Belden Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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May 1, 2025
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Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to this morning's Belden Reports First Quarter twenty twenty five Results. Just a reminder, this call is being recorded. At this time, you are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session.

Operator

If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your touch tone phone. If you are in the question queue and would like to withdraw your question, I would now like to turn the call over to Aaron Reddington. Please go ahead, sir.

Aaron Reddington
Aaron Reddington
VP, IR at Belden

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Belden's first quarter twenty twenty five earnings conference call. With me today are Belden's President and CEO, Ashish Chand and Senior Vice President and CFO, Jeremy Parks. Ashish will provide a strategic overview of our business, and then Jeremy will provide a detailed review of our financial and operating results followed by Q and A. We issued our earnings release earlier this morning and have prepared a slide presentation that we will reference on this call. The press release, presentation and transcript of these prepared remarks are currently available online at investor.belden.com.

Aaron Reddington
Aaron Reddington
VP, IR at Belden

Turning to Slide two in the presentation. During this call, management will make certain forward looking statements in reliance upon the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. For more information, please review today's press release and our most recent annual report on Form 10 ks. Additionally, during today's call, management will reference adjusted or non GAAP financial information. In accordance with Regulation G, the appendix to our presentation in the Investor Relations section of our website contains a reconciliation of the most closely associated GAAP financial information to the non GAAP financial information we communicate.

Aaron Reddington
Aaron Reddington
VP, IR at Belden

I will now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Ashish Chand.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Thank you, Arun, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us. Let's turn to slide four for a summary of our major accomplishments during the first quarter and key messages I would like to highlight. As a reminder, I will be referring to adjusted results today. First, let me congratulate our team on another solid quarter and a great start to the year.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

We once again executed well and delivered results ahead of expectations. For the first quarter, our revenue and earnings per share both exceeded the high end of our guidance as the solutions transformation continues to progress. Revenue totaled $625,000,000, up 17% compared to the prior year, and earnings per share came in at $1.60, up 29% compared to the prior Profitability was strong with gross margins of 39.8%, up a 40 basis points year over year. Adjusted EBITDA margins came in at 16.6% for the quarter, up 80 basis points year over year. Before I move on, I wanna quickly point out that gross margins of nearly 40% are the highest we've achieved since reshaping the business with our strategic solutions transformation in 2020.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Performance like this highlights the benefits of a solutions transformation and gives a road map for future opportunities as solutions expand across the organization. Next, demand for the quarter was steady with performance modestly ahead of expectations given the heightened uncertainty. Overall, our business grew organically by 11% for the quarter, led by strength in The Americas, which saw organic growth of 14%. Orders were up modestly sequentially for the first quarter and up 18% compared to the prior year. We finished the period with a book to bill of 1.05 compared to 1.03 in the prior year period.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Finally, our business continues to generate meaningful cash flow, and we are deploying capital consistent with our capital allocation priorities. Trailing twelve month free cash flow was strong at $220,000,000, aligned with our expectations. With the ample free cash flow, our team continues to invest in high return opportunities beneficial to shareholders. We continued buying back our stock, deploying hundred million dollars to repurchase 1,000,000 shares so far this year. Our balance sheet remains strong, allowing us to enhance shareholder returns in multiple ways.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

We will continue looking for acquisitions that support our solutions transformation and, when appropriate, return capital to our shareholders through buybacks. Now please turn to slide five. I'd like to share a customer success story that underscores the long term value of our relationships by illustrating how solutions open the door for deeper engagement with customers and the power of a broad product portfolio with spanned industrial and enterprise applications. Today's example involves a long standing solutions customer in the North American automated warehouse space. Our relationship began with deploying 40 components, specifically our industrial wireless products and applications to improve operational efficiency.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

From the start, the customer saw immediate benefits to their most critical KPIs and was impressed with our team's expertise, capabilities, and product portfolio strength. As the partnership deepened, our solutions team continued identifying new ways to enhance their operations and drive meaningful improvements to KPIs through network infrastructure upgrades. The customer faced challenges with inconsistent physical infrastructure, which led to downtime, functionality gaps, and supply chain disruptions. In response, our team engineered a robust physical OT layer that complements the Belden products already in place. After on-site validation of our solution, the customer was so confident in our capabilities that Belden has now been officially specified in the physical OD infrastructure.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

As the customer expands the footprint with new automated warehouse deployments across North America, we are well positioned for ongoing and incremental revenue opportunities, which will be meaningful for our business. It's also worth noting that our initial engagement started with traditionally industrial products and has now expanded to include elements more commonly associated with enterprise environments. This new spec position and order illustrates the ITOT convergence opportunity for which Belden is uniquely qualified to supply. Combined with our industrial wireless products, our new order for copper cabling, fiber solutions, various connectors, and our IDS cabinets positions us as a provider of a nearly complete end to end solution, helping to address our customers' most critical KPIs. This example highlights two important points.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

First, our solutions driven approach allows us to build strong enduring customer relationships that lead to repeat business and strategic spec positioning. Second, it enables us to deliver comprehensive end to end solutions that draw on the full breadth of a product portfolio, a capability unique to Belton. As our solution strategy continues to evolve, we expect to further bridge the gap between industrial and enterprise applications by offering unified high value solutions across both spaces. We are confident that our solutions provide superior value in the marketplace, and new and existing customers are increasingly seeing the positive impact on their operations as we grow and expand. I will now request Jeremy to provide additional insight into our first quarter financial performance.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

Thank you, Ashish. I will start my comments with results for the first quarter, followed by a review of our segments, a discussion of the balance sheet and cash flow, and finally, our outlook. As a reminder, I will be referencing adjusted results today. Now please turn to Slide six. Revenue for the quarter was $625,000,000 up 17% year over year and exceeding the high end of our guidance of $620,000,000 Revenue was up 11% organically on a year over year basis, with Automation Solutions up 16% and Smart Infrastructure Solutions up 6%.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

Orders for the quarter were up modestly sequentially and up 18% year over year with both segments exhibiting strong growth. Automation Solutions orders were up 22% year over year, and Smart Infrastructure Solutions orders were up 13% year over year. Gross profit margins were 39.8%, increasing 140 basis points compared to the prior year. Margins in the first quarter were strong, reflecting both normal seasonal patterns and a favorable business mix. First quarter margins are typically higher due to segment mix as our smart infrastructure segment is seasonally slower early in the year, helping lift overall margins.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

EBITDA was $104,000,000 with EBITDA margins up 80 basis points year over year to 16.6%. Net income was $65,000,000 up from $51,000,000 in the prior year quarter. And EPS was 1.6 up 29% and above the high end of our guidance of $1.53 Now please turn to Slide seven for a review of our business segment results for the quarter. Despite policy uncertainty, performance for our segments was slightly ahead of expectations. Revenue in our Automation Solutions segment was up 16% compared to the prior year period, with EBITDA margins of 20.9%, up from 19.5%.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

Orders in automation solutions were up 22% compared to the prior year with a book to bill of 1.09. For the quarter, we saw strength in our more traditional industrial verticals, including discrete and process manufacturing, which both achieved double digit organic growth. From a regional perspective, in automation solutions, we saw continued strength in The Americas and APAC. While EMEA was our slowest growing region, it did achieve organic growth for the quarter, a welcome improvement from the prior year. Revenue in our Smart Infrastructure Solutions segment grew 17% compared to the prior year with EBITDA margins of 11.4%, up from 11%.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

Orders in Smart Infrastructure were up 13% compared to the prior year with a book to bill of 0.98. For the quarter, we saw strength in targeted verticals, including health care, education, and hospitality. These verticals present a compelling opportunity for us going forward as we look to integrate our traditional industrial and enterprise businesses into a combined solutions offering. Broadband revenue was up year over year led by strength in fiber, which was up 9% organically. Our markets remain stable with most customers taking a neutral stance in the short term as they await greater clarity on policy decisions and resulting implications on supply chains and end demand.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

Next, please turn to Slide eight for our balance sheet and cash flow highlights. Our cash and cash equivalents balance at the end of the first quarter was $259,000,000 compared to $370,000,000 in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. Our cash position reflects typical seasonality and capital deployment towards share repurchases during the quarter. Our financial leverage was a reasonable two point zero times net debt to EBITDA, consistent with our expectations. We intend to maintain net leverage of approximately 1.5 times over the long term.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

However, we will fluctuate from time to time as we pursue strategic opportunities consistent with our capital allocation priorities. For the trailing twelve months, our free cash flow was $220,000,000 and 9% of total revenue. Year to date, we repurchased 1,000,000 shares, further reducing our share count, which is now more than 10% lower than it was at the end of twenty twenty one. We currently have $240,000,000 remaining on our repurchase authorization. Going forward, we see the opportunity to continue deploying capital towards acquisitions and share repurchases.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

As our solutions offerings expand, our margins continue to strengthen, leading to increased cash flow. This steady flow of capital allows us to make strategic, high return investments that further enhance our cash flow generating capacity. As a reminder, our next debt maturity is not until 2027, and all of our debt is fixed with rates averaging 3.5%. Please turn to Slide nine for our second quarter outlook. We have executed well amid ongoing challenges.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

However, our customers still face heightened uncertainty as they navigate this rapidly changing environment. Assuming the continuation of current market conditions, revenues for the second quarter are expected to be between $645,000,000 and $660,000,000,000, representing a 7% to 9% increase over the prior year quarter. Adjusted EPS is expected to be between a dollar 67 and a dollar 77, representing an 11 to 17% increase over the prior year quarter. We expect a tax rate of 17.5% in the second quarter and approximately 18% for the full year. Finally, I want to quickly cover currently enacted tariffs as they relate to our guidance.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

First, it is important to highlight that our strategy for many years has been to produce within region across our business lines. This strategy served us well during COVID and has once again proven beneficial as we navigate the current uncertainties. To date, we have taken a number of mitigating actions, including sourcing changes and pricing adjustments to offset the tariff impact. While the situation is ever changing, we want to assure you that we are on top of the complex environment and will adjust as needed. That concludes my prepared remarks.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

I would now like to turn the call back to Ashish.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Thank you, Jeremy. To summarize, our first quarter performance exceeded expectations and set a strong foundation for the year ahead. Despite a dynamic and often unpredictable environment, our team executed with focus and consistency delivering impressive results across the board. Organic growth came in at 11%, auto growth reached 18%, adjusted gross margins are nearly 40% and adjusted EBITDA improved by 80 basis points compared to the prior year. These results are especially noteworthy given current market conditions and reflect the success of our ongoing solutions transformation.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

We are well positioned to benefit from major global trends such as reindustrialization, digitization, and automation. Trends we believe are still in the early stages. As we look towards the second quarter, our guidance implies that customers maintain a neutral posture, and we expect near term uncertainty around trade policy to persist. That said, our long term outlook remains optimistic. We continue to see meaningful upside once decision makers have greater clarity.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

In fact, we believe Belden is positioned to be a winner as this transition plays out. While its early phases often bring uncertainty and noise, companies like Belden that are well aligned with the direction of change are best positioned to succeed. There are several reasons why we remain optimistic about the road ahead. First, orders remain steady, and we see promising signals of strength beneath the surface. Growth in key regions is healthy, particularly in The Americas and APAC, and we believe that both Europe and China have likely bottomed.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Good news for our business. Our end markets are also holding up well with positive momentum in both our discrete and process manufacturing verticals. Second, after more than two years of contraction in global manufacturing PMIs, we are finally seeing signs of a recovery. US manufacturing PMIs recently turned positive, and we are encouraged by Europe as Germany's manufacturing PMIs edge closer to positive territory. These are early but positive indicators of a broader industrial recovery just around the corner.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Finally, we anticipate that a combination of key trends, reindustrialization, automation, and the integration of ITOT will have a positive impact on our business. As these dynamics gain momentum, we are strategically aligned to capitalize on them. The shift towards localized manufacturing will drive increased demand for automation, whilst the ongoing digitization of operations and IT only convergence will unlock new efficiencies and scalability. Our portfolio is purpose built to support this transformation, and we believe we are uniquely equipped to support our customers as they grow and adapt to these evolving demands. Our solutions transformation delivers results, drives incremental growth, and expands margins.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Strong tailwinds from secular trends and our continued push into innovative offerings, we see a significant runway ahead. We remain committed to operating the business with discipline and a focus on long term value creation. Our capital allocation strategy is guided by the same principles, making thoughtful strategic investments and decisions that support our long term commitments. As outlined during our Investor Day, our long term growth algorithm remains intact. We are targeting true cycle EPS growth of 10% to 12%, driven by mid to single digit organic growth and steady margin expansion.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Our progress in the first quarter and the opportunity we see ahead are testaments to our team's dedication and hard work. I'm proud of what we have accomplished and even more excited about what's to come. As we continue to execute our strategy, I have no doubt that we will reach new heights and create lasting value for all our stakeholders. Finally, I want to take a moment to recognize the valuable contributions of our associates over the past quarter. Your efforts and commitment are greatly appreciated, and I thank you for your unwavering support as we transform Belton.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the call to questions.

Operator

And our first question is from William Stein with Truist Securities.

William Stein
William Stein
Managing Director/Senior Research Analyst - Technology at Truist Securities

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. First, Ashish, when I think about the changes that I think this administration wants to enable, namely more manufacturing in The US, it seems like Belden is very well positioned for that. And I wonder if you could comment as to whether you've seen incremental interest in maybe reshoring, not just friendshoring or nearshoring, but reshoring to The US among manufacturers, or perhaps the current environment's had the opposite effect and and your customers and potential customers feel, I don't know, a bit trapped or or unsure as to what to do given the changing policies. Any any sort of comment clarifying this would be helpful.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Sure, Will. So I think it's more of the former. I think across our large customers, we see a lot more confidence about the long term, especially in The US bringing back more manufacturing capacity here closer to the points of consumption. And therefore, we see discussions around longer term plans. You know, this whole ITO d convergence topic has been kind of pending for some time.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

People have talked about it for some time. This is kind of a catalyst terrible because, you know, if you if you were manufacturing offshore, the urgency around bringing IT and OT together was lower because you had cheaper labor and, you know, you were outsourcing a lot of that headache to somebody else. Now as companies think about how do they manufacture in The US with a lack of skilled labor, higher costs. They're really discussing this converged backbone solution with us. So we see a lot of interest in that.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Our funnel for solutions has gone up. Now I will say in the near term, there is some uncertainty around certain sectors thinking whether, you know, they will be able to continue French shoring or not. Therefore, they're postponing certain decisions in the, you know, in the near term. So but I think overall, the trends we see in terms of our discussions, in terms of a funnel, and also I think in terms of our initial bookings is that, overwhelmingly, people are thinking about investing in IT already converged backbones to enable reshoring in The US.

William Stein
William Stein
Managing Director/Senior Research Analyst - Technology at Truist Securities

Okay. As a follow-up, I'd like to ask about the book to bill in smart infrastructure, which was a little bit below parity. Can you maybe dig one level deeper? Was this in forget if you still call it the smart buildings versus broadband? Between those two, are you seeing noticeable strength or weakness in one or the other?

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

Yeah. Let me let me take that, Will. So in terms of orders on a year over year basis, Smart Buildings orders were up about 8%. Broadband orders were up 18%. If you adjust for the acquisition that we did within broadband, I think orders were still up 12 or 13% within broadband.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

So I'd say a little bit stronger in that business, than in smart buildings.

William Stein
William Stein
Managing Director/Senior Research Analyst - Technology at Truist Securities

Thank you.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

Sure.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Yeah. The one thing I'll add here, Will, is, you know, whilst we're seeing the traditional smart buildings infrastructure is still a little slow. You know, they're being still thoughtful about how they invest. We are seeing more and more cases, and we talked about one example today on on the call where we are able to take smart buildings products into our what we previously thought of as automation solutions. So for example, in material handling, for example, in mass transit.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

So we do expect that to keep improving in spite of the general environment. But, yes, smart buildings has been a little quiet.

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from David Williams with Benchmark.

David Williams
Equity Research Analyst at The Benchmark Company LLC

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question and congratulations on the really solid execution here. Maybe kind of stepping back to Will's question just now, but on the reinvest realization, you know, that clearly is a positive, and and you talked a little bit about that. But is is there a way maybe to quantify the the level or number of discussions and kind of the activity? I guess just trying to to size how much the how much is being delayed and how much is actively ongoing in terms of, maybe that the potential to move back to The US.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Yeah. I think, first of thank you, Adam. It's it's a little difficult right now to quantify, you know, from an exact bookings perspective. I will say this that, you know, within our overall sales funnel, we look at the portion that is related to these full solutions, especially around how we are, you know, focused on the reshoring of the infrastructure build here in The US. And that has gone up, you know, it's, like, more in the high teens.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

We see that we see that progressing pretty well. So I think there's a lot more discussion taking place now than there was even, you know, six months ago. So the the leading indicators tell me that within The Americas, the solutions business should continue to grow in the high teens. But because of this short term uncertainty and some friction, it's difficult to say exactly when that land in terms of bookings.

David Williams
Equity Research Analyst at The Benchmark Company LLC

K. Great. Thanks thanks so much for the color there. And then maybe secondly, just on the demand pull forward, do you feel like you're seeing a significant demand pull forward? Or is there any way to kind of think about what you're seeing there and maybe even into the second quarter or anything specific?

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

We haven't seen any anything that's material here, Dave. Because remember, our products and solutions are more engineered. You know, they're not really impulse driven or consumer type. We I know that there are certain markets where that that has happened more on the consumer side, maybe on mobile, you know, technology, etcetera. But we haven't seen anything really, you know, when customers think about deploying relevant solutions, they typically work to schedule.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

It's very it's very well planned. Now we do see, like I said before, we do see a lot more people coming and talking to us about, hey. If we had to do some things quickly, will you guys be able to support us as we go forward? So so while we haven't seen demand pull in, we've seen, kind of interest pull in. More people are talking.

David Williams
Equity Research Analyst at The Benchmark Company LLC

Great. Thanks so much.

Operator

And our next question comes from Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs.

Mark Delaney
Mark Delaney
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Hi. You have Aman Gupta on for Mark Delaney. Thank you for taking the questions. And I appreciate the color you gave on being in region for region and the tariff exposure. But could you maybe give a little more detail around what exposure you do have, if there is anything that's being done outside The U.

Mark Delaney
Mark Delaney
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

S. That's coming into The U. S? And how much of that have you been able to offset today, and how how much longer would it take to offset the rest?

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

Yeah. So I'll I'll take that one. In terms of our exposures, our largest exposure right now in The US is Mexico. But the majority of the products that we're importing from Mexico at the moment have exemptions under the USMCA. So so I think we're well covered with respect to those imports.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

We don't manufacture anything in China for The US. We do have a couple of third party suppliers that we utilize that do source products from China, but we are in the process right now of getting that sourcing changed or in rare cases, increasing prices where we need to with our customers to pass those costs on. So I think as you could tell from our guidance, the the net impact is is roughly zero or neutral in the second quarter.

Mark Delaney
Mark Delaney
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Appreciate that color. And as a follow-up, I know longer term, you're still targeting that 10% to 12% EPS CAGR, but you had spoken previously to a goal of $8 in in 2025. Any thoughts on on where that stands? I know margins came in pretty strong in 1Q, it sounds like some of that was maybe a bit of help from mix.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

Yeah. So we we gave a detailed update on that the path to $8 last quarter. I don't think we really have anything further to add at this point, and we're not guiding beyond the second quarter.

Operator

And

Operator

we'll move to our next question from Rob Jamieson with Vertical Research Partners.

Robert Jamieson
Industrial Tech Equity Research at Vertical Research Partners

Hey, good morning, guys. Congrats on the quarter. Just a couple of questions on margin. I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about performance in the quarter between both segments. I mean, very strong from Industrial Solutions.

Robert Jamieson
Industrial Tech Equity Research at Vertical Research Partners

But a little bit of a sequential step down in smart infrastructure. You know, just curious if there's anything outside of normal seasonality there and anything else that you can kind of provide some light on because that was a solid performance overall.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

Yeah. Hey, Rob. So agreed. The performance within industrial, I think, was was fairly strong. I think gross margins have held up very well in that business.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

And from a total company level, we we get favorable mix in the first quarter because, remember, seasonality disproportionately impacts the smart infrastructure business, which is lower margin. I think when you look at the particular segments, smart infrastructure in the first quarter, they have a larger drop in revenue from q four to q one, which is really, the main impact to their margins is just leverage on on revenue. At the same time, we are continuing to make some in targeted investments in that business. As Ashish said, we are working to accelerate solutions in that business and bring solutions into even some of our traditional industrial markets in a converged fashion. So we'll make investments, but the biggest impact sequentially from q four to q one is just leverage on volume.

Robert Jamieson
Industrial Tech Equity Research at Vertical Research Partners

Great. That's helpful. And, actually, just on the point on the combined sales force and what you're doing there, it sounds like the customer when they highlighted issues was, you know, reflective of that decision that you made last year to combine the solution sales forces from both segments. You know, can you maybe expand some of learnings that the team has so far, you know, and how this might may have already started to help the opportunity funnel for solutions as we look ahead?

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Yes, Rob. So I think when we started this process, our in going hypothesis was that some of our customers will upgrade their entire IT already converged backbone infrastructure, you know, in one goal.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

One of

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

the learnings has been that it's that's part of how it's gonna work. It's gonna be like a two, three step journey. And typically, a lot of our customers are now saying that they want autonomy in their systems. So an example of an autonomous system would be where two different subsystems communicate with each other and without human intervention, a decision is made, of, like, a pipeline being shut down because the earthquake monitoring system detected a certain kind of a tremor, or the air conditioning in a hospital emergency ward increasing because an accident was reported in the vicinity and people knew that the traffic to the emergency ward will increase. So it's stuff like that, you know, which is which we think of as autonomous systems.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

So so people want that, but they also appreciate that it's a two, three step journey to get there. And typically, it starts with first digitizing the operations, like that example we talked about on the warehouse automation. Then second is extending that whole data infrastructure to between IT and OD. And then third, bringing in some software capability to start orchestrating that data. And we had to kind of redesign a process as we reflected on that learning.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

And it's a little slower. It's not the big bang approach, but it's far more sticky. And we have a number of customers now where we have installed base positions where we're able to take them to steps two and three in that in that process. And this is gonna be a big deal in The US, especially because there isn't a lot of skilled labor available both for manufacturing, but also for maintaining networks. So we we see a lot a lot of traction here.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

We are being modest about it in terms of just not necessarily, you know, highlighting it all the time. But below the hood, there's a lot of interesting action going on.

Robert Jamieson
Industrial Tech Equity Research at Vertical Research Partners

Great. Thank you. And then just one last one on free cash flow, Jeremy. You know, another solid quarter. You've been making a lot of progress here last last couple of years.

Robert Jamieson
Industrial Tech Equity Research at Vertical Research Partners

Just curious, you know, anything that you're working on in terms of managing working capital and just kind of some puts and takes on, you know, just driving, you know, a better conversion as we as we look ahead.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

Yeah. So we so I I think we continue to try to find improvements in our supply chain and managing inventory. I know inventory turns were down a little bit sequentially. That's that's typical in the first quarter. But on a year over year basis, we had nice improvement in inventory turns.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

I think the key driver this year is gonna be EBITDA growth and just responsible capital investments. So we're trying to be, again, very targeted in the investments that we make in manufacturing and r and d, but I think the key driver will be EBITDA on a year over year basis. But our goal right now is to continue to improve that free cash flow margin or free cash flow as a percentage of revenue. We were, I think, eight and a half percent a couple of years ago last year. We were a little over 9%, and, we're working to continue to move that closer to 10%.

Jeremy Parks
Jeremy Parks
Senior VP of Finance & CFO at Belden

So, hopefully, we will see some nice improvement in in 2025 as well.

Robert Jamieson
Industrial Tech Equity Research at Vertical Research Partners

That's great. Thank you, guys.

Operator

And if there are any additional questions, please press 1 on your touch tone phone. We'll move to our next question, Steven Fox from Fox Advisors.

Steven Fox
Founder & CEO at Fox Advisors, LLC

Hi. Good morning, guys. Off of some of the stuff that you already talked about with the potential to benefit on, you know, US reshoring, I was wondering is as we think about how that plays out in the future, which I think it's gonna happen with or without tariffs anyway, but, like, where what's what's the low hanging fruit look like? I mean, Ashish, you talked about sort of a what seemed like a multiyear process to sort of improving on your content at one customer. But what would be, like, sort of an initial reaction from customers, and how would it drive specific product sales with you guys?

Steven Fox
Founder & CEO at Fox Advisors, LLC

Then I have a follow-up.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Sure. So, Steve, I think the low hanging fruit is essentially the first layer, which is the complete digitization of operations across multiple verticals. So whether it's in manufacturing, whether it's in hospitality, health care process. Right now, if you look across The US, there's a lot of legacy infrastructure that is sometimes analog, sometimes it's a combination. They've come from different suppliers.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

They're not really on the same system. So that's the low hanging fruit. And, really, it's it's happening it started happening even before the whole tariffs discussion came up. But I think it's accelerated because everybody appreciates that whilst they might have some kind of a reshoring plus friendshoring strategy, the reshoring element is a % definite yes. And and that part is gonna happen.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

So that's what we are seeing right now. I think the next step for some of these customers will be when they start combining that digitized OT with their IT. And some of our customers are already at that stage, so that's why we called it out. And I think the bulk of our customers are still at the stage one where they're digitizing operations.

Steven Fox
Founder & CEO at Fox Advisors, LLC

Great. That's very helpful. And then for a follow-up, I was just curious. I saw I understand the numbers now on broadband, but any other color you can add on just how the broadband markets are tracking, you know, to date and your expectations for spending for the rest of the year? Thanks.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Yeah. So I think broadband has been, you know, they did they did well on a year over year basis. Across the board, I think we've seen a little bit of channel inventory, you know, digestion. So there's there's been that at play too. But if you look at our customers, they've talked about continuing with their DOCSIS rollouts.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Those programs are fairly intact. There's been some talk about will there be, you know, release of beat funds, etcetera. Now remember that was not really part of our 2025 model. We expect that, you know, that program will continue with some modifications as, you know, early announcements come out of that space. So I think in broadband, our goal is to continue increasing our fiber content.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

And then we know that whatever channel from an access perspective, whatever channel is required to get to the user, we will remain part of that. And as you might remember, Steve, we acquired Precision Optical that allows us to, you know, be more involved in the electronics portion of that full end to end channel that goes to the user. So that that allows us more visibility. So, yeah, it's a little bit of a mixed bag partly because of the channel destocking. But I think that phase is over now.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

And from here onwards, we should see steady growth.

Steven Fox
Founder & CEO at Fox Advisors, LLC

Great. That's all very helpful. Thank you.

Ashish Chand
Ashish Chand
President and CEO at Belden

Sure.

Operator

And there are no further questions at this time. Please continue.

Aaron Reddington
Aaron Reddington
VP, IR at Belden

Yes. Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. If you have any questions, please contact the IR team here at Belden. Our email address is investor.relations@belden.com.

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes the call for today. Your you may now disconnect, and have a great day.

Executives
    • Aaron Reddington
      Aaron Reddington
      VP, IR
    • Ashish Chand
      Ashish Chand
      President and CEO
    • Jeremy Parks
      Jeremy Parks
      Senior VP of Finance & CFO
Analysts
    • William Stein
      Managing Director/Senior Research Analyst - Technology at Truist Securities
    • David Williams
      Equity Research Analyst at The Benchmark Company LLC
    • Mark Delaney
      Analyst at Goldman Sachs
    • Robert Jamieson
      Industrial Tech Equity Research at Vertical Research Partners
    • Steven Fox
      Founder & CEO at Fox Advisors, LLC
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Key Takeaways

  • Belden reported Q1 revenue of $625M (+17% YoY) and adjusted EPS of $1.60 (+29% YoY), both above the high end of guidance, with gross margins at 39.8% and adj. EBITDA margin at 16.6%.
  • Organic growth was 11% in Q1, led by a 14% expansion in the Americas; orders rose 18% YoY and the book-to-bill ratio reached 1.05.
  • Trailing 12-month free cash flow was $220M, and the company repurchased $100M of stock year-to-date, reducing share count by over 10% since 2021 with $240M of repurchase authorization remaining.
  • The ongoing solutions transformation and IT/OT convergence drove the highest gross margins since 2020, exemplified by a North American automated warehouse deployment that expanded Belden’s footprint across industrial and enterprise applications.
  • For Q2 2025, Belden expects revenue of $645M–$660M (+7–9% YoY) and adjusted EPS of $1.67–$1.77 (+11–17% YoY), with tariffs largely offset by regional production and strategic sourcing.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Belden Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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