Middleby Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
May 7, 2025
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Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Middleby Corporation First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr.

Operator

Timothy Fitzgerald, CEO. Please go ahead.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

Thank you for joining today's call. I'd like to begin by highlighting several key developments that underscore our commitment to driving shareholder value. As announced this morning, we've authorized an additional 7,500,000,000.0 shares under our accelerated buyback program. We plan to deploy the vast majority of our free cash flow towards repurchasing shares, reflecting our confidence in the business. We believe our current share price does not fully capture the strength of our business.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

By prioritizing share repurchases, we aim to bridge that gap and deliver superior returns to shareholders while maintaining our strategic growth investments. This decision follows our February 2025 announcement to separate the food processing business into a standalone public company, a strategic move designed to unlock value and sharpen our focus. Middleby's consistent operational excellence, strong cash flow generation, and disciplined capital allocation provide a sound foundation for this enhanced buyback initiative. The total authorized shares for repurchase represent 21% of our outstanding equity. Now, as it relates to the separation of our food processing group, we remain on track to complete the spin off in early twenty twenty six.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

We are confident that creating a standalone food processing company will unlock significant shareholder value by enabling focused growth strategies and operational agility. As outlined in our February call, the creation of two market leading but separate businesses will ensure greater strategic and operational focus at each standalone entity, allowing each business to implement an optimized capital structure and capital allocation policy to best support growth opportunities, and enabling Middleby Food Processing with its best in class growth and margin profile to be valued in line with key food processing and industrial peers. We are excited about of food processing as this business is poised for long term growth as we continue to execute on our strategy to be the supplier of choice with our full line solutions, enhancing the value delivered to our customers. We see market expansion opportunities as we extend into attractive adjacent markets, such as poultry, pet, and snack foods, leveraging existing competencies. In the coming quarters, we will provide more information on stand alone financials, the leadership team, and cost structures.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

We also plan to have a dedicated Shareholder Day in the fourth quarter to present further details on the strategic roadmap and growth outlook for the food processing business as an independent entity. Now turning to tariffs, we are actively working to mitigate the cost impact of tariffs through targeted operational actions and pricing adjustments. Our preliminary estimate of tariff related costs is expected to increase our annual expenses by approximately 150,000,000 to $200,000,000 We are highly confident in our ability to navigate this new challenge, and while we see the negative impact in the next several quarters, we anticipate our ongoing actions will offset these cost impacts by end of the year. While we address the cost side of the tariff equation, we are heavily focused on leveraging the strength of our manufacturing footprint, A strength we believe provides us competitive advantage and unique opportunity to gain market share in a number of key product categories. We fully expect to not only manage the current market dynamics, but emerge stronger.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

Before I turn it to Brian, I would also like to reemphasize the strategic investments we have outlined and invested in over the past several years to drive sustainable long term growth. We have been consistent and intentional through market disruptions to execute against our stated key priorities, to accelerate the development of market leading innovations, and to transform our go to market sales strategies. We put these two strategic priorities in place several years ago, and we've been building an engine to drive sustainable long term organic growth. Market conditions may be challenged, but we are better positioned than ever. Middleby is the established leader for the future trends of automation, ventless cooking, electrification, digital technologies and IoT connectivity in the kitchen.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

This is the result of our execution on this strategy. And we have been strategic in our approach to identify and enter new complementary and attractive markets, including ice and beverage, which has broadened our addressable market, providing an expanded runway for growth. We're excited about the many new game changing innovations we have delivered, which James has discussed with enthusiasm on many of our past calls. We are proud that many of these products have been recognized with recent industry awards. We see these innovations gaining traction with customers and interest broadening in the marketplace.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

While the pipeline takes time to develop, the future is bright. Along with our acceleration of innovation, we have made major steps in transforming our go to market capabilities. From investments in innovation centers, establishment of leading culinary teams, launch of unique digital sales tools, and the creation of a dedicated sales team focused on marketing our industry leading solutions, we have made strategic and incremental investments to recreate how we do business. This is all providing our customers a better experience for Middleby. We are at early stages of realizing benefits from these long term growth strategies with recent wins and with more on the horizon.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

We're confident Middleby is better positioned than ever, and we're extending this leading position. And it is the reason we're confident Middleby is a great investment. Brian, I'll turn it over to you now for further comments on the quarter and outlook.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

Thanks, Tim. Looking back

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

at Q1, we are pleased to have driven margins and generated strong cash flows. Operating cash flows of just over $141,000,000 are our highest for our first quarter. Free cash flows were $107,000,000 for the quarter and totaled $620,000,000 for the trailing twelve months. Over the past two years, we have consistently demonstrated our ability to deliberately delever from three times to a modest two times today. Our balance sheet remains strong and our cash flows are resilient.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

After year to date open market stock repurchases of nearly $50,000,000 we are now substantially accelerating our share repurchasing. From a reporting standpoint, I want to call out that we have made a small adjustment in our segment's composition, as discussed in the footnotes in our press release. We have moved one operating division from being part of the commercial segment into food processing. This change has an impact of around $10,000,000 per quarter of revenue. We have restated all periods presented for this change.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

For Q1, we had growth in the residential segment, strong cost control actions, and managing leverage led to higher operating income and net earnings. Regardless of market conditions, we have delivered robust cash flows and driven margin performance. Our commercial foodservice business is seeing success, thanks to our investments in the ice and beverage platform, as well as chain wins with cooking and refrigeration brands. However, muted buying levels by our largest chain customers across a few of our brands are offsetting these wins. Nonetheless, margins expanded, benefiting from our continued cost control actions and favorable mix.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

Food processing, after a very strong fourth quarter and having seen some customer driven delivery delays in Q1, did see a drop in revenues. Given the lower volumes and some unfavorable mix, margins were challenged. However, we have near term opportunities to engage directly with many customers at two very large trade shows in Q2, '1 focused on protein and one on bakery, which provide additional opportunities to improve the order trends. The residential segment growth was primarily attributable to outdoor products. Margins held in well given the product mix and production levels.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

Looking forward, in commercial, we do acknowledge the challenging market conditions facing our largest chain customers and the resulting impacts on their buying decisions around our products. Nonetheless, we remain optimistic that over the year, we could see consistent sequential revenue increases as customers continue to adopt our leading technologies with rollouts and store build plans. Tariffs are impacting this business in a few ways. Positively, we have a strong US manufacturing footprint compared to our competition, and the geographies of our revenues and where we manufacture are generally aligned. Meanwhile, the level of Asian finished goods we import is negligible.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

Conversely, the associated uncertainty contributes to a continuation of marketplace dynamics, where the spending level by customers remains rather muted, although there are some areas where we are seeing rollouts advancing. The biggest operational tariff challenge we face is around the costs of foreign sourced componentry, mainly from China. We are implementing pricing actions to address this exposure, as well as taking operational actions and continuing supply chain activities. Our current view is that the margin pressures in Q2 may likely grow in the back half of the year. We expect to have offset these higher costs by the end of the year.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

Our long term outlook for this segment remains unchanged. Our leading innovative solutions address our customers' challenges. This will drive organic growth, strong margins, and increasing cash flow. For food processing, I do view Q1 as a bit of anomaly. We expect meaningfully higher revenue sequentially into Q2.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

Margins will also improve from Q1. These views are supported by the impacts of Q1 delayed deliveries, backlog levels, and order activity. For the full year, areas of stronger performance include snack foods and some protein product lines. Uncertainty around trade and consumer behavior creates delays in converting an opportunity into an order and then into revenue. This may challenge us to deliver growth for the year, but as with our typical pattern, margins should sequentially improve as we proceed through the year.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

The magnitude may be a little lower than prior years, given revenue levels and tariff cost impacts. Looking beyond '25, we remain completely bullish on this segment. Our multibillion dollar pipeline is as robust as ever. Our strengths will drive growth over the coming years. Our full line solutions resonate with customers and provide strong returns on their investments.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

We are expanding our capabilities into growing markets of poultry, pet foods and snacks. We provide automated and innovative products across our portfolio. We remain very well positioned to capitalize on the opportunities ahead. Lastly, residential may be the strongest performing segment this year. We are seeing stability and even potential growth in some of the premium indoor brands.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

Tariffs may have quite a negative impact on most outdoor products revenue. However, we continue to introduce new products across our brands and our geographies. A cautiously optimistic view sees 25 revenues flat to the prior year. We are taking actions to maintain at least double digit margins and realize that our views are highly dependent on consumer sentiment and spending, so there certainly is some risk associated with this outlook. But overall, we have full confidence in our long term outlook.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

We expect cash flows to remain strong. We will continue to deliver value to shareholders through our innovation, operational excellence, and significantly heightened share buyback levels. We've consistently demonstrated our ability to manage our business effectively, maintain a strong balance sheet, and preserve margins under challenging market conditions. We are leaders in innovation. Our solutions address our customers' pressing business challenges.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

The current environment makes it a little hard to predict the next two to three quarters, but our confidence in the next two to three years remains high. Thank you, and we will now take your questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. Please go ahead.

Walter Liptak
Industry Analyst at Seaport Research Partners

Hi, thanks. Good morning, everyone.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

Hey, Walter.

Walter Liptak
Industry Analyst at Seaport Research Partners

I wanted to

Walter Liptak
Industry Analyst at Seaport Research Partners

ask about the 2025 sales guidance. You were previously at low single digit and you just provided segment guidance. I wonder what you're thinking about for the company in total. And then within the three segments, you know, where you're seeing the biggest change? You know, is it food processing where, you know, the outlook has changed the most?

Walter Liptak
Industry Analyst at Seaport Research Partners

Or is it in the CFS segment?

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

Thanks, Walt. It's Brian. I'll take that one. Obviously, the full year outlook is going to be mostly driven by commercial, it being the largest segment. So I think based on what we're seeing today, even though as we think it improves over the course of the year, that keeps the expectations on the full year mostly aligned with how commercial will turn out.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

A lot of the change in the outlook really is due to, I'll call it, change in the macro and the change in the trade environment and what that has meant to uncertainty around consumer behavior, what that means to what our customers are seeing in the marketplace and their investment decisions. And so I do think that goes across to a certain extent most of our segments. The dynamics are a little bit different in residential where it's consumers making investment decisions as opposed to in commercial and food processing, where it is businesses making business decisions. But I think as well discussed in the general marketplace, uncertainty creates challenging times for people to make the investments. And so that is what's caused our outlook to maybe be a little bit more muted today than it was the last time we discussed results.

Walter Liptak
Industry Analyst at Seaport Research Partners

Okay, great. And when you roll it all up, what are you thinking about for the revenue for 2025, especially in the back

Walter Liptak
Industry Analyst at Seaport Research Partners

half?

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

Yeah,

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

you know, like I said, things are going to, you know, should sequentially improve over the year, but I don't want to get explicitly pointed with a point estimate or a tight range for the year. But I think where we noted that growth is going to be a little bit challenged in at least two of the segments, right, that overall outlook is what would also be applied to the full company.

Walter Liptak
Industry Analyst at Seaport Research Partners

Okay, got it. Okay, thanks so much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Jeff Hammond with KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

Jeffrey Hammond
Jeffrey Hammond
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Hey, good morning. Just wanted to start with the buyback decision. Just what informed that? Is it recognition like M and A is fewer and farther between or it's difficult or recognition on where the valuation of your company is versus deals or focus on RRC? Just more color there.

Jeffrey Hammond
Jeffrey Hammond
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Thanks.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

Yeah, I mean, I would say it's a combination of a number of factors and you sit on a couple of them. Think first and foremost, it's our view, our valuation, something that we've been spending time on going through last year led to the spin. But as we kind of think about our business, and as I mentioned in the comments, we really do believe it is stronger than ever the last handful of years. We've come a long way with the strength of each of the portfolios, the amount of innovation, how we've transformed our go to market processes. And that's kind of against this backdrop of some of the challenging dynamics.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

And at the same time, we've grown cash flows, profitability is still leading. I think we believe inherently that the share price is not reflecting that. So I think that's the number one factor. So we're the best investment in town. I think at the same time, cash flows have grown, like we've compounded over a long period of time.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

We've got a lot of cash flow to deploy. As Brian mentioned in his comments, the balance sheet is also strong as we've delevered from three times to two times, which was also very intentional by the company. We're in a much better place from a cash flow and balance sheet position. So where do we want to deploy that cash? And that is to our best investment.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

And then as you kind of think about M and A, if you look at really where we focused the last couple of years, I think five out of the last six deals have been food processing. So we've been scaling that business, and that's really the segment that's got the most opportunities. I think as we've grown, there is differences in what are the opportunities in each of the three segments and some of the merit of why we've moved towards the separation, because we do think that food processing going forward is still going to be, has a lot of M and A opportunities where the other businesses are a bit more mature. Even the investments that we've made in commercial and residential to a certain extent have been largely technology focused. So I would say enhancing our organic growth initiatives.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

So I think that's a number of those factors with the evolution of the business kind of led to that decision. So we're very excited about the buyback. So, yeah, so hopefully that gives you a little bit more perspective.

Jeffrey Hammond
Jeffrey Hammond
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

No, that's helpful. And then I guess with respect to tariffs and the tariff, I wanted to better understand one, given your U. S. Centric footprint, where you think there are the biggest opportunities for share gains and how quickly those can come through? And then conversely, I think the grills business has been a challenge and I think most of that is sourced out of China.

Jeffrey Hammond
Jeffrey Hammond
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

So what's kind of risk in the short term and the long term strategy to kind of right the ship on the grill side?

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

Yes. I'll start and then I'll kind of kick it around here. I mean, I think even though we put out, I'll say a big number and that's kind of more the gross number, we are confident we're going to offset. I mean, I think certainly operating initiatives, which include supply chain, which were the strength of that capability is much more developed today than a few years ago. I think those two also the strength of the overall platform and our manufacturing.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

But we are highly confident we're going to offset this number. Price increases is not a scary number to us. So I think we have a high degree of confidence that through the balance of this year, this will all be offset. So your other question, we really are a US centric manufacturer. So the tariffs really are an opportunity.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

In some ways we're a bit excited about the tariffs. So we actually don't want them all to go away. Mean, you kind of look across different product categories, for example, light duty and counter line cooking equipment, we're kind of the last man standing with brands like Star, Toastmaster, Wells, Hulman. A lot of that business with our competitors has been shifted overseas. We see that as an advantage.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

But speed cook, fryers, induction is an area we've been investing. We're the only manufacturer of induction in The US. Our coffee platform that we've invested in, we're largely competing with Swiss, German, Italian, and we're the Seattle based guys. Under counter refrigeration also, the residential side of the business, most of our competition today is in China. So we're very well positioned.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

So there's actually quite a few categories, both commercial and residential that we think we're going to benefit from. So we very often kind of put The USA flag on our boxes, but that means a lot more today and hopefully next year as we go forward. On the outdoor, I'm first going to start with the premium. So we manufacture our premium outdoor in Greenwood, Mississippi. That's actually one of the initiatives over the last several years is to consolidate some of our outdoor premium lines, including Viking and Lynx there.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

Operationally, we're much stronger today and a lot of our competition is coming from overseas China in particular. So that's going to position us well there. And then on the other real segments, we've got action plans in place. We're in a similar boat to our competitors. So I think that the team has swung into action to counter some of those tariffs out there.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

I think it'll have an immediate market dynamic, but I think we'll navigate it as well as anybody there. Certainly some of the orders that may get delayed in a quarter or two, we think will just create some pent up demand for the latter part of the year.

Jeffrey Hammond
Jeffrey Hammond
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay. Appreciate the color, Tim.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Mig Dobre with Baird. Please go ahead.

Mircea Dobre
Associate Director of Research & Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

Thanks. Good morning. Maybe, just some clarification around this tariffs figure, the $175,000,000 at the midpoint. Is there a way to help us understand the allocation at segment level? What would this breakdown be between the three segments?

Mircea Dobre
Associate Director of Research & Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

And you talked about being able to offset these costs by year end. So I'm kind of understanding this that into 2026, you expect this to be offset. But how do we think about these costs flowing through in Q2, Q3, Q4? Presumably it takes a little bit of time before you can actually get to where you fully offset these costs.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

Mig, this is Steve. I'm happy to take a first pass at it. I think in terms of the allocation across the three segments, if you're maybe I'll just use percentages of the 175. I think the impact is, I'll call it weighted more towards commercial and towards residential, and actually probably less on food processing. So if I had kind of round numbers, I'd probably say it's something like 70% ish would be commercial and 20% is residential and then 10% food processing.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

It's somewhere in that neighborhood in terms of scale of the overall 175. The big difference between, I would say, commercial and residential versus food processing is you don't have really any componentry being sourced from China or not as much in the food processing space. So that's how I would think about the allocation across the three segments. I think in terms of how we're mitigating it, we have talked a lot about the pricing actions that we would take. In commercial, we've already announced a July 1 price increase that we're working through as we speak.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

We try to be very intentional around the timing of the increase to try to give as much clarity to our customers as possible. So we feel like we are able to drive the pricing through the back half of the year. I think we've proven that we can do this over the last several three, four, five years as we've gone through inflationary periods and be able to get pricing through the market. So that is our intention at this point. I also think that we are better positioned today from a supply chain standpoint.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

Again, going through the last three, four, five years of supply chain disruption has actually, I think, enabled us to withstand this next period of disruption. We've actually moved a decent amount of sourcing of componentry into The US over the last five years. So even though China remains a decent spend on componentry, it's actually less today than it was five years ago, I think, thanks to our supply chain team. I think other capabilities around, like we have a facility in Nogales, Mexico that has become an in sourcing capability for us. So even though there are tariffs, they're obviously coming in from Mexico into The US, obviously substantially less than China.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

So we have already been, even before this last round of tariffs, been moving in house manufacturing from China to Mexico. So between pricing, supply chain and operational initiatives, I think that's why we're confident, Mig, that we can, in the back half of this year, overcome and mitigate tariff impact to have us more or less a cost neutral standpoint going into 'twenty six.

Mircea Dobre
Associate Director of Research & Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

That's helpful. And maybe this is parsing things too finely, but you know, in CSS specifically, got to call it 4%. Guess that the cost headwind would be about 4% of sales, right? So, you know, as you think about these, the things that you have to do to offset that, what we how much of that do you think is pricing versus all these other cost actions that you've sort of talked about? And I'm asking the question because you did talk about the fact that you were able to put through pricing in prior years, and that was very clear, but the industry was in a very different spot.

Mircea Dobre
Associate Director of Research & Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

Right? We've been reeling here with destocking, weak demand. This is not a great environment to be able to put through price increases. So how reliant are you specifically on pricing and how confident are you that you're going be able to actually get that?

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

Yeah, it's very fair question, Meg. I think as we think about the impact of pricing just in terms of scale, I expect that the pricing we set forth on July 1 is going to be in the mid to high single digit range. So a predominant part of the coverage is going to come from pricing, and obviously the rest of it is going to come from the operational and supply chain initiatives. I would say from a competitive landscape standpoint, from what we've seen so far, I think that puts us below the majority of our competitors. So even though it is another increase to your point on an already tough pricing spot, we actually think we're positioned better in a lower price point from our competitors.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

I do believe that the way I think we can be effective in getting the pricing through goes back to being very transparent in our approach, which I think is something we were effective with going back several years ago. Our customers are not ignorant to, hey, there is this tariff impact. They know that they're going to have to absorb majority of it or a portion of it. It goes back to being transparent with customers on where the increases are coming from. And I think it's also transparent on, hey, if tariffs do go away, that we would adjust pricing accordingly to remain competitive in the marketplace.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

So I think if you take that approach, and again, we've already started these conversations with the majority of our big customers that we feel like we can get the pricing through. I actually do believe to round it out that even though the pricing is tough in the market that we're in, it still favors us more than I think anybody because it puts more and more focus on, we still have to solve for all the challenges the restaurants are facing, it's food costs, which are facing inflation again, labor continues to be a challenge, utility costs. And that ultimately still comes back to us as a solution to help solve for all of those things. So that would be my positive spin on even if costs continue to go up, I think they look to us to help solve those challenges that the restaurants continue to face.

Mircea Dobre
Associate Director of Research & Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

That's helpful. If I may squeeze one last one. Sure. When thinking about the revenue outlook based on what you know today, I know that in Q2, typically we see a little seasonal bump relative to Q1 for the revenue. And I'm wondering if that's still reasonable to expect.

Mircea Dobre
Associate Director of Research & Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

And then relative to the second half, in your slides, you talk about the fact that new store openings for your customers are weighted to the second half of twenty twenty five. How reliant is your revenue on these new store openings? Or maybe put differently, how much risk do we have from store openings potentially getting pushed out into 2026 or some later date? Thank you.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

Mig, it's Steve again. So I think Brian called out sequential improvement that we believe will be in place second quarter over first quarter. So I don't know if I'd quite call it seasonality, but I do believe that second quarter sequentially will be above first quarter for commercial. Yeah, new store openings, we've talked a fair bit about over the last several years. We get pretty regular updates from, I'll call it, at least our top 25 chain customers in terms of new store openings by market, by country, etcetera.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

If you look at that list today of the top 25 chains we do business with and their new store opening plans for this year, yes, there has been push outs or push outs last year. I think you'll see some ebb and flow still this year. But for the most part, they would all have in their build plans that the remaining three quarters of development this year are net higher than the same periods in the back half of last year. So they continue to reiterate that. I think there's going to be some push out here or there?

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

Yes, I do. But I think by and large, numbers they continue to give to us do reflect a year over year improvement in net development for the remaining three quarters of this year.

Mircea Dobre
Associate Director of Research & Senior Research Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co

Great, thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Tim Tyn with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Tim Thein
Tim Thein
Managing Director & Research Analyst at Raymond James Financial

Thank you. I'll try and keep this tight here. Two questions on commercial, the first being the mix benefit that you called out helping to support margins. I'm curious if that was a channel or product mix. Obviously, product mix can swing around on a quarter to quarter basis, but just curious if that's something that I guess the question is kind of the element of sustainability on that.

Tim Thein
Tim Thein
Managing Director & Research Analyst at Raymond James Financial

And then, guess, Steve, continuing on that last thread that you're talking about in terms of the new store openings. My sense is at least from and obviously, don't have the lens that you do in terms of the number operation or operators, but it seems like more of that mix maybe is kind of oriented towards international markets. I'm curious if is if A, if you're seeing that B, does that how Middleby is positioned to the extent that that read is accurate that I. E. More of the new store growth being outside North America?

Tim Thein
Tim Thein
Managing Director & Research Analyst at Raymond James Financial

Thank you.

Bryan Mittelman
Bryan Mittelman
Chief Financial Officer at The Middleby

Hey, Tim, this is Brian. I'll start with the mix and the margins in Q1 on commercial. It actually has contributed both, you know, I'll say, you know, customer and, you know, and product, you know, we've noted that we have some, businesses in the beverage platform that perform well because of the value they create for our customers, as well as just as you go up and down the list of the many different brands we have and which segments of customers we're buying, that there was some positive mix in terms of which customer segments we're buying at higher levels this quarter.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

And Tim, this is Steve. To answer your question about international mix on new store openings, you are spot on. If you were to bucket the new store opening pipeline for this year from a domestic versus international standpoint, it is definitely more heavily weighted. It's probably something like 75, 20 five, maybe even eighty, twenty towards international markets. You certainly see a lot of growth with some of the bigger chains in markets.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

Actually, Europe is doing well. Places like India, Brazil are markets where you continue to see these chains look for new franchisees and new markets to enter into. I think Middleby is incredibly well positioned. I think we've put a lot of investment into having the resources, both from a presale and post sale perspective. Service, especially in international markets for these changes, is incredibly important.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

And I think we've put a lot of time and resources and investment into Europe, into The UK, into India, into The Middle East. And I think that lines up very well with where we're seeing that growth take place from our biggest chain customers.

Tim Thein
Tim Thein
Managing Director & Research Analyst at Raymond James Financial

Excellent. Thank you, Steve.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Tami Zakaria with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Tami Zakaria
Tami Zakaria
Analyst at JPMorgan Chase

Hey, good morning. Thank you so much. So my first question is on the 150,000,000 to $200,000,000 impact you mentioned from tariffs, half of which is from China. Is that number based on the current 145% tariff rate? What I'm trying to understand is what the benefit of reversal could look like if that rate comes down to a more manageable level in the coming months?

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

Yeah, so the true gross number is maybe slightly higher than that. So I think the range we've kind of taken a view of a little bit of a haircut of what we think it might model out to. So I would say we've assumed it might be anywhere from 20 to 40% lower looking at all the different countries in China in particular. So that kind of gave us the range of 150 to 200. Possibly that range can come down further depending on obviously how negotiations with tariffs go.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

That is what we think is an adjusted gross number.

Tami Zakaria
Tami Zakaria
Analyst at JPMorgan Chase

Understood. Very helpful. And my second question is on the buyback. Are you expecting most of the free cash flow you're going to generate this year to go for buybacks?

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

Yeah, I mean, I think the term we used in there is vast. So, I mean, I think really we are thinking about using essentially the entirety of our cash flow this year. Certainly we'll take a lot of other factors into consideration, but we're pretty committed to deploying most of our cash flow to the buyback.

Tami Zakaria
Tami Zakaria
Analyst at JPMorgan Chase

Got it. Super helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Brian McNamara with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.

Brian McNamara
MD & Senior Analyst - Consumer at Canaccord Genuity - Global Capital Markets

Hey, good morning guys. Thanks for taking the In commercial foodservice, I'm curious what competitive price increases that you have observed already in the marketplace in response to tariffs thus far and how those would compare to kind of the mid high single digit that you're planning on taking July 1? I think you said you expect yours to be below, but I'm curious what you've observed already, if anything?

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

Yes, Brian, this is Steve. I mean, I'll preface my comments by obviously, there's a wide range of products and brands within Middleby and we think competitors obviously crosses over a pretty wide landscape. I would just say first and foremost, when the tariff news first broke earlier this year, think we built a lot of goodwill from our customer standpoint. We took an approach of a little bit more of a wait and see that, hey, we want to give you as much certainty as possible in uncertain times. And so that's why link coming up July 1 is actually later than many.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

I think a lot of our competitors, I would say, rush to put something across the line without having a lot of data to support it. And I think that did not play well from a customer standpoint. So I think we've taken the right approach of being a little bit more thoughtful and making sure we had as much data to support our increase as possible going back to being transparent to get the pricing through. In terms of the competitive landscape, again, Brian, our increase is going to be just again in the mid single digit range. We have seen competitors anywhere from 10% to 25% in terms of increases.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

Tim called it out earlier. We've also seen a number of competitors that bring in product directly from China, either having to take massive increases in that 25 plus range or simply saying, hey, they're getting out of those products. So that's where we see again a pretty big opportunity in the countertop space, the cooking space, fryers, ovens, etcetera. So we definitely feel like we have a competitive advantage, both from the pricing standpoint, and from again, having the product coming out of The US and not bringing anything in from China.

Operator

Brian, I hope that answers your question.

Steve Spittle
Steve Spittle
Chief Commercial Officer at The Middleby

Yes, sorry.

Brian McNamara
MD & Senior Analyst - Consumer at Canaccord Genuity - Global Capital Markets

On tariffs, thank you for that, Steve. I'm curious, is there any nuance as it relates to China tariffs specifically? We've heard that like this Section two thirty two steel tariffs supersede the reciprocal tariffs from other companies? And I know it sounds like your exposure is only on the component side, but is there anything investors should be kind of mindful of as it relates to the nuances associated with the stackability of kind of the reciprocals versus the steel as it relates to the componentry?

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

I think

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

we've reflected all those nuances, I think in the range that we've given. So I guess that's kind of the first comment. There's a handful of strategies to minimize the impact, including different types of classifications, etcetera. Think we have quite a few tools in the toolbox to mitigate the exposure that we see in China, including relocating out of China. But I mean, I think everything that relates to China, we've kind of embedded in all the comments that I think that we've already got through here today.

Brian McNamara
MD & Senior Analyst - Consumer at Canaccord Genuity - Global Capital Markets

Great. And then finally, I was just wondering if you could provide an update on any new Open Kitchen rollouts and maybe some of the new products featured at NAFEM that are gaining traction that you're most excited about. I think a lot of the conversation focuses on tariffs when you got some exciting stuff going on in the base business.

Executive

Yes, so we continue to have good momentum on Open Kitchen. We do have a lot of good pipeline activity with Open Kitchen with some large chain customers. Obviously, I don't want to name names today, but we've got some good velocity behind us with chain activity, especially around really what I'll call the entire enterprise platform, Vulcan Kitchen. That's connectivity at the front of the house, the middle of the house, and with the back of the house connectivity with the connected products. Additionally, we are seeing a second order benefit and we saw this in 2024 where we are winning rollouts because of connectivity.

Executive

And so we had 10s of million dollars of rollouts in '24 because our products were connected to Open Kitchen and that ultimately tipped us over the competition relative to winning that chain. So a lot of great momentum with open kitchen in the marketplace. And remind me your second question.

Brian McNamara
MD & Senior Analyst - Consumer at Canaccord Genuity - Global Capital Markets

Just the products you're excited about from Nathan.

Executive

So I mean, we're excited about our entire pipeline and Tim's going to talk about the sizzling seven at NRA that we're debating debuting here in a couple weeks. And a lot of the new products are around beverage beverage dispensing. And we've got a lot of great pipeline support on those products. We have some new products and in holding around holding chicken for extended periods of time. And obviously, everybody on the call knows how hot the chicken market is in the QSR space Beyond that, the frying with the new torque fryer, we're super excited about because we believe that revolutionizes the frying industry forever.

Executive

We take oil life from five days over thirty days with the torque fryer. A couple other mentions. Obviously, we talk a lot about the invoke combi oven. We are really starting to get traction on that. We're now rounding that out right after the NRA show with the introduction of our gas versions of the invoke combi oven.

Executive

So that'll continue to help us drive sales with the invoke combi. And then lastly, the infection oven from Blodgett, which offers a unique multi cavity impingement and conviction of an on demand platform. And we see that really, going into the casual dining market and having a great success there. So, just to wrap it up, bullish on open kitchen and very bullish on our NPI.

Brian McNamara
MD & Senior Analyst - Consumer at Canaccord Genuity - Global Capital Markets

Very helpful. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Timothy Fitzgerald for any closing remarks.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

Yeah. No. No. Thank you, everybody, for attending today's call. I was gonna put an invite out, and I think James did a great job of covering all the terrific things that we've got going on with innovation.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

James referred to it there, but we're very proud to be taking seven Kitchen Innovation Awards at the National Restaurant Show. That's the most of any manufacturer. And I would encourage everybody to come and see it. James said, but you'll see the latest in automation, next generation beverage, which is an exciting platform for us and everything digital, including IoT, as James mentioned there, which is a big growth initiative and huge part of the future for Middleby. So it's May '20 in Chicago, so hopefully the invite is out and we will see many of you there.

Timothy FitzGerald
Timothy FitzGerald
CEO at The Middleby

Thank you.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Timothy FitzGerald
      Timothy FitzGerald
      CEO
    • Bryan Mittelman
      Bryan Mittelman
      Chief Financial Officer
    • Steve Spittle
      Steve Spittle
      Chief Commercial Officer
Analysts
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Key Takeaways

  • Middleby authorized 7.5 billion additional shares for repurchase—21% of outstanding equity—and plans to deploy the majority of its free cash flow to buybacks, citing confidence in its business strength.
  • The company remains on track to complete the food processing spin-off in early 2026, aiming to unlock shareholder value by creating two focused, market-leading public entities with optimized capital structures.
  • Middleby expects tariff-related costs of $150 million–$200 million annually but is highly confident that pricing adjustments, targeted operational actions, and its U.S. manufacturing footprint will offset these headwinds by year-end.
  • In Q1, operating cash flow reached a first-quarter record of $141 million and free cash flow totaled $107 million, enabling Middleby to reduce net leverage from 3× to 2× EBITDA and maintain a strong balance sheet.
  • The company continues to drive long-term organic growth through innovation and go-to-market transformation, highlighting advances in automation, IoT connectivity (Open Kitchen), ventless cooking, and new industry-award–winning products.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Middleby Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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