Dover Q4 2022 Earnings Results & Report

Dover EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $2.16
• Consensus EPS: $2.15
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.01
• One Year Ago EPS: $1.78
• EPS Beat Rate: 8 of last 8 quarters

Dover Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $2.14 billion
• Expected Revenue: $2.12 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$18.14 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +7.50%

Dover (NYSE:DOV) (NYSE: DOV) is a diversified manufacturer that develops and produces specialized equipment, components and engineered systems for industrial and commercial customers. Its businesses serve markets including fluid handling, equipment manufacturing, clean energy, fueling, refrigeration, heating and cooling, printing, and vehicle service.

The company’s products include pumps, compressors, controls, dispensing and fueling equipment, refrigeration systems, heat-transfer technologies, industrial machinery, vehicle lifts and service equipment, and components used in engineered industrial applications. Dover sells its products through a combination of direct sales and distribution networks to customers in North America, Europe, Asia and other international markets.

Founded in 1955, Dover has expanded through the development and acquisition of specialized operating companies. It is headquartered in Downers Grove, Illinois, and is led by President and Chief Executive Officer Richard J. Tobin.

Dover Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Dover delivered 9% organic revenue growth and 150 basis points margin improvement in Q4, driven by volume, mix, pricing actions and cost reductions.
• For full-year 2023, Dover forecasts 3% to 5% organic revenue growth and adjusted EPS of $8.85 to $9.05, reflecting confidence in demand trends and productivity measures.
• Foreign exchange was a headwind in Q4 and full-year 2022, reducing EPS by $0.10 in Q4 and $0.35 for the year, with 2023 FX drag estimated at $0.05 to $0.10.
• Free cash flow reached $585 million in 2022 and is expected to improve to 15%–17% of revenue in 2023 as inventory and receivables normalize.
• In 2022, Dover executed five bolt-on acquisitions to expand into high-growth technologies and completed a $500 million accelerated share repurchase to return capital to shareholders.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good morning, and welcome to Dover's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Speaking today are Richard J. Tobin, President and Chief Executive Officer, Brad Cerepak, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Jack Dickens, Senior Director of Investor Relations. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer period. If you'd like to ask a question during that time, please press star and then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star two. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, this conference call is being recorded and your participation implies consent to our recording of this call. If you do not agree with these terms, please disconnect at this time. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Jack Dickens. Please go ahead, sir.

[Jack Dickens, Senior Director of Investor Relations at Dover Corporation]

Thank you, Gretchen. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. An audio version of this call will be available on our website through February 21st, and a replay link of the webcast will be archived for 90 days. Dover provides non-GAAP information and reconciliations between GAAP and adjusted measures are included in our investor supplement and presentation materials, which are available on our website. Our comments today will include forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Actual results and events could differ from those statements due to a number of risks and uncertainties which are discussed in our SEC filings. We assume no obligation to update our forward-looking statements. With that, I'll turn the call over to Rich.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Thanks, Jack. Let's get started with the performance highlights on slide three. Dover delivered strong organic revenue growth of 9% and margin improvement at 150 basis points in the fourth quarter. Volume mix, price cost, and prior period cost reduction actions all contributed to the positive performance. As we've been forecasting throughout 2021, the relationship between supply chain constraints and bookings has continued to play out into Q4. The majority of the labor and component availability and logistics constraints have dissipated, resulting in production lead times returning to pre-pandemic levels. Importantly, our 4% annualized through cycle organic bookings growth rate reflects the continued secular demand strength across our businesses. Our order backlog remains elevated compared to normal levels and provides us with a good top-line visibility going into 2023.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Our continuous efforts to improve productivity and efficiency, principally enabled by advances we achieved in e-commerce adoption, back-office consolidation, and SKU complexity reduction, resulted in robust margin accretion in the quarter. We expect benefits from our recent efforts to further accrue in 2023. We continue to deploy capital toward portfolio improvement, organic growth, and production efficiency in 2022. Our capital expenditures in 2022 were the highest in recent Dover history. We continue to invest in manufacturing productivity projects and proactive capacity expansions to fuel our top-line growth and margin improvement capabilities. We also completed five attractive bolt-on acquisitions in 2022 that provide exposure to high-growth technologies and end markets. Finally, we took the opportunity to return capital to our shareholders, including the completion of our $500 million accelerated share repurchase, which was completed in quarter four.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

We enter 2023 with a constructive stance. Demand trends remain healthy across our portfolio, and we have a significant volume of business and backlog entering into the new year. Expected revenue growth, price actions, and productivity measures from 2022 lay the foundation for margin accretion in 2023. We have high confidence in Dover's markets, flexible business model, and proven execution playbook continuing to deliver earnings growth. Our strategy for robust through-cycle shareholder value creation remains unchanged to combine solid and consistent growth above GDP, strong operational execution, generating meaningful margin accretion over time, and value-added disciplined capital deployment. As a result of this, we are forecasting full year revenue guidance of 3%-5% organic revenue growth, and adjusted EPS of $8.85-$9.05. I'll skip slide 4, and let's move on to slide 5.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Engineered Products revenue is up 16% in the quarter, continuing the trend of double-digit top-line growth through the year. Revenue growth was broad-based across the portfolio, with particular strength in North America. Margins continued their sequential build throughout the year, finishing Q4 at 20%, up 620 basis points year-over-year, primarily driven by improving supply chains and price cost dynamics, products mix, as well as investments and productivity initiatives. Clean Energy & Fueling finished the quarter and the year roughly flat on an organic basis. Revenue performance from quarter was up in Clean Energy Components, Vehicle Wash, Fuel Transport, and Below-Ground Retail Fueling, offsetting the comparable decline in dispenser and EMV card reader demand in the period.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Margins in the quarter were up 170 basis points on positive price cost and the mix impact from both organic and inorganic investments that we made in Clean Energy components and vehicle wash. This was augmented by further cost reduction actions initiated in the third quarter, and the full year carryover of these actions will continue to accrue in 2023. In Imaging & Identification, volumes for our Marking and Coding Printers, spare parts, and consumables were strong in all geographies, with the exception of near-term softness in China due to the COVID impact. Our software businesses continue to perform well with penetration of key customer brand accounts, with strong growth in SaaS portion of our Serialization Software. FX remained negative headwind to absolute revenue and profits in the segment, given its large base of non-U.S. followers.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Q4 margins in Imaging & Identification were very strong at 25%, improving 250 basis points on stronger volumes, pricing actions, and products, product mix richness. This business has delivered exemplary margin improvement in the last few years as it utilizes our productivity tools for e-commerce back office consolidation and offshore engineering. Pumps & Process Solutions was up 4% organically for the year, posted a 4% decline in the fourth quarter, driven principally by post-COVID transition in the biopharma space. The non-COVID biopharma businesses continue to grow, our overall biopharma business is well above its pre-pandemic level. New orders for biopharma connectors inflected positively in the fourth quarter after several quarters of sequential declines.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

All other business in the segment posted solid organic growth in the fourth quarter, with particular strength in Polymer Processing Equipment and Precision Components on the back of improved conditions in energy markets. Operating margin for the quarter was 29% as comparable revenue mix of products delivered. Top line and Climate & Sustainability Technologies continued its double-digit growth in the fourth quarter, posted 27% organic growth across all businesses and geographies. Demand trends remain particularly robust in Heat Exchangers and CO2 refrigeration systems driven by the global investments in sustainability. Our capacity expansion programs in both these businesses remain on schedule and will continue to allow us to continue to meet growing customer demand.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Margins were up 450 basis points in the quarter and over 300 basis points for the full year on improved productivity in food, retail, and strong volume growth and good mix of product delivered. I'll pass it on to Brad here.

[Brad Cerepak, SVP and CFO at Dover Corporation]

Thanks, Rich. Good morning, everyone. I'm on slide 6. The top bridge shows our quarterly organic revenue growth of 9%, driven by increases in 4 of our 5 segments. As expected, FX was a substantial headwind at 5% or $94 million, and impacted both revenue growth and profitability. FX headwinds resulted in Q4 and full year 2022 negative EPS impacts of $0.10 and $0.35, respectively. Recent EUR gains against US dollar have reduced our forecasted FX headwinds in 2023, which we currently estimate at $0.05 to $0.10 for the full year EPS. M&A contributed $58 million to the top line in the quarter, a product of $80 million from acquisitions, partially offset by $22 million from divestitures late in 2021. We saw strong organic growth across most of our geographies in the quarter.

[Brad Cerepak, SVP and CFO at Dover Corporation]

The U.S., our largest market, was up 7% organically. Europe was up 19% organically, driven by particular strength in polymer processing, beverage can-making, Natural Refrigerant Systems, and Heat Exchangers. All of Asia was down 1%. China, which represents approximately half of our business in Asia, declined by about 10% in Q4, driven by short-term impacts from the COVID resurgence. On the bottom chart, bookings were down year-over-year due to foreign exchange translation and normalizing lead times across several businesses. On our cash flow statement on page, slide 7. Free cash flow for the year came in at $585 million, down year-over-year on increased capital expenditures, one-time tax payments, and investments in working capital supporting growth.

[Brad Cerepak, SVP and CFO at Dover Corporation]

At our current earnings margin, we would expect to generate free cash flow of approximately 13% of revenue in an average year. 2022 free cash flow lagged behind that level, due primarily to elevated working capital investments, driving 2/3 of the gap. As previously discussed, we view incremental investment in inventory over the past 2 years as productive, despite its carrying costs, enabling us to deliver 17% cumulative organic top line growth and over 30% growth in absolute EBITDA between 2019 and 2022. We are now focused on extracting back cash invested in inventory. As supply chains improved in the 4th quarter, we began reducing inventory, particularly finished goods.

[Brad Cerepak, SVP and CFO at Dover Corporation]

The majority of excess we carry into 2023 is in raw materials, and we expect to consume a significant portion of that excess in the first half of the year. In addition, in addition to inventory reductions, we expect to collect elevated receivables from the fourth quarter and normalize our payable balances, driving significant improvement in working capital in 2023. We also forecast lower CapEx following a stepped up CapEx year in 2022. As a result, our forecast for 2023 free cash flow is between 15 and 17% of revenue. I'll turn it back to Rich.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Okay, I'm on slide 8. I'll be brief on this slide, since we've been discussing the linkages between bookings backlog and revenue and expected trajectory of these metrics for nearly two years. First, I'll remind everyone that in 2021 bookings of $9.4 billion driven by post-COVID demand surge, as well as constrained supply chains that required customers to order in advance were roughly 20% higher than our revenue that year, resulting in an unprecedented backlog that requires time to ship and unwind while bookings normalize. Importantly, concerns about double ordering and cancellations did not materialize, and we have been depleting the backlog in an orderly fashion as product lead times improved. If we smooth out the post-pandemic surge in bookings, our bookings CAGR has been four percent from 2019 to 2022. Let's go to slide 9.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Here we show the growth and margin outlook by segment for 2023 that underpin our guidance. We expect Engineered Products to remain solid. Pent-up demand and automation initiatives and waste hauling support a robust outlook. Despite high demand, our refuse collection vehicles shipments in 2022 is still has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels due to chassis availability. After an excellent booking performance in Vehicle Service Group in Q4, we expect a slower start in 2023. Engineered Products is forecast to improve margins in 2023 on solid volumes, benefits from our recent productivity capital investments taking hold, and positive co-price cost tailwinds. Clean Energy & Fueling is expected to grow single digits organically, which we expect to be second half-weighted due to subdued demand for dispensers entering the year.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Dispenser bookings beginning to normalize, we expect Q1 to be the trough for the business with gradual recovery through the remainder of the year. All other businesses in the segment are positioned well for growth in 2023, with particular strength in our Clean Energy components. For the year, we expect margin improvement in Clean Energy & Fueling on volume recovery, improved mix, and recently enacted restructuring actions in above-ground fueling. Imaging and ID is expected to continue its trajectory steady, GDP growing and attractive margins. We see robust demand for new printers and components and consumables and professional services. The outlook for the bolt Serialization and Brand Protection software is also strong. Margins in this business are robust, and we expect them to remain as such through 2023. We project flat organic growth in Pumps & Process Solutions.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Our industrial Pumps and plastics and polymers, precision components, and thermal connector businesses are all positioned for solid growth. The biopharma components business is expect to hit its bottom in volume and margin in the first quarter as customers work through and repurpose excess inventory. We are beginning to see encouraging signs of bookings for our biopharma connectors. Our full 4-year forecast may prove to be conservative. The long-term tailwinds of single-use components for biological drug manufacturing remain compelling. Importantly, our products are specified for regulated manufacturing of therapies with attractive growth outlook. We continue to win new specifications in an active pipeline of new biologic and cell and gene therapies.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Margin performance expected to be roughly flat for the year, with a sequentially lower level in the first and second quarters on unfavorable product mix from slower biopharma and geographic mix from higher sales in China for plastics and polymers. Growth outlook for Climate & Sustainability Technologies remain solid as our businesses continue to ship against strong backlog levels. We are forecasting continued double-digit growth in both Natural Refrigerant Systems and Heat Exchangers for Heat Pumps. Our beverage can-making business is booked well into 2023. We expect continued margin improvement in 2023 on volume conversion, productivity gains, and mix. Let's move on to slide 10. Here we show our recent performance against our capital allocation priorities, our priorities to reinvest in our business, which represents the highest return on investment. 2022 represented a recent record for CapEx, with numerous capacity expansions and productivity investments completed.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

We will continue our efforts to add attractive bolt-on acquisitions to improve our portfolio by entering new markets with secular growth. We invested $325 million into 5 highly attractive acquisitions in 2022. We're carrying significant firepower and a compelling M&A pipeline into 2023. Finally, as we did in 2022, we will return excess liquidity to our shareholders through increased dividends and opportunistic share repurchases. Let's move on to slide 11 for the wrap-up. Before we get into our full year guidance, I'll make a few comments on our view of the macro environment and how we believe the year may develop. First and foremost, we hope that the Fed is cautious going forward from here.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

We support the efforts to tackle inflation, which it had a large hand in causing, but we are in the camp that believes that the Fed has gone far enough and the lagged effect of further actions could be problematic to economic growth. Market participants are likely to be cautious with the timing of their demand generating decisions, as there is a recognition that manufacturing lead times and logistics constraints have been largely repaired. As such, we expect first quarter demand to reflect this cautious stance. We expect seasonality to the year to be weighted towards quarters two and three in revenue and earnings and weighted to H1 for cash flow as our balance sheet reflects liquidation of inventory and receivables from 2022. Despite the uncertain macro, our goals remain ambitious. We will push hard to win our share of demand.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

We have done a lot of work to improve the performance of our products, and we believe we have the right to win. We have proactively expanded capacity to meet projected demand in areas of the portfolio with significant secular growth opportunities.Now let me put our guide and EPS per-performance into longer-term perspective. Our objective is to deliver double-digit through cycle EPS growth for our investors through a balanced mix of healthy revenue growth, margin accretion, and value creation and capital deployment. We have been delivering on that equipment, that commitment, and we'll continue to drive to continue to do so. I wanna thank our customers for trusting Dover businesses to deliver on their important needs, and I'm grateful to the Dover teams across the world for continuing to serve our customers and execute well despite various challenges along the road.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

That completes the comments, so Jack, let's go to questions.

[Operator]

If you would like to ask a question, simply press star then number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star two. We ask that participants limit themselves to one question and one follow-up question. We'll take our first question from Andrew Obin from Bank of America.

[David Ridley-Lane, Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Good morning. This is David Ridley-Lane on for Andrew Obin. There are different reasons for each segment, but the guidance assumes better second half growth than, you know, 3 of the 5 segments. What's kind of the underlying demand assumption? Are you assuming things are fairly stable, or do you embed kind of a deterioration in underlying demand given you're seeing better second half growth in, you know, several segments?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

I think that the feedback that we're getting from our customers is to start off the year cautiously. I think that there's, in a lot of portions of the marketplace, there's inventory that needs to be depleted. I think that there's a concern about the macro. There also is this view that inflation is coming down, and that being prudent about when to start projects is probably gonna put them in the money. Furthermore, I think they have a difficult comp in Q1 just because of FX alone. I don't think there's anything other than, you know, as we mentioned, biopharma, meat getting to the bottom, where we expect orders to inflect positively from there. I think it's just an overly cautious stance going into the new year.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Everybody knows that lead times have been repaired, so it's not as if they have to put the orders in and take the deliveries in Q1. It will actually go back to what had been historically, the seasonality of the Dover portfolio, where a little bit of a slow start, second quarter and third quarter quite high, and then we run for cash in Q4.

[David Ridley-Lane, Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Got it. A quick one on China. Heard you that you'd seen some demand disruptions, given the COVID resurgence. Any concern about labor-related disruptions at your operations or suppliers showing up later this year?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

No. I mean, from a supply standpoint, we are not overly levered towards China, with the exception of electronic components, which don't make a disproportionate high amount of our purchases. no, I think that China, the stance is it's gonna get better from here, not worse.

[David Ridley-Lane, Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Thank you very much.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Welcome.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Jeffrey Sprague from Vertical Research.

[Jeffrey Sprague, Founder and Managing Partner at Vertical Research]

Hey, thank you. Good morning, everyone. Hey, Rich, just on the order normalization, and I agree we've been talking about this for a long time. Do you kind of expect things to revert back to that kind of historical balance where your backlog is, you know, call it 20% or so of forward sales by the end of the year, or do you think this takes a bit longer to normalize?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Well, a lot of that depends on the macro, Jeff, at the end of the day. Yeah, I mean, yes, we would expect to go back there. I would call your attention to the slide that we had at the end of Q3 that showed normal backlogs by segment. We would expect to go back there. If 19 is normal, let's say, I think that's what the comparative number there is, we would expect it to go back there.

[Jeffrey Sprague, Founder and Managing Partner at Vertical Research]

Rich.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

It may flex over time. Well, again, I'll leave it at that. I would call your attention to that slide. That's where we're gonna end up.

[Jeffrey Sprague, Founder and Managing Partner at Vertical Research]

Okay, great. No, thanks for that. You know, the comments to the prior question kinda touched on this a little bit, the nature of my follow-up here is, what is the price discussion like on orders now? You know, now that, as you say, kinda supply chains are normalizing, there's the expectation that inflation does begin to fade. You know, do you see downward pressure on price? Maybe put that in the context of, you know, what your own cost equation looks like in 2023.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

We've been pretty disciplined in terms of not repricing our backlog, for sure. I don't expect any issues there that are not manageable. I think that what we can expect at the beginning of this year is everybody having a view, when this includes us when we deal with our own suppliers, that inflation's coming down, you know, if I spend some time in Q1 renegotiating, maybe I can force the issue to a certain extent. In our estimates, we don't have any unannounced pricing that's not out in the marketplace, meaning there's not baked into our numbers another price increase in the June time period. It's gonna be, it's, it's gonna be interesting to see how it develops over time.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

I think it's gonna be reflected more in a delay in terms of the order rates until we get into a position of back and forth of do you know, when do you need the product and when do you have to stop negotiating the price.

[Jeffrey Sprague, Founder and Managing Partner at Vertical Research]

That algorithm leaves you price cost positive for the year as it stands now?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Yeah. Yeah. Our, our estimates are price cost positive for the year based on roll forward... Well, basically, what you see in Q4.

[Jeffrey Sprague, Founder and Managing Partner at Vertical Research]

Great. Thank you.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

You're welcome.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Stephen Tusa from JPMorgan.

[Stephen Tusa, Managing Director at JPMorgan]

Hey, guys. Good morning.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Morning.

[Stephen Tusa, Managing Director at JPMorgan]

You've, you have these backlogs, right? You expect to work them down over the course of the year. Why, why wouldn't that mean that, you know, assuming that those lead times, I mean, they are extended, but, you know, I wouldn't think too extended given the nature of your business, why wouldn't that, you know, liquidation of backlog help kind of the normal seasonality? You know, assuming that you know, the trend line is what it is, but you're delivering out a backlog, which should help sales in the near term. Why, why are customers, you know, not taking this stuff earlier?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

It, a lot of them are based on their own CapEx plan. As we talked about in the end of Q4 about decline in dispensers, it was kind of interesting to us because we were shipping heavily in the below ground and hardly shipping anything in above ground, and that was a reflection of the delay in getting these projects done because of supply chain constraints and labor and everything else. I think that's an example. We're gonna see a little bit of that more in Q1, right? Despite having the backlog, the customers are not saying, "You know what? Deliver it on January first, and I'll go put it in the warehouse, and I'll pull it out when I want." They just don't feel the need.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

That's what was kind of going on in the marketplace to a certain extent for a period of time. As that accordion effect is beginning to unwind, yeah, the backlog's there, but they're saying, "You know what? Here's the timing of my project, and I may want it in March, I may want it in April." The depletion will be orderly over the balance of the year.

[Stephen Tusa, Managing Director at JPMorgan]

Got it. How much price are you assuming this year in the organic?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

I don't think that we disclosed that, but it's a good portion of the organic growth is price.

[Stephen Tusa, Managing Director at JPMorgan]

Okay. Then one last one for you just on orders. I think to get to that level of backlog, at the end of the year looks like it's roughly, I don't know, like a $2 billion backlog, assuming a mid-single digit growth rate, which would imply roughly $6 billion of orders. Does that feel about right?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Let me do it in my head. Yeah. That's close. Yep.

[Stephen Tusa, Managing Director at JPMorgan]

Okay.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

I think it's very much. It's gonna be very much contingent of what happens in the long cycle portion of the business, right? The Markem-Imaje and the Belvac and to a certain extent SWEP, which is becoming a long cycle business because we're beginning to rather than sell the product, we're selling capacity. If those three hang in there, then yeah, that's where we'll be.

[Stephen Tusa, Managing Director at JPMorgan]

Yeah. Okay. Those would be the toughest comps in the first half.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Correct.

[Stephen Tusa, Managing Director at JPMorgan]

Yeah. Okay. Great. Thanks.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Joe Ritchie from Goldman Sachs.

[Joe Ritchie, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

Thanks. Good morning, guys.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Hey, Joe.

[Joe Ritchie, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

Hey, Rich, I just wanna make sure I understand your seasonality comments as it relates to the first quarter, 'cause if I go back to, like, prior seasonality, you could see, you know, the first quarter being kind of like a high teens % of the full year to kinda mid-20s. I mean, if I use the midpoint, it kinda puts me around the $2 range, if I'm doing the math right, for the first quarter. I just wanna make sure that I'm level setting correctly.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Joe, I don't have Excel open here in front of me. I'd like to help you. I just... Look, I, you know... At the end of the day, this is just a general statement about the feedback that we're getting from the marketplace, right? Everybody's concerned about recession, and so there's a bias towards being very careful with inventory, us included. We just think that the takeoff is, back to the question that Steve asked before, is that the backlog's there, but the take rate on that backlog should start out slowly, right? Until everybody gets in place, we can... A lot of what we deliver goes right to the project site in a lot of cases, at least the businesses that aren't tethered to distribution. I...

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

You know, I'm not calling for a collapse in Q1 by any stretch of the margin, but we don't want to... The only reason that we're calling it out is we're coming out of periods where we had very strong Q1s, and the seasonality versus the past got a little bit out of whack. We're just telling you to just be careful with Q1. The full year is the full year, and we're confident in that. I think we just, we have to recognize that there's an amount of caution in the marketplace, and everybody's gonna be very careful about how much inventory they lay in until they can see what's going on with kind of the macro, per se.

[Joe Ritchie, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

Got it. No, no. That makes sense. I guess maybe my quick follow-on, I think last quarter you guys had called out, I think, like a roughly $0.23 benefit in DCEF from your cost actions, and you're continuing to highlight, you know, kind of margin improvement this year. Can you maybe? Firstly, you know, are you still on track for that $0.23? Secondly, you know, across the rest of the portfolio, where are you seeing opportunities for margin expansion in 2023?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

I think all of the 23 was not in Clean Energy. I think 19 of the 23, if I remember correctly, more or less is in there. Yeah.

[Brad Cerepak, SVP and CFO at Dover Corporation]

Some of that was in the fourth quarter too.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Yeah. Some of that was in the fourth quarter also because we actually took the cost actions in Q3. Everything is on track. What you do is you get a bad comp in that business because it was still delivering pretty heavily in Q1, but we expect that to be offset by Clean Energy components and below ground and car wash, which are margin accretive. You get basically over the year a positive inflection of mix on the portfolio. I think you just have to be a little bit careful in Q1 just because the above-ground's a bad comp.

[Joe Ritchie, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

Got it. Makes sense. Thanks, guys.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Andy Kaplowitz from Citigroup.

[Andy Kaplowitz, Senior Analyst and Managing Director at Citigroup]

Rich, could you give us a little more color regarding your expectations for DPPS in 23? What's your conviction level in terms of biopharma connectors destock ending in Q1? I know you mentioned book is inflected, you know, sequentially. just in terms of margin, I know you're forecasting flattish for the year in this segment. You know, given where Q4 22 left off, it's not that easy to get there. Maybe you could elaborate on your cost controls and productivity actions in that segment that gets you back to those 22 levels.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Well, we did take cost out as volume came out of the sector for sure, and we did that progressively through the year, and I think we took a further action in the end of Q3, Q4, more or less. Look, orders are beginning to inflect. We are paying a lot of attention to the commentary of our customers out there who are basically saying, you know, it's an H1 event, and then they expect to have all the inventory cleared. I will tell you that we have not been overly ambitious in our estimates for the full year. I think if we're going to, you know...

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

I think that we may have a little bit more difficult H1, but I think that we've got a better than even chance to have a better than expected performance in the second half of the year. You know, what we'd like to see is, you know, the order rates come up and us start expanding capacity to deal with it, which I think we can turn around and do it. Yeah, the flat margins year-over-year, we're gonna have to be really careful with our cost controls, and we're gonna have to deliver, polymers and plastics and precision components are gonna have to deliver on the volume that we expect to get out of those two businesses. It's not like we're being overly ambitious in volume and biopharma for the year.

[Andy Kaplowitz, Senior Analyst and Managing Director at Citigroup]

Great. Rich, I know you wanna tell us all about your investor day, you know, in March, but maybe, you know, in terms of you've talked about portfolio management a little more frequently lately, so maybe update us on that. Obviously you talked at the beginning of your prepared comments around SKU management. We know you've been really focused on cost. In terms of longer term margin targets, anything to sort of talk about there or preview there? You know, I assume margins can rise pretty significantly from where, you know, they end in 2022.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Well, I mean, that's gonna be part of it, Andy, at the end of the day, let's not get the cart before the horse. We're gonna basically do what we did back in 2019 and try to give you a, you know, a 3-year forward roll by segment and what we think the contributing factors to it. I mean, a lot of it is gonna be ongoing productivity, I think what's underestimated is that the organic revenue potential is underestimated. I think we've done a lot of work in terms of mix here. The mix of products that we have today versus what we started with in 2020 is, I think, a lot different than it was back then. It's not some ambitious, we're gonna grow completely out of the order.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

I think we'll grow higher than basically the market expects us because we generally get bottom quartile expected growth rates in revenue, but I think mix is gonna be the most important aspect of it.

[Andy Kaplowitz, Senior Analyst and Managing Director at Citigroup]

Do you expect to give a specific target around organic growth, or is it like GDP plus?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

I don't know yet.

[Andy Kaplowitz, Senior Analyst and Managing Director at Citigroup]

Fair enough. Thanks, Rich.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Scott Davis from Melius Research.

[Scott Davis, Chairman and CEO at Melius Research]

Hey, good morning, guys.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Scott.

[Brad Cerepak, SVP and CFO at Dover Corporation]

Scott.

[Scott Davis, Chairman and CEO at Melius Research]

The, you know, I probably asked this a couple quarters ago, but the M&A markets, Rich, have they come down to kind of more realistic levels for you guys and expect to be a little bit more active in 2023?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Well, I guess taking on any leverage to do a deal has not been well received by anybody. I guess we'd have to be careful with a larger deal presently. For whatever reason, the capital markets are not looking kindly on leverage for, I guess, for the reasons we can understand about unsurety of the macro going forward. Yeah, I think that what we've seen so far is that realistic multiples are now reflective of what's gone on in the capital markets. You always have. Most of our deals are private, as you know. Private companies, there's always a lag between the public capital markets and the private valuation. I think that has narrowed towards the public capital markets.

[Scott Davis, Chairman and CEO at Melius Research]

Okay. guys, I don't, I don't like to traffic in minutiae, is there such a thing as a can making cycle? I mean, it seems like we've had pretty high demand here for several years in a row. What's in the other side of it? Is there a big investment cycle now and then it just kind of air pockets after that? is there some new dynamic involved in that, in that world?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Yeah. I'm not allowed to say that the AP, right?

[Scott Davis, Chairman and CEO at Melius Research]

Mm-hmm.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

The CTAs love to pick up on that, on that step. Yeah, look, I mean, it is a cyclical business, and there are investment cycles and part and parcel is to know not over-capacitize yourself as the cycle goes up, and the recapture on the spare parts, which are margin accretive on the way down. That's the way that we look at the business. Now, having said that, it will be interesting to see what happens with PET in, in drinks going forward. There's, you know, I know that there's been a little bit of a pushback on ESG lately. The fact of the matter is that PET from an environmental point of view is not a preferred option.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

To the extent that the cost plus the ESG aspect of PET over time make aluminum more attractive, then we could that is the by far the largest portion of the market. Even if a recapture rate of 15% of that PET market would drive another cycle. That's kind of where we are right now.

[Scott Davis, Chairman and CEO at Melius Research]

All right. Helpful. Good luck, guys, in 2023. Thanks. See you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Josh Pokrzywinski from Morgan Stanley.

[Josh Pokrzywinski, Executive Director at Morgan Stanley]

Hey, good morning, guys.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Good morning.

[Josh Pokrzywinski, Executive Director at Morgan Stanley]

Rich, you've been, you know, sort of telegraphing what's happened with, you know, orders and backlog and kind of, you know, watching the Fed movements for a while now and, you know, been more concerned about them overdoing it. Does your view of, you know, kind of downturn management look different because of some of the scarcity that we've had the last 2 years in terms of hiring folks, you know, looking for new suppliers, you know, maybe honoring existing agreements? Does any of that look different if the, you know, with the recovery on the other side, you know, we kind of have more of the same scarcity that we've had in the past?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

I wouldn't expect to run into the logistics constraints that we've seen. I think that was a one-off. I mean, you had just such a collapse of the macro and then a restart, and then you had a lot of, you know, the energy markets went haywire, which drove the logistics markets haywire. I don't expect that to happen. I mean, I think that capacity was brought on, and if you look at logistics costs and the forward curves there, I don't expect that to repeat under any reasonable macro scenario from here. I, you know, I think there is a lot of liquidity that is being taken from the general market. I think that lending is very low right now.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

It's very difficult to get loans and secure liquidity to run businesses out there. I'm not making a Dover comment. I'm talking in total. I'm concerned about that. If that's the case, and there's the only way that if you're a private company, the only way you can generate liquidity in order to continue to fund yourself is to draw down inventory balances to extremely low levels, and that's negative to orders and revenue going forward. That's our overall concern of I don't see the point of wringing out another 50 basis points only to turn around and give the 50 basis points back in the Q4. Why bother? Why can't we just sit where we're standing right here? You know, liquidity in the market is incredibly tight right now.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

That's the fear at the end of the day, is that you have a delayed CapEx cycle, which, you know, we ascribe to the fact that there is a CapEx need out there because of productivity to offset higher labor costs, and then you've got all the stimulus money out there. The fact of the matter is there's no liquidity to accompany that. I think that you have a delay effect that could be problematic.

[Josh Pokrzywinski, Executive Director at Morgan Stanley]

Got it. That's helpful. Then just thinking about the 4Q orders, any sense from you guys as lead times have improved that this was sort of the quarter where customers, you know, kind of squeezed the accordion on, "Hey, we don't need things, you know, 16 weeks earlier than normal anymore. Let's get back to maybe more normal ordering pace." Like, is there an artificial low that you go through on orders as lead times normalize, or is that something that's kind of barely perceptible over the medium term?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

No. That's exactly what we think, and we think it's gonna continue through Q1. From there, we expect based on our view of the demand cycle, that it will inflect positively from there. I think you're gonna get another quarter of exactly how you described it, right? I know I can get the product. I have enough inventory to carry me through the quarter. I'm gonna take the chance of depleting it because I know you can deliver into Q2.

[Josh Pokrzywinski, Executive Director at Morgan Stanley]

Very helpful. Thanks. Best of luck, guys.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Guy Hardwick from Credit Suisse.

[Guy Hardwick, Equity Research Analyst and VP at Credit Suisse]

Hi. Hi. Good morning.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Hi. Good morning.

[Guy Hardwick, Equity Research Analyst and VP at Credit Suisse]

Rich, I think on the last call, you talked about a fundamental change to the business model in DCEF. Are you ready to talk a bit more about that today?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Well, I, you know, I would, I would leave that to the investor day, right? I mean, I think that my comment was, is that we went through this period of EMV, and then we went through this period of the overhype EV taking over the world, and we were basically saying that we believe that we can position this business to harvest profits for 20 years. I think that we've made the moves in Q3 of this year to begin to position ourselves appropriately there, right? There was no sense of doing it in advance of a rising revenue curve. You know, now that it flattens out, we've got to run the business differently on one hand.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

On the other hand, we've been a pretty active acquirer, in that particular segment as we transition to Clean Energy exposure, particularly in the hydrogen space. We're doing it. If you're looking for, you know, what does that mean going forward from here in a holistic way, why don't we wait until March and we'll surely talk about it.

[Guy Hardwick, Equity Research Analyst and VP at Credit Suisse]

Just to follow up, could you clarify that backlog math? Where do you think you could be at the end of the year?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Yeah, you know what? why don't we take this offline because everybody's got a different calculation of if, you know, if it's, I think that there was 20% of the annual revenue should be in backlog in a normal time. You've got what our forecast is for revenue for this year. It's a relatively easy calculation.

[Guy Hardwick, Equity Research Analyst and VP at Credit Suisse]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Nigel Coe from Wolfe Research.

[Nigel Coe, Managing Director at Wolfe Research]

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Rich, we've cut a lot of ground here, but just going back to the caution. You seem to talk about inventory and, you know, inventory management more so than projects. I'm just wondering, you know, if you have to generalize, would you say the caution is more on CapEx, or is it more the channel partners, you know, managing inventory levels very, very tightly? Would you say it's U.S. versus Europe? You know, would you say both are in the same camp, or would you say the U.S. is right now where you're seeing the most caution?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

I think it's a U.S.-centric comment. I mean, if you look at our growth rate in Europe, I don't think anybody would have modeled that considering kind of the overall caution about Europe in total. Frankly, a lot of what we do out of our production base in Europe gets, you know, we recognize the revenue in Europe, but it may end up around the world at the end of the day. I think it's more our exposure is larger in North America, so it's largely a North American comment. I think that Europe, any kind of, let's call it destocking, would have happened during this past year because they were in the front end of the curve.

[Nigel Coe, Managing Director at Wolfe Research]

Right. Okay. That's helpful. Then just, you know, you mentioned, you know, free cash flow more loaded to the first half of the year, which is obviously very unusual. You mentioned that the bulk of your excess inventory is raw material. That doesn't seem to have an impact on your fixed cost absorption. I'm wondering, as you go through the inventory management, are you expecting there to be some margin penalty as you work on inventories?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

No, actually, I think that in our models, it's a margin credit as we liquidate it. If you look at forwards based on when we bought that inventory sequentially through 2022, it's actually, and you can see it in our margins, in some of the sectors, that's part and parcel to this price cost. At the end of the day, if I go back and look over the last couple of years, we made a significant investment in inventory, and that allowed us to deliver revenue growth that was above expectation. Now lead times and availability and capacity has repaired itself, so we get, you know, almost a triple effect of we liquidate kind of the excess raw materials that we've been carrying to meet demand. We slowed down production in Q4, our payables balance dropped significantly.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

From a net working capital point of view, we got the negative of shipping heavily in Q4, so there's a big receivable balance that gets liquidated. We build probably in the latter half of Q1, but more in Q2. Our payables expand, and then we collect on that receivables balance. All three come in in the first half.

[Nigel Coe, Managing Director at Wolfe Research]

Mm-hmm. Makes sense. Thanks, Rich.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Our last question comes from Julian Mitchell from Barclays.

[Julian Mitchell, Equity Research Analyst, US Industrials at Barclays]

Hi, good morning, and thanks for squeezing me in. Maybe Rich, you'd mentioned mix once or twice as a factor, and we can obviously see that impact in DPPS as well documented. I just wanted to circle back to the DII segment. You know, there was a mix tailwind, I think, in fourth quarter, possible headwind in the year ahead guided, and that's weighing on the margins there. Maybe expand a little bit on that? DEP had an exceptional margin expansion, albeit off an easy base. Is there anything much moving around on mix in DEP?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

In DEP, no. I think rightly, I would look at DEP sequentially as opposed to comp, right? We all know what happened in Q4 of 2022, that's why we had been saying all year that, you know, not to worry because as price cost rolls forward, you're gonna get what you get. I would look at DEP on a sequential basis as a precursor of what you can expect into 2023. On the other question you had was on marking and coding, right?

[Julian Mitchell, Equity Research Analyst, US Industrials at Barclays]

Yes.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

That is just a function of the amount of consumables you shipped in any given period. Meaning the more that you ship in printers, that is, that is negative to margins, the more that you ship in consumables, it's positive. It's gonna bounce around. I think that our comment that we made on that particular business set is that the margins are quite robust, and it's all about what kind of revenue growth we can get from here. We're not calling it down for 2023.

[Julian Mitchell, Equity Research Analyst, US Industrials at Barclays]

That's helpful. Thank you. Just a follow-up on kind of firm-wide Dover operating margins. I think the operating margin overall was flattish in 2022. It's guided maybe to grow a little bit in 2023. I just wondered, with that backdrop, is there the appetite maybe to accelerate restructuring spend? I saw in your guide you've got kind of $0.10, I think, for 2023, after $0.20 last year. I wondered, just sort of thinking ahead, is there maybe the appetite to drive, make sure that 2024, let's say, has stronger margin expansion, and that might require more restructuring this year?

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

Well, Julian, I mean, I think to the extent that we have flat margins, despite the fact that our biopharma business, which is clearly our most profitable portion of the portfolio, being down, one could argue that once we get through this destocking period, which we expect to be an H1 2023 event, as that inflects back to the positive that the incremental margins that we're gonna see there, and all things being equal, we hold and continuing to improve the balance of the portfolio, that by itself is margin accretion. I think I would call your attention to what we've done in Climate & Sustainability Technologies. We think that that's got room to run. We think that we've got, you know, with DPPS, we've just talked about.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

I think we've got some growth there, and we've got the return of biopharma in the second half of the year, which I'll repeat myself. I don't think we've been overly ambitious with that. We think we're gonna keep that in our back pocket and see how the market develops. The roll forward on the Engineered Products, if we look at what our exit rate is, and we roll that forward, I think that's quite healthy from a margin point of view. Back to the restructuring. Look, we're always scouring our fixed costs around here. Our management is incentivized to deliver fixed cost reduction and incremental margins, so I would expect we'll continue to do so, but I don't see any need to accelerate it to protect margin performance going forward.

[Julian Mitchell, Equity Research Analyst, US Industrials at Barclays]

Great. Thank you.

[Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO at Dover Corporation]

You're welcome.

[Operator]

Thank you. That concludes our question and answer period in Dover's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. You may now disconnect your line at this time. Have a wonderful day.

Participants

Executives

• Brad Cerepak, SVP and CFO
• Jack Dickens, Senior Director of Investor Relations
• Richard J. Tobin, President and CEO

Analysts

• Andy Kaplowitz, Senior Analyst and Managing Director at Citigroup
• David Ridley-Lane, Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America
• Guy Hardwick, Equity Research Analyst and VP at Credit Suisse
• Jeffrey Sprague, Founder and Managing Partner at Vertical Research
• Joe Ritchie, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs
• Josh Pokrzywinski, Executive Director at Morgan Stanley
• Julian Mitchell, Equity Research Analyst, US Industrials at Barclays
• Nigel Coe, Managing Director at Wolfe Research
• Scott Davis, Chairman and CEO at Melius Research
• Stephen Tusa, Managing Director at JPMorgan