Hubbell Incorporated (HUBB) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2022

April 26, 2022 10:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the First Quarter 2022 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions].

And now, it is my pleasure to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Dan Innamorato, Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Dan Innamorato

Thanks, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release announcing our first quarter 2022 results. The press release and slides are posted to the Investors section of our website at hubbell.com. I’m joined today by our Chairman, President and CEO, Gerben Bakker; and our Executive Vice President and CFO, Bill Sperry.

Please note that our comments this morning may include statements related to the expected future results of our company and our forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Therefore, please note the discussion of forward-looking statements in our press release and considered incorporated by reference into this call. Additionally, comments may also include non-GAAP financial measures. Those measures are reconciled to the comparable GAAP measures and are included in the press release and slides.

And with that, I’ll turn the call over to Gerben.

Gerben Bakker

Great. Thanks, Dan, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss Hubbell’s first quarter results. Hubbell is off to a strong start in 2022. Our markets remain healthy, with broad-based demand driving strong sales and order growth. In particular, our utility Solutions segment continues to build backlog, even as customer shipments picked up sequentially. Grid modernization initiatives continued to drive robust investment levels from our core utility customers, as they seek to upgrade aging infrastructure and integrate renewables onto the grid. Operationally, supply chain headwinds persist. Inflation and raw materials and labor, tight availability, and higher cost of containers, as well as shortages in key materials such as chips and resins, are leading to higher input costs and manufacturing and transportation inefficiencies across our businesses. However, we are executing effectively through these challenges to serve our customers and deliver strong results for our shareholders. We continue to accelerate our price and productivity initiatives, and we have now turned the corner on price material, which was a net positive in the first quarter. The combination of strong volume growth and positive price material enabled us to return to year-over-year margin expansion a quarter earlier than we had initially anticipated. Overall, we are pleased with the performance in the quarter, and we are confident that we are well positioned to continue executing effectively over the balance of 2022. While the macroeconomic environment remains dynamic, our strong order book, significant price traction, and operational discipline, gives us visibility and confidence to raise our full year outlook today, which now reflects mid-teens adjusted earnings per share growth. We will provide more color on the full year outlook later in the presentation.