Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
Chart Industries, Inc. (NYSE:GTLS) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 28, 2024
Chart Industries, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good morning and welcome to Chart Industries, Inc. 2023 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. The company’s release and supplemental presentation were issued earlier this morning. If you have not received the release, you may access it by visiting Chart’s website at www.chartindustries.com. A telephone replay of today’s broadcast will be available approximately two hours following the conclusion of the call until Friday, March 29, 2024. The replay information is contained in the company’s press release. Before we begin, the company would like to remind you that statements made during this call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements.
Please refer to the information regarding forward-looking statements and risk factors included in the company’s earnings release and latest filings with the SEC. The company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Jill Evanko, Chart Industries’ CEO. Please go ahead.
Jill Evanko: Thank you, Julie, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining Joe Brinkman, our CFO and me to walk through our record fourth quarter and full year 2023 results. Our results shown are from continuing operations. I refer you to our earnings release for reported results. For purposes of our discussion this morning, when referring to the fourth quarter 2022, full year 2022, or any quarter of 2023 comparative period, all metrics are pro forma for continuing operations of the combined business of Chart and Howden. This includes Howden, excludes Roots and excludes November and December of 2022 of the divested American Fan, Cofimco and Cryo Diffusion businesses. Information on divestitures completed in 2023 can be found on Slide 4.
Starting on Slide 6, as a reminder, we closed on the acquisition of Howden on March 17, 2023. We have exceeded both our original year one commercial and cost synergy targets ahead of the one-year mark. Commercial synergy awards to date of approximately $530 million also exceeded our year three commercial synergy target. We have achieved over $181 million of cost synergies to date. The Howden acquisition has also contributed many other benefits, including less reliance on big LNG projects, more aftermarket service and repair, less cyclicality, broader geographic diversity, and less customer concentration. In 2023, our top 10 customers made up about 25% of our sales, whereas in 2021 and 2022, they comprised 39% and 38% on a chart standalone basis.
In the Q4 2023, we had record orders, backlog, sales, gross profit, gross profit margin, operating income, operating income margin, EBITDA, EBITDA margin, adjusted EPS and reported an adjusted free cash flow. Our highest reported gross margin quarter ever in the fourth quarter of 32.9% contributed to our reported Q4 operating margin of 21% and EBITDA margin of 21.7%. When adjusting for primarily Howden related integration and deal associated costs, adjusted EBITDA margin was 24.2%. Sales of $1.02 billion was a record quarter as well, the only quarter to date that we have exceeded $1 billion, and in a few minutes, Joe will talk about other throughput activities that we have underway to further drive this ahead. Q4 sales were up sequentially 13% and 12.5% compared to Q4 2022.
While we surpassed the $1 billion mark and set numerous profitability records as I just described, we had anticipated higher revenues related to revenue recognition timing in the quarter. Our year end net leverage ratio of 3.35 was supported by an increase in cash on hand and debt pay down totalling approximately $291 million in Q4. As part of our Howden integration, we executed a plan to align our legal entity structure with our integrated operations. This resulted in a positive impact on our effective tax rate and sets us up for future back-office synergies, efficient and flexible cash management and an anticipated future steadier sustainable tax rate. Our fourth quarter of 2023 results compared to pro forma Q4 of 2022 and sequentially to the third quarter of 2023 can be seen on Slide 7.
The far righthand column shows the changes in each metric year-over-year. Orders are up over 28%, reported gross margin increased 540 basis points, adjusted EBITDA increased by 64% and adjusted EBITDA margin by 760 bps. Q4 2023 adjusted earnings per diluted share were $2.25. Fourth quarter free cash flow was $110 million and adjusted was $120 million. Joe will speak to the details in a moment. The middle column on Slide 7 shows that every metric increased sequentially in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter of 2023, even when considering that the third quarter included an entire quarter of Cofimco, American Fans and Cryo Diffusion results, whereas the fourth quarter only included one month of these as they were divested the last week of October 2023.
Q4 also contributed to a record full year, as you can see on Slide 8. Including the Howden stub period, pro forma full year 2023 sales were $3.66 billion. Strong operational margins throughout the year, including all of our Howden ownership quarters being above 30% reported gross margin contributed to full year 2023 gross margin as 31%. As we look to 2024 and we'll have a section on this coming up here, in summary, we anticipate that each of our segments and each of our regions, which are Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa, APAC, India and China will each grow sales compared to 2023. Our fourth quarter was our highest ever order quarter in our pro forma history with over $1.2 billion of awards received. Slide 9 shows pro forma orders and backlog trends.
The fourth quarter was the highest order quarter of the year for both Cryo tank solutions and heat transfer systems. Repair service and leasing orders were over $328 million marking our three full quarters of Howden ownership having RSL orders each above $315 million. This reflects the growing adoption of our aftermarket programs to both Howden and Chart legacy installed bases and the increasing pull through of our original equipment customers to aftermarket. In 2023, RSL orders for the full year were up 25% and our long-term service agreements and framework agreements increased more than 4% year-over-year. Just a few comments about the diversity of our 2023 year-end backlog. Space exploration, carbon capture, hydrogen and helium, brazed aluminium heat exchangers, and HTS systems all have record backlog as of the end of the year.
Combined, these end markets account for approximately half of our total backlog. RSL is just under 14% of total backlog and CTS just under 9%. The remaining approximately 27% comprised of the rest of specialty products as well as HTS air coolers and VRV heat exchangers. We have seen a surge in demand for Howden screw compressors driven by food and beverage refrigeration, emissions reduction via flare gas recovery and expansion of methane compression. The year end 2023 backlog for this particular product is two times prior year, contributing to our higher than historically typical backlog coverage for the year. As we have shared, we have a significantly below 1% cancellation rate of backlog. There's a theme that we're seeing across many of our markets of increasing project size and engineering content.
A few comments by end markets of what we're seeing to start 2024, starting with industrial gas. In EMEA, our pipeline is strong, we had an excellent January of orders and project sizes are increasing. For industrial gas in the U.S. and the rest of the world, the commercial pipeline remains strong, inclusive of hydrogen opportunities. While we expect a “strong quarter” for CTS orders compared to other first quarters in prior years, Q1 is typically and still expected for this end market to be our lowest quarter of the year. In energy markets, we are seeing moderating North American demand, which is offset by increasing international inbound since the beginning of the year. The global market for LNG continues unabated. As the United States pauses, the rest of the world accelerates.
This is evident in our commercial pipelines for Big LNG and small scale and floating LNG, which can be seen in the appendix on Slide 28. As of now, we have 30 potential Big LNG projects in our pipeline, including 15 international opportunities for potential IPSMR usage. Both of these metrics increased from Q3 year end 2023. Similarly, since the beginning of this year of 2024, small and floating potential projects in our commercial pipeline increased about 4.5%, mainly driven by additional international opportunities. In the case of Qatar, we do have potential opportunities to participate, including with cryogenic equipment, compression, debottlenecking and process technologies. Our near-term prospects, we believe are on heat rejection optimization on existing facilities and potential pretreatment heat exchangers for expansion plants.
Specialty products demand is consistently strong and we're also seeing increasing potential project sizes as a theme in many of these end markets as well. Marine has an increasing commercial pipeline, in part due to our upcoming jumbo tank capacity at Teddy 2 as well as multiple Howden air lubrication opportunities. SpaceX market remains robust. HLNG over the road vehicle tank activity is increasing, albeit not at prior levels, but certainly, outlook is better than the past two years' actual activity. As of yesterday, Q1 2024 quarter to date, we've booked orders for HLNG vehicle tanks that equate to more than 50% of last year's full year HLNG vehicle tank sales. Mining and metals markets remain very strong, driven by global demand for electrification and a push to reduce carbon footprints using DRI processes, hydrogen and metals and other solutions such as our VentSim offering.
Our mining and metals pipeline of opportunities identified has increased approximately 10% pro forma year-over-year. CCUS activity is also increasing with our small-scale Earthly Labs offering going international and again, in this end market, project sizes for potential Chart content are getting larger. Hydrogen pipeline remains active. We're paying close attention to U.S. Timing specifically related to hydrogen hubs and IRA clarifications. Internationally, there's also increasing traction, including the recent European Commission approval of €6.9 billion in state aid for development of the hydrogen value chain. We are excited to announce that last week, we were awarded a significant hydrogen compression solution within the renewable hydrogen industry.
Using Howden's reciprocating compression technology, this is the largest single compressor award in dollars in Howden's 167-year history. It's also a synergy win as the solution includes Chart legacy pressure vessel equipment and finally, as we like to see, it brings with it the future opportunity for installation and post installation monitoring. Aftermarket service and repair is off to a consistent start quarter-to-date with multiple customers across end markets, in particular in Europe. In the Americas, we entered 2024 with RSL backlog a bit better than normal and quoting activity remains strong. You can see our increasing operational margin metrics, including the sequential increase in reported gross profit margin on the left-hand side of Slide 10.
The same up into the right trend applies for EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin on the right-hand side, reflective of our full solution mix, aftermarket service and repair over 30% of our business, productivity actions, cost synergies and additional volume throughput. Moving to Slide 11, this shows sequential segment reported results for sales, gross and operating margins for Q3 and Q4 of 2023. CTS, HTS and RSL segments all had record sales in the fourth quarter. CTS and RSL sales were up over 29% and 25% sequentially compared to Q3. Specialty sales did decline sequentially, which was driven by the marine end market, had a full quarter of American Fans in Q3 and not in Q4 due to divestiture, as well as from revenue timing for hydrogen metals and space exploration.
We expect all of these to be strong contributors to 2024 sales as we had full year record orders in hydrogen, metals and space. Each segment did have its highest reported gross margin quarter of the year in the Q4 2023. And finally, we're focused on cost control with the strength in gross margin dropping through to operating margin results in each segment.
Joe Brinkman: Slide 12 shows our cash generated from operations in the Q4 2023 of $130 million netted with $20 million of CapEx, our adjusted Q4 free cash flow is 12% of sales. Our priority has been and continues to be debt pay down and leverage reduction. Our net leverage ratio went from 4.08 in Q1 of 2023 to 3.35 as we exited the year, a meaningful step towards our anticipated and reiterated mid 2024target of 2.5 to 2. 9 and overall target net leverage ratio range of 2 to 2.5. There were specific outflows of cash in the Q4 2023 that we did not adjust shown on the right-hand side of slide 13. We ended the year with $814 million of liquidity in addition to paying down over $150 million of our Term Loan B in the year. Our weighted average interest rate of 7.8% was down approximately 25 basis points from the end of Q3.
In addition to operational cash focus from our entire organization on our cash culture, we continue to work additional cash generation activities, whether evaluating potential minority investment exits, sale of underutilized real estate and cash repatriation. We reiterate our financial policy and commitment to debt pay down as shown on the bottom right-hand side of Slide 13. Slide 15 shows our main material cost input trends. They remain stable and in some cases are trending down. Looking at the lower right hand freight chart, the trend has been up the past few months, yet we have seen pricing levelling in recent weeks and in many of our customer agreements, we passed the freight costs through to them. We are carefully monitoring the Red Sea situation.
As of now, we have not seen any major impacts material availability into the plants. We are experiencing approximately 2-to-3-week delay on certain routes. We have three main categories of pricing project pricing, price lists for component sales and price mechanisms and long-term agreements. Over the past three years, we have incorporated price increases to adapt to the increasing cost environment and we have held this pricing. The continuous part of our business is ongoing new certifications, customer site approvals, productivity, automation and what we call Chart Business Excellence or CBE. This year is no different and includes our Lean Six Sigma training program for our internal team members as well as approximately $115 million to $125 million of capital spend expected in 2024.
The CapEx spend includes capacity expansions as shown on the top of Slide 16. We actively manage our cost structure and see further synergies ahead this year inclusive of in sourcing and localization for compressor and Fan products. Over the next few slides starting on Slide 18, we will walk through the elements of our 2024 outlook range. We anticipate our full 2024 sales to be in the range of $4.7 billion to $5 billion dollars with forecasted full year 2024 adjusted EBITDA in the range of $1.175 billion to $1.3 billion. Free cash flow guidance of $575 million to $625 million is defined as operating cash flow less capital expenditures.
Jill Evanko: Slide 19 shows the sales bridge from 2023 to 2024. The main drivers of the anticipated increase are incremental Big LNG, Teddy 2 backlog converting to sales, stronger than typical backlog coverage as we entered the year and commercial synergies flowing through our shops. Book and ship represents approximately 40% of our 2024 outlook, lower than normal due to the strong backlog coverage, which brings us to our three main potential drivers to the higher end of our range. Higher book and ship activity throughout the year, large project awards in the first half that begin to generate revenue in the second half and more achievement of additional backlog conversion. The adjusted EBITDA bridge is shown on Slide 20. The elements of our EPS outlook for 2024 of $12 to $14 per diluted share are shown on Slide 27 of the appendix.
We anticipate our tax rate to be approximately 20% and a diluted share count of 47 million to 48 million. Slide 21 is intended to give you our perspective toward each of our segments end market activity. The transfer system had strong order years in both 2022 and 2023 in the base business as well as with Big LNG activity. We had approximately $385 million of Big LNG related awards in 2023, contributing to year-end HTS record backlog. The U.S. Biden Administration Department of Energy moratorium on LNG export approvals announced in January of 2024 has begged numerous questions. Let me reiterate a few things. We are molecule agnostic and our technology and equipment service multiple end markets, including traditional energy, LNG, hydrogen and other new energies.
Earlier in the presentation, we discussed international macro activity in global energy, so I won't reiterate that here. Although I will remind you about our IPSMR process and associated equipment being chosen for a large IOC's international LNG project. This award is not yet in our backlog and we anticipate the booking to be later this year or in the first part of 2025. IPSMR international margins are extremely similar to North American IPSMR margins as a clarifying point. Cryo Tank Solutions not only has Teddy 1 and 2 additional capacity coming online in the near term, CTS also ended 2023 with the highest order in sales quarter of the year. Engineering projects and service opportunities with our main CTS customers have been picking up since the beginning of the year and some of our industrial gas customers have shared with us that they are looking at their 2024 standard equipment forecast more optimistically than they were last summer.
Specialty Products end markets have momentum from macro tailwinds as well as chart specific activities. Examples of this include recent growing interest in deploying hydrogen at much larger scale than we have seen in the past few years. We are now speaking with Japanese, Middle East and European companies looking to build larger production facilities than ever discussed before for hydrogen, inclusive of potentially 300 ton per day liquefaction. Specific to us, we have received multiple certifications for our products in specialty applications, giving us first mover and only approved supplier advantages in some cases, such as with our liquid hydrogen trailer certification in South Korea. Additionally, via our Howden integration, we are taking existing products into new geographies, including just recently executing our first MOU for Earthly Labs small scale carbon capture with UK based CO2 hub.
We're also taking our existing products into new applications, including a recent win where we re-engineered an industrial refrigeration compressor for a vapor recovery application to reduce emissions associated with upstream, onshore oil and gas. And we shared information earlier about aftermarket. We've already discussed what's shown on Slide 22 throughout our remarks today and we've worked to have balanced these considerations in our 2024 outlook. A few considerations for our first quarter of 2024 are on slide 23, given that it is the first quarter of the combined business. Similar to prior years in both the Chart and Howden businesses, as we move from the last quarter to year to first quarter, we anticipate our general trend of seasonality.
This expectation is furthered by the timing capacity productivity that Joe talked about earlier. We have our semi-annual interest payments for our long-term debt in the first and third quarter of 2024 and this is estimated to be approximately $73 million in the first quarter. Q1 has other specific cash uses including CapEx related to the completion of Teddy 2, timing of bonus and tax payments as well as our annual insurance premium payment. We're reiterating our medium-term financial targets on Slide 24. As a reminder, our outlook in the medium term does not include any additional Big LNG projects that were not included in our September 30, 2023 backlog nor awards related to the U.S. DOE's $7 billion hydrogen hub investment that lies ahead.
To conclude on Slide 25, we spent less time today than in the past on new customers, first of a kind and other chart differentiators. Yet these metrics are as strong as ever, including booking orders with 322 new customers in 2023, receiving 54 patents, logging 106 new first of the kinds and booking orders with over 67% of our partners that we executed MOUs with in 2022 and 2023. We continue to partner via new MOUs and one such in Q4 was with Coca-Cola to improve their ESG goals by evaluating our carbon capture technology at their bottling facilities. We have exceeded our own greenhouse gas emission reduction target this past year and have received numerous new certifications for our products and facilities. None of this would have been accomplished without the mighty focused and positive efforts of our OneChart Global team members.
So thank you to each of you. And now Julie, please open it up for Q&A.
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