Teledyne Technologies Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
April 24, 2024

There are 12 speakers on the call.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Teledyne Q1 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. Later, we will have a question and answer session and instructions for queuing up will be provided for you at that time. And as a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to your host, Jason Van Wyse.

Operator

Please go ahead, sir.

Speaker 1

Hi. Thank you, and good morning, everyone. This is Jason Van Weis, Vice Chairman. I would like to welcome everyone to Teledyne's Q1 2024 earnings release conference call. We released our earnings earlier this morning before the market opened.

Speaker 1

Joining me today are Teledyne's Executive Chairman, Robert Moravian CEO, Edwin Rock President and COO, George Bob SVP and CFO, Steve Blackwood and Melanie Sobeck, EVP, General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer and Secretary. After remarks by Robert Edwin, George and Steve, we will ask for your questions. However, before we get started, 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. In order to avoid potential selective disclosures, this call is simultaneously being webcast under replay, both via webcast and dial in will be available for approximately 1 month. Here is Robert.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Jason. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our earnings call. Today, we reported record 1st quarter non GAAP operating margin, record adjusted earnings per share and record free cash flow. While overall orders remained strong, sales were impacted by deterioration in some of our short cycle imaging and instrumentation markets. We have previously assumed no full year sales growth in Industrial Automation as well as Test and Measurement market.

Speaker 2

However, those markets weakened more than planned in the Q1, and we now forecast full year sales in those product families to decline meaningfully in 2024. Nevertheless, we believe such sales declines will be offset by our Marine, Aviation and Certain Defense Businesses, resulting in full year flat sales compared to 2023. Despite those anticipated sales reductions in what are among our highest margin businesses, we believe overall operating margin will remain flat in 24 versus 2023. Within the Digital Imaging segment, year over year sales declined due to significantly lower sales of machine vision sensors and cameras related to industrial automation. However, this was partially offset by organic growth and significant margin improvement at Teledyne Clear.

Speaker 2

Given our unmanned system businesses, growth and the resiliency of our core infrared imaging. Similarly, in instrumentation, we were relatively flat where significant reduction in sales of test and measurement instrumentation were almost entirely offset by marine electronics and unmanned underwater system. And despite the overall flat sales, segment margin increased considerably. In our smallest segment, Engineered Systems, which is largely a U. S.

Speaker 2

Government prime contractor, sales were impacted by the very late approval of the U. S. 2024 budget. We also revised estimated progress and cost to complete the uncertain contracts, resulting in some revenue and profit reversal. Finally, given our even stronger balance sheet with quarter end leverage just at 1.7 percent combined with record free cash flow, we believe it's appropriate time for us to add stock repurchases to our capital deployment plan.

Speaker 2

I will now turn the call over to Edmond and Georges, who will further comment on the performance of our 4 business segments.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Robert. This is Edwin. And I will report on the Digital Imaging segment, which represents 55% of Teledyne's portfolio. And like Teledyne as a whole, this segment is a mix of local cycle businesses such as defense, space and healthcare combined with shorter cycle markets including industrial automation, semiconductor inspection and infrared components and cameras for applications ranging from factory condition monitoring to maritime navigation. Q1 2024 sales declined 4.1% compared with last year as certain products declined considerably, but were largely offset by those with meaningful increases.

Speaker 3

For example, sales to industrial machine vision markets declined approximately 30% year over year. On the other hand, care systems, cement ground systems and integrated counter drone systems collectively increased nearly plus 30%. Other year over year changes were less significant, but included continued growth in our Space Based Imaging business, resilient sales in Healthcare FLIR's core infrared and maritime businesses and declining sales of semiconductor related microelectrical mechanical systems or MEMS. As Gottfred mentioned, the FLIR businesses grew organically and for the 3rd consecutive quarter were positive contributors to overall segment margin. Finally, segment orders were healthy with a first quarter book to bill of 1.06 times.

Speaker 3

George will now report on the other 3 segments, which represent the remaining 45% of sales.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Edwin. The Instrumentation segment consists of our marine, environmental and test and measurement businesses, which contributed a little over 24% of sales. For the total segment, overall 1st quarter sales decreased 0.9% versus last year. Sales of Marine Instruments increased 15.3% in the quarter, primarily due to both strong offshore energy and subsea defense sales. Sales of environmental instruments decreased 5.8% with greater sales of process gas, emission monitoring systems and gas and flame safety analyzers more than offset by lower sales of drug discovery and laboratory instruments.

Speaker 4

Sales of electronic test and measurement systems, which include oscilloscope, digitizers and protocol analyzers decreased 18.2% year over year on the toughest quarterly comparison of 2024 versus 2023. Overall, Instrumentation segment operating profit increased in the Q1 with GAAP operating margin increasing 183 basis points to 26% and 175 basis points on a non GAAP basis to 27.1%. In the Aerospace and Defense Electronics segment, which represents 14% of Teledyne sales, 1st quarter sales increased 7.2% driven by growth of commercial aerospace and defense microwave products. GAAP and non GAAP segment operating profit increased year over year with segment margin increasing approximately 80 basis points. For the Engineered Systems segment, which contributes 7% to overall sales, 1st quarter revenue decreased 10.5% and operating profit was impacted by lower sales and the cost to complete estimate revision Robert mentioned earlier.

Speaker 4

I will now pass the call back to Robert.

Speaker 2

Thanks, George. In conclusion, orders have been strong for 2 consecutive quarters, with the increase almost entirely due to our longer cycle businesses such as Defense and Energy. However, given the nature of these businesses, converting much of the greater backlog to sales will not begin until the second half of twenty twenty four. At the same time, the pace of orders in our short cycle instrumentation and imaging businesses did have a near term sales impact in the Q1 and likely will continue to impact total sales in the Q2 of 2024. So while our current outlook for full year sales is flat with 2023, we expect 2nd quarter sales to be sequentially flat with the Q1 and then increase in the second half of the year.

Speaker 2

The current market environment is reminiscent of the 2014 through 2016 period. That is when total Teledyne sales and earnings were flattish, except market dynamics were the opposite of what we are experiencing today. Specifically, growth in certain short cycle markets were partially offsetting declines in our longer cycle defense and energy businesses. Hopefully, this time, the recovery in the short cycle businesses would be shorter. In any event, during the 2014 to 2016, we executed approximately $400,000,000 of opportunistic share repurchases, completed 10 acquisitions and subsequently experienced significant sales and earnings growth when market normalize.

Speaker 2

Today, we're pleased to renew our stock repurchase authorization and plan to begin repurchasing shares this quarter. At the same time, because of our strong balance sheet, we're continuing to evaluate a number of acquisition opportunities. I will now turn the call over to Steve.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Robert, and good morning.

Speaker 5

I'll first discuss some additional financials for

Speaker 4

the quarter not covered by Robert,

Speaker 5

and then I will discuss our Q2 and full year 2024 outlook. In the Q1, cash flow from operating activities was $291,000,000 compared with $203,000,000 in 2023. Free cash flow, that is cash from operating activities less capital expenditures, was $275,100,000 in the Q1 2024 compared with 178 $600,000 in 2023. Cash flow increased in the Q1 due to stronger working capital performance. Capital expenditures were $15,900,000 in the Q1 of 2024 compared with $24,400,000 in 2023.

Speaker 5

Depreciation and amortization expense was $78,000,000 for the Q1 of 2024 compared with $82,100,000 in 2023. We ended the quarter with approximately $2,330,000,000 of net debt. That is approximately $3,250,000,000 of debt less cash of $912,400,000 Now turning to our outlook. Management currently believes that GAAP earnings per share in the Q2 of 2024 will be in the range of $3.57 to $3.70 per share with non GAAP earnings in the range of $4.40 to $4.50 per share. And for the full year 2024, our GAAP earnings per share outlook is $16.02 to $16.27 and on a non GAAP basis, dollars 19.25 to $19.45 per share.

Speaker 5

The 2024 full year estimated tax rate, excluding discrete items, is expected to be 22.5%. I will now pass the call back to Robert.

Speaker 2

We would now like to take your questions. Operator, if you're ready to proceed with the questions and answers, please go ahead.

Operator

Our first question is going to come from Jim Ricchiuti with Needham and Company. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hi, thanks. Good morning. First question, just given the weakness that you're seeing in some of the higher margin areas of the short cycle business, I wonder how you're thinking about gross margins over the next couple of quarters?

Speaker 2

In terms of the gross margin, we're looking at relatively flat gross margins of somewhere around 43%. Okay. Yes.

Speaker 6

All right. Robert, with the shift in capital allocation, I'm wondering what is this? What does this imply just in terms of the M and A pipeline? Are you still seeing more opportunities for the smaller deals as opposed to the larger M and A? Is that a fair way to characterize the environment right now?

Speaker 2

Jim, kind of, but let me just start with some numbers that are significant. Our debt to EBITDA is at 1.7 now. We have one acquisition in the pipeline. Once we make that, we would spend over $300,000,000 since we bought FLIR in acquisition. If we don't do anything else, by the end of the year, our debt to EBITDA ratio will be closer to 1.3 where it is at 1.7 today.

Speaker 2

So we think that it's an appropriate time first to look at our stock and repurchase some shares because since we bought Clear, our shares have increased by almost 700,000 shares because of stock option exercises and restricted stock awards. We like to get that off the table first. But at the same time, we have a lot of capacity for acquisition. We can spend up to $1,500,000,000 $2,000,000,000 because we haven't touched our line of credit at all and we have cash on hand. So we are looking at acquisitions.

Speaker 2

The issue is that smaller acquisitions, we may be able to complete this year, larger acquisitions, even if we find it, with all the various regulatory hurdles that you have to go through, what happened until next year. But the answer is, we're going to do both. We're going to do exactly what we did in 20 14 to 2016. We bought our shares back. We bought 10 companies.

Speaker 2

And then some of our competitors didn't do as well in that constricted period, and we were able to acquire it to be right after that, because we had the financial where we go. So I don't know if that answers your question.

Speaker 6

It helps. I mean, in the past, more recently, you've talked about valuations still being a bit on the rich side. Are you do you see as you look at the pipeline for some of the larger M and A, have you seen any change in terms of the prices out there that it's going to take to do some of these larger deals?

Speaker 2

Not yet. On the other hand, I have to tell you, Jim, they haven't all come out with their earnings. And in this market, kind of a bifurcated market, I expect that some of those will come down and they'll be just like it did before. Interestingly enough, history does repeat itself. It doesn't repeat itself on the time scale that we always expect, but repeat itself.

Speaker 6

Got it. Thanks very much.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Jim.

Operator

Our next question is going to come from Greg Konrad with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Good morning.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Greg.

Speaker 7

This is a bit of an unusual question, but one I've been getting from investors. And in Is Teledyne different today than what has made it so successful thinking back over the past 20 years? Or what's really changed just given some of these uncharacteristic items? Or is this just you think about it as part of the normal cycle?

Speaker 2

Well, two things. 1st, in the 25 years or so, Greg, we've only had this occasion in 4 earnings. So almost 100 earnings calls and releases, we've experienced this 4 times, 4%. So it's not something that happens very frequently. The flip side of it is that the economy and the market are not quite predictable.

Speaker 2

Some parts of the economy are doing well, like our marine businesses are divisioning the ball out of the park. And defense, of course, is doing well now with our recent passage, etcetera. We intend we expect that to continue. What is unusual is that the prediction of the slowdown in industrial automation took us by surprise. We thought in January that we would be relatively flat for the year in our vision Machine Vision businesses.

Speaker 2

And now we're suddenly faced with in April projecting a 20% decline. Now that sounds like a lot, but it's only $120,000,000 What is different today from the past is that Teledyne can absorb those kinds of shock much more easily than it could before. In 20 fifteen-sixteen, when oil went from over $100 down to $30 that was a shocker to Atelladyne because our revenue was only $2,500,000,000 $2,600,000,000 And we that decreased our marine businesses by almost a third over a very short period of time. So what is different is that the shock absorber in Teledyne is a lot stiffer and can absorb shocks like that. And we did this quarter, everything else being equal.

Speaker 2

But when I look at it, I said, look, we had 2 hits that we took in 1 quarter. One of them was the significant decline in industrial automation and some semiconductor. But semiconductor seems to be recovering slowly, so we see signs of that. And I think Machine Vision business will come back. We took another hit in our Engineered Systems business, which was unexpected.

Speaker 2

But we had to go in and look at everything and do some estimates and change our estimates to complete. That was a one time event. So I'm not going to worry about that too much. What I am saying is that, look, yes, we took a hit and we're taking our revenue down by $220,000,000 out of 5 point $9,000,000 to $5,700,000,000 In the old days, at those days, if we've taken a $220,000,000 hit, that would have been just devastating. We recovered those times, those kinds of shocks, I think will recover this time just as well, if not better, because we have the muscle to and the ability and the credit to buy companies and when necessary buyback our stock.

Speaker 7

And then I appreciate that. And maybe just kind of a follow-up to that. I mean, just thinking back to what Teledyne did out of the oil and gas downturn and there was the sequester before that and impacted the Fend. I mean, if I remember back, I mean, you took pretty aggressive actions and we saw what margins and growth did out of those two downturns. I mean, is there similar actions that you're undertaking on the short cycle side?

Speaker 7

Does that offer opportunity maybe to examine the margins where you have an even better kind of trajectory coming out of market recovery?

Speaker 2

Yes. First, if you look at the FLIR businesses, year over year, the margins are up almost 200 basis points year over year. And the reason that happened is very simple. We took about $52,000,000 worth of cost out last year, We're taking additional $10,000,000 to $15,000,000 cost out this year early on. So that is affecting the margin.

Speaker 2

If you look at the DALSA E2V, which is our traditional businesses, our estimates are that by the end of Q2, we'd have taken another $40,000,000 out of that. Altogether, we're talking about almost $100,000,000 in cost. As we anticipate, that DOLSA E2B margins were the lowest, they have been for a long time. They were at 19.5% in Q1. We expect that to recover.

Speaker 2

And frankly, we expect the overall margin for Digital Imaging to be flat with last year on much lower revenue. So it basically says that we have taken the cost off and if need be, we'll take more. But I think right now, we're doing okay. We're just not very aggressive in our hiring. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Joe Guadagno with TD Cowen. You may begin.

Speaker 7

Hey, guys. How are

Speaker 8

you doing?

Speaker 2

Hi.

Speaker 8

Maybe I'll start on DI as well. Just I'm curious on the timing of this, right? Because if you look at some of the pure players with Envision, they had huge declines last year and you guys did okay relative to them last year. And now this year, it seems like, well, they're yet to report largely, but it sounds like they're going to be sequentially improving offload levels starting like now. And it seems like now is when you guys are starting to see declines.

Speaker 8

So I'm just curious your thoughts on what that timing mismatch is because it's pretty short cycle stuff.

Speaker 2

It is. We know a couple of businesses that took a pretty good hit, but their quarters are kind of a little different and their years are a little different from ours. They took a pretty big hit and lowered their numbers significantly. So now they're coming up from the bottom slightly better. We didn't take a hit because we didn't have short cycle declines of the magnitude we saw.

Speaker 2

We anticipated it would happen, but it happened fast and we took the cost off. The flip side of it is that in even digital imaging, we have, of course, the short cycle businesses, but we also have long cycle businesses like Space and Defense. And those markets are doing really well. So I got to be a little careful when we designate what is digital imaging. Basically, the average, we think in the second half, we will recover because of the Space and Defense business.

Speaker 8

And then just a follow-up on the question earlier about is Teledyne different today. I think what you guys have been known for so long is being very good estimators of your own businesses and with high precision. And when you think about all the M and A companies you've done, does that become just inherently more challenging today versus a decade ago just because you have so many more businesses? And is there maybe like is does there need to be a tinkering of the process with how you communicate upwards from the businesses towards management to fine tune the budgeting process in light of some of these being caught off guard here?

Speaker 9

Well,

Speaker 2

I mean, you're right in one respect. And I'll kind of paraphrase what you said. The estimating the short cycle businesses actually has always been inherently challenging. The flip side of is the part that you mentioned, we have a lot of businesses, etcetera. That part is actually a help to us rather than a hindrance because it opens up the platform from which you can make acquisitions.

Speaker 2

And that is true and it will remain true, so we will accelerate that. The only thing we don't want to do is make stupid acquisitions with very high prices that are not going to be accretive. But acquisitions, we will do. We had a larger platform to do that with. And like we just bought something in our marine business, the South Forest in the U.

Speaker 2

K. And we have Adamic, which is a digital imaging business in the Netherlands that we are going to we are in the process of buying. The only difference between that business and our short cycle businesses is that they do a lot more custom imaging design and they have a significant market in imaging in the defense domain. So I think this is an opportune time for us. Let's see what happens to the rest of the earnings and costs that come out.

Speaker 2

We did lower our numbers significantly. If we lowered, we'd be up now, right? So all we're saying is we're going to be flat with last year. Our margins are going to be the same by the end of the year. Our revenue is going to be about the same.

Speaker 2

With that, without making any acquisitions. And we have enough Musko to buy our shares. And yes, that's a good place to be with a even after those purchases, I think we'll end the year let's say, we bought $200,000,000 of our stock. We'll still end the year below 1.5 debt to EBITDA ratio, which is below our target of 1.5 to 2.5. So I think we're doing fine.

Speaker 2

I'm not worried. Thank you. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Andrew Buscaglia with BNP. Please go ahead.

Speaker 10

Hey, good morning guys.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Andrew.

Speaker 10

So I wanted to just get a sense of how much this guidance is really derisked. Maybe number 1, are you assuming buybacks in the guidance? And then secondly, why should we have confidence given the low visibility that there's not another step down here in some of these shorter cycle areas?

Speaker 2

A very good question, Andrew. First, no, the buybacks are not built into the numbers, primarily because when we buy back, it's really going to affect next year's EPS, not this year's. So that's fairly neutral for this year, depending on, of course, how much we buy. So I would put that aside. The second part of the question, we've struggled with that mightily over the last 10 days and with our Board in the last 2 days, trying to decide how conservative we should be or how aggressive we should be.

Speaker 2

We've ended up being somewhere in between the 2. We think that we've derisked some of the downside. On the other hand, we haven't see risk at all. Flip backlog and the overall backlog in the company is 1.06. So the defense and space businesses are going to come back in the second half.

Speaker 2

So they're going to balance that. In a situation like this, you can do 1 or 2 things. You can really lower the numbers and just play it very safe or you can do what is a reasonable judgment on what you see in the market and go forward. We've taken the latter approach.

Speaker 10

Yes. Okay. Okay. Just I think some investors are also somewhat confused by the small portion of the sales. It seems like a small portion of digital imaging is driving sort of profound these profound declines.

Speaker 10

Can you kind of walk through within digital imaging, we know machine vision is weak, but that's probably only low double digit as a percentage of that segment. Can you walk through the other items beyond just machine vision and tell us how much that is as a percentage of that segment sales just so we could get some more clarity around what's affecting that the overall decline?

Speaker 2

Sure. First, let's start with Machine Vision specifically. Approximately $600,000,000 in 2023, we are projecting a decline of about $100 and $20,000,000 of that. So the reason it's affecting other things is that's the highest margin business that we have in digital imaging. And overall, there are when you put the 2 parts together, which is DALSA E2V, PSNI and FLIR, our total revenue there is going to be down about by year end, about 1.5%.

Speaker 2

So it's not a big number, right? 1.5%, but that's 1.5% with something like over $2,100,000,000 So it's meaningful only because the top line 3.1 is significant and it's our highest margin business. By year end, we're projecting that basically, the declines would be 1.5% overall. We clear up and don't say to be done because of that. So I don't know if that answers your question.

Speaker 2

The numbers when you look at them look large, but in retrospect, it's not huge, it's 1.5% of the total.

Speaker 10

Yes. Okay. And beyond machine vision, what other areas are short cycle that are out of favor?

Speaker 2

Well, the only other one that I would say is out of favor, I wouldn't call it out of favor, I'd say it's decline. It's test and measurement. Test and measurement is the oscilloscope and protocol solutions that we have. Last year, we had $340,000,000 of revenue there. We expect right now that in January, we thought it remained flat.

Speaker 2

Now we're expecting it to go down about 10%. So that's $30,000,000 in revenue. The good part of that is that its margins are remaining very healthy and at the very high end of all of our margins. And we can take that decline in revenue without having a big hit anywhere else because marine is making up those sales declines. The last area, which is a little different, is Engineered Systems.

Speaker 2

In 2023, we had $440,000,000 in revenue. Right now, we're projecting about a 10% decline or about $35,000,000 to $40,000,000 decline. If there is a good part to it is that, that's only 7% of our portfolio and it's our lowest margin business at 10% or less. So that's why while the surprise here is that, yes, we do have declines, but we're saying we're going to keep our revenue the same as last year and our operating margins are going to be the same as last year in an environment that's a little more constricted for our Digital Imaging short cycle business.

Speaker 10

Yes. Okay. Thanks, Robert.

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

Next we will go to Christine Leewig with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Speaker 11

Hi, good morning guys. This is Gabby on for Christine. Thanks for taking the question. So I was just wondering if you can provide some a little bit of color if you've been seeing improvements in the supply chain and your expectations for the supply chain going forward and how that's going to impact the business throughout the year?

Speaker 2

Thank you very much. Great question. The supply chain improved in 2023 significantly versus 2022. It has improved further this year. Just to give you exact numbers, we when we buy from brokers, we pay higher percentages of price.

Speaker 2

Last year in the Q1, we bought about $10,000,000 for electronic suppliers broker. This year Q1, we only bought a little over $2,000,000 So I think there's been significant improvement. Having said that, there are a couple of suppliers that make very sophisticated board or device semiconductor devices that are still lagging. And it's more of a delay problem rather than a price problem. So I think the supply chain is okay.

Speaker 2

We're all experiencing some delays of some sophisticated part. Other than that, I think that's behind.

Speaker 11

Great. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2

For sure.

Operator

And our next question is going to come from Noah Poponak from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Hey, good morning, everyone.

Speaker 2

Good morning, Noah.

Speaker 9

Robert, to have the 2nd quarter revenue be about flat from the first, the year over year rate of decline would need to accelerate. Is that right? Is that what you're anticipating?

Speaker 2

Right now, we're anticipating that it will be flat only because the answer is yes, only because we don't think our where we have really good backlog, it's got to kick in until the Q3. The decline is about 4.5% from last year, year over year in Q2. Yes.

Speaker 9

Okay. Yes. And then I guess that would imply kind of mid single digit organic revenue growth in year over year in the back half. I was going to ask you just alluded to it, but I was going to ask, how much of that is kind of purely visibility from longer cycle things in the backlog versus what's the assumption embedded in that on the short cycle side?

Speaker 2

I think primarily it's what we have in the long cycle. The majority of that recovery is in what we have in our backlog, maybe 3.5% to 4% improvement in revenue in the second half. There is a little bit of positivity in some of our short cycle businesses only because our larger customers or platforms on which we serve like semiconductors. The data shows that it's better than it was last year and improving itself. So we have a little of that in mind.

Speaker 2

That so I think that's it. But we're not counting on industrial automation, other things to improve significantly because frankly, we have no visibility. Okay.

Speaker 9

What are the pieces of the Engineered Systems margin in the quarter? Is there I assume there's some kind of cumulative catch up adjustment mark to market write down in that?

Speaker 2

Yeah. What happens in that business is that, as you well know, we're obligated to do 606 accounting. And so you estimate your cost and completion timing. When we went back and looked pretty hard, we saw that some of the costs were higher than we had anticipated. So we adjusted those.

Speaker 2

I think that took a kick out of our sales. But when you do cost to cost, once you take the sales down, let's say, several $1,000,000 you have to take the profit down the same amount. So that's what took the hit. But I think we know exactly what happened. We'll fix it.

Speaker 2

We are fixing it. And we should get beyond that as we move forward.

Speaker 9

Do you know the size of in front of you guys there on how much of a markdown you took in the quarter?

Speaker 2

Well, we took in Q1, we took about a $7,000,000 EBIT hit, which was basically $0.10 to $0.11 So if that hadn't happened, we would have made our earnings.

Speaker 10

Okay.

Speaker 2

Despite the downturn in our short cycle image. We'll fix

Speaker 9

Got it. That's helpful. Last one, I guess, given how much you've now delevered balance sheet, net debt to EBITDA post FLIR integration, you're still going to have pretty healthy free cash flow despite the tweaks you're making here today. If you're coming out with a share repurchase, I guess the number you're talking about is kind of small relative to your forward annual free cash flow generation, how much balance sheet firepower you have if you were to take leverage a little higher, little bit of like a, if you're going to lay up, lay up type of thing. I guess I'm surprised that you maybe part of it as you formulated all this before the move in the stock today.

Speaker 9

Is there a scenario where you reevaluate something more aggressive in 2024? Do you need to keep room for the M and A pipeline? How would you respond to that?

Speaker 2

Well, 2 ways. First, we'll put out a case about our authorization. And if you look at that, we have authorization to go from what we said was $200,000,000 to $250,000,000 to $300,000,000 we can go up to $1,250,000,000 in buybacks. As you know, Noah, that depends on the stock price and how the market reacts. But the lower stock price that we I'm just looking at this morning, I was looking at this morning, that would be a significant number of shares.

Speaker 2

We can do that if we choose. We still have enough powder to make acquisitions. Frankly, that part of our portfolio doesn't bother me. If you look at final data points you may want to know is we have only $150,000,000 of debt fixed debt that we have to pay in the second half of twenty twenty four in October, dollars 150,000,000 We just paid 450,000,000 The next payment doesn't have come due until 2026. And then if you look forward, the next 3 or 4 payments, our average borrowing cost and those are all fixed.

Speaker 2

Our average borrowing cost is more like 2.35 percent. So that's about as ideal a debt as you want to have. And if as we generate cash, we can buy the shares and we can make acquisitions and we haven't even touched our line of credit yet. So from that perspective, I feel pretty comfortable.

Speaker 9

Okay, Helpful. Thank

Speaker 2

you. Thank you, Noah.

Operator

And at this time, there are no additional questions in queue.

Speaker 2

Thank you very much. We would like now to conclude the conference operator. I will now ask Jason to do so.

Speaker 1

Thank you, John, and thanks everyone for joining the earnings call this morning. Again, all the earnings release are on our website. The replay is available. And for those on the call, please feel free to talk further. So thank you, everyone.

Speaker 1

Bye.

Operator

As we mentioned, this conference has been recorded for replay, which will be available for 1 month starting at 10 am Pacific Time today and ending May 24, 2024 midnight. To access and listen to the replay at any time, you can call 86 62071041 and use access code 8,327,266. International callers, you can use the number 4029700847. Again, for domestic, that is 866-207-1041 and international, 40 2970-0840 7 and the access code to use is 8,327,266. That does conclude your conference call for today.

Operator

We do thank you for your participation and for using AT and T event conferencing. You may now disconnect.

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