Teledyne Technologies Incorporated (NYSE:TDY) Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call October 23, 2024 11:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Jason VanWees - Vice Chairman
Robert Mehrabian - Executive Chairman
Edwin Roks - Chief Executive Officer
George Bobb - President and Chief Operating Officer
Stephen Blackwood - Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Jim Ricchiuti - Needham
Greg Konrad - Jefferies
Andrew Buscaglia - BNP
Joe Giordano - TD Cowen
Jordan Lane - Bank of America
Guy Hardwick - Freedom Capital Markets
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Teledyne Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Later, there will be an opportunity for questions-and-answers with instructions given at that time. [Operator Instructions] And as a reminder, your conference call today is being recorded.
I will now turn the conference call over to your first speaker, Jason VanWees. Please go ahead.
Jason VanWees
Thank you. Hello, and good morning, everyone. This is Jason VanWees, Vice Chairman. And I'd like to welcome everyone to Teledyne's third quarter 2024 earnings release conference call. We released our earnings earlier this morning.
Joining us today are Teledyne's Executive Chairman, Robert Mehrabian; CEO, Edwin Roks, President and COO; George Bobb, and SVP, CFO, Steve Blackwood, and Melanie Cibik, EVP, Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer and Secretary. After remarks by Robert, Edwin, George and Steve, who will ask for your questions.
But of course, before we get started, our attorneys have remind to me to tell you that all forward-looking statements made this morning are subject to various assumptions, risks and caveats as noted in the earnings release and our periodic SEC filings, and of course, actual results may differ materially.
Here's Robert.
Robert Mehrabian
Thank you, Jason, and good morning, and thank you for joining our earnings call. Teledyne achieved all-time record sales in the third quarter with revenues sequentially greater in each segment, allowing us to report overall year-over-year growth as we expected.
We continue to see robust demand in our longer cycle defense, space and energy businesses. And at the same time, while year-over-year comparison remains challenging, sales for most of our short cycle commercial businesses have either stabilized or have begun to recover sequentially. Year-to-date, we approximately repurchased about $354 million of our stock. We completed 2 acquisitions for $125 million, repaid $450 million of gross debt.
But our quarter end leverage has remained in the 1.7 times given record free cash flow over the last nine months. Orders were greater than sales for the fourth consecutive quarter and we once again ended the period with record backlog. Nevertheless, given the timing of future shipments against this backdrop, and some sales, we were able to accelerate into the third quarter. We continue to remain reasonably confident that quarterly sales will again increase sequentially in the fourth quarter, but only modestly compared with the third quarter.