Q3 2023 Flex Ltd Earnings Call
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Speaker 2: fiveline of fiveline of five is.
Speaker 3: Good afternoon and thank you for standing by. Welcome to FLEX's fiscal third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Presently, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speakers remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your phone. If you would like to withdraw your questions, please press the pound key. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I will now begin and turn the call over to Mr. David Rubin. Let me begin. Thank you, JP. Good afternoon and welcome to FLEX's third quarter fiscal 2023 earnings conference call. With me today is our chief executive officer, Revathi Adbathy, and our chief financial officer,
Speaker 4: no obligation to update these four looking statements. Unless otherwise specified, we'll refer to non-GAAP metrics on the call. The full non-GAAP to GAAP reconciliations can be found in the appendix slides of today's presentation, as well as in the summary financials posted in the investor relations website.
Speaker 5: On January 13th of this year, we publicly filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission relating to Nextracker's proposed initial public offering. In connection with the proposed offering, Nextracker intends to list under the ticker symbol NXT. The timing, number of shares.
Speaker 6: to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. This offering is determined, excuse me, is the offering is subject to market and other conditions. For more information, please refer to the S-1 filing. Following SEC regulation, remain in quiet period and will not make any further statements or answer additional questions on the next tracker filing at this time.
Speaker 7: With that out of the way, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO , Rabati. Thank you, David. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today. So by now you've all probably seen the S1 public filing for the Nextracker IPO.
Speaker 8: As I said from the very beginning of this process, the first step in creating value for our shareholders and to unlock the full long-term potential of Nextracker is for it to operate as a standalone company. This process was of course delayed by the supply chain crisis brought on by the pandemic.
Speaker 9: Despite all of the challenges during this time, we have maintained discipline and achieved multiple quarters of improving growth and margins.
Speaker 10: Along the way, we partnered with TPG Rise Climate, a team who's making a real difference in the renewable energy transition.
Speaker 11: So now we're moving forward. That said, renewable energy is one of the most important global technology transitions ever. It also represents a robust long-term growth opportunity for a number of technologies, including solar trackers, and FLEX will continue to be a
Speaker 12: involved to help drive this critical sector.
Speaker 13: Moving to our results, please turn to slide four.
Speaker 14: Overall, fiscal Q3 was another fantastic quarter for FLEX and another validation in the resiliency of our diverse portfolio. The year grew 17% year over year with adjusted operating margin at 4.8%.
Speaker 15: And the strong performance overall drove solid results of adjusted EPS at $0.62, up 24% year-over-year.
Speaker 16: Turning to slide five.
Speaker 17: Many of the positive dynamics in fiscal Q2 continued through the quarter, but with a few ongoing challenges that I'll touch on in a minute.
Speaker 18: We see strong growth driven by secular trends with technology transitions in EV and ADAS, in renewables, in factory automation, along with cloud expansion and strong automotive backlog.
Speaker 19: We're also seeing demand in communications, network security, and many of the industrial applications we touch.
Speaker 20: Consumer and markets remained weak, which shouldn't be a surprise, and we expect that weakness to continue in the current environment.
Speaker 21: Similar to last quarter, the overall supply chain and logistics situation continues to improve on a global level.
Speaker 22: However, shortages in the large node semiconductors remain a challenge, particularly within high-reliability applications such as automotive, industrial, and some healthcare products.
Speaker 23: We have talked before about how this causes inefficiencies and underabsorption of costs, and this golden screw effect is also the primary driver of higher working capital requirements.
Speaker 24: We remain very bullish on the long-term growth opportunities and reliability, so have made additional near-term operational investments to support this growth, including increases in higher skilled labor.
Speaker 25: The net result this quarter was additional pressure on reliability operating margins. However, these investments will benefit our longer-term market positioning and is worth the focus as reliability has and will be the bigger driver of our long-term growth story.
Speaker 26: The agility team had great execution, meeting strong demand in CEC and delivered another quarter of growth in lifestyle, but also demonstrated very effective cost management given the broader consumer turndown.
Speaker 27: We continue to recognize the benefits of both the operational improvements and portfolio changes we have made over the last several years.
Speaker 28: It is important to highlight the power of a well-diversified and balanced portfolio. We remain in a challenging macro environment and yet delivered growth in five of six core business units and accelerated growth in Nextracker.
Speaker 29: Now looking to slide six.
Speaker 30: Paul will discuss our guidance in a minute, but assuming Q4 revenue comes in as expected, we remain on track to deliver 16% year-over-year growth in fiscal 2023.
Speaker 31: As you can see in the chart on the left, this also means we will have beat our previous revenue high water mark before we pruned a substantial amount of lower quality business.
Speaker 32: Adding in our operational initiative, you can see a steady and consistent path of margin expansion, and all of this reflects the improvements we have made as a company.
With the evolving macroeconomic uncertainty, it's still a highly dynamic environment out there.
However, I want to share an early view into what we're seeing as we look to our fiscal 2024.
At this point, demand indicators are holding up for many of the multiyear trends we've been talking about, including renewables, next-gen mobility, cloud, and health care.
We believe these are strong enough to offset headwinds like consumer-related weaknesses and slowing enterprise IT spending.
So at this point, we thought it was important to state, we expect to grow next year in fiscal 2024.
We will discuss our full fiscal 2024 guidance on next quarter's call.
Turning to slide 7.
Lastly, taking a step back, as I look at the fiscal 2025 financial framework we gave you in our investor day last year.
We said, high single-digit revenue CAGR.
which will lead to 5 plus percent adjusting operating margin in core flex, which is without next tracker.
with mid-teens adjusted EPS growth getting us to $2.65 for Core Flex.
and 80% adjusted free cash flow conversion.
It is a combination of strong multi-year drivers coupled with our focus on the right growth areas and our execution that will get us to these targets.
With that, I'll turn it over to Paul to take you through our financials. Paul? Okay. Great. Thanks, Rabati. And good afternoon, everyone. I'll begin on slide 9 with a review of our third quarter results. Please note all results provided will be non-GAAP , and all growth metrics will be on a year-over-year basis unless stated otherwise.
The GAAP reconciliations can be found in the appendix of the earnings presentation.
Revenue growth was strong, up 17% at $7.8 billion. Gross profit totaled $595 million and gross margin improved to 7.7%.
Operating profit was $372 million with operating margins at 4.8%, improving 30 basis points year over year. Lastly, earnings per share came in at 62 cents for the quarter, an increase of 24%.
GAAP EPS came in at 50 cents, up 4% year over year, but if you recall in Q3 of last year we had a number of small non-operating gains that we non-GAAPed out, creating the difficult lockdown that's what you need to know.
Overall, we're pleased with our performance this quarter.
The strong growth is a result of the resiliency of our diverse portfolio and the compelling value proposition that flex brings to the markets we serve.
Turning to our third quarter segment results on the next slide.
Reliability revenue increased 19% to $3.2 billion.
Operating income was $143 million, up 6%, and operating margin for the segment was 4.4%, impacted by persisting semi-shortages.
some increased operational investments made to support future growth.
In agility, revenue was $4 billion, up 13%.
Operating income was $181 million, up 11%, with an operating margin of 4.5%.
Finally, Nextracker revenue came in at $516 million, up a very impressive 53% year over year.
Operating income at Nextracker was $60 million, up 225%, with operating margins now at 11.7%.
That's over two and a half points of sequential improvement and three sequential quarters of significant margin expansion.
In reliability, despite macro concerns, auto inventory is still low and customer backlog is stable. However, semi-shortages impacted efficiency and contributed to increased expedite costs, tempering profitability.
Industrial demand was solid with notable strength in renewables, automation, and other specialty programs.
Demand in the healthcare space remains steady and we continue to invest for future growth.
Looking at agility, our lifestyle business was up slightly in the quarter despite the ongoing consumer-related weakness.
We've now seen multiple quarters of this outperformance driven by significant share gains.
As expected, consumer devices was down similar to what we saw last quarter with continued soft end markets.
And finally, CEC again showed excellent overall performance, driven by strong execution, and a continuation of trends in cloud and network infrastructure.
Moving to cash flow on slide 11.
Q3 net capex totaled 157 million on target at approximately 2% of revenue.
Free cash flow was $202 million in the quarter.
With the golden screw situation continuing to the degree it has, and given our visibility today, we expect free cash flow in the fourth quarter to be on par with what we delivered in Q3, which would put us below our previous target of $550 million for the full year.
We are however beginning to see trends inflect.
Inventory net of working capital advances decreased 3% sequentially and we flattened the curve on gross inventory up only 1% sequentially.
So it's nice to see that we are starting to see some progress on inventory. Lastly, we returned $40 million to shareholders this quarter through share repurchases.
Please turn to slide 12 for our segment outlook.
for the fiscal fourth quarter and for our year-over-year growth expectations.
For reliability solutions, we often talk about the longer-term secular tailwinds, but they are also playing out in the near term.
industrial continues to benefit from regionalization opportunities and trends in factory automation.
And while the industry awaits further clarity on the IRA, the overall renewable energy transition is a positive driver. Health solutions remain strong, with outsourcing trends providing more opportunities to grow, and we continue making progress on program ramps.
And in auto, the EV and ADAS transition remains a dominant theme. Collectively, these trends should contribute to overall growth, with reliability revenue up high single digits to mid-teens.
For agility solutions, revenue will be relatively flat. CEC is expected to grow based on healthy underlying fundamentals, particularly within cloud and communications. But we expect both consumer devices and lifestyle to be down, driven by the weakness in consumer product and markets.
On to slide 13 for our quarterly guidance.
We expect revenue in the range of $7 to $7.4 billion with adjusted operating income between $315 and $345 million.
Interest in other is estimated to be around 60 million.
We expect the tax rate to be around 14% this quarter, and we expect adjusted EPS between 48 and 54 cents based on approximately 460 million weighted shares outstanding.
Now let's go over our full year guidance on the following slide.
We increased our fiscal 23 revenue expectations to 29.9 to 30.3 billion, which would result in mid-teens growth year over year.
We expect adjusted operating margins to be around 4.7%, consistent with what we've told you before. And adjusted EPS is up from last quarter's guidance and is now between 227 and 233 a share.
Before we begin Q&A, I want to just echo Ravetty's thoughts that I remain excited about the opportunities ahead of us.
As our results demonstrate, we are able to continue to deliver growth despite facing macro pressures and industry-wide challenges.
The resiliency of our portfolio has been strengthened by our diversification, strategic investments in key growth areas, and operational excellence.
There are a number of external factors still at play, but our team is executing against our strategy and we remain focused on meeting our long-term targets and delivering value for all flex stakeholders. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to the operator to begin Q&A.
We will now begin the question and answer portion of today's call. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your phone. As a reminder, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up.
One moment please for the first question.
The first question comes from the line of Steven Fox from Fox Advisors.
Hi, good afternoon. Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, we can hear you. Okay, thank you. First of all, I was wondering if you can provide a little more color on the margin pressures on reliability solutions. Can you quantify the hit from sort of investing for the future and also the semiconductor area and talk about what kind of path?
you see going forward for the margins for that segment. Then I had a follow up.
Yeah, Steven, I'll start and then Paul can weigh in if he feels like. I'd say plus this.
reliability is seeing tremendous growth, as you're aware. We're very pleased with our growth, around 19%. And with growth comes all kinds of challenges. I'd say first is the supply chain issues and under-absorption continues in pretty much all three segments of...
of the reliability business. And because the support the growth we have this year and then what we continue to see moving forward, driven by all the macro trends we have talked about, regionalization, et cetera, we decided to continue to make some operational investments that supports multi-year program growth.
and also try to pull forward some program programs we could and put in some front end costs when we can afford to do it, right? And like I said in my opening remarks, the diversity of our portfolio and how the company is performing gives us the room to make those decisions.
I'm going to say nuances also, of course, for liability that you know well, Steven, is that the skilled labor market is tight. And so we have to continuously find ways to keep that labor available and hire the right kind of labor in different regions of the world that provide some pressure.
But we feel very good about kind of the trajectory of how reliability margins comes out of this. I think these are decisions we choose to make because of how bullish we are about the long-term sector growth itself. We feel like overall the longer term growth driver of margin except for the longer-term growth industry.
longer term.
Great. That's helpful. And then just as a follow-up, I was wondering if there's anything you would highlight, say, over the last 90 days or so related to that regionalization theme. You know, there's been a lot of headlines, good and bad, in China, India, you know, related to electrification, et cetera. Is there anything you would call out?
That's either playing more or less in that team than you would have thought versus a quarter ago. Thank you very much.
Yeah, Steven, I would say if anything, this only continues to accelerate. I would say it doesn't matter, you know, the ups and downs of the conversation on China, whether it is regionalization or whether the country is opening up now or what you're hearing going on in India.
We are just supporting quite a significant amount of programs right now that is driven by that regionalization trend, which is driven by reducing resiliency, increasing resiliency in the supply chain, particularly in Mexico.
in US are kind of our two biggest growth areas. And then some in Southeast Asia. So haven't seen the trajectory change. If anything, it's accelerated. We're trying to kind of absorb this beast and really figure out how much more we can do moving forward. So...
The pressure is on from customers to do more and do it quickly is what we're seeing.
customers to do more and do it quickly is what we're seeing. Great, that's helpful. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Shannon Cross from Credit Suisse. Give me a question.
Thank you very much. Can you talk a bit about cash flow, and what I'm wondering, I mean you are holding to 80% cash conversion over a longer period of time. But what are you doing internally to, I don't know, maybe improve your visibility?
manage inventory better because I know some of what's gone on obviously has been the golden screw. I'm guessing some of it has been working capital related to just the growth that you've had. So I'm just wondering as you look at how the business has changed over the last couple of years, you know, how has the industry changed over the last couple of years?
how you're going about managing this so that you can get back to the 80%, because I think that's one of the few knots on your stock right now is your cash conversion.
Yeah, I would say first I'd start with Shannon that, you know, I really feel good about kind of the trajectory change that we're starting to see overall with working capital and how we're managing our customers. And I'm happy with the things we're seeing. And you know, as you guys said, what cubes are you talking about and why do you guys Cannes at which market point do we need to find the market strength like that I would say at that particular level they really do need to be able to get better by Visa. So I think that's, I would say thats probably the biggest question that came up that was
we track to see the right direction in inventory. So we do think that flips. And you're seeing that kind of the start of this quarter in terms of our overall cash flow. And we think that continues to improve. That is the reason why we feel comfortable with sticking with kind of our cash flow conversion target, because obviously coming out of this, this business is going to generate.
is we have become more disciplined in planning. We're helping our customers get more disciplined with it. And that will have longer term implications in terms of how supply chains are managed, not for us, but all the customers that we touch, right? This is near and dear to my heart, supply chain and planning. And we think that this will really make us a better company and my aspiration will be to be better.
I understand you're not going to talk about it necessarily, but just in terms of cash generation, assuming you move back, you'll have access cash. So maybe can you talk a bit about what the landscape looks like in terms of potential acquisitions? Obviously, you've been buying back stock, but just in general, your approach to returning cash to shareholders. Thank you.
bus pipeline. But in terms of prioritization when it comes to capital allocation I would say number one priority right now is is supporting very strong organic growth and whether that's with you know some working capital or if it's internal you know investments or CapEx very high priority because we have a
a very clear path ahead of us for solid top line growth over the next several years. And we want to make sure that we've funded the business for that. So that's one. Stock buyback, you know, has been a priority for us the last couple of years. I think we've been pretty vocal about our views on valuation and we've leaned into that.
And so I guess I would put M&A last, although again, we remain disciplined. We're going to be opportunistic. You know, we have a pipeline, but at the moment that's probably our lowest allocation priority.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Mark Delaney from Goldman Sachs. You may ask your question.
Yes, good afternoon. Thanks very much for taking the question. In the CEC segment, the company if I heard correctly was guiding for growth there. I think a number of companies have been reporting pretty broad-based weakness in the Comms infrastructure market. So, let me elaborate a little bit more on what Flex has seen in the Comms infrastructure markets and –
perhaps is their share gain or something else that's a tailwind for flax that other companies perhaps are not benefiting from.
Yeah, no, I'd say first is two things are happening, right? If you think about the three segments in CEC, cloud communications and enterprise, you know, we're still seeing growth in all three segments of it while you are, you know, seeing a lot of noise about enterprise segment and how that is performing.
But for us, a couple things happening. In cloud, we've clearly, while people have talked about the rate of growth changing, it is still pretty significant growth. And that's important. And along with that and market share gains, it has helped us show continued growth for cloud.
and we see that playing forward. I would say in the communication space, similarly, we have seen share gain that has happened with specific customers and we're supporting that growth, but we're also seeing there's enough backlog being cleared in that business that is also supporting underlying growth.
Overall, it's still a very positive growth story for us. Paul, did that anything? No, I think that was clear.
Thanks for everything. My second question was on the China market. I was hoping you could elaborate a bit more on what Flex has been seeing operationally in China given the unfortunate COVID dynamics in recent months. And also, when you talk to your customers, are they expecting demand to pick up this coming year given the potential reopening that's occurring in China? Thanks.
No problem, Mark. So the way we thought about this, you know, a couple of months ago was, you know, we, as things started to open up, we expected there to be a sort of a big COVID spike, you know, in the November , December timeframe and then post Chinese New Year, our thought was we'd see another one.
Just kind of tell you how that played out. You know, COVID cases were very high as we moved through December , particularly the back half of December . That probably had a little bit of effect on us, but I think we were able to manage it. But absenteeism was quite high in December .
Too early to call on what's going to happen your post Chinese New Year, but you know we track this stuff every day and I'm pleased to say that you know people returning to work has been very very high higher than what we had originally anticipated You know coming back. You know from from Chinese New Year, and and I think by the end of this week We're going to be at a hundred percent, so that's that's that's good news
Hopefully that is some color that helps, Mark.
Yes, thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Matt Sheeran from Stevell. You may ask your question.
I wanted to ask another question on the reliability segment where you've got good growth and it sounds like you're confident in most of those sub-segments in terms of growth and program ramps. We are hearing about some incremental weakness in some of those broader industrial markets. We are hearing about some incremental weakness in some of those broader industrial markets.
particularly semi-cap. I know you have some exposure but not as much as some of your peers. So could you talk about those end markets demand versus program ramps and any pockets of concern there?
Yeah, so Matt, you know, across reliability, we have really good, strong demand driven by the underlying fundamentals of the end markets we're in, but also kind of continued market share gains. We have very little in some I caps, so that's a good thing.
like automation. So industrial between renewables, the basic power business there, and automation, the fundamentals are very strong and we don't have much exposure to semi-cap equipment. And then in auto, EV and ADAS is – EV particularly is very, very strong because we have a lot of new program ramps going on.
is going well. So we really are on the other side of this equation. We have a lot of growth and reliability. We just have to execute to that.
Okay, thanks for that. And then on the margins within that business, which I know have been under pressure for the reasons that you explained, how do we get to that, that you're talking about a 5% plus margin for the whole company, which would imply nice margin expansion within reliability because…
When do we start to see those margins move up?
Yeah, that's a good question, Matt. I look back to the February , March timeframe when we were putting together the framework that we ultimately shared with you with our investor day and in a spreadsheet, we always plan for a nice gradual acceleration of margins, nice, even smooth line, but I don't think any of us anticipated going into this year.
that inflation would be as sticky and persistent, as large and sticky as it has been, nor did we anticipate the semiconductor shortages persisting as long as it has. And so both of those have put pressure on the business, including reliability, of course.
And I would say more so with reliability because what we've talked about before, you know, the stops and starts on that larger node technology where you have, you know, resources idled waiting for components definitely puts pressure on margins. And so I look at both the inflation effect...
the component shortage effect and ultimately how that impacts factories as sort of being one-time items. All else equal I think you would have seen you know better margin performance you know out of the the core flex business you know and I think as we look ahead we'll slowly start to see those things abate then and we'll see the market.
that. So long-term targets remain intact. If anything, we feel really good about it.
Long-term targets remain intact. If anything, we feel really good about it. Okay, thanks very much.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Rupalu Bhattacharya from Bank of America. Let me ask her question.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Revati, I wanted to ask you about how you're thinking about risk management. When you look out into the next 12 months, what is it that gives you the most concern? And you just reiterated the long-term or the medium-term target of high single-digit revenue growth. Can you talk about what are some of the things that are giving you confidence?
you the most concern and what is giving you confidence in the medium term on revenues? And then I have a follow up on margins. Yeah, Rupal, I'd say first is, you know, our portfolio has changed significantly if you look from history to where we are today. You know, that we have in a very smart and planful way, we have looked at our portfolio.
the end markets that have good long-term trajectory, and the macro is in our favor, right? Whether it is regionalization or continued technology transitions, all of those are really in our favor. And that's why when we look forward, we're really focused on that we need to have reliability growth.
continue to be supported because that's going to be the long-term trajectory. Agility, the way the portfolio is, will always have some ups and downs, but we have really minimized that pretty significantly. As you can see, the last few months we took the comps on consumer markets and still grew.
So the diversity of our portfolio really makes it the real story of why we feel very strong about kind of committing to this longer term growth. And we have delivered on that. If you look about the last four years, Rooplu, doesn't matter if it was trade crisis and exiting large portfolios or whether it is
with making this commitment.
Okay, thanks for the details there, Revati. If I can ask a follow-up on margins. So I think you just talked about the reliability segment being 4.4 and agility 4.5. So you're pretty much at the mid-force, right? And if we take out inflation pass-through, I mean, those margins are likely like 10 to 20 percent.
like 20 basis points. So maybe can you talk about some of the leverage that you have for the margin improvement over the next two years? Is it getting harder to get the margin improvement? Or where is that margin improvement going to come from? And what why wouldn't be higher than 5% is what I'm trying to get in?
Yeah, I think, Rupalu, a little bit of this I answered in the last question about, and you hit the nail on the head, right, that even with kind of reliability margins, we were able to make decisions on investment for the longer term of the business because we could afford to make those investments, right? git gational
next investor day. I think it's too early to commit, but I see lots of room for what we can continue to drive. I'd say manufacturing productivity is big for us. There's tons more to do. I see all kinds of opportunities there. I'd say driving efficiency around program growth and how we do that.
upside on that does help. So, you know, I have to agree with your thesis. I just don't want to make any commitment. I would say we are sticking with the long-term commitment we're giving you.
Okay, thank you for that. If I can, since you mentioned efficiency, if I can sneak one more in. If we talk about manufacturing efficiency, you know, I'm just looking over the past four years, right? Your revenues have grown $4 billion, but your total manufacturing square foot has not increased that much. I mean, technically the revenue per square foot.
structure support and can you talk about any manufacturing efficiencies? Are there more efficiencies to be had and where do they come from?
Sure, well, first of all, thank you, Rupalu. Do more with less. That's the goal. A couple things, will there be incremental PPE expenditures? Absolutely. We're going to have to facilitate for growth. Ravely talked about the regionalization trends, significant growth in the U.S.
and we remained laser focused on factory productivity and high, high asset utilization.
Thanks for all the details. Appreciate it.
Yeah. Thanks, Ruplu.
Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your phone.
Your next question comes from the line of Paul Chung from J.P. Morgan. You may ask your question.
Hi, thanks for taking my question.
Just on Anord Martic, so you've had this acquisition for about a year. Can you talk about how that business has performed on revenues and margins?
and would have been some of the benefits of CrossDell and how material has acquisition been to kind of winning other deals in the space and.
You know, as we think about future complementary kind of acquisitions, where are you looking to?
find incremental value and which specific verticals should we be thinking about that can see the same playbook from an Android Mardix.
I'd say, Paul, the acquisition has gone very well. If you recall, the strategy was we wanted to get bigger in the power space, and we particularly wanted to focus on data centers, both colo and hyperscale.
and expand our portfolio in that because we felt it's a long-term macro for us that was important. And Anord Mardex, in terms of revenue growth, has done really well and they have a strong backlog. We're more focused on expanding their footprint and really helping them grow their business fast.
our customers and we see that as a differentiator that nobody else has in our space. And so the conversations has definitely changed with data center space in terms of how we're focused on power and on the IT sector whether it is racks and enclosures and servers and storage.
We're seeing the effect of it. It's playing out exactly how we thought it would. And you see that in our cloud expansion and our overall growth there. So really good asset, I would say for us. The growth story has been fantastic.
Okay, great. And then just a follow-up on cash flow. Which
Which end markets are you having kind of the most issues with with golden screws? And you know, how do we think about some of the timing of? conversion there on cash and now are you taking advantage of more customer deposits to kind of partially offset as well and then I Know it's early, but can we see more meaningful conversion in 24 and?
gotten a little bit easier and so the more the commoditized more consumer end markets but automotive and industrial to an extent health solutions have continued to face pressure from those shortages and that has has not been helpful. You know you see it manifesting itself in the P&L as we talked about earlier today but but you're absolutely right Paul that also has an effect.
heard in our prepared remarks I was very pleased to see that for the first time in a long time
We saw the trends of net inventory, and I say net as in gross inventory less advances from customers, actually came down sequentially. So that was a source of cash and great to see. You know, is there light at the end of the tunnel? I don't know, but you know, certainly like to see that trend. So we are getting some support from the customers.
I think Shannon asked a question before about the last couple years, what's changed? Well, that would be one change. I think better partnership with our customers in supporting a very voracious appetite for inventory. And then the third, you know, looking ahead to 2024, it's a little premature to guide on that.
you know, long term, I think everybody understands that this is a timing issue, you know, and, you know, ultimately, yeah, I mean, inventory should come down as all these, all these, you know, shortages start to abate. But I would balance that with a comment on organic growth. Look, flex is probably going to grow 16% this year. That definitely puts some pressure on.
from the line of Jim Zuba from Citigroup. Let me ask you a question.
Thank you very much. This is more of a strategic bigger picture question. Ray Tivie, as you load more on-shoring facilities, whether it be Guadalajara or North America or South America or Europe ones, how do you see the impact of the pandemic?
facilities and you build on a cost plus model, now that those factors are better utilized, plus the labor rate is a little bit higher, which you pass to the end customer, doesn't this also help out your long-term operating margin goals to be accretive also? I just wanted to make sure or maybe it doesn't work that way.
I would say first, Jim, that I think the areas you've picked out are all the right ones that we have said Mexico, parts of the US are definitely our biggest growth trajectory, some in Malaysia, Southeast Asia. So-
Those are all the right areas that we're growing. The way I think about it, I mean, you see this in reliability now, right? When we start to execute these programs, there's always some challenges with it because they are big, complex programs. And what you see, particularly in Mexico and US, is very few people can execute these type of complex programs, and we are choosing to take those on.
So you see that execution pressure which challenges some of our reliability margins as you see now. But as you say, as those programs mature and we get to a more efficient model, I won't call it just a cost plus model, but a more efficient model that we work with at our customers, we do expect that to be tailwind for margins.
That's why I keep answering the question of the 5% as it's something that we feel good about. There's a lot of different ways this industry is monetizing and expanding margins, and that is definitely one of them. So I agree with you.
Great, thank you so much for the clarification and details and congratulations to you and all your teams.
Thanks, Jim. Okay, so thank you everyone. I just want to close by saying that on behalf of the Flex leadership team, sincere thanks to our customers and to all our shareholders for their support and of course to the Flex team across the world. Your hard work makes this possible. We wouldn't be here today.