Good morning. My name is Brianna, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Tennant Company's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded. There will be time for Q&A at the end of the call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you for participating in Tennant Company's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. Beginning today's meeting is Mr. Lorenzo Bassi, Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations for Tennant Company. Mr. Bassi, you may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Tennant Company's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. I'm Lorenzo Bassi, Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations. Joining me on the call today are Dave Huml, Tennant's President and CEO; and Fay West, Senior Vice President and CFO. Today, we will review our fourth quarter and full year performance, as well as our initial guidance for 2024. Dave will provide you an update on our operations and enterprise strategy, and Fay will cover our financials. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions. An earnings press release and slide presentation that accompanies this conference call are available on our Investor Relations website. Before we begin, please be advised that our remarks this morning and our answers to questions may contain forward-looking statements regarding the company's expectations of future performance. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and our actual results may differ materially from those contained in the statements. These risks and uncertainties are described in today's news release and the documents we filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We encourage you to review those documents, particularly our Safe Harbor statement, for a description of the risks and uncertainties that may affect our results. Additionally, on this conference call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures that include or exclude certain items. Our 2023 fourth quarter and full year earnings release and presentations include the comparable GAAP measure and a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to our GAAP results. I'll now turn the call over to Dave.

Thank you, Lorenzo, and hello, everyone. On the call today, I will be discussing highlights from the fourth quarter and full year 2023, our outlook for 2024, and our new enterprise strategy and long-term growth targets. I am pleased to report our fourth quarter performance, underpinned by strong revenue growth and margin expansion. Our team's dedication in navigating supply chain challenges and executing on our enterprise strategy drove the momentum we carried through the year, which resulted in record highs in net sales, adjusted EBITDA and EBITDA margin. For the full year, net sales reached $1.243 billion, while our adjusted EBITDA rose to $192.9 million, resulting in an EBITDA margin of 15.5%. We saw year-over-year organic growth across all geographic business units and product categories led by equipment sales in North America. Our full year organic growth rate of nearly 14% was fueled by a combination of approximately 9% price growth and a 5% increase in volume. Order rates remained resilient and we meaningfully reduced backlog throughout 2023. Additionally, we converted 150% of net income to free cash flow during the year as we continued to make improvements in working capital. This enabled us to focus on making strategic investments for future growth and return capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. Turning to Slide 4, as we close a strong year, I'd like to point out several key accomplishments the team made in 2023. First, our teams across the company made incredible efforts and collaborated to stabilize our supply chain, maintain backlogged orders and translate strategic investments made during the recovery into profitable net sales. This dedication has not only generated sales, but also improved customer satisfaction and kept new orders flowing in. Second, we introduced our new sustainability framework, Thriving People, Healthy Planet, featuring ambitious goals validated…

Thank you, Dave, and good morning,, everyone. In the fourth quarter of 2023, Tennant delivered GAAP net income of $31 million, an increase of 30.3% over the prior year period. Adjusted net income in the fourth quarter of 2023 was $36.2 million compared to $27.2 million in the prior year period. And adjusted EPS for the fourth quarter of 2023 increased 31.5% to $1.92 per diluted share compared to the prior year period. Full year 2023 GAAP net income was a record $109.5 million, an increase of $43.2 million, or 65.2% from the prior year. Full year 2023 adjusted net income was $123.4 million, an increase of $46.9 million compared to $76.5 million in the prior year. and adjusted EPS for the full year of $6.57 per diluted share increased 60% compared to the prior year. Strong net income performance both for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2023 was driven by higher net sales and a significant improvement in gross margin, which benefited from higher price realization, cost out activities and increases in productivity. Operating expenses were higher in the current year due to higher variable costs, which were linked to improved operating performance. Operating expenses were also impacted by incremental spending on strategic investments aimed at fostering future growth. Looking beyond operating income in the fourth quarter, we realized an income tax benefit of approximately $15 million related to a discrete, nonrecurring, noncash item, which favorably impacted net income for both the fourth quarter and the full year. Interest expense in the fourth quarter was approximately $1 million lower than the prior year period, driven mostly by lower debt balances as we meaningfully reduced debt throughout the year. On a full year basis, interest expense increased $6.4 million as higher interest rates more than offset lower…

Thank you, Fay. I could not be more proud of the results our high performing teams have achieved in 2023 and I’m excited about what our plans are for 2024. We have a few upcoming events if you wish to learn more about our company and the direction we are heading. In March, we will participate in two virtual non-deal roadshows. The first on March 4 is hosted by CL King and the second on March 14 is hosted by Sidoti. We are also excited to announce Tennant’s Investor Day on May 13, 2024 in the Freedom Hall at the New York Stock Exchange. Senior management team members will be on hand to discuss Tennant’s mission to be a global leader driven by a differentiated growth strategy. We will talk about specific growth opportunities that are compounded by positive global megatrends, as well as our commitment to innovation, superior service, and maximizing shareholder value. Invites will be distributed soon. Please reach out to us directly if you wish to attend, either in person or virtually. With that, we will open the call to questions. Operator, please go ahead.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Steve Ferazani with Sidoti. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Dave, Fay. Appreciate all the detail on the call. Not surprising that I want to start out with a couple of questions on guidance. I’m a little surprised given that backlog conversion, you won’t be converting as much backlog as expected in 2024 and given that the challenging economic environment, organic volume it looked like was down slightly in 4Q I’m a little surprised you’re getting to 2% growth. What are you seeing out there that gives you that optimism?

Thanks, Steve. As we look out at 2024, our guidance indicates growth in the 2% to 4% range, which is in line with our long term targets of 3% to 5%, albeit at the lower end of the range. And the reason for that is really the differential in backlog reduction. So we’ve got $140 million benefit through 2023. We’re targeting $80 million to $100 million benefit coming through calendar year 2024. That’s just a mathematical reality of benefiting from backlog reduction in a given period. When you open the aperture, that backlog was generated over multiple periods. It’s been durable. We’ve held the orders and we have demonstrated we can convert that to profitable revenue. So that’s embedded in our guidance. But certainly on a year-over-year basis, the differential and backlog reduction presents a headwind for us. From a base business perspective and order outlook, orders have remained resilient, albeit different than a typical year. If you go back kind of pre-pandemic, and what our seasonality looked like, we lived through some years, certainly 2023, we started to return to more normal seasonality, but we’re expecting a significant return to normal seasonality in 2024. And that’s implied in our guidance as well. We’ve got to manage and overcome in this business, lumpy deals, the lumpiness of demand from customers, placing future orders and big deals. We have some very large customers on a global basis that can impact performance within a given quarter. And so we predict those to the extent possible, and certainly we pursue those rigorously. And when we land them, we’re happy to report the success. But it does present a challenge, not only to forecast and then predict for a year upcoming, but then we have to lap that. And we’ve seen some of that.…

Great. That’s very helpful. When I think about the guidance on the margin, a little bit higher than this year coming off of 4Q, which was lower, I guess, Fay, how much of that was if you – I don’t know if you want to quantify it. How much of that was performance based comp that brought down 4Q, because if I – obviously if I were to annualize that you wouldn’t.

Yes. So I would say it’s two-fold. It’s both performance based that drives some of those variable costs higher year-over-year and certainly will not be lapping that in 2024, and also those one time investments that Dave alluded to, and I alluded to in our prepared remarks. And so we saw that come through in Q4 throughout the entire year, as we were looking forward and investing in our recovery, in our strategy, and preparing ourselves for growth. And so we saw that come through in Q4 as well. And that was, I’d say, roughly around $5 million in Q4.

Okay. So when you baked into your guidance is what kind of an SG&A as a percentage of sales in 2024, do you have a range on that?

Yes. Well, we don’t typically guide to that, but inherently in kind of the margin improvement, what underpins that has to be gross margin improvement, which we’re anticipating, as well as S&A kind of improvement. Now, on a year-over-year basis, the quarter was pretty strong. You saw that kind of come through in the quarter pretty meaningfully. But on a year-over-year basis, 2022 to 2023, S&A as a percentage of sales was fairly comparable. But we do anticipate both gross margin improvement in 2024 as well as improvement in S&A.

Okay. That’s helpful. Thanks, Fay. If I could just get another one in, in terms of very low CapEx expected again in 2024, that’s looks like it’s probably not far off of maintenance levels. Obviously, if you do 100% cash conversion, my math isn’t great, but you’re in a net cash position without any additional spending. How are you thinking about that? And if you can give any kind of updates on the development of the M&A pipeline?

Yes, I’d be happy to. We’ve articulated – Fay, please chime in. We’ve articulated our capital allocation priorities, and so maybe I’ll frame my comments in the context of those priorities. When you look out of 2024, our guidance implies kind of a run rate CapEx investment back into growing the core in the $20 million, $25 million range. And that’s sufficient to fund what we need to internally and deliver on the commitments within guidance. And we’ve got the powder. If we can exceed and find the opportunity to overinvest, to further drive and further accelerate results. Certainly, we’re not constrained in doing so. We’ve demonstrated the commitment to paying dividends. As Fay mentioned in her prepared remarks, we took a step change in our debt reduction in 2023, taking debt down by $100 million, which we thought was appropriate given the variable rate environment. We also were active in buying back shares, more so in the beginning of the year, less so as our stock has appreciated nicely in response to our raising guidance and performance through the quarters. And we think we have – we like our position from a cash perspective. We’re committed to converting free cash flow net income at 100% rate. And so we think we’re well-positioned for where we want to take the company. You asked specifically about strategic M&A. We have activated that work. We’ve articulated in the past that our priorities from an M&A perspective are first to defend and grow our core by filling product gaps and expanding our channel coverage, so that we can take the fantastic Tennant brand value proposition and Tennant brand portfolio, brand portfolio of value propositions to more customers on a global basis. We want to win in connected autonomy and the announcement of our agreement with Brain, our exclusive technology agreement with Brain certainly fits in that connected autonomy adjacency from an M&A perspective, although the minority equity stake is not an acquisition per se, we kind of view it in that light. It’s about putting our capital to work to drive value creation for shareholders. And we think that the Brain agreement is a fantastic example of us doing just that. And then the third adjacency, which is further out around mobile equipment adjacencies. And so we’ve activated the funnel. We are out talking to potentially interested partners and telling and selling our story and as soon as we have something more in addition to the action, we just – the agreement we just signed with Brain, as soon as we have something more to announce, we'll let you know. But we are actively engaged and anxious to put the capital to work for the benefit of our shareholders.

Perfect. Thanks, Dave. Thanks, Fay.

Thank you. Steve.

Your next question comes from Tim Moore with EF Hutton. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Dave, I love your bundling comments on Brain Corp andselling the service with the product, I think that's terrific. Can you just go back and talk a little bit more about what you're seeing on an attachment rate? I mean you started doing that more the last couple of years with preventative maintenance packages. I got the field office in there. They're able to address some inferior competitive products and get customers to upgrade and buy a preventative maintenance package. So have you seen that start to accelerate the last year or two on the cross selling and bundling?

Yes. So this is really a step – thanks for your question. This is really a step to change in bundling for us. With the X4 ROVR and our new exclusive technology agreement with Brain, we'll be able to take this value proposition to customers and offer them at a single point of sale with the Tennant salesperson and a single point of service from a Tennant service technician, a bundled solution that includes the leading cleaning robot for their application as well as state of the art navigation software embedded and the data and analytics insights that go along with it. And service and support aftermarket, so that the service technician – qualified service technicians and the parts and consumables that can keep the machine running and deliver on the promise of autonomous productivity and uptime for our customers. We expect that that bundled offering will be popular with customers and that's the reason that we're leading with it. We have a variety of offerings in our hip pocket and we're going to let the customer decide where they want to go with it. We expect that for many customers, buying a bundled solution that includes equipment and software, and the ease and simplicity of moving through that approval process, as well as the kind of consolidated responsibility and accountability the Tennant has to deliver on the promise will be very appealing to customers, but it's new territory for us. So this is not the same as sort of selling equipment and then trying to sell a full service contract with preventative maintenance as well as ongoing maintenance. This is a unique and differentiated value proposition for our customers. We're really excited about it and I think it's going to be very compelling and interesting. What we're trying to do is drive a step change in robotics adoption, and so bundling these together is just one component of that equation. Iterating our product and launching a purpose built ground up AMR like X4 ROVR that has improved maneuverability to navigate tight spaces, leveraging Gen3 Technology and navigation software enabled by AI chips, as well as enhanced sensing and cameras on the machine. That's a differentiated level of performance that allows our robot to perform even better in the application for the customer. And then wrapped in this ecosystem of support that includes sales, customer adoption, service and as you mentioned, kind of the all in bundled packaging from a pricing and an ease of transacting perspective, we think it's a step change in terms of our value prop and robotics we're excited to launch it here mid-year 2024.

Great, Dave. Thanks for differentiating between those two type of paths and that's terrific. And just one other topic and actually before I get to it, I'm not actually worried about your sales guidance for this year. I care a lot about EBITDA margin expansion. I think you guys have a really great track for that, including the ERP spending. The other question I had, I know I’ve asked about this in the past, you’ve got a lot of great things going on. I was just wondering maybe if there’s more progress kind of on the equipment-as-a-service, the leasing model for some of these smaller and medium sized customers in South America and parts of Europe that don’t want to invest in a full fleet, but they know small medium sized spaces. Have you added more people to that business? Because it seems like there could be a lot of potential there, and a high margin.

Yes, it’s a within the suite of value props that we can offer our customer. That is one that we currently offer in select geographies today, and it’s a compelling value prop for the reasons you noted. Now, when we go with equipment-as-a-service, the burden shifts to us to make sure that we can perform a service to deliver the uptime. But then profitability rests squarely on our shoulders. So it does require a level of internal expertise, flow of data analytics to enable service efficiency and deliver on uptime and service infrastructure so that you can respond to any equipment challenges promptly and make sure you’re delivering the uptime. As we migrate into robotics and connected autonomy, the ability to flow data and fault codes and usage codes and flow the data back to us directly from the machine is a key enabler we believe in future offerings from an equipment-as-a-service perspective. And so when you look at the X4 ROVR and you think about the upgraded abilities it has and the potential, because it’s a connected robot, the potential it has to provide the data to allow us to perform EAS [ph] profitability and reliably, it becomes really exciting. On other machines, non-robotic machines, like I said, we offer equipment-as-a-service, competitively and profitably in some geographies. Now, we are working on what it would take and whether it’s going to be an interesting part of our business going forward in other geographies. And really we’re going to let the customer dictate that. So we need to do a little bit of work internally to make sure that we have the capabilities to provide a fantastic customer experience that our customers expect from Tennant. Make sure that we can make commitments we can deliver on and do it profitably, and then go test it with customers and see which customers, in which vertical markets and through which channels will really be interested in that type of offering. But it is clearly on our radar screen, and we are investing in building the building blocks for capability, and the market will tell us which direction they want to go.

Great, Dave, that’s a terrific roadmap. Yes, it seems like it could be a point or two of growth later on. And I just want to congratulate you and the team again on amazing EBITDA expansion and margin expansion. And you guys got stuck with the whole COVID shutdown. It’s a few years ago and you bounced back quite well. So good job. And that’s it for my questions.

Thanks, Tim. I appreciate your comments and compliments. As you know, winning in business is a team sport, and so this is a team Tennant effort on a global basis to deliver these results in 2023 and gives me confidence that we can deliver on our commitments going forward.

Since there are no further questions at this time, I would like to turn the call over to management for closing remarks.

Thank you. And thank you all for your participation today and your interest in Tennant Company. This concludes our earnings call. Have a great day.

This concludes today’s conference. You may now disconnect.