Q3 2024 Ag Growth International Inc Earnings Call

Conference Operator: Thank you for standing by. This is the Conference Operator. Welcome to the AGI 3rd Quarter 2020-4 results conference call in webcast. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity for analysts to ask questions.

Conference Operator: 2. Join the question queue you make press star than one on your telephone keypad. As a courtesy to management and other participants on the call, please limit yourself to two questions and rejoin the queue if you have further questions.

Conference Operator: should anyone need assistance during the conference call they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Paul, Householder, President and CEO of AGI. Please go ahead, sir.

Paul Householder: Thank you, operator. Good morning and welcome to Agi's 3rd quarter 2024 Results Call.

Conference Operator: I'm joined today by our CFO Jim Retic.

Conference Operator: I will start the call with a review of our third quarter results and other relevant business updates, then turn the call to Jim for additional commentary on the quarter. Following our prepared landmarks, the call will be open for questions.

Conference Operator: I will begin with a few customary comments on safety at AGI. We recently celebrated an outstanding safety result at our Manufacturing Facility in Saskatoon, which achieved a significant industry milestone of 10 years without a lost time safety incident.

Conference Operator: This is an incredible achievement, which we appropriately celebrated with a special on-site event and an awards ceremony to recognize the team's commitment to safety.

Conference Operator: This long-term dedication and discipline around safety is the type of result we are aiming for all facilities across AGI.

Conference Operator: It is a terrific example of our safety culture, which aspires to ensure that each and every AGI employee around the world, regardless of where they are working, returns home in the exact same safe condition as they arrived at work. Congratulations to the Saskatoon team.

Conference Operator: Turning to our results, our third quarter was lower than our expectations.

Conference Operator: While nearly all areas of AGI continue to perform well, with good line of sight to fourth quarter and full year results, the U.S. farm market did not pick up from a slow first half, which was a key headwind to third quarter results.

Conference Operator: In particular, our portable grain handling product lines were impacted.

Conference Operator: a combination of elevated dealer level inventories, declining farmer income, and low crop prices all contributed to challenging U.S. farm market conditions.

Conference Operator: We are very encouraged to see a strong third quarter margin result and a stable outlook for margin performance for the full year.

Conference Operator: This performance was delivered despite the mixed challenges stemming from the soft result for our portable business in the U.S. farm market.

Conference Operator: Offsetting this margin headwind was a steadfast commitment to cost control and further progress on several operational excellence initiatives aimed at streamlining efficiency across AGI.

Conference Operator: Our ability to effectively mitigate mixed dynamics and stabilize margin performance is a highly differentiated capability that AGI did not possess just a few short years ago.

Conference Operator: Activity in the international areas of our commercial segment continues to be robust and encouraging, which is a direct result of our focus on our three strategic growth initiatives, including product transfers, emerging markets, and growth platforms.

Conference Operator: Across Q3, we continued that favorable trend by successfully winning several new and significant customer contracts.

Conference Operator: Our outstanding team supporting Brazil secured several projects with a combined value of approximately $105 million.

Conference Operator: This impressive Q3 achievement complements the already strong commercial segment order book supported by activity in EMEA and Asia Pacific.

Conference Operator: Visibility to a highly active and attractive commercial pipeline across Brazil, EMEA and Asia-Pacific provides potential for further wins and sustained strong performance across 2025.

Conference Operator: Last quarter, we highlighted several areas that gave us confidence in the second half of 2024.

Conference Operator: Many of these still hold true, while others have not yet fully materialized.

Conference Operator: Most businesses across AGI continue to perform well, particularly within international commercial.

Conference Operator: Our order book remains extremely strong and sits at a record level exiting the third quarter.

Conference Operator: Favorable international commercial contributions remain on track and will play a critical role in delivering fourth quarter results and a strong start to 2025.

Conference Operator: The early positive signs in U.S. and Brazil farm markets, particularly the U.S. farm market, did not accelerate.

Conference Operator: Aggregate dealer inventory levels slowly improved and will take additional time to normalize.

Conference Operator: U.S. farm market conditions are the contributor to our third quarter results and our revised full year outlook.

Conference Operator: Order intake in North America Farm remained slow across the third quarter.

Conference Operator: The strength in the commercial order book has remained impressive and continues to accelerate. These large and sophisticated commercial projects will be significant to both Q4 results and into 2025.

Conference Operator: Product transfers and emerging market growth strategies are delivering, with revenue on track for low single-digit contribution to total consolidated full year revenue.

Conference Operator: Finally, operational excellence initiatives continue to deliver as expected, further supplemented by recently executed actions to streamline costs aligned with market conditions.

Conference Operator: As we get into more discussion on the quarter, I'd like to provide an update on our three strategic corporate priorities.

Conference Operator: For profitable organic growth, our 2024 expectation now calls for a slight decline in year-over-year revenue and adjusted EBITDA, primarily owing to difficult U.S. farm market conditions.

Conference Operator: Given we are on pace for a near record year for consolidated results amid a very difficult time within our largest market and business, we are pleased to see the resilience of our overall diversification strategy working.

Conference Operator: Intense efforts to update our growth plans and strategies across our North America farm business are complemented by the strong international commercial outlook and together are supportive of AGI returning to our growth path next year.

Conference Operator: For operational excellence, third quarter margins were quite strong relative to historical third quarter results, especially after factoring in the impact of farm segment mix.

Conference Operator: For the full year, we are on pace for a similar margin result to last year.

Conference Operator: Our ability to demonstrate a consistently strong and stable margin performance is a clear sign of the step change we have achieved in realizing sustainably higher margins through extremely efficient business operations.

Conference Operator: For balance sheet discipline, our focus on free cash flow generation continues to show sustained improvement.

Conference Operator: Our leverage ratio and depth levels improved year over year, and we continue to closely monitor with a view of achieving our 2.5x target in 2025.

Conference Operator: Now turning to a review of our results and trends across segments and geographies, beginning with our farm segment.

Conference Operator: Overall farm segment results for the third quarter were challenged as the U.S. navigates generally soft market conditions.

Conference Operator: Farm segment revenue from our Canada region increased 13% versus prior year through a significant increase in demand for permanent equipment and a moderate increase for higher margin portable grain handling products.

Conference Operator: As a percentage of mix within the farm segment, Canada is less weighted to portable equipment relative to the U.S., owing to the strong storage business and brands we possess in Canada.

Conference Operator: We continue to carefully monitor order intake in Canada as it helps us to deliver and implement the appropriate plans and tactics to ensure momentum can be sustained in 2025.

Conference Operator: The U.S. farm segment has been particularly slow this year due to tepid farmer sentiment.

Conference Operator: Aggregate dealer inventory levels of farm equipment continue to slowly decline and remain above average levels, creating near-term challenges for equipment suppliers including AGI and our portable product lines.

Conference Operator: With harvest conditions generally trending favorably and the new crop working through the supply chain, dealer inventories of portable equipment will continue to improve, gradually returning to more balanced levels.

Conference Operator: This will be supportive of a recovery in our U.S. farm business, an area we will continue to closely monitor.

Conference Operator: In addition, we are confident that the appropriate business actions have been implemented through Q2 and Q3 to restructure and reposition our farm business to limit the headwind as we look ahead to 2025.

Conference Operator: These actions include updated rebate and incentive programs to stimulate demand, as well as right-sizing our cost structure to mitigate margin pressure.

Conference Operator: Farm segment revenue from our international regions decreased 18% year-over-year.

Conference Operator: While a very strong first quarter pulled some revenue ahead from the remainder of the year, we are encouraged to see significant increases in margins for our permanent equipment in Brazil from operational efficiency initiatives made at the manufacturing level.

Conference Operator: As we navigate the current market, the notable grain storage deficit in Brazil suggests that this market will be a good leading indicator of overall farm market recovery.

Conference Operator: early business indicators such as quote activity are positive and trending above prior year

Conference Operator: Results from Australia were steady in the quarter. The team continues to focus on building out our portable business and dealer network across Australia, especially with production capabilities advancing in India.

Conference Operator: Now turning to our commercial segment.

Conference Operator: Commercial activity across all international markets remains robust with EMEA and Asia-Pacific helping to stabilize overall third quarter performance.

Conference Operator: In Canada and the U.S., we navigated slower overall activity while our Brazilian operations were awarded several large-scale projects late in the quarter, which are now fully underway.

Conference Operator: The Canadian commercial segment is positioned for an uplift in activity and results.

Conference Operator: Efforts to rebuild the order book are beginning to pay off with a significant increase in orders exiting the third quarter.

Conference Operator: The order book now sits at a record level for the quarter and up significantly relative to last year.

Conference Operator: Activity in our U.S. commercial segment remains steady. With a healthy order book, this segment is set up for a strong fourth quarter and consistent overall results for the full year.

Conference Operator: The international commercial segment was effectively flat in the third quarter, as a very strong EMEA result was offset primarily by Brazil and the broader LATAM region in South America.

Conference Operator: There is a timing element to be mindful of as our international commercial projects have been generally weighted towards Q4 of this year with several large orders secured late last year.

Conference Operator: The EMEA region continues to be a bright spot for the company with another strong quarter and a very strong order book which benefits from solid execution of our emerging markets growth strategy.

Conference Operator: The focus and success within emerging markets, such as the Middle East and Africa, is the key contributor to the ongoing momentum and success for the business in Q4 and across 2025.

Conference Operator: Our Brazilian commercial business is showing significant signs of accelerating results driven by our strategic focus on expanding local capabilities and broadening market segment reach.

Conference Operator: The benefits of this strategy are clearly visible in our recent signing of approximately $105 million in new projects, which will begin contribution in the fourth quarter and across 2025.

Conference Operator: An extremely robust pipeline provides added confidence in the potential for this business.

Conference Operator: Finally, our India business remains a solid contributor to AGI's overall results with a stable third quarter and a sizable increase in order book.

Conference Operator: The lift in the order book is directly attributed to product transfers with well-established manufacturing capabilities for bins and permanent material handling, complemented by ongoing demand for rice milling equipment.

Conference Operator: Overall, our international business is performing extremely well.

Conference Operator: This performance is a direct result of our strategic shift towards the commercial segment achieved through our three growth initiatives including product transfers, emerging markets, and growth platforms.

Conference Operator: The strategy is working, creating accelerated demand across all regions and leading to a strong order book that positions AGI well for our fourth quarter and provides exciting momentum heading into 2025.

Conference Operator: In total, our international commercial business now represents a sizable majority of the overall company order book and is up 75% relative to prior year.

Conference Operator: The international commercial segment has been a key driver of this result during a time where our U.S. farm market business navigates market headwinds.

Conference Operator: With several sizable commercial orders secured and underway, we are well positioned as a strategic partner to support our customers' critical projects around the world.

Conference Operator: The resilience and diversification of our business model and global footprint continue to drive near record-level annual performance.

Conference Operator: We have a strong project pipeline and a secure position as an industry leader with significant long-term growth potential.

Conference Operator: We have updated our full year guidance to include adjusted EBITDA of approximately $280 million with margins of approximately 19%.

Conference Operator: The margin outlook is particularly encouraging given the headwind that mixed players in our results relative to last year

Conference Operator: Our ability to sustain a new and higher level of margin performance relative to historic results is a clear indicator of our commitment and capabilities to consistently drive an attractive margin profile going forward.

Speaker Change: I appreciate your time this morning and will now hand the call over to Jim.

Jim Retic: Thank you, Paul, and good morning, everyone.

Jim Retic: For today's call, I will touch on four areas, including an overview of our third quarter results,

Jim Retic: An update on key balance sheet metrics.

Jim Retic: Some comments on cash flow and finally a quick recap of our outlook for the remainder of the year.

Conference Operator: On a consolidated basis, third quarter revenues of $357 million and adjusted EBITDA of $69 million decreased 13% and 19% respectively.

Conference Operator: This demonstrates the continued resilience of our margins in a variety of operating environments.

Conference Operator: The year-over-year margin change is primarily due to the mixed impact from a softer U.S. farm result, partially offset by ongoing efforts to streamline SG&A at the corporate level and other cost control initiatives implemented across the organization.

Conference Operator: Our adjusted EBITDA includes approximately $10 million in transaction and transitional costs that are largely related to legal matters, mostly from our digital business, as well as some trailing one-time costs associated with recently announced facility consolidations.

Conference Operator: Our farm segment delivered $185 million in revenue, adjusted EBITDA of $45 million and margins of 24.6%.

Conference Operator: As discussed earlier, the soft U.S. market, which persisted from the first half of the year, was the main driver of the results.

Conference Operator: In the commercial segment, revenues of $173 million were down slightly year-over-year as solid growth in EMEA and APAC was offset primarily by slower conditions in North America.

Conference Operator: Adjusted EBITDA of $31 million declined 10% year-over-year with margins contracting roughly 90 basis points to 17.9%.

Conference Operator: Moving on to our balance sheet.

Conference Operator: We remain disciplined with our credit facility usage, making notable repayments against our senior facilities in the corridor.

Conference Operator: While we are focused on managing cash flow and adhering to a disciplined capital allocation approach,

Conference Operator: that we will likely achieve our Net Debt Leverage Ratio target of 2.5 times in 2025.

Conference Operator: Overall, we feel comfortable operating the business with leverage ratios where they are today, but we recognize the importance of achieving our improvement objectives and we will continue to prioritize progress on managing this ratio into 2025.

Conference Operator: Turning to working capital investment, which continues to be a key focus across the organization, our net investment of $195 million in the third quarter was down from $243 million year-over-year.

Conference Operator: On an annualized percentage of revenue basis, working capital intensity decreased from 15% to 14% year-over-year.

Conference Operator: Our teams are well-established in new processes and procedures to better manage working capital at the facility level, and this is reflected in the long-term trend of improvement in our working capital usage.

Conference Operator: And now moving on to cash flow.

Conference Operator: Over the last 12 months, our free cash flow is approximately $111 million.

Conference Operator: roughly a 40% conversion against adjusted EBITDA and a 53% improvement relative to the comparable LTM period from the third quarter of last year.

Conference Operator: The improvement is partially attributable to a significant cash-out flow made in the comparable LTM period related to the resolution of large one-time warranty provisions.

Conference Operator: Overall, similar to working capital, we are encouraged to see a clear uptrend in our free cash flow metric over recent years with progress accelerating.

Conference Operator: We also continue to closely monitor our capital allocation plans and strategies, balancing debt repayment, growth investments, and opportunities to create value for shareholders.

Conference Operator: Given our view as a management team that AGI's share price does not reflect the intrinsic value of the company,

Conference Operator: We are preparing a share repurchase program, subject to TSX approval, as an attractive option to prioritize within our capital allocation strategy.

Conference Operator: Finally, turning to our Outlook.

Conference Operator: For 2024, our adjusted EBITDA guidance now calls for approximately $280 million.

Conference Operator: We have clear visibility into project delivery timing, particularly for our international commercial businesses, which will be a key driver for the fourth quarter.

Conference Operator: In terms of margin levels, we expect our full-year margin levels to stabilize at approximately 19%.

Conference Operator: We anticipate further incremental operational excellence gains to accrue to margins, offset by a shift in mix towards commercial, which is generally lower margin than farm.

Conference Operator: Overall, our ability to stabilize the step change in margins we realized in 2023 is a clear signal of the meaningful progress we have made as a company to consistently drive profitability and performance to a new level.

Conference Operator: I'll now hand the call back to the operator and open up the lines for questions.

Speaker Change: Thank you. We will now begin the

Conference Operator: To join the question queue, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys.

Conference Operator: To withdraw your question, please press star then two. As a reminder, please limit yourself to two questions and rejoin the queue if you have further questions.

Speaker Change: The first question comes from Jacob Bout with CIBC. Please go ahead.

Jacob Bout: Good morning.

Jacob Bout: Hey, Greg, how's it going?

Jacob Bout: So maybe just a topical question here given you know the Trump win and looks like he's going to win both the House and the Senate. You're concerned about cross-border tariffs. You know how much product destined for the US market is produced in Canada?

Greg: Yeah thanks for the question Jacob and yeah well obviously paying close attention to the election results.

Conference Operator: If you look at our business in North America and our manufacturing capabilities and our supply strategies right now from a farm standpoint,

Conference Operator: We manufacture our portable equipment, as well as a portion of our permanent equipment in Canada, and deliver that into the U.S. market. That's complemented by a fairly comprehensive manufacturing network that we have established across the U.S.

Conference Operator: So we have a pretty good balance of manufacturing capabilities across both Canada and the U.S. that we think sets us up pretty well for, you know, whatever conditions or...

Conference Operator: new implications may arise out of the election.

Conference Operator: Okay.

Speaker Change: And maybe just a question on the U.S. farm.

Speaker Change: When you strip out, maybe just look at it this way, from the dealer perspective, what was the in-season U.S. portable demand like for the fall of this year?

Speaker Change: Yeah, so great question, Jacob, and this is an area that we are obviously watching fairly closely. We have a fantastic, portable business across the U.S., one that we're actually quite proud of and has been a tailwind for us from a results standpoint for the past

Speaker Change: several years. One of the challenges that we've had across 2024 is the level of inventory that exists across the channel. This is

Conference Operator: Fairly high inventory across a good bit of ag-related products, and that is consistent for AGI's portable equipment.

Conference Operator: So, that has been a headwind for us across 2024, inventory levels of portable equipment. As we commented in Q3, Jacob, we started to see those inventory levels improve, our inventory level of portable equipment start to come down. That trend did continue across Q3 at a slow rate, so we did see demand for portable equipment.

Conference Operator: continue across Q3. It's not yet at historic levels and it's something that we are continuing to monitor quite closely. We would expect the inventory levels to continue to improve and get to a more normalized level at some point in 2025.

Jacob Bout: Okay, that's helpful. Maybe I can just squeeze one more in, just on this COPPA allocation. You know, paying down debt, share brought back in M&A. Kind of where do things stand and, you know, what's the expectation for COPPAX over the next 12 months in free cash flow conversion?

Speaker Change: Yeah, so thank you Jacob. Capital, our approach at Managing Capital has not changed. You know, we still remain very excited about the growth opportunities. We'll continue to invest in India. We've got our normal level of CAPEX that we'll spend in terms of maintenance.

Speaker Change: We always manage to also do a number of growth CAPREX initiatives.

Conference Operator: So that will not change.

Conference Operator: The only thing and the other encouraging thing is, you know, we have the capacity across the organization to continue to grow and meet the demands for some time. And so all that we're doing now is acknowledging that

Conference Operator: We feel very confident about the strategy of our company and think that the valuation right now in our stock price is not reflecting that.

Conference Operator: You know, we've decided to reallocate some of that capital.

Conference Operator: And as you saw, we announced an NCIB, up to 10% of the value of the float.

Conference Operator: And so we think that's being more opportunistic, you know, we'll manage that accordingly over the next and monitor that over the next few months.

Conference Operator: but nothing's really changed in terms of our confidence and our strategy and our outlook. And with our debt levels now where they are, in the last year and a bit we've proven we can get down the leverage ratio and pay down debt.

Conference Operator: and we'll continue to do that. Our cash flow profile is quite strong going forward, and so we're being more opportunistic now given the value of our stock.

Conference Operator: Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Steve Hansen with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Conference Operator: Yeah, I could run that six at a time.

Steve Hansen: Paul, do you have a sense for maybe a bit more granularity on you know how long it'll take to burn down?

Steve Hansen: the U.S. portable inventories. We're late into the selling season this year, of course, so I presume it's spring at the earliest and maybe in the summer, if things go maybe a little bit slower. How do you feel about that sort of timeline?

Paul Householder: Thanks for the question. I think you're hunting in the right area from a timeline standpoint. We're going to continue to look at US Farm quite carefully. Our focus will be on the portable inventory as well as our strong permanent business out there.

Paul Householder: We would remain cautious on the U.S. Farm and the Portable Inventory. We do expect that our inventory levels will continue to come down. You know, we did see that across Q3. We're starting to see that now early in Q4. So, you know, sometime in 2025, probably more biased towards the second half. As you're referencing, Steve, we would expect to see that inventory level more normalized.

Speaker Change: Okay that's helpful and just just for some broader context for us all like how do you manage that?

Steve Hansen: process then, I think you described a number of cost sections and the take in, I'm presuming that means taking down production rates a little bit and perhaps maybe working down some of the excess staffing levels. I'm trying to understand how you actually manage that business to accommodate this kind of headwind. Thanks.

Speaker Change: Yes, that's a terrific question and you heard a little bit in our prepared remarks. This is an area where we're quite proud, the internal teams have done just a fantastic job of making sure that we keep a very close eye on the market conditions and then adjust our operations to reflect that reality. So you're absolutely right, we've made the appropriate adjustments at our manufacturing facilities to ensure that we're, that our production capabilities is in line with demand. And accompanying that, we have the right cost structure in place accordingly. That's been a key initiative for us, it exemplifies the agility that we have across our business to make those adjustments.

Steve Hansen: impressive margin profile as a result.

Speaker Change: Okay, helpful, thanks. I'll jump back in the queue. Appreciate it.

Steve Hansen: Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Gary Ho with Desjardins Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Gary Ho: Thanks. Good morning.

Gary Ho: Just on the commercial wins that you guys have achieved, Paul, maybe just curious to pick your brain here. What are maybe several factors you believe you're having success in winning contracts?

Steve Hansen: Maybe lack of competition in these international areas, is it significant commercial demand? Like what's the secret sauce and what's the upside in commercial as you look at quartering activity later this year into 2025?

Paul Householder: Thanks for that question, Gary. And again, this is an area that we're pretty excited about. I think it all starts with our strategy that we have in place, we put in place a couple of years ago. Our strategy really was supportive of growing

Steve Hansen: Supporting that broad strategy we implemented the three strategic initiatives that we continue to reference the product transfers, emerging markets, and our growth platforms.

Steve Hansen: As the teams continue to be successful in implementing these, ultimately it is enhancing the capabilities that we have regionally as well as broadening our market reach.

Steve Hansen: Those two elements are very powerful and they are a strong indicator of the type of results that we've seen.

Steve Hansen: In addition to that, particularly down in Brazil, we're enhancing our capabilities to be able to successfully win and serve a market opportunity to be more involved in large and complex projects and managing those from a turnkey standpoint. We feel that this is a highly differentiated capability that we have in Brazil. We saw the market moving in this direction. We initiated activities to enhance these capabilities back in 2023. We actually won two good-sized projects that were turnkey in 2023 and successfully executed those.

Steve Hansen: That gave us the confidence to take the next step and is a key part of the recent wins that we've had in Q3.

Speaker Change: Just rounding that out Gary, as you heard in the prepared marks, the pipeline for these type of projects, not only in Brazil, but across our international and commercial statements remains extremely robust.

Speaker Change: is underscoring the strength that we have in our order book exiting Q3 and gives us quite a lot of confidence and excitement that that type of momentum is not only going to support our Q4 results but be supportive of 2025 as well.

Speaker Change: Perfect, thanks for that. And then maybe as a related question, if you can dig a little bit further.

Speaker Change: into the product transfers, just wondering if you can share any update where you are in terms of that initiative year-to-date and also can you provide a bit more color in terms of the next round of product transfers and what you intend to implement next year and any associated significant growth cutbacks related to product transfers in 2025.

Speaker Change: Outstanding, Gary. We're highly active, obviously, from a products transfer standpoint. The ones that we initiated back early part of 2023 are all very well-progressed. So if you start in India...

Speaker Change: our silos, our storage bins, as well as permanent material handling. That manufacturing, that engineering capability is very well established in India. The team has done an excellent job progressing the very large order that we've secured in this space.

Speaker Change: back in the Q4 2023 time frame. That's part of the commercial tailwind that we have supporting Q4.

Speaker Change: So that product transfer very well progressed.

Speaker Change: Staying down in India, the transfer of our portable equipment continues to gain momentum as we head into 2025. We'll be shifting more of our manufacturing production for Australia into India. Previously it was out of Canada. This is a great capability for us to streamline our supply chain, get closer to our markets and our customers, and overall enhance our capabilities to serve that Australia market. So all of those are well-progressed.

Speaker Change: jumping down to Brazil.

Speaker Change: Food, Feed, and Fertilizer are product transfers that are also well underway. Those transfers have been very supportive to the momentum that we are now establishing on the commercial side of the business down in Brazil. We talked about how strong our order book is overall down in Brazil. Our order book is up approximately 200% versus prior year, supportive by both farm and commercial, but certainly weighted more towards commercial and enhanced by that product transfer success. So I expect Gary gives you a quick snapshot of where we are on the product transfers that we have previously initiated.

Speaker Change: In terms of the next round of product transfers, there's two in particular that we will be launching across 2025.

Speaker Change: The first one is related to our digital products and part of our digital growth platform. We've got a very nice market position for our digital products in the U.S.

Speaker Change: We see a very attractive market for these products down in Brazil, as well as EMEA. We'll be shifting our capabilities, including some manufacturing capabilities, into those markets across 2025, positioning ourselves to start accelerating our activity in those markets.

Speaker Change: The final one, Gary.

Speaker Change: that we will be implementing in 2025 is transferring part of our conveyor technology and capability.

Speaker Change: in the EMEA, broad EMEA region for these products over the next coming years. Transferring this capability over to EMEA is going to position us extremely well to participate very actively in that market.

Speaker Change: Good afternoon everyone, this is

Speaker Change: From a CAPEX standpoint, Gary, the final part of your question, it's one of the attractive parts of our product transfers. It's really just incremental capital, very much consistent with the comments that you heard Jim make. It's not a step change investment in capital that is required to get these product transfers up and running.

Gary Ho: Absolutely. Okay, no thanks for the detailed response there, Paul.

Gary Ho: You got it.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Andrew Wong with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Andrew Wong: Hey, good morning. Can you provide some guidance on the business transition-related costs like transaction costs and ERP system costs? How much will we be modeling in for the next couple of years and how many years do you expect these costs to continue?

Speaker Change: So, thanks, Andrew. Hey, good morning from a couple parts in there.

Speaker Change: So, first of all, take the ERP costs, you'll notice in our results, you'll see an amount going through the adjusted EBITDA tables, that project we talked about at the end of

Speaker Change: It will continue through 2026, through the end of 2026, and the amount to expect from a cash flow perspective will be approximately the same of what you saw this quarter on each quarter for the next two years.

Speaker Change: So that's one item. In terms of other transitional costs that may run through our results.

Speaker Change: A big part of our strategy is operational excellence.

Speaker Change: through a lot of the innings, so to speak, of that journey, but there still are a number of opportunities as we look across our operational footprint across the world.

Speaker Change: And so, to the extent that we still see opportunities...

Speaker Change: from a return perspective to make changes, there will be some other costs.

Speaker Change: that will flow through there that will identify and call out for you.

Speaker Change: I don't expect those to be as significant as they have been in the past few years.

Speaker Change: Okay, that's great. Thank you. And then just on the buybacks, are these contingent on meeting your leverage targets or sound like they might be more opportunistic? So could those buybacks come even before you reach your leverage target?

Speaker Change: Yeah, they will. So we'll start those buybacks as soon as possible and manage accordingly. You know, from a leverage perspective, it doesn't do a significant amount of impact to our overall leverage. And as we work through Q4 and what we see going forward, we'll continue to generate cash flow.

Speaker Change: And with what we have on tap from a CapEx perspective and our working capital management initiatives, we'll be able to utilize some of that cash to opportunistically buy back our stock.

Speaker Change: Okay, great. If I could just maybe ask one more, just maybe a little bit more strategic question. You know, you've been pretty clear that your stock valuation is low. We saw a transaction earlier this year for one of your competitors. It's a higher valuation. There were reports of a takeout offer back in May.

Speaker Change: You know, you've executed well on your margins and growth and obviously there have been some bumps recently more market related

Speaker Change: But if these shares stay at these levels, at what point would you want to consider a strategic option just to realize shareholder value if nothing really changes?

Speaker Change: Yeah, Andrew, thanks for the question. You know, from our standpoint, we are extremely excited about the future direction of the company. We feel quite strongly in the strategy that we have in place, the strategic direction that we're headed, and that is our focus. There's no interest to explore other options at this point in time. Our focus and our commitment is on our strategy, the execution of our strategy, delivering positive results, and ultimately shareholder value.

Andrew Wong: Thank you. It's very clear.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Tim Monticello with ATB Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Tim Monticello: Hey good morning everyone. Good morning. So just looking at the Q4 guidance, it's pretty, you know, specific.

Tim Monticello: I guess the 2024 guidance implies a pretty specific number for Q4.

Tim Monticello: context of farm headwinds I'm just trying to understand how you guys have that much confidence in the outlook and if you could provide any data points or granularity on your expectations for revenue mix between commercial and farm and your expectations for farm in particular in Q4 on either a year over year or quarter of a quarter basis that'd be helpful

Speaker Change: Yeah, thanks Tim. We remain very excited about the outlook of Q4 and give you a little bit of color on how we see that unfolding on farm versus commercial. As commented earlier, we'll continue to remain cautious at least from a U.S. farm standpoint so that has been factored in to our Q4 outlook.

Tim Monticello: On the Canada Farm basis, Canada Farm has performed well in Q3, has performed well year-to-date, and has a positive outlook for Q4, so we would expect Canada Farm to contribute to our favorable Q4 outlook.

Speaker Change: Down in Brazil, the farm conditions continue to improve. We saw a bit of that in Q3. We expect more of that into Q4. So we also expect, you know, good conditions from our farm business down in Brazil.

Tim Monticello: But unquestionably, the key to our Q4 performance is going to be on the commercial side. It all starts, Tim, back to those significant projects.

Speaker Change: that we won at the end of 2023. A number of large projects across Brazil, EMEA and India, all three of those regions have been active in executing those projects across the year. We're now in a position where those projects will hit in Q4 as we wrap those projects up and ship them off to our customers. So we expect to see a fairly sizable uptick in our commercial results in Q4, complemented by more steady results in farm, ultimately leading to our positive outlook for Q4 overall.

Speaker Change: Okay.

Speaker Change: And I guess, you know, most of the projects that you're going to process in the commercial side of the business, it sounds like those were inked or maybe late in 2023 or early 2024, and you've had some nice commercial wins in the back half of this year that you spoke about earlier on the call.

Speaker Change: I guess can you provide any guidance on how we should expect the commercial business in 2025 to perform perhaps on a year-over-year basis and also like

Speaker Change: You know, do we see a pretty large step down into Q1 from Q4 levels?

Speaker Change: Yeah, thanks for that question Tim. So maybe I'll start with just overall outlook for 2025 on the commercial segment. Obviously it's still a bit early days of us pulling together our budget and our more detailed outlook for 2025.

Speaker Change: The manager is not...

Speaker Change: Currently it's a strength of our order book, you know, it's up 36% over prior year, it's sitting at a record level for Q3, it is strongly supported on the commercial side, the commercial segment that's up about 75% over prior year.

Speaker Change: On the international side, the order book is up around 100% over prior year. So all of that is indications that, at least at the early part of 2025, as we continue to execute and deliver those projects, we would expect favorable results on the commercial side.

Speaker Change: And as we commented earlier, the pipeline also looks quite attractive.

Speaker Change: We continue to quote and work with customers on winning new projects.

Speaker Change: To the extent we continue to be successful in securing these large complex projects across our commercial platform, that would be supportive to an overall favorable outlook for 2025. But as you know, our order book on the commercial side gives us visibility, you know, typically in that six, say six to nine months. So it's mostly in the first half of the year right now that we've got good visibility on the commercial side.

Speaker Change: Okay, got it.

Speaker Change: And then I guess one follow-up, if I might, just on U.S. Farm. Do you think that the operational efficiency initiatives that you've implemented over the last, you know...

Speaker Change: 2018-24 months, I suppose, have negatively impacted topline.

Speaker Change: Yeah, thanks for that question, Tim. Again, an area of strength really for us is the Operational Excellence Initiative.

Speaker Change: The direct answer is no, we don't think they've had any impact at all.

Speaker Change: Operational excellence initiatives have been aimed at improving our cost structure, taking costs out of our product lines that will ultimately put us in a more competitive position going forward. You know, you've heard Jim and I talk about the potential that remains from an operational excellence standpoint and how we would look to manage that across our business.

Speaker Change: And as we continue to execute against operational excellence initiatives, improve our cost structure, that will put us in a more competitive position that we think is going to be a tailwind of growth going forward.

Speaker Change: Okay, got it. I appreciate the details, I'll turn it back.

Speaker Change: You got it, Tim. Thanks.

Speaker Change: The next question comes from Michael

Michael: Thank you. I know we're late in the year here, so there's not a lot of time left to try to forecast to get to your full year, your new full year guidance. But I guess the question is really just,

Michael: Can you speak about your level of confidence in delivering the new full year guidance and then what that implies for the fourth quarter?

Michael: Is there anything we should be aware of that could present a risk in terms of any projects slipping out of the fourth quarter and putting that guidance at risk? If you can just talk about your confidence and any risks.

Speaker Change: Yeah, thanks, Michael. At this point in time, we feel confident in the Q4 guidance. We've obviously taken a very close look across all of our geographies, all of our markets and segments, keeping an extremely close eye on U.S. Farm in particular. So I think we're very balanced, and we have a degree of confidence overall in our Q4 forecast.

Speaker Change: There's always risks in the forecast, you know, if we had an unexpected delay in a commercial project.

Speaker Change: That could be a risk. However, we've taken a number of steps to mitigate that as a risk. We've referenced those in prior calls. A lot of what we've done in terms of our contract, our contractual situation, and moving more to a percent of complete payment structure helps.

Speaker Change: to mitigate that risk. So, you know, there are risks that are out there, but we feel that as a team, we've taken the appropriate steps to position us to well mitigate those risks.

Speaker Change: Okay, appreciate that. A lot of talk about your confidence in the commercial segment and part of that or a big part of that being driven by the order book. I guess when I look at the order book like you no longer provide a breakdown of this so clearly it's up a lot year-over-year up 36% year-over-year but the prior comps

Speaker Change: which are quite a bit higher than, again, that Q3 2023 number. So I guess, is there any way to sort of unpack the order book for us and help us understand what's happening with the commercial, which, again, is where a lot of the confidence in the outlook there is really driven by this order book?

Speaker Change: Yeah, thanks for the question, Michael, and, you know, when we look at the order book, you know, we always think it's relevant to mostly focus on year-on-year comparisons, because you naturally have variations in our business activity as you progress through the year, so sitting up 36% we feel is a pretty exciting result. So that is on the strength of our commercial segment. It is largely on the strength of our international business.

Speaker Change: That doesn't surprise us at all. It is directly in line with our long-term strategy as well as our strategic initiatives you know that have been biased towards the commercial and towards the international. It's in these areas where we see a lot of exciting short, medium, and long-term growth potential. So we've made the right strategic moves to position us very well to capture a lot of that opportunity.

Speaker Change: On the commercial side, that's up over 75%. We do have some softness in our order book from the farm side. A lot of that is specific to the U.S. farm and the conditions that we'll reference.

Speaker Change: but it's more than offset by the activity and the success.

Speaker Change: that we're having both on the commercial side as well as international.

Speaker Change: If you explore international a little bit more, Michael, just to give you some insights, you know, our Brazil order book is up 200%, our EMEA order book is up 100%, our Asia-Pacific order book is also up close to 100%.

Speaker Change: you know, a lot of the strength is international, a lot of the strength is in our commercial part of the business.

Speaker Change: Okay, that's all very helpful. Thank you. And then just squeeze one last one in here. Just on the NCIB, you've had a few questions here, so it doesn't sound like it's the usage of that is contingent on bringing leverage down before you can use it or anything like that, but

Speaker Change: Given the fact that you're talking about an automated or an automatic share purchase plan with with your your broker partner

Speaker Change: Can you give us some insights into the parameters you're thinking about? Would you expect to be active at current share price levels, or do you need to see something happen with the share price before you're within the bands that you're looking at? Just any colour to help us understand how active you're likely to be.

Speaker Change: sort of now and in the very near term.

Speaker Change: Rudyk, Paul Householder

Speaker Change: Okay, that's great to hear. Thank you.

Speaker Change: Thanks, Michael.

Speaker Change: and we have a follow-up from Steve Hansen with Raymond James. Raymond James please go ahead.

Steve Hansen: Yeah, thanks guys. Just wanted to follow up on...

Steve Hansen: the margin profile here a bit. So historically your auger and conveyor business has been your highest margin.

Speaker Change: segment or product set if you will. That's obviously got a few short-term challenges ahead of it.

Speaker Change: I think you described, Paul, in your opening remarks, you're expecting to see some improvements in your commercial...

Speaker Change: Margin Profile

Speaker Change: Maybe just focus on the latter, if you will. How should we expect that you continue to target 19% of your highest margin businesses suffering a bit? It sounds like you've got some things in flight here on the margin profile side for commercial. Maybe just give us some color there and the confidence around that. Thanks.

Speaker Change: and P&L leverage, and then as well actions that we've taken from an SG&A standpoint to make sure that our cost structure is right sized in general are all favorable indications of margin performance going forward.

Speaker Change: Okay that's helpful and just I'll squeeze one last one and I apologize but just wanted to ask about the broader LATAM market.

Speaker Change: Your large competitor down south spends a fair bit of time marketing its products into the adjacent LATAM countries, you know, Argentina, Uruguay, etc. As I recall, you're not spending a lot of time doing that as yet. It's very focused on Brazil in particular. Have you got plans to start to target that broader LATAM market? I know you're focused globally.

Speaker Change: in the rest of the tent. So just curious the way the strategy is there. Thanks.

Speaker Change: Yeah, thanks Steve. Obviously we're quite bullish on Brazil as you noted, but we have a presence and we continue to focus on broader LATAM as well. And it's really a lot of the countries and areas across LATAM. Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, absolutely, Chile, Mexico. These are all areas where we have a good customer base. We have a strong agent support. We have sales people in these countries throughout South America that are supporting this business. So we have been and we will continue to be active in South America. That's a market that we largely see as

Speaker Change: stable with some slight growth opportunities and it's why we will continue to support it where we see a significant amount of growth down in South America is in Brazil.

Steve Hansen: Okay, very helpful. Thank you.

Speaker Change: And I know we're getting close to the top of the hour. Is there time for one more follow-up?

Steve Hansen: Sure.

Speaker Change: Okay, we have a follow-up from Tim

Tim Monticello: Thanks. Yeah, just a quick follow-up on...

Tim Monticello: permanent farm. It sounds like the Canadian business is seeing some growth and the U.S. businesses, I guess on a consolidated farm basis, continue to struggle but that sounds like it's mostly on the portable side. Are you seeing similar tailwinds that you're seeing in Canada and the U.S. permanent side or is that also hitting lower?

Speaker Change: Thanks for the question Tim. Our Canada, overall our Canada farm business as you've noted has performed well really throughout 2020 for into Q3. We'd expected to continue in Q4. We've got a terrific business in Canada, a fantastic team, very strong brands in Canada. We've got the number one market position on the permanent side. That has absolutely been supportive of our result in Canada. In the U.S. farm, I mean the story really is on the portable side, the inventory levels that exist in the channel. If you go a level lower, you look at our permanent business.

Speaker Change: For the full year, we actually expect our permanent business from a profitability standpoint to be up over prior year. So that just underscores, you know, really where the focus and the opportunity is from the U.S. farm standpoint.

Speaker Change: Heading into 2025.

Speaker Change: Just sticking, Tim, on the permanent side, we would expect our U.S. Farm permanent business to continue to improve and be out in front of portable. We do not have an inventory challenge, a channel challenge on our permanent side. So we would expect that in U.S. Farm in 2025 to look even more favorable.

Tim Monticello: Got it. And then also in the U.S. commercial side, you mentioned some labor shortages that are impacting throughput on the commercial order book. Have those been resolved or do you expect that to continue?

Speaker Change: Those have been resolved, Tim. We feel very good about where our manufacturing capabilities are. We feel we've right-sized our labor positions, making sure that we've got enough labor in the areas where activity is high and the right amount of labor where we're seeing some challenging market conditions. We've got a fantastic team that is looking at the labor, both manufacturing and our HR teams, to make sure that we've got the capabilities where and when we need them. So no issues or concerns going forward.

Speaker Change: This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Paul Householder for any closing remarks.

Paul Householder: Okay, thanks very much for joining us today. We appreciate all the questions and interests and we look forward to our Q4 call. Thanks very much.

Speaker Change: This brings to a close today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.