, out of China, for all intents and purposes, by the end of this year, less than 5%, and we're on, we're on pace, and actually we've been, we've been moving a little quicker. So we're, we're doing well, we're doing well there. And then, secondarily has been in, achieving USMCA qualification. And I had said last year that we thought that we could, in the medium term, get to kind of industry averages for an industrial, which is kind of called, you know, 75-ish% USMCA qualified. And I would say that now we've, we've been, we've been making great progress, and I would say that, you know, we can be at or above that level for sure.
So, now the productivity and the tariff mitigation, while we have them as two different parts of that bridge, they're really similar activities-
Yeah
... done by a lot of the same people. So, we've got a lot of activity underway, but I feel good about, you know, kind of the capabilities we've built over the past, you know, 12+ months in the turmoil we've been through, to continue that execution level. And, you know, with what we see is, you know, we're not planning on a exceptional market backdrop. We feel good about where we're gonna look for, you know, achieving those margin targets. And as I've said, you know, as well, I mean, it's like, yeah, we feel good about being where we need to be, 34%-35% at the end of the year, knowing what we know now, and we'll continue to execute to get there.
The medium-term goal, the sort of like mid-high teens EBITDA.
Yeah
... margin, kind of in 2028, what do you need top line-wise, you know, at a minimum, let's say, to, for that goal to be?
Yeah, we don't have a lot of volume-
Yeah
... in that equation.
Mm-hmm.
So it's kind of, you know, getting, it's kind of this year is low single digits, kind of getting, you know, to the maybe lower end of mid-single digits by the end of the timeframe.
Yeah.
But it's not a volume-based story.
Yeah.
And when I-
Sure
... when I talk about the productivity that we intend to drive, I'm talking about productivity on flat volume.
Yeah.
What I look at is saying that that volume and that, that kind of organic growth is gonna be a little bit of upside that we can look at, and, you know, I feel good about the 35. To me, the growth on top of that becomes where the 35 goes beyond 35. And we've said the longer-term goals are the 35%-37%.
Mm-hmm.
I think that that's very manageable. For the organization, you know, obviously we need to finish the swing on getting to that 35% level, 'cause that's a healthy margin level that we think allows us to continue to reinvest in the business. And, you know, and now it's, you know, you go and talk to anybody in our organization, it's about: Okay, how are we gonna see the growth? Let's make sure that we're investing, make sure that we're driving that growth and the share gain as well, because, you know, obviously we'd love to see all that hard work and structural cost change-
Mm-hmm
... be able to drop through with higher volume.
Perfect. And then last question, I think before the audience response, survey ones. Just around portfolio. CAM's gonna come out soon, very helpful for delevering. How do you feel about the sort of the rest of the portfolio? Does outdoor need portfolio surgery, or you think you can push the margin up without that?
I'd say the, the large answer is, we like our portfolio. We'll continue—we will, as always, continue to evaluate it.
Yeah.
As it relates to outdoor, we like the outdoor business, but we're gonna make sure and kind of look product line by product line, and make sure that within the outdoor business, we are in the products and categories that we like. We like the growth trajectory, we like the industry structure-
Mm-hmm
... and we like the fact that they're gonna, those are products that are gonna continue to electrify, and therefore, we can grab more of the value chain and expand our margins. So we announced that we're gonna be moving the gas walk-behinds to a license model-
Yeah
... which is, you know, we'll still participate, but we don't need to be the manufacturer, and that allows us to put our resources where we want in the outdoor business. We'll look at other things like that around the edges, but, you know, no major portfolio, you know, kind of, actions on the horizon in that area.
Perfect. Well, thanks, Chris. And with that, we'll switch to audience response survey. So first question around sort of current ownership of Stanley Black & Decker.
This is my report card, right?
Yes, a mini one. Okay, so about 2/3 not owning it. That's pretty standard. Second question is around kind of overall bias or sort of attitude to the stock at the moment.