Q4 2024 The Manitowoc Co Inc Earnings Call
Good day and welcome to the Manitowoc fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero.
After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, and then 2. Please note, this event is being recorded.
Speaker Change: I would now like to turn the conference over to Ion Warner, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Good morning everyone and welcome to our earnings call to review the company's fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial performance and business update as outlined in last evening's press release.
Speaker Change: Joining me this morning with prepared remarks are Aaron Ravenscroft, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Brian Regan, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
Speaker Change: Earlier this morning, we posted our slide presentation on the investor relations section on our website, banitawak.com, which you can use to follow along with our prepared remarks.
Speaker Change: Before we start, please note our Safe Harbor Statement and the material provided for this call.
During today's call,
Speaker Change: Forward-looking statements, as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, are made based on the company's current assessment of its markets and other factors that affect its business.
Speaker Change: However, actual results could differ materially from any implied or actual projections due to one or more of the factors, among others, described in the company's latest SEC filings.
Speaker Change: The Manitowoc Company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement whether the result of new information, future events, or other circumstances. And with that, I'll now turn the call over to Aaron.
Aaron Ravenscroft: Thank you, Ion, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to slide three. In the wise words of Winston Churchill, a customer sees the difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Aaron Ravenscroft: As you can draw from our financial results, we faced plenty of difficulties during 2024. I'm proud to say that the Manitowoc team pursued every potential opportunity with great enthusiasm and optimism.
Aaron Ravenscroft: It's inspiring to see the level of motivation and passion throughout the company. For example, during the year, we set a new record with $629 million in non-new machine sales. We grew our field service technician count by 7% to over 460 team members.
Aaron Ravenscroft: We launched 13 new cranes including the next generation EV self-erecting tower crane and the MCT 2205 which is the largest tower crane that we've designed and built out of our China operations
Aaron Ravenscroft: and we renegotiated our debt to improve our liquidity and extend our tenor.
Aaron Ravenscroft: I'd like to express my sincerest gratitude to the Manitowoc team for a hard-fought 2024.
Aaron Ravenscroft: For the full year, we reported $2.2 billion in sales and $128 million in adjusted EBITDA. We generated $100 million of free cash flow during the fourth quarter and ended the year with $321 million in liquidity. Please turn to slide four.
Aaron Ravenscroft: Turning our focus to the Manitowoc Way, I am extremely proud of the team's achievements. First and foremost, in terms of safety, we ended the year with an RIR or Recordable Incident Rate of 1.19. This is the second best result in the company's history following a phenomenal year in 2023.
Aaron Ravenscroft: In addition, we reduced our first aid incidents 25% year over year and saw a significant reduction in the severity of our lost time injuries.
Aaron Ravenscroft: 2024 was arguably the safest year in our 120 year history.
Aaron Ravenscroft: Nevertheless, our goal still remains zero injuries and the team continues to find ways to improve.
Aaron Ravenscroft: We also continue to forge ahead with our environmental-related kaizens. In addition to the benefits to the planet, these initiatives have been pretty darn good for our pocketbook. During the year, we reduced our greenhouse gas intensity 6%, which equates to roughly $100,000 in savings.
Aaron Ravenscroft: Since 2019, when we set our baseline for this metric, we've reduced our intensity by 36%.
Aaron Ravenscroft: Lastly, I'd like to recognize our maintenance team in Portugal who won our annual Manitowoc Way Lesson Learned Award. Thanks to their ingenuity, the team built an automated tester for welding torches that only cost 50 euros.
Aaron Ravenscroft: Previously, we fixed upon failure, which could cause serious quality problems and significant loss of time.
Aaron Ravenscroft: In addition to this invention, over the past two years the team has done an excellent job integrating different IoT tools to track PPMs on our machining centers, modifying our paint boosts to reduce our emissions and gas consumption, and applying 5S to our maintenance area of the plant. Obrigado to the team and congratulations.
Please move to slide five.
Aaron Ravenscroft: Turning our attention to the market, we generated orders of $516 million during the fourth quarter. Our backlog ended the year at $650 million.
Aaron Ravenscroft: Regionally, the Americas rebounded in the fourth quarter following the U.S. election. Customer sentiment has significantly improved post-election. Dealer inventory levels remain reasonable. Utilization rates at crane operators have been strong and rental rates have held steady. There's optimism about the future demand.
Aaron Ravenscroft: In Europe, the situation remains complicated, but there are a few positive indicators that suggest the European tower crane market is gradually recovering.
Aaron Ravenscroft: For the second quarter in a row, our orders for tower cranes grew modestly year over year. While the French market remains weak, this has been offset by growth in Germany, Italy, and the UK.
Aaron Ravenscroft: and Italy a new incentive plan called Transione 5.0 has recently announced and of course we are keen to see the impact of the upcoming German elections.
Aaron Ravenscroft: Regarding France, I visited our two largest dealers and four major construction companies in December. Overall sentiment has yet to improve. All said, uncertainty still exists, but I am hopeful that there is some recovery in 2025.
Aaron Ravenscroft: For EU Mobiles, in spite of the difficult economic environment in the region, demand for all-terrain cranes has been relatively stable. We continue to benefit from recent product introductions and our significant improvements in quality and service.
Aaron Ravenscroft: The show is always a good barometer for how Europe will shape up over the next couple of years. If you plan to attend the show, we'd be happy to host you.
Aaron Ravenscroft: Turning to the Middle East, the overall market remains robust. Fourth quarter orders were up over 44% year over year. I visited the region in December and the situation remains the same in Saudi. While funding is tightening, numerous projects in the kingdom need to be completed to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games, the World Expo in 2030, and the World Cup in 2034.
Aaron Ravenscroft: To put this into perspective, a total of 780,000 hotel rooms will be needed for the World Cup alone.
Aaron Ravenscroft: Three stadium projects have been awarded, with another seven due to be granted. As for Neome, one of these stadiums will be integrated into the line.
Aaron Ravenscroft: Although it may take some time before the 170 kilometer vision for the line is completed, the airport project is already underway and the initial modules are in progress.
Speaker Change: The Asia-Pacific market is a mixed bag. There are no signs of construction recovery in China and overall competition with Chinese exporters has never been more intense.
Speaker Change: The biggest surprise during the quarter, however, came from South Korea. Due to the recent political upheaval, we had a couple cancellations and a few hot deals that dried up, worth roughly eight million dollars in sales.
Speaker Change: Lastly, Australia continues to be steady. The mobile business continues to be stable and demand for tower cranes is gaining steam with new product deliveries and a robust aftermarket.
Speaker Change: With that, I'll pass it to Brian to walk you through the financials before I close with an update on our strategy.
Brian Regan: Thanks, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. Please move to slide six.
Brian Regan: Despite entering the fourth quarter with a lot of uncertainty around the U.S. election, our results were generally in line with our expectations and the guidance previously provided.
Brian Regan: To summarize, total revenue for the quarter was $596 million, and we achieved trailing 12-month non-new machine sales of $629 million, a record high.
Brian Regan: Furthermore, we made significant improvements in reducing our inventory, generating $100 million of free cash flows to bring our leverage back below our target of three times.
Brian Regan: We had customer payments that slid into 2025, impacting our ability to achieve the cash flow guidance.
Brian Regan: Specific to fourth quarter results, orders were 516 million dollars, an increase of 8% from a year ago. Notably, European tower crane orders were up year over year for the second quarter in a row. It is encouraging to see some early signs of a potential recovery.
Brian Regan: December 31st backlog was $650 million, a year-over-year decrease of 29%.
Brian Regan: Net sales in the fourth quarter were $596 million, flat versus a year ago. A year-over-year decrease in America's was offset by stronger non-new machine sales.
Brian Regan: SG&A expenses were $77 million, which included a $1 million charge related to a legal matter with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Brian Regan: Excluding the impact of this charge, SG&A expenses as a percentage of sales were 13% flat year-over-year.
Brian Regan: Our adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was $35 million, a decrease of 4% year-over-year.
Brian Regan: Adjusted EBITDA margin was 5.9%, a decrease of 20 basis points.
Brian Regan: Our GAAP diluted income per share in the quarter was $1.59. On an adjusted basis, diluted income per share was $0.10, an increase of a penny from the prior year.
Please turn to slide seven.
Brian Regan: Looking at the full year, our 2024 orders totaled $1.923 billion, an 8% decrease year-over-year.
Brian Regan: Net sales for the full year were $2.178 billion, a 2% decrease over the prior year.
Our non-new machine sales were $629 million.
Brian Regan: Reflecting back to 2020, the year prior to embarking on our Cranes Plus 50 strategy, non-new machine sales were $376 million. Since then, we have grown our non-new machine sales by over $250 million, or 67%.
Brian Regan: This reflects great progress in executing our strategy to grow the less cyclical, higher margin aftermarket business.
Brian Regan: Adjusted EBITDA for the year was $128 million, a decrease of 27% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA margin decreased 200 basis points over the prior year to 5.9%, primarily due to product mix and under absorption of fixed costs.
Brian Regan: The year-over-year adjusted EBITDA headwind of the European tower crane business was $32 million.
Brian Regan: On a gap basis, our benefit for income taxes in the year was $44 million. This includes a non-cash benefit of $56 million related to the release of a valuation allowance.
Brian Regan: On an adjusted basis, our provision for income taxes was $12 million.
Brian Regan: This includes $4 million or $0.10 per share of non-operational discrete items which were not considered in our guidance.
Our adjusted diluted earnings per share was 41 cents.
Brian Regan: Turning to slide 8, during the year we generated $49 million of cash flows from operations and had capital expenditures of $45 million, of which $5 million was related to strategic rental fleet growth.
Brian Regan: This resulted in free cash flows of $4 million and an ending cash balance of $48 million.
Brian Regan: The lower than guided free cash flows were the result of the timing of shipments at the end of the year, which resulted in a delay in cash collections to 2025. Networking capital as a percentage of sales at the end of the year was 21% flat compared to the prior year.
Brian Regan: Our build plan adjustments were effective in getting our net leverage to 2.66 times below our targeted three times.
Brian Regan: Total outstanding borrowings under the ADL increased 19 million dollars during the year with 79 million dollars outstanding at year-end.
Brian Regan: With the successful refinancing of our debt during the year and the related incremental availability under our ABL, total liquidity was a healthy $321 million.
Please turn to slide 9.
Brian Regan: As we look ahead to 2025, the one consistency is that uncertainty persists. For the U.S. market, the positive sentiment we heard in May at our Crane Days event is coming back. There are still questions as to what will happen to interest rates and the effect of any tariffs.
Brian Regan: While there is some optimism in Europe for the first time in a while, any improvement is expected to be slight.
Brian Regan: Asia continues to be a challenge and the competition in the Middle East remains fierce.
Brian Regan: As you can see on the slide, the midpoint of our 2025 guidance reflects a marginally better year with net sales of $2.175 billion to $2.275 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $120 million to $145 million.
Brian Regan: In addition, we expect to generate between $55 million and $85 million of operational free cash flows, excluding the impact of any potential impayment to settle the EPA matter.
Brian Regan: While we do not provide quarterly guidance, we do want to note that the first quarter of 2025 is expected to be extremely light, more so than usual, as a result of the build schedule reductions we made in 2024.
Speaker Change: While historically, Q1 has provided approximately 20 to 25% of our full year adjusted EBITDA, this Q1 is expected to contribute approximately half that amount. With that, I will now turn the call back to Aaron. Thank you, Brian. Please turn to slide 10.
Speaker Change: 2024 was definitely a challenging year. The European tower crane market reached what we believe is the bottom of its cycle. Chinese competition intensified globally, compressing prices in emerging markets, and the Americas experienced a significant slowdown leading up to the election.
Speaker Change: Nevertheless, the team continued to push our strategy forward, finding pockets of opportunity for growth.
Speaker Change: Even in the weak European tower crane market, we were able to grow our non-new machine sales year over year.
Speaker Change: And in the Americas, we continue to expand our service locations to support our Cranes Plus 50 strategy.
Speaker Change: In addition to upgrading our locations in Phoenix and Baton Rouge, we recently announced the acquisition of certain crane assets and territories in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
Speaker Change: We continue to transform Manitowoc through the execution of our Cranes Plus 50 strategy. Just consider the progress that we made since 2020. First, non-new machine sales in 2024 were $629 million, a 67% increase compared to 2020.
Speaker Change: Second, we increased our field service tech population to 467 techs in 2024, an increase of over a hundred percent since 2020.
Speaker Change: Third, in the U.S., we added 16 service locations compared to just one location in 2020. In addition, we added service shops in Lima, Peru, Barnsley, U.K., and Marou, France.
Speaker Change: Fourth, gross profits from non-new machine sales in 2024 were $208 million, a 64% increase since 2020.
Speaker Change: Although we can't control the ebbs and flows of the crane cycle, Manitowoc has a strong reputation for managing it, utilizing the Manitowoc way. I'm convinced more than ever that our crane safety strategy is the key to breaking this cycle's grip on our business.
Speaker Change: As a reminder, non-new machine sales are significantly less volatile than the new crane market, and have average gross profits of roughly 35%.
Speaker Change: Our goal is to consistently generate stable and substantial returns on our invested capital regardless of the crane cycle. Cranes Plus 50 provides us a blueprint to achieve this. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.
Speaker Change: We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touch-tone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star and then 2.
Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up.
Speaker Change: Our first question comes from Jerry Revich with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Morning, Jerry. Hi, Jerry.
Hey, you've got clay on here for Jerry Yeah
Speaker Change: to start off here. Guidance implies sales, you know, up a little bit here at the midpoint. Can you just talk about, you know, where that embeds things, you know, staying the same or getting better just regionally? You know, you talked a little bit about it on earlier. I was just curious where, what got into bets, you know, on a regional basis.
Speaker Change: Yeah, I think, you know, it's it's marginally better I'd say year over year from a revenue standpoint, you know, we've got a wide range because there's a handful of possibilities that will happen during the year but, you know, I mentioned that we expect Europe to be slightly better in particular on the tower crane side.
Speaker Change: You know, the U.S. slightly better, but Asia continues to be, you know, uncertain, in particular South Korea. So, you know, I'd say it's a mixed bag, hence why we've got the large range in the guidance.
Speaker Change: Thanks. And separately, on the non-new machine sales, can you talk about how used values for cranes have trended, you know, throughout the quarter, and now as we head into 2025? Thanks.
Speaker Change: Yeah, I mean, in terms of values on used cranes, it always depends on the age and, and the model of the crane. So I mean, from my perspective, there's not been much change, of course,
Speaker Change: Sometimes whenever you go through some of these surveys, you look at Ritchie Brothers numbers, usually those are cranes that are last resort. I mean, we're typically doing the deals directly and those are
Speaker Change: Cranes, I think that have more interesting value or more interesting models to the marketplace. So from my perspective Use use prices haven't gone down or up
Thanks, I'll pass it on.
Thanks, Clay.
Speaker Change: Again, if you have a question, please press star and then one.
Speaker Change: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Ion Warner for any closing remarks.
Ion Warner: Thank you. Please note that a replay of our fourth quarter 2024 earnings call will be available later this morning by accessing the investor relations section of our website at Manitowoc.com. Thank you everyone for joining us today and for your continuing interest in the Manitowoc Company. We look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.
Ion Warner: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.