Paul Lundstrom
Analyst · Citigroup. Please ask your question
Yes, happy to. So, I am glad you asked the question, Jim, because it’s helpful to maybe demystify this a little bit for investors. If you look at the model, the contracting model in this industry, like you said, it is largely cost plus, when you have episodes of higher than usual inflation, or micro shocks to the system. A good example would be big shutdown in Malaysia in July of last year, June of last year, was basically shut the country down for a month, similar to what we are seeing here in Shanghai. There is various mechanisms in our contracts today, and contracts in the future, to protect us from those headwinds, hard pegged costs. So, very specific component inflation costs, specific expediting fees, those are fairly easy to contract to just pass right through. It’s we unfortunately don’t have the benefit of 15% Op margins to absorb all that, we just can’t. So that’s the nature of the industry, those costs, again, that you can hard peg get passed back to the customers, and that protects the overall margin dollars for companies, companies like Flex. The softer costs, things that you had mentioned, COVID, the stops and starts, inefficiency from under-absorption, that’s a little bit more difficult to hard peg, we work on ways to mitigate that. And it’s I think sit with the most part, we have got really good relationships with our customers and we find ways to work things out. But that’s kind of how it works. For the most part, those incremental costs do get passed through directly as often as we can, so largely protected. You bring up another interesting point when it comes to inventory. Look, is the just in-time model broken. Is there going to be more inventory in the system going forward, particularly as we continue to see trends with things like regionalization, I don’t know. But that’s a – it’s a very interesting question, because we are seeing it today, with the support that we are getting from our customers in the form of working capital advances. I think I had mentioned to Matt, that we have got significant year-on-year growth in working capital advances. It’s almost – it’s up almost 3x. That’s an operating model difference. I think our customers in the past haven’t been asked to help share the burden of that inventory growth, because I don’t think we have been in a situation like this in a very, very long time. That’s a potential shift in the operating model. And what I would say is, we are – this is to lean a margin business to bear all of that inventory cost ourselves. If something does happen structurally, we will need customer support, continued customer support on that. And I would say that’s no different than anyone else in the industry. But very good question.