Steelcase Inc. (NYSE:SCS) Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call December 20, 2023 8:30 AM ET
Company Participants:
– Mike O’Meara – Investor Relations
– Sara Armbruster – President and Chief Executive Officer
– Dave Sylvester – Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants:
– Reuben Garner – The Benchmark Company
– Greg Burns – Sidoti
– Steven Ramsey – Thompson Research Group
– Budd Bugatch – Water Tower Research
Operator: Good morning. My name is Krista, and I’ll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Steelcase Third Quarter Fiscal 2024 Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Mr. O’Meara, you may begin your conference.
Mike O’Meara: Thank you, Krista. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the recap of our third quarter fiscal 2024 financial results. Here with me today are Sara Armbruster, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Dave Sylvester, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our third quarter earnings, which crossed the line — the wires yesterday, is accessible on our website. This conference call is being webcast, and this webcast is a copyrighted production of Steelcase Inc. A replay of this webcast will be posted to ir.steelcase.com later today. Our discussion today may include references to non-GAAP financial measures and forward-looking statements. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures and details regarding the risks associated with the use of forward-looking statements are included in our earnings release, and we are incorporating by reference into this conference call the text of our safe harbor statement included in the release. Following our prepared remarks, we will respond to questions from investors and analysts. I will now turn the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Sara Armbruster.
Sara Armbruster: Thanks, Mike, and hello, everyone, and thanks for joining the call today. Our third quarter results reflect the continued progress we’re making on our profit improvement initiatives, which is evidenced by our year-over-year gross margin improvement of 360 basis points. I’m proud of all of our employees who are continuing to drive fitness and reallocate resources to support our growth and transformation initiative. I’d like to thank our sales team for capturing price increases and our operations teams for the improvements they’re driving. Additionally, our operations teams continue to make changes aimed at improving our manufacturing and distribution efficiency. We recently announced the relocation of our regional distribution center in Rancho Cucamonga, California to Phoenix, which we expect will provide additional savings beyond that from our previously announced Atlanta distribution center closure. We’ve also begun implementing the consolidation of certain seating production into our Mexico and Malaysia operations, which will open up additional footprint that will enable us to pursue further efficiency actions. Our Americas segment delivered another strong quarter of year-over-year profitability improvement. And I’ll also highlight the turnaround in the results in our International business this quarter. We delivered over $9 million of adjusted operating income in our International segment, or over $4 million if we exclude the earn-out adjustment we recorded. These figures compare to the nearly $15 million adjusted operating loss we recorded in the first half of the year. We’re seeing momentum in the improvements we’re making in both our EMEA and Asia Pacific businesses, where we’re now benefiting from some of the actions we announced earlier in the year to lower our cost structure and tune our strategy. Our third quarter orders grew 15% overall against the prior year and 1% sequentially against our second quarter, continuing the relatively stable overall levels we’ve seen this year. Our International orders grew 10% year-over-year, and that included 40% growth — or over 40% growth in Asia Pacific. In the Americas, our third quarter orders grew 16% and were led by strong growth in our large corporate customer segment. We also posted order growth in our other customer segments on a collective basis. Those segments continue to see progress in areas such as clinical healthcare spaces and classroom environments, while we experienced headwinds in others such as healthcare and educational administrative settings, which we believe is consistent with the broader trend in those verticals. Orders in the large corporate customer segment have been strengthening over the past year, and customers are coming to us for guidance as they strive to create spaces that will engage their employees and help them perform. Customers are looking to invest in spaces that solve for a host of needs, such as providing places to focus, collaborate, build social connections, and foster well-being. We’ve stayed invested throughout the last few years in workplace research and new product offerings to maintain and enhance a differentiated offering, and we believe that’s reflected in our strong win rates, and we’re continuing to position ourselves to lead the transformation of the workplace and win new business. As I look at some of our most recent significant wins, our customers say that two of the most important factors in their furniture selections are innovation and sustainability. They’re seeking products rooted in insights-based innovation to help increase the performance of their work spaces. And they’re also leveraging rigorous product selection processes with an eye to achieving environmental goals. So, we’ve taken deliberate steps to curate and grow our product portfolio to answer this call. So, for example, we recently launched CarbonNeutral options for Ology and Migration SE, and we expanded CarbonNeutral task seating options to EMEA. And this adds to the CarbonNeutral task seating portfolio we launched in the Americas last spring. This quarter, we also launched our innovative Karman mesh chair in Asia Pacific, expanding the offerings we have in that region to support ergonomic comfort and well-being. We’ve also made performance enhancements to Steelcase Ology and our AMQ height adjustable tables to provide improved well-being solutions at a broad range of price points. We believe we are uniquely positioned to meet evolving customer needs and expectations, and we believe our wins reinforce both our strategy and our global investments in these areas. Finally, I’d like to celebrate the work our team has done in connecting our strategy with our Better People, Better Planet aspiration. I encourage you to dive into the details of that work in our recently published Impact Report. This year, instead of releasing it exclusively as an online PDF, we integrated the report into our Work Better magazine to demonstrate the central role that having a positive impact on people and the planet has in our business and in our conversations with customers. Leaders today have an incredible opportunity to help people do their best work by creating places that work better, and Steelcase is equipped to help them and is excited to offer solutions that meet their most pressing needs. So, in closing, our demand levels have been stable and we’ve continued to drive year-over-year profitability improvements. We are optimistic that as more companies settle into a stronger in-office presence, their investment levels will increase. We remain focused on executing our strategy to lead the workplace transformation, diversify the customers and markets we serve, and improve our profitability. So with that, I’ll turn it over to Dave to review the financial results and share details regarding our outlook.
Dave Sylvester: Thank you, Sara, and good morning, everyone. My comments today will provide some additional color around our third quarter results, including a comparison to the outlook we provided in September, as well as some comments regarding our orders, the balance sheet, and our cash flow. I will also cover the outlook for the fourth quarter and share some preliminary thoughts about fiscal 2025. Our third quarter adjusted earnings per share included the benefits of a decrease in the valuation of an acquisition earn-out liability and gains from the sale of land and fixed assets. Those items benefited our third quarter results by approximately $0.10 per share, which was $0.06 more than the benefits we had included in our third quarter guidance range for projected gains on the sale of fixed assets. Setting these items aside, our third quarter results were in-line with our expectations, as the impact of lower-than-expected revenue was offset by a more favorable gross margin and lower operating expenses. Our revenue of $778 million was slightly below our expectations because…
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