Kennametal Inc. (NYSE:KMT) Q1 2024 Results Conference Call November 1, 2023 9:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Michael Pici - Vice President of Investor Relations

Christopher Rossi - President and Chief Executive Officer

Pat Watson - Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Sanjay Chowbey - Vice President and President of Metal Cutting

Franklin Cardenas - Vice President and President of Infrastructure

Conference Call Participants

Julian Mitchell - Barclays

Tami Zakaria - JPMorgan

Mike Feniger - Bank of America

Chris Dankert - Loop

Steve Barger - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Steven Fisher - UBS

Steve Volkmann - Jefferies

Operator

Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to Kennametal's First Quarter Fiscal 2024 Earnings Conference Call [Operator Instructions]. Please note that this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Michael Pici, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Michael Pici

Thank you, operator. Welcome, everyone and thank you for joining us to review Kennametal's first quarter fiscal 2024 results. This morning, we issued our earnings press release and posted our presentation slides on our Web site. We will be referring to that slide deck during today's call. I'm Michael Pici, Vice President of Investor Relations. Joining me on the call today are Christopher Rossi, President and Chief Executive Officer; Pat Watson, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Sanjay Chowbey, Vice President and President Metal Cutting; and Franklin Cardenas, Vice President and President of Infrastructure. After Chris and Pat's prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. At this time, I'd like to direct your attention to our forward-looking disclosure statement. Today's discussion contains comments that constitute forward-looking statements and as such involve a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such statements. These risk factors and uncertainties are detailed in Kennametal's SEC filings. In addition, we will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures on the call today. Reconciliation to the GAAP financial measures that we believe are most directly comparable can be found at the back of the slide deck and on our Form 8-K on our Web site.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to you, Chris.

Christopher Rossi

Thanks, Mike. Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I'll start the call today with a review of the quarter and some end market commentary as well as an example of the industry leading innovation we're bringing to market. Then Pat will cover the quarterly financial results and the fiscal year '24 outlook. Finally, I'll make some summary comments at the end then open the call for questions. Beginning on Slide 3. For the quarter, sales were flat year-over-year with flat organic growth and no meaningful effect from the net of negative workdays and positive foreign currency. Price realization was offset by anticipated seasonal volume declines. At the segment level, Metal Cutting grew 2% organically and infrastructure declined 3%. On a constant currency basis, EMEA posted 8% growth, driven primarily by aerospace and defense, general engineering and transportation. The Americas declined 3% mainly driven by energy and general engineering. Asia Pacific declined 8% driven by general engineering, transportation and energy, and reflects year-over-year and sequential declines in China. By end market, Aerospace and Defense reported 17% growth, Energy declined 12%, general engineering declined 1%, transportation declined 1% and Earthworks was flat. This performance was largely as expected with declines in General Engineering, Oil and Gas and in the latter part of the quarter, China. Sequentially, as expected, Q1 sales declined 10%, which is below our historical average of approximately 8%, but generally in line [Technical Difficulty].