Teledyne Technologies Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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October 23, 2024

There are 12 speakers on the call.

Operator

And as a reminder, your conference call today is being recorded.

Operator

I'll now turn the conference call over to your first speaker, Jason Van Wees. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Hello, and good morning, everyone. This is Jason Van Wees, Vice Chairman, and I'd like to welcome everyone to Teledyne's Q3 2024 Earnings Release Conference Call. We released our earnings earlier this morning. Joining us today are Telenet's Executive Chairman, Robert Marabian CEO, Edwin Rox President and COO, George Bob and SAP CFO, Steve Blackwood and Melanie Cibic, EVP, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer and Secretary.

Speaker 1

After remarks by Robert, Edwin, George and Steve, we will answer your questions. But of course, before we get started, our attorneys have reminded me to tell you that all forward looking statements made this morning are subject to various assumptions, risks and caveats as noted in the earnings release and our periodic SEC filings, and of course, actual results may differ materially. Here is Robert.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Jason, and good morning and thank you for joining our earnings call. Teledyne achieved all time record sales in the 3rd quarter with revenues sequentially greater in each segment, allowing us to report overall year over year growth as we expected. We continue to see robust demand in our longer cycle defense, space and energy businesses. And at the same time, while year over year comparison remains challenging, sales for most of our short cycle commercial businesses have either stabilized or have begun to recover sequentially. Year to date, we approximately repurchased about $354,000,000 of our stock.

Speaker 2

We completed 2 acquisitions for 125,000,000 dollars and repaid $450,000,000 of gross debt. But our quarter end leverage has remained in the 1.7x given record free cash flow over the last 9 months. Orders were greater than sales for the 4th consecutive quarter and we once again ended the period with record backlog. Nevertheless, given the timing of future shipments against this backlog and some sales we were able to accelerate into the 3rd quarter, we continue to remain reasonably confident that quarterly sales will again increase sequentially in the 4th quarter, but only modestly compared with the 3rd quarter. I will now turn the call over to Edwin, our CEO, who will further comment on the performance of our 4 business segments.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Robert. This is Edwin and I will first report on the digital imaging segment, which represents a bit over 50% of Teledyne's portfolio. And like Teledyne as a whole, this segment is a mix of longer cycle businesses such as defense, space and healthcare combined with shorter cycle markets including industrial automation, semiconductor transfection and infrared components and cameras for applications ranging from factory condition monitoring to maritime navigation. 3rd quarter 2024 sales declined less than 1% compared to last year. Sales to industrial machine vision markets declined year over year.

Speaker 3

However, this was partially offset by increased sales from FLIR, both its commercial infrared imaging and defense business as well as for Teledyne's space based infrared imaging detectors. Furthermore,

Speaker 2

for

Speaker 3

the 5th consecutive quarter, healthy margins across the entire Freer business portfolio helped us protect overall operating margin even given the significant year over year reduction in sales of our typically highest contribution margin product lines. George will now report on the other three segments, which represents the balance of Telenet.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Edwin. The Instrumentation segment consists of our marine, environmental and test and measurement businesses, which contribute a little under 25% of sales. For the total segment, overall 3rd quarter sales increased 6.3% versus last year. Sales of marine instruments increased 24.1% in the quarter, primarily due to both strong offshore energy and subsea defense sales. Sales of environmental instruments decreased 3.5%, primarily due to greater sales of water quality instruments, offset by lower sales of select laboratory instruments and emission monitoring systems.

Speaker 4

Sales in electronic test and measurement systems, which include oscilloscopes, digitizers and protocol analyzers decreased 8.6% year over year on a tough quarterly comparison versus 2023. Instrumentation operating margin increased in each product family in the 3rd quarter with overall operating margin increasing 155 basis points to 27.5 percent and 152 basis points on a non GAAP basis to 28.6 percent. In the Aerospace and Defense Electronics segment, which represents roughly 15% of televine sales, 3rd quarter sales increased 9.2% driven by growth of both commercial aerospace and defense electronics products. Overall segment operating profit increased year over year with GAAP segment margin increasing 117 basis points to 28.1 percent and 116 basis points on a non GAAP basis to 28.2%. For the Engineered Systems segment, which contributes less than 10% to overall sales, 3rd quarter revenue increased 9.4%.

Speaker 4

Segment operating profit also grew with segment margin increasing 78 basis points due to higher sales and a greater mix of manufacturing programs. I will now pass the call back to Robert.

Speaker 2

Thank you, George. I'll conclude with a few comments on strategy and capital allocation. Over the last several quarters, some of our markets have experienced weakness, but we lowered costs to protect margins in these businesses, while growing and increasing margin in those businesses where the environment was more favorable. During this period, we also opportunistically purchased our own stock. While our current $1,250,000,000 stock repurchase authorization remains active, we're also fortunate that our near term acquisition pipeline is healthy.

Speaker 2

While there are always new challenges, I'm optimistic that we have begun to exit some of our more difficult quarterly comparisons. And we will continue to grow both organically and through acquisitions. I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Steve.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Robert, and good morning. I will first discuss some additional financials for the quarter not covered by Robert, and now I'll discuss our Q4 and full year 2024 outlook. In the Q3, cash flow from operating activities was $249,800,000 compared with $278,200,000 in 2023. Free cash flow, that is cash flow from operating activities less capital expenditures, was $228,700,000 in the Q3 of 2024 compared to $255,200,000 in 2023. Cash flow decreased in the Q3 due to higher income tax payments.

Speaker 5

Capital expenditures were $21,100,000 in the Q3 of 2024 compared with $23,000,000 in 2023. Depreciation and amortization expense was $76,900,000 for both the 3rd quarters of 20242023. For the 1st 9 months of 2024, cash flow from operating activities and free cash flow were $859,500,000 $804,800,000 respectively. We ended the quarter with approximately $2,240,000,000 of net debt that is approximately $2,801,000,000 of debt less cash of $561,000,000,000 Now turning to our outlook. Management currently believes that GAAP earnings per share in the Q4 of 2024 will be in the range of $4.27 to $4.41 per share with non GAAP earnings per share in the range of $5.13 to $5.23 And for the full year of 2024, we are raising our GAAP earnings per share outlook to $17.28 to $17.42 and we are narrowing our non GAAP outlook to $19.35 to $19.45 the top end of our prior outlook range.

Speaker 5

I will now pass the call back to Robert.

Speaker 2

Thank you. We would now like to take your questions. Operator, if you're ready to proceed with the question and answers, please go ahead. Did I lose that operator?

Operator

No, I'm sorry. Our first question will come from the line of Jim Ricchiuti with Needham. Go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hi, thank you. Good morning. Robert, I think you alluded to some acceleration in sales perhaps coming pull ins from Q4. Was that mainly in the defense area or were there some other markets where you saw that?

Speaker 2

No, I think it was primarily where we have the largest backlog, which would be the defense businesses, A little bit from energy, but primarily defense. Right, Jim.

Speaker 6

Got it. And just with respect to it sounds like you had a good quarter from an order standpoint. Can you give us any more color in terms of book to bill as it relates to the segments? And maybe how you're thinking about overall revenue growth versus what you maybe were thinking about few months back?

Speaker 2

Yes. Let me start with the book to bill. Let me start with the overall first. Book to bill at the end of Q3 was about 1.08. Almost all of the businesses had healthy book to bill, except for one of our environmental businesses.

Speaker 2

Let me now go over those. In instruments, book to bill was about 1, with marine, of course, being much higher and T and M coming along too at over 1 and environmental below 1. In digital imaging, we are experiencing good book to bill numbers in what we call historical Teledyne, book to bill was 1.08 and FLIR had excellent book to bill of 1.17. Dollars Aerospace and Defense, dollars 1.04 and Engineered Systems, dollars 1.02 Now regarding the revenue, we've decided that with all the uncertainty in the world today, starting with elections and then of course, the various conflicts in the Middle East and Europe, we've decided that it's prudent to maintain the number, the revenue number that we had in at the end of Q2 that we projected, which is about 5.6 $2,000,000 or $5,600,000,000 And we might do better, but right now, Jim, with all the uncertainty, it's prudent not to be too effervescent.

Speaker 6

Okay. Makes sense. Just one quick follow-up and then I'll turn it over. Just with respect to the Test and Measurement business, are you seeing now look like you had nice sequential growth. Do you feel that the weakness in the scopes business is behind you?

Speaker 6

Or is it still the protocol analogic business, strength contributing to this overall better results?

Speaker 2

In the Q3, it was primarily the protocol. I think we're a little hesitant about projecting the oscilloscope businesses. But usually what happens at year end, which would be our Q4, people do capital expenditures and we pick up business in that domain. So we're hopeful that this year would be a repeat of last year with Q4 being higher than Q3.

Speaker 6

Got it. Thanks very much.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Jim.

Operator

We will next go to the line of Greg Konrad with Jefferies. Go ahead.

Speaker 7

Good morning.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Greg.

Speaker 7

Is there any way or can you parse digital imaging for the quarter and maybe what you're seeing across the different businesses? I mean, going into the quarter, we did see a couple of negative pre announcements from some of your peers on the vision side. Any color on what you're seeing across the different Vision end markets either from an order or just trend perspective?

Speaker 2

Yes. Let me slice it on the larger picture first, if I may. If you look at our 2 segments within that digital imaging, you have our historical digital imaging, which is DALSA E2V as well as our Scientific Imaging here. And then you have FLIR. So if I look at the big picture for Q3, on the what we call our traditional historical digital imaging, revenue was declined, organic growth was negative, almost 9.8%, 9.9%.

Speaker 2

On the other hand, FLIR did exceptionally well. In the defense businesses in FLIR, which is 40% of FLIR, the growth was 8.2% with all the subdivisions within there growing very healthy. In the flare commercial businesses, we were essentially flat, but we have to keep in mind that in the commercial flare businesses, we also do have a camera vision system, which is basically an area camera, 2 dimensional area camera, which, had much lower sales, just like the rest of our vision camera systems in Dulsa E2B. So if we took that negative out, FLIR Industrial also grew. And overall FLIR grew 3.2% with that negative coming.

Speaker 2

We had now we also going to Dolce A2V. What we're looking at there is basically a range of businesses, some positive and some negative. Let me give you the positives first and the negatives which we've talked about before. Interestingly enough, our microelectro mechanical systems or MEMS is experiencing really good growth. Maybe that's the canary in the mind because they're making a lot of products that are of relevance to the semiconductor industry.

Speaker 2

Also, as you may recall, we have an aerospace and defense business within our historical digital imaging that did very well, grew almost 13%. Where we had decreases were primarily in scientific and industrial vision systems and somewhat in healthcare. I think the healthcare is going to recover. And I think in the industrial and scientific vision systems, we believe that at least in the camera domain, we've bottomed out and we have a slow recovery. There is a portion of that that deals with sensors, where we make sensors for ourselves and other people.

Speaker 2

That's going to lag a little more. It may have bottomed out, but we don't see a recovery at this point. So overall, I would say dulcea E2V Teledyne Imaging were lagged a little bit with mixed progress in the different businesses. FLIR carried the day for the overall digital imaging.

Speaker 7

And then, I mean, maybe it's a little bit early to talk about 2025, but it seems at least on the long cycle, whether that's defense or on marine, you've experienced positive book to bill on ramping sales. If you look out over the next year, can you maybe talk about how much visibility you have on the long cycle businesses versus how you're thinking about the recovery in short cycle over the next year?

Speaker 2

The long cycle businesses, Greg, assuming there's no catastrophes, because anything like that can affect our long cycle businesses. They're healthy. We think it's they're going to grow year over year. We have some really good program wins both in our flare defense as well as in our Teledyne Imaging here in space and other programs. So we think those are going to grow.

Speaker 2

On the short cycle businesses, we're just going through the first cut of our plans for next year. I think I have to say it's a little too early to predict how that's going to work. I'll wait another couple of months and see if what happens to the elections here, but more importantly, what kind of capital expenditures people exercise as they get near the end of the quarter's Q4.

Speaker 7

And then maybe just sneaking in one last one. I mean, if you think about defense across FLIR and Engineered and A and D Electronics, what was defense up in the quarter?

Speaker 2

Defense U. S. Government defense was up organically maybe 2.5% plus, but we do have programs overseas that are doing really well. For example, Ukraine, we supply a whole range of products to them, also some to Middle East. And those programs have been very healthy and we seem to be winning new programs, especially with offers that we have in counter UAV systems as well as our miniature, our own UAVs, the small Black Hornets, which are doing really well.

Speaker 2

So we're overall very positive in that domain.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Speaker 2

For sure.

Operator

We'll move on to the line of Andrew Buscaglia with BNP. Go ahead.

Speaker 9

Hey, good morning everyone.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Andrew.

Speaker 9

I wanted to touch on Marine has been so strong all year and you seem to have good visibility in that. I'm just wondering what the sustainability of that growth is through next year. How much visibility do you have that you could maintain such a strong segment and then not maybe not see a little bit worried about challenging comps, but how do you see that playing out?

Speaker 2

Yes, let me that's a good question. Marine has had kind of variation in their book to bill with Q1 being very strong at 1.27 and then Q3 being around 1.04. Here's the story on Marine. It's we acquired about 23 small businesses to form our Marine Group. Those range from interconnects for commercial oil exploration and oil production to defense.

Speaker 2

We have underwater vehicles, a whole range of them from floats to gliders to what we call the GAVE vehicles that are being used both in this country and in Europe. And then we have military programs that deal with haul penetrators for the Virginia class submarine as an example. So the mix is very interesting. It's offshore energy, maybe 30%, maybe more if you put in exploration, it's close to 40%. But then we have science, construction, which are about 27% and then we have defense, which is as much as 28%.

Speaker 2

So it's a distributor, it's a kind of mirrors in some ways, Teledyne as a whole. Our expectation are that, that will remain strong. It is possible though that with the current projections, oil prices may decline significantly, not as much as they did in 2014 to 2016, but may decline. And if that happens, some of our production interconnects will go down, but the other businesses that we have there should remain healthy. So I'm positive about marine for next year.

Speaker 9

Okay. No, that's helpful. And you guys made the comment in your press release about, you've been buying back stock, but maybe M and A looks like it's perking up here. Can you comment

Speaker 7

a little bit more on that?

Speaker 9

And then specifically on any what are the size of these deals here you might be seeing?

Speaker 2

Yes. Andrew, that's a very good question. And the reason it's timely is for the first time, I would say, since we acquired FLIR. We've done a couple of acquisitions every year. Like this year, we bought a small business for our marine and we bought Adamic, which is an imaging business for our overall imaging Dulsa E2V.

Speaker 2

But there hasn't been that much activity or opportunity for us to do acquisition. Suddenly, in the last month or so, the funnel seems to have opened up and we are seeing more opportunities, especially outside digital imaging, for example, in our aerospace and defense as well our instrument. So, we're kind of positively inclined to look at what we can do, how much power we have to make acquisitions. And frankly, we bought our stock when it was close to 52 weeks low. And we've continued buying it through Q3.

Speaker 2

But now I think it's more likely that we will focus more highly on acquisitions. Since we have the wherewithal to spend up to $2,000,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 if we want to. I don't know if we'll do that much, but we certainly are in the market to buy some smaller companies, which would be, let's say, in the $50,000,000 range and maybe some things that are closer to $500,000,000 or more. It won't be anything as large as FLIR at this time, but there are many opportunities.

Speaker 9

Okay, very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

For sure. We'll move on to the line of George Yarno from TD Cowen. Go ahead.

Speaker 8

Hey guys, good morning.

Speaker 2

Good morning.

Speaker 8

Can you just talk us through like what's contemplated in the guide for next quarter and how you're thinking going forward about what's going on at Boeing?

Speaker 2

Let me start with Boeing because that's a subject that we've kind of study and follow. We in our aerospace business, which serves Boeing as well as other Airbus and a whole bunch of airline customers. We think the strike could have a risk for us. I'm hoping that it settles, but the risk for us is in the 737 MAX, where we have the data acquisition systems that could hit us that's assuming the strike goes through the year through the quarter that could hit us as much as on the upside maybe $5,000,000 in revenue from Q3 to Q4. But if the strike is settled, depending on timing, it could be less than that, maybe 2 or 3.

Speaker 2

So it's a little bit of a headwind for us. The other part of your question was, forgive me, I kind of lost the trend

Speaker 8

of Boeing was the first question. I can move. You also mentioned, in Instrumentation, I think you indicated that there was a piece of that business on the environmental side that was weak with like orders below revenues. Can you give us a little bit more color on what that is and what type of applications or end markets that's facing?

Speaker 2

Yes. In the environmental side, we have 2 sets of businesses. One set deals with drug discovery and water quality, etcetera. And that business has been okay. Where we've seen a little weakness is in our air quality monitoring, stack monitoring and basically looking at quality of products.

Speaker 2

There we've had a little weakening, but and we depend a little bit on Middle East where they buy our systems, large systems. I think it might be a little weak, few $1,000,000 but I'm not that concerned about it. There's nothing bad is going to happen. It just we think Q4 should be a little better than Q3. So it doesn't concern me right now.

Speaker 2

And instruments, as George said, includes marine, T and A, Test and Measurement as well as environmental.

Speaker 8

And just last for me. The margins in DI were good. I think probably better than some expected. Can you give us maybe some color on to what drove that and how are you thinking about margins to wrap up the year across the portfolio here?

Speaker 2

I think what you have is FLIR's margins really improved very much. We're very healthy. And digital imaging as a whole remains relatively flat in margins. I would say maybe we're down 30 basis points. If you look at the whole year, 24 versus 23.

Speaker 2

The savior, of course, as I mentioned was clear. On the flip side, Edwin and his people were able to take cost out in our camera, especially in our camera and some healthcare businesses to compensate for lower revenue. And that helped protect some of the margins in those businesses. Some of our very high margin businesses are in the camera business. So there's been this combination.

Speaker 2

FLIR, very strong. Digital Imaging, the rest of Digital Imaging taking the cost out. And I'm hoping that as the recovery comes, we will not put that cost back in, because we've had really good experience with defense and of course with marine in the past, where we took the cost out, didn't put the cost back in very quickly and the margins there have turned out to be very healthy. So overall, I'm positive about digital imaging.

Speaker 8

Is there a way for you to just kind of scale like how big a drag? Because I know those cameras and sensor businesses are very high margin. So how much of a drag would you say currently those businesses are on what you're reporting for margin?

Speaker 2

I would say overall those businesses account for maybe $300,000,000 the ones that we're seeing the drag on. And I would say, it changes, but I'd say maybe $50,000,000 in a drag in those businesses overall. Doesn't sound like a lot, but those are our highest margin businesses. And so when the revenue goes down, then the margin overall declines because of that. But as we've said before, we think the cameras have bottomed out.

Speaker 2

Book to bill is better than 1. Of course, remember, bill is low compared to last year. And sensors will come eventually, but not right away. Thanks

Operator

guys. For sure. We'll go next to the line of Jordan Lianney with Bank of America. Go ahead.

Speaker 10

Hey, good morning. Could you just give us some color around how you're thinking about FLIR's opportunity for new programs like Replicator 2?

Speaker 2

Let me take this. We have a whole bunch of programs for FLIR that are doing really well. Let's start with the small UAVs. The small UAVs, we have the best system in the world. These are UAVs that are about 6 to 7 inches in size.

Speaker 2

If they were flying in the room with you, you probably wouldn't hear it or notice it, but your picture can go automatically. You'd get a good video of it up to 25 kilometers away. So that's really good. But on the other side, we also have a content UAV system that's being used in Europe. And another example is we have loitering UAVs that we are introducing, which can carry munitions.

Speaker 2

The difference between these and other people's munition enabled UAVs is that we can call these back if they reach the target and it's not an opportune time. So we can recover the system. So overall, I think the whole UAV business for us is very strong. We also have a whole bunch of other programs like we just announced a program win in a suite of sensors that go on for chemical, biological, nuclear. We announced that we just won a program for $168,000,000 So FLIR, especially FLIR Defense, we're very positive.

Speaker 2

We have an excellent leaders there in Jeep and Lee and we're very positive about that business. Got it. And then so

Speaker 10

I meant for a Replicator 2 specifically counter UAS systems?

Speaker 2

We have a system in Europe right now with Kongsberg, which is being deployed and it's successful. That's all I can say about that at this time.

Speaker 10

Got it. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3

For sure.

Operator

We'll go next to Guy Hardwick with Freedom Capital Markets. Go ahead.

Speaker 11

Hi, good morning.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Guy.

Speaker 11

Hi. A lot of my questions have been answered, but just sort of big picture of digital imaging margins peaked at 24% a few years back. If short cycle does recover some point next year, what is the potential you think in terms of given the kind of what you've said in incremental margins and the higher margin mix of short cycle?

Speaker 2

Yes. Right now, if I look at Q3, our margins in overall digital imaging are about 22.6%. Last year, this time, they were more like 24.2%. So I would hazard a guess that as a minimum should be as good as last year. And if the short cycle businesses do come back strongly, there's an opportunity for us to go above 25%, which would be very healthy for us.

Speaker 2

But I would maintain that with the uncertainty, especially in our longer recovery of our sensors I

Operator

didn't realize you weren't done, sorry. We bless you.

Speaker 2

We'll go probably more to 24 percent plus, 24.2 percent, 24.5 percent. But if the sensors recover, then the margin will go higher.

Speaker 11

Okay. And thank you. Just as a follow-up, obviously, you've indicated in the statement that you see short cycle has stabilized and maybe improving. I assume that's because of booking trends. Can you maybe just give us a bit more color on booking trends in short cycle?

Speaker 2

Yes. In the last 2 to 3 months, our book to bill is above 1, let's say 1.1. But I have to always keep in mind that when we talk book to bill, we're talking about bill that's lower than it used to be. So I don't want to overstate that. It's not like book to bill at the height of the system.

Speaker 2

So but what that tells us is that we have reached the bottom and we're recovering. The flip side on sensors themselves, the book to bill has not recovered yet. So we're a little people are a little more hesitant to spend money on sensors because then they have the longer haul of developing cameras, whereas it's easier for them to acquire cameras. The flip side I have to say, again, going back to FLIR because FLIR has been so successful is that they have both long cycle and short cycle infrared cameras. In the long cycle, they're fixed cameras.

Speaker 2

In the short cycle, they're handheld cameras. And we're very pleased that the FLIR Industrial has done really well in that domain and we expect that they'll continue to do so with new products, with artificial intelligence enabled cameras that bring decision, make decisions easier for the customers. We're positive there as we are with the Clear Defense Businesses.

Speaker 11

And Robert, is that the point what we used to be called point gray, is that what you're referring to?

Speaker 2

No. Point gray is the one that's more matched to the cameras that we have in DULCE A2V. Actually, while we kind of put it in FLIR, it's more aligned with I'll say to we and from an organization standpoint, it reports to the leader there. What I was talking about was the infrared offering. Okay.

Speaker 2

It's just substantial.

Speaker 11

Not visible. Okay. Thank you, Robert.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

We have no further questions in queue at this time.

Speaker 2

Thank you. Operator, thank you very much. I'll now ask Jason to conclude our conference call, please.

Speaker 1

Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Robert. If you have any follow-up questions, of course, my number is on the earnings release. Please feel free to call me. And then Alan, if you please give the replay information at the end of the call, that would be ideal.

Speaker 1

Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this conference is available for replay and that will be beginning today, October 23, 2024 at 10 o'clock Pacific Daylight Time through November 23, 2024 at midnight. To access the AT and T playback service during that time, you can dial toll free 866-207-1041

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