Avnet Inc Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call

Welcome to the Avnet Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Call. I would now like to turn the floor over to Joe Burke, VP, Treasury and Investor Relations for Avnet.

Thank you, operator. I'd like to welcome everyone to Avnet's Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. This morning, Avnet released financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025, and the release is available on the Investor Relations section of Avnet's website, along with a slide presentation, which you may access at your convenience. As a reminder, some of the information contained in the news release and on this conference call contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Such forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of performance, and the company's actual results could differ materially from those contained in such statements. Several factors that could cause or contribute to such differences are described in detail in Avnet's most recent Form 10-Q and 10-K and subsequent filings with the SEC. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this presentation, and the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements or supply new information regarding the circumstances after the date of this presentation. Please note, unless otherwise stated, all results provided will be non-GAAP measures. The full non-GAAP to GAAP reconciliation can be found in the press release issued today as well as in the appendix slides of today's presentation and posted on the Investor Relations website. Today's call will be led by Phil Gallagher, Avnet's CEO; and Ken Jacobson, Avnet's CFO. With that, let me turn the call over to Phil Gallagher. Phil?

Thank you, Joe, and thank you, everyone, for joining us on our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 earnings call. For the fiscal year, we delivered $22.2 billion in revenues and $3.44 of adjusted diluted earnings per share. Looking back, this was a year of intense focus on managing the things within our control, including competing well in the market, strengthening our supplier and customer relationships by demonstrating the value Avnet brings to the technology supply chain. Controlling costs, while continuing to make investments that enable our long-term strategy. Optimizing our working capital and generating healthy cash flows and continuing to return cash to shareholders through buybacks and the dividend. We also announced a couple of key executive additions this fiscal year, including the appointment of Dave Youngblood, a 25-year industry veteran as our Chief Digital Officer and more recently, the promotion of Gilles Beltran, a 23-year veteran of Avnet as the new President of our EMEA region. Congratulations, Gilles. Gilles will be succeeding Slobodan Puljarevic, better known as Puli, and Mario Orlandi, who have co-led the EMEA region with distinction for many years. They will remain with us for the next several quarters to ensure a smooth transition. Succession planning is critical to any organization, and we have a thoughtful structured process in place at Avnet. Mario and Puli did a great job leading the success of our EMEA region over the years and also developing talent for the next generation of leadership. I want to thank them for their many years of tireless dedication. I want to express my gratitude to our team for their unwavering commitment and hard work in driving us toward our objectives. In challenging markets like we have faced the past couple of years, our collective efforts truly highlight the critical role we play at the heart of the technology supply chain, reinforcing our value to all stakeholders. Now turning to the recently completed fourth quarter. I am pleased; we delivered another quarter of financial results that exceeded our sales and EPS guidance. In the quarter, we achieved sales of $5.6 billion and adjusted operating margins of 2.5%, highlighted by a 4.3% operating margin in our Farnell business. We also generated $139 million of cash flow from operations in the quarter. Sales were better than expected, led by Asia which delivered 18% year-over-year growth in the quarter. Sequentially, demand increased across most of the markets we serve. On a year-on-year basis, demand increased in the compute, transportation, and communication end markets globally. Semiconductor and IP&E lead times and pricing remained stable for most technologies. Our Book-to-bill ratio improved across all regions and Farnell last quarter. The improvement was led by our Europe and Asia regions, which were both above parity. Bookings also continued to grow in our IP&E business and remain above parity as well. We continue to coordinate closely with suppliers and customers to effectively manage our backlog, which is growing again. New customer orders within lead times, which we refer to as our turns business, also increased across all regions and is a positive sign that customer inventories are normalizing. Order cancellations have remained at normal levels. I am pleased with our progress on reducing inventories. Although, there is still work to do. Even so, we believe we are well positioned today and remain focused on ensuring we have the right inventory in hand, balancing reductions with investment opportunities. We expect to continue to be disciplined in optimizing our inventory as we move through fiscal year 2026. Now with that, let me turn to the fourth quarter results. At the top line, our Electronic Components business increased on a sequential basis and year-over-year. All regions were higher sequentially and notably, this was our fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth in Asia. Sales in Asia were better than expected, and demand in most end markets increased both year-over-year and sequentially. Similar to last quarter, we experienced a slight benefit from customers ordering due to the uncertainty of potential regulatory changes in the U.S. In the Americas, demand increased sequentially for the communications end market, and compute was strongest on a year-on-year basis. We did not see pull-ins of any magnitude, and customer billings for tariffs were not meaningful during the quarter. In EMEA, the market is still mixed with some signs of improvement in certain end markets. In the quarter, most end markets increased sequentially. The communications market was the only vertical that showed growth year-on-year. With that said, we are optimistic that bookings in EMEA will grow in September as the Europeans return from their typical summer vacation period. From a demand creation standpoint, revenues increased 7% sequentially, as our field application engineers continue to engage with our customers and suppliers on design wins and registrations. The strength of our FAEs and technical teams is a key part of our value proposition. Now turning to Farnell. The team continued to deliver on the strategy that Rebeca Obregon and her leadership team put in place one year ago. Rightsizing the cost structure, reorganizing the management team, and leveraging Avnet's broader relationships and bolstering our digital and e-commerce capabilities. In the quarter, sales were higher both sequentially and year-over-year with improved operating margin. We are pleased that Farnell's results have stabilized, but we still have work to do to achieve its full margin potential. We are confident they are well positioned for steady improvement. To conclude, Avnet has momentum as we enter the new fiscal year, despite challenging business conditions over the last two years. And with that, we have a number of reasons to be optimistic about fiscal 2026, beginning with Asia's double-digit growth in fiscal 2025. The region has historically led us out of cycles in the past, and this one should be no different. Stabilization at Farnell, with a right-sized cost structure and synergies from the Power of One initiative, Farnell's poised for steady growth. Book-to-bills above parity in all regions and in our IP&E business, which is one of our higher-margin growth opportunities. We have made significant investments in our digital infrastructure to boost our customer experience and data insights. Demand creation, as semiconductors become more pervasive, the value of Avnet's engineering capabilities will further increase. And finally, lead times have normalized. Our backlog and turns business are improving. And through it all, gross margins have held up well for each of our EC regions in fiscal 2025 compared to fiscal 2024. I continue to feel optimistic about our value proposition and am encouraged by the positive signs that market conditions are beginning to turn in the Americas and EMEA. At the center of the technology supply chain, we are well positioned to help solve for the increasing complexity our customers and suppliers face around the world and bring resiliency to the supply chain. With that, I'll turn it over to Ken to dive deeper into our fourth quarter results. Ken?

Thank you, Phil, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your interest in Avnet and for joining our fourth quarter earnings call. Our sales for the fourth quarter were approximately $5.6 billion, above the high end of our guidance range, up 6% sequentially and up slightly year-over-year. Regionally, on a year-over-year basis, sales increased 18% in Asia but declined 17% in EMEA and 2% in the Americas. In constant currency, EMEA sales were down 21% year-over-year. From an operating group perspective, Electronic Component sales improved 1% year-over-year and 6% sequentially. Farnell sales increased 3% year-over-year and 5% sequentially. For the fourth quarter, gross margin of 10.6% was 99 basis points lower year-over-year, mainly due to a higher mix of Asia sales, and 49 basis points lower sequentially, mainly due to product and customer mix, in addition to some impact from foreign currency exchange rate changes. The regional mix shift to Asia impacted EC gross margin year-over-year. Sales from the Asia region represented 48% of fourth quarter sales in fiscal 2025 compared to 41% in the year-ago quarter. Gross margins for the Americas and Asia regions were lower both sequentially and year-over-year, while gross margins for EMEA increased year-over-year and declined on a sequential basis. Overall, on a region-by-region basis, we believe gross margins are generally stable, although they can be impacted by product or customer mix within any given quarter. Farnell gross margin declined both sequentially and year-over-year, primarily as a result of a higher mix of off-the-board components and single-board computers. Farnell gross margins at the product category level, including on-the-board components, continue to be stable. Turning to operating expenses. We continue to manage expense well and take costs out where necessary. SG&A expenses were $451 million in the quarter, up $1 million year-over-year and up $16 million sequentially. Foreign currency negatively impacted operating expenses by approximately $14 million sequentially and $10 million year-over-year. Excluding the impact of foreign currency and the prior quarter benefit from the gain on sale and leaseback facility, our operating expenses decreased approximately 2% both year-over-year and sequentially. As a percentage of gross profit dollars, SG&A expenses were slightly higher sequentially at 76%. Moving into fiscal year 2026, we expect some operating expense headwinds as a result of our decision to invest in our people by providing merit pay increases, which were not awarded in fiscal year 2025. We believe these increases are necessary to reward and retain our employees, especially ahead of the expected market recovery this fiscal year. For the fourth quarter, we reported adjusted operating income of $143 million and our adjusted operating margin was 2.5%. By operating group, Electronic Components operating income was $157 million and EC operating margin was 3%. The year-over-year decline in EC operating margin was primarily due to the sales mix shift to Asia and the sales decline in EMEA. Farnell's operating income was $17 million and operating income margin was 4.3%. Operating margin was approximately 129 basis points quarter-over-quarter and up 25 basis points year-over-year, reflecting improved sales and the benefits of prior operating expense reduction efforts. It is worth noting that this is the first year-on-year improvement in Farnell operating margin since Q1 of FY '23. Farnell operating expenses were down $7 million year-over-year and down $5 million sequentially on higher sales. There is still a lot of work ahead of us at Farnell, but as expected, we are seeing steady improvement, led this quarter by the increase in sales of single-board computers and the improvement in the number and size of customer orders. Turning to expenses below operating income. Fourth quarter interest expense of $58 million decreased by $6 million year-over-year and decreased by $3 million sequentially due to lower average borrowings. This lower interest expense positively impacted adjusted diluted earnings per share by $0.05 year-over-year. We continue to look for ways to further reduce interest expense, including paying down debt with operating cash flows or reducing our average borrowing rates. Our adjusted effective income tax rate was 23% in the quarter as expected. Adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.81 exceeded the high end of our guidance range for the quarter. Turning to the balance sheet and liquidity. During the quarter, working capital increased $29 million sequentially and included a $35 million decrease in reported inventories, a $232 million increase in receivables, and a $168 million increase in payables. Sequential increases in foreign currency exchange rates added $202 million to working capital, including $150 million to reported inventories. Excluding the impact of changes in foreign currency exchange rates, inventories decreased by $185 million or approximately 4% compared to last quarter. On a year-over-year basis, in constant currency, inventories are down over $400 million or approximately 8%. We remain focused on reducing inventory levels where elevated, noting that we also want to make investments where needed. Our return on working capital was 9.4% for the quarter. We generated $139 million of cash from operations in the quarter and $725 million for the fiscal year. We expect lower cash flow from operations in Q1, primarily due to certain income tax payments that need to be made. For the fiscal year, we lowered our debt by $237 million. We ended the quarter with a gross leverage of 3.4x, and we had approximately $1.1 billion of available committed borrowing capacity. During the quarter, net cash used for capital expenditures was $60 million, which included the planned purchase of an office building. We expect capital expenditures to return to normal levels of approximately $25 million to $35 million per quarter in fiscal year 2026. For the fiscal year, we returned a total of $415 million to shareholders through our share repurchases and dividends. In the fourth quarter, we paid our quarterly dividend of $0.33 per share or $28 million. We also repurchased approximately $50 million worth of our shares. We achieved our goal to reduce shares outstanding by at least 5% this fiscal year as we repurchased nearly 7% of our outstanding shares. Additionally, we have more than $300 million left on our current share repurchase authorization. Book value per share increased to approximately $59 or a sequential increase of $3 per share, primarily due to the changes in foreign currency exchange rates. With regard to our capital allocation, we continue to prioritize our existing business needs and invest in areas that can make our overall business better. We also remain focused on ensuring we have a strong balance sheet and making sure our leverage remains at appropriate levels. Turning to guidance. For the first quarter of fiscal 2026, we are guiding sales in the range of $5.55 billion to $5.85 billion and diluted earnings per share in the range of $0.75 to $0.85. Our first quarter guidance assumes sequential sales growth of approximately 2% at the midpoint and assumed sales growth in all regions. This guidance also assumes similar interest expense compared to the fourth quarter, an effective tax rate of between 22% and 26% and 85 million shares outstanding on a diluted basis. Our team has made significant effort to adjust our processes for tariffs. We continue to work with our suppliers and customers to mitigate the impact where possible. During the fourth quarter, less than 3% of the Americas sales and less than 1% of global sales were from customer tariff billings. In summary, our fourth quarter performance is better than expected, despite the challenging market conditions. Our team continues to focus on generating operating cash flow, and over the past year, we've been able to balance the pay-down of debt with returning cash to shareholders through our share repurchase and dividend programs. I want to echo Phil's comments in thanking our team for continuing to focus on the things we can control. Our global scale, and the diversification of our distribution center locations, the supplier technologies we provide and the vertical markets we serve gives us the ability to reduce complexities and better serve our customers.

With that, I will turn it back to Phil for one last word before questions. Phil?

Congrats to Joe Burke. Thanks for all the help over the last several years. Maybe just to start, it feels like the commentary on EMEA is definitely a bit more positive than 90 days ago. So can you talk about just kind of what's changed there? And like what end markets maybe you are driving?

Yes, Joe, thank you for the question and for your comments. We are feeling more optimistic about EMEA right now. It's important to note that the revenue percentage from this region has decreased significantly, and the market has been weak. However, we are beginning to observe a modest recovery in bookings. The backlog in EMEA is increasing year-on-year, and I'm currently reviewing those figures. While the growth is modest, we are indeed seeing some positive movement, which is significant for us given the region's importance to our profitability.

And then I guess as a follow-up, I appreciate that FX is kind of making the inventory dynamic a bit more difficult to track quarter-to-quarter for at least just looking at it on the balance sheet at that point in time. But I guess, how should we think about just inventory trends in the September quarter that you're thinking about relative to trying to still work that down maybe in some pockets?

Yes. We expect the EC business to continue to reduce inventory with a modest decline next quarter, slightly offset by Farnell. This quarter's inventory was approximately $186 million, excluding FX impacts. A portion of this was due to Farnell, with significant contributions from Europe. We are making continued progress in the core areas, including Asia and the Americas. Although there's still work to do regarding inventory, we anticipate a slight reduction despite a small increase in sales.

Yes. And I'll just add to that. As we talked in the past, Joe, and we put it in the script, we're still making investments in inventory, too. So it's not all a bad thing, right? So it's a handful of commodities, more that are driving a lot of the upside in inventory need to keep working that down while we continue to make sure we have the appropriate SKUs and inventory levels to service the balance of the customer base. We want to get back into the mid-80s, if we can, from days of inventory. That's still our goal.

My questions, Joe. We're going to miss you. Stay in touch. You're retiring too soon. I mean, so really appreciate all the help.

Thank you, Ruplu.

All right. Phil, I wanted to start by asking on the core business. So Asia remains strong. How do you see that trend continuing over the next couple of quarters? How do see the mix of regions? And how does that impact the core business margins as we go forward?

Yes, that’s a great question. I'll have Ken provide some insights on the margins. We're very proud of our team in Asia Pacific. They have not only been growing and capturing market share, but also maintaining their margins. They've achieved year-on-year growth for four consecutive quarters, which is impressive, and we are proud of their performance and our position in that region. Looking ahead to the next several quarters, we have a positive outlook for Asia. They continue to perform well, and historically, market trends start in Asia Pacific before moving to the West. Although that transition hasn't occurred yet this time, we remain confident in the continued strong performance of our Asia segment. Additionally, as highlighted in our slide, Asia now represents a larger share of our overall business, which has affected our margins. This is a straightforward mathematical impact, with margins adjusting as Europe declines and Asia increases. We have no intention of slowing our efforts in Asia while we focus on revitalizing growth and improving margins in the other regions. Ken, would you like to add anything?

Ruplu, I think Phil mentioned in the script, but I want to emphasize, we kind of measure the businesses in terms of their stand-alone gross margin, right? We can't necessarily control the mix because of the fact of where the different markets are at. But each of the regions really were flattish year-over-year for the full year. So we feel pretty good about that, that fundamentally, the gross margins are holding up. Again, EMEA was down 21% in constant currency year-over-year this past quarter, we can kind of move that tide. You should see normal margin uplift. So how long it takes to kind of catch up that mix from what it was before, is still to be determined based on how fast the recovery is. But just getting back to growth in Europe has some positive benefits on the margin and the Americas as well, right? So we should, as the West begins to grow year-over-year and starts to recover, we should start to see a more favorable mix to the West, but getting back to where it was, it may take some more time. And clearly, that would have an impact on the broader operating margin of EC, but you also have Farnell that's out there that could help lift that up too, if that begins to recover and expand their margin that helps the overall business uplift.

Well, that's a great segue into my next question, which is on Farnell. What are some of the things that you guys are doing to improve margins there? One aspect was, you've hired a Chief Digital Officer. Can you give us like how much of sales for Farnell are now? That's now come through the online portal. And how do you see margins trending? It was at 4.3% this quarter. How should we think about that going forward?

Yes. We've made several changes, including a leadership overhaul at Farnell last year, with Rebeca implementing many adjustments. We've replaced around 70% of the executive team and actively worked on eliminating non-essential expenses to enhance efficiency. On the digital front, we brought in Dave Youngblood, who has a strong reputation in the industry and has been pivotal in collaborating with Rebeca and the digital team at Farnell to improve the website and enhance the digital customer experience. We're fully committed to this initiative. Currently, 70% of Farnell's activities are digital, contributing over 50% to revenue, and we expect this to grow further.

And Ruplu, I will also add that we have the opportunity we have with more partnering with Avnet to help drive the top line, too. So in addition to the belief that the market will recover for on-the-board components, which should help their gross margin and their sales overall. There are some things on the revenue side that we have within our control, including the efficiency of our e-commerce and proposition there as well as the partner with Avnet that should continue to give Farnell a lift over the upcoming quarters.

Yes. The message from the Farnell team is continuous improvement, which will be beneficial for Avnet. We achieved 4.3%, and now we need to see that continue to improve quarter-on-quarter. The plan is to achieve this over the next 4 to 8 quarters to return to double-digit operating margins.

If I could ask a quick, high-level question, the industry has been experiencing an inventory correction for the past year to a year and a half. Phil, do you believe we have reached the bottom of this situation and that excess inventory has been cleared from the channel? Do you think we are at a turning point now?

I believe we're approaching a turning point. I can't provide a precise answer, but observing the increasing book-to-bill ratio suggests that customer orders are on the rise. However, there is still some caution among customers regarding their forecasts. Lead times have stabilized without significant changes, particularly in semi-passives and interconnects, aside from a few types like high bandwidth memory. Our analysis of inventory levels from key suppliers indicates that inventory days have decreased by about 11 to 12 days compared to a few quarters ago, and the IP&E sector remains steady. In the EMS segment, inventories have declined by over 20 days versus a year ago. Some OEMs we monitor are also seeing inventory in the 54-day range, which is lower. While there are positive indicators, it's important to note that there may still be more inventory present than we would prefer. We have successfully reduced our inventory and aim to decrease it further, which contributes to our cautious optimism as our backlog grows and lead times remain consistent, along with diminishing inventory levels.

I have a few questions. To start, Joe, I hope we can still play golf together in the spring. That would be great and you might have more time. Following up on some of Ruplu's questions about Farnell margins specifically, Phil, I think you hinted at getting back to a double-digit margin percentage. I'm curious about what should be considered a normalized margin for Farnell. Obviously, we experienced some extraordinary conditions during the supply chain crisis. Could you share the internal targets for margins with us?

I can't do that, Melissa.

There's about twenty of them on the table. You want to pop over. But anyway, thanks, Melissa. Yes, you're right; a few years ago, we experienced a significant surge in the market due to a supply shortage, which pushed our operating margin up to 14%. When the market corrected, we almost reached breakeven at just 1%. We cannot allow that to happen again. Therefore, we are planning for operating margins in the double digits, aiming for 10% to 13% over the next couple of years. If there's another market correction, as we've seen before when conditions improve, we will not let our margins dip below mid-single digits, ideally maintaining above 5%. Our goal is to achieve an average operating margin greater than 10%.

I had a couple of questions for Ken. You mentioned that you would restart the merit increases that we didn't see in fiscal '25. Just wondering how we should model OpEx going forward? If it's the September quarter outlook that kind of contemplates that entire uplift? Or it's going to be kind of like a rolling, I don't know if it's on a calendar year or fiscal year for those merit increases?

Yes, the full impact will be reflected in the guidance for the first quarter. I believe there have been some currency effects on the fourth quarter numbers, but the main concern is the merit increases, which I estimate will be between $8 million and $10 million and are already accounted for in the run rate. That said, we are exploring ways to mitigate other potential inflationary pressures as we enter the new fiscal year. I wouldn’t anticipate a significant decrease in expenses, although there might be some slight reductions. This is likely a useful point for your models when projecting Q1 and extending it throughout the year, assuming there aren't any significant volume increases. We usually have some operating expenses tied to volume fluctuations, but the current run rate looks solid as we move into Q1.

Okay. And maybe as a last question, asking you guys to pull out your crystal ball forecasting. It was nice to see interest expense come down a little bit in the June quarter, that you're guiding for flat during the September quarter. Assuming that we are starting to see some stabilization, maybe even an inflection point in some of the broader demand. What should we be assuming in terms of inventory investment and then potentially what that means for the interest expense going forward?

Yes. I think mostly how we look at it is we have enough dollars of inventory, right, for the current level of sales even for some growth. It's really about continuing to get a higher quality mix. There are some pockets where we need to continue to work it down. So I would say we expect to still come down again modestly, but at the same time, we wouldn't expect to utilize a lot of cash to grow the business here. So there's still some work to do internally in terms of the inventory, but we expect it to go down a little bit still, all things be equal, but even with a more aggressive recovery, we think we've got enough dollars and we'll begin to turn it faster.

Gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I'll now turn it back to Phil Gallagher for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and let me thank everyone for attending today's earnings call and look forward to speaking to you again at our first quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings report in October. Have a great rest of the summer.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.