Eaton Corporation PLC (NYSE:ETN) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call April 30, 2024 11:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Yan Jin - SVP, IR & Finance Transformation
Craig Arnold - Chairman & CEO
Olivier Leonetti - EVP & CFO
Conference Call Participants
Joseph Ritchie - Goldman Sachs Group
Jeffrey Sprague - Vertical Research Partners
Deane Dray - RBC Capital Markets
Charles Tusa - JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Andrew Obin - Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Scott Davis - Melius Research
Philip Buller - Berenberg
Julian Mitchell - Barclays Bank
Jeffrey Hammond - KeyBanc Capital Markets
Nicole DeBlase - Deutsche Bank
Nigel Coe - Wolfe Research
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Eaton First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions].
I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Yan Jin. Please go ahead.
Yan Jin
Good morning. Thank you all for joining us for Eaton's Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Call.
With me today are Craig Arnold, our Chairman and CEO; and Olivier Leonetti, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our agenda today includes the opening remarks by Craig, then he will turn it over to Olivier, who will highlight the company's performance in the fourth quarter. As we have done on our past calls, we'll be taking questions at the end of Craig's closing commentary.
The press release and the presentation we'll go through today have been posted on our website. This presentation includes adjusted earnings per share, adjusted free cash flow and other non-GAAP measures. They are all reconciled in the appendix. A webcast of this call is accessible on our website and will be available for replay. I would like to remind you that our comments today will include the statements related to the expected future results of the company and are therefore forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from our forecasted projections due to a wide range of risks and uncertainties that are described into our earnings release and the presentation.
With that, I will turn it over to Craig.
Craig Arnold
Okay. Thanks, Yan. And we'll start with some highlights on Page 3, and I'll lead off by noting that we've delivered another strong quarter this year. Our adjusted EPS was $2.40 in the quarter, well above our guidance range, our record for the quarter and up 28% from prior year.
I'd also note that our orders came in ahead of expectations with strong order growth in Electrical, both the Americas and Global. On a rolling 12-month basis, total electrical orders were up 7% and aerospace orders increased by 2%. This led to another quarter of growing and record backlogs up 27% for Electrical and 11% for Aerospace, with strong book-to-bill ratios. The growth in orders and backlog support our point of view on the strength of the mega trends that we're in the early stages and that our market should be strong for years to come. And given our Q1 results, we're raising our guidance for organic growth, segment margins and adjusted EPS for the year. On balance, we're very pleased with our start to the year.