Badger Meter, Inc. (BMI) Q1 2025 Earnings Conference Call April 17, 2025 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Karen Bauer - Retiring Investor Relations Executive
Unknown - Unknown
Conference Call Operator - Call Moderator
Bob Rockledge - Chief Financial Officer
Ken Bachor - Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer

Conference Call Participants

Scott Gray - Analyst at Seaport Research
Rob Mason - Analyst at BAD
Andrew Krill - Analyst at Deutsche Bank
Jeffrey Reeve - Analyst at RBC
Nathan Jones - Analyst

Conference Call Operator

Please go ahead, Ms. . Bauer.

Karen Bauer

Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for joining us for Badger Leaders first quarter of 2025 earnings conference call and the 72nd and last quarterly earnings call for me ever with my May 2nd retirement date now just two short weeks away.

Joining me on the call today are Ken Bachor, chairman, president, and chief executive officer, Bob Rockledge, chief financial officer, and Barb Noverini, senior director of investor relations. Please note that the earnings release and related slide presentation are available on our website. Quickly, I'll cover the safe harbor, reminding you that any forward looking statements made during this call are subject to various risks and uncertainties, the most important of which are outlined in our press release and SEC violence.

On the call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial metrics. Our earnings slides provide a reconciliation of the gap to non-GAAP financial metrics used. With that, I'll turn the call over to Ken.

Ken Bachor

Thanks, Sharon. And thank you all for joining our call. I'm pleased with our start to the year with another quarter of solid revenue growth, record operating margins, and robust earnings per share improvement, which continues to reflect the durable drivers supporting water industry technology adoption.

Our results now include smart cover following completion of the acquisition in late January. Since then, we've been onboarding our new colleagues and setting common goals to capture the many opportunities we have to drive sales and operating synergies. We've heard strong positive feedback on our combination from many customers who recognize the value of adding smart cover sewer and list station monitoring capabilities to our blue edge suite of water management solutions.

I'll be back to provide our outlook later in the call, and what you might expect will also include a discussion about tariffs. But for now, I'll turn it over to Bob to go through the details of the quarter.

Bob Rockledge

Thanks, Jenny. Good morning, everyone. Turning to slide four, we delivered strong operating performance across the board with our key financial metrics demonstrating solid improvement in the quarter.

Total sales grew 13% year over year in the first quarter of 2025. Excluding smart cover, sales increased 10%, which as a reminder was on top of 23% growth in the first quarter of last year. Total utility water product line sales increased 16% year over year, or 12% when excluding just over 6 million of smart cover revenue for the two months since acquisition.

Year over year growth in utility water was again led by cellular AMI adoption, including associated meters, Orion cellular endpoints, and beacon software. Sales for the flow instrumentation product line decreased nearly 5% year over year, as lower demand in the de-emphasized array of market applications offset modest growth in water related end markets. However, flow instrumentation sales did show sequential improvement of 7% growth from the fourth quarter of 2024.

Turning to margins, we were particularly pleased with the record operating profit margins in the quarter of 22.2%, expanding 360 basis points year over year. Gross profit margins came in at 42.9%, a 360 basis point improvement from .3% in the prior year comparable quarter, and above our normalized gross margin range of 38 to 40%. As we've said in the past, customer and product mix can and does vary quarter to quarter, with this being an especially favorable example in nearly all respects of a positive sales mix scenario. For example, in the first quarter benefited from a particularly attractive combination of customer mix overall.

From a product mix standpoint, software was the top revenue growth contributor up 25% in the quarter. Similar to the sales unevenness we often discuss, we have variations in gross margins in the short term from various mix elements. While we certainly expect structural sales mix improvements to continue over time, the .9% gross margin outcome in the first quarter was a perfect combination of nearly all elements contributing favorably.

At the same time, there remain significant uncertainty surrounding the evolving tariffs and turbulent macroeconomic situation. Can we walk through our manufacturing footprint and supply chain exposures to tariffs, as well as our mitigation actions later in the call. In short, we don't believe it is proven at this time to guide to a higher range for gross margin performance.

Yet we remain confident in our normalized gross margin range of 38 to 40%, assuming no further changes in global economic and trade policies. SEA expenses increased by $5.4% million, or 13% year over year, to 46 million in the first quarter. The increase included approximately $1.1% million of intangible asset amortization from a smart cover acquisition, which on a two month basis is in line with our previously communicated expectation of six to $7 million annually.

Excluding smart cover, SEA expenses increased by $2.2% million, or 5%. SEA as a percent of sales was .7% in the first quarter or flat year over year. Excluding smart cover, SEA as a percent of sales would have declined to pro forma 90 basis points year over year.

The income tax provision increased modestly to .4% in the first quarter of 2025, from .5% in the comparable prior year period. This remains consistent with our previously discussed 25% tax rate assumption. In summary, our strong operating results in the first quarter drove a 31% increase in consolidated EPS to $1.30% from 99 cents in the prior year comparable quarter.

Primary working capital as a percent of sales increased from .8% at year end to 22% as of March 31st, 2025, inclusive of smart cover. We generated strong free cashflow in the quarter of $30 million, up 60% from 18.8% million in last year's comparable quarter. As is normal, our first quarter reflected typical seasonality with incentive compensation and retirement plan contributions paid out for the respective previous year.

With that, I'll turn the call back over to Ken.

Ken Bachor

Thanks, Bob. Turning to slide five on the topic du jour, tariffs. As we've seen play out over the past several weeks, what we know for sure is that uncertainty and volatility in the tariff picture remains likely. The key takeaway for BadgerMeter is that we will definitely manage what is in our control, just as we've done through COVID, supply chain disruptions, inflation, and other challenging macro dynamics that we've faced over the past five plus years.

With that in mind, I'll walk you through our status given the current set of circumstances. As many of you know, we operate a world-class assembly facility in Nogales, Mexico, which we're proud to say celebrated its 45th birthday last week. The facility is in Michiladora, which essentially acts as an extension of our U.S. operations on Mexican soil.

It's the primary assembly site for our residential meters and radios, the vast majority of which qualify for exemption from tariffs under the USMCA. The components coming into this Mexico facility for assembly originate from a wide range of countries, and we will continue to manage component sourcing into Mexico, which limits our exposures to a certain degree. For our U.S.-based manufacturing facilities, including our Buy America, Build America compliant assembly line, we could base import tariff exposure on electronics and related components from China, Southeast Asia, and Israel, among others.

This means that U.S. manufactured products are likely to face higher tariff-related input costs under the structures currently in place, to institute targeted pricing offsets to manage this potential impact. We could also base tariffs on the finished goods we import from our European manufacturing facilities, which produce certain flow instrumentation and water quality products for sale in the U.S. This represents a relatively small percentage of batcher meters overall sales, but targeted pricing actions may also be required for these products. Finally, let me share an example of the knock-on effect of the tariffs that may not be as obvious from the headlines.

China has implemented export controls on certain chemical and rare earth elements as part of its response to U.S. tariff actions. Bismuth is an element that's included in these supply restrictions. While Bismuth happens to be a small component of our brass ingot recipe, the price has increased nearly 10-fold since early this year.

China produces 90-plus percent of the Bismuth in the world. A pivot away from Bismuth in the recipe is not plausible in the short term, and strategic sourcing initiatives won't help reduce the cost of a supply-restricted rare element. We will therefore need to adjust pricing accordingly.

Obviously, copper makes up a far greater percentage of the recipe, and while copper prices have been volatile, current pricing is only modestly higher than it was at the beginning of the year. We will continue to watch this closely as we always do. All told, we believe there's a level playing field competitively for these targeted mitigation actions.

As Bob mentioned earlier in his remarks on margins, the gross margin we delivered this quarter demonstrates that the structural misbenefit of technology adoption within our business is real. Yet the various cost pressures and lagged impact of mitigation actions from the tariff situation have informed us our decision to maintain our normalized margin range, at least or not. Turning now to our outlook, we have a proven history of differentiated operational execution, and we'll continue to focus on controlling what we can control in a turbulent economic environment, particularly in the management of our supply chain, manufacturing footprint, and value-based pricing strategy.

Our first quarter results demonstrate the resilience and durability of our replacement-driven business. As previously communicated, the second quarter represents our most difficult prior year comparison, and we've already walked through some of the puts and takes we have on the margin side, especially in the near term as we navigate the evolving tariff situation. Nevertheless, nevertheless, the attractive fundamentals of the water industry and the growing extensibility of our blue-edged suite of solutions, which now includes sewer and lift station monitoring with the exact acquisition of smart cover, continue to support a long-term average revenue growth outlook of high single digits and modest margin improvement over time.

Even after the smart cover acquisition, we have available cash, continue to generate strong recovery cash flow, and remain dead-free. Our balance sheet has ample capacity to invest in both organic and inorganic growth while we continue to work our way through any further matter of economic volatility. We were proud to be named the barren list of 100 most sustainable companies for the third year in a row.

We take very seriously our role in protecting the world's most precious resource and believe this responsibility aligns with the creation of shareholder value over the long term. Finally, as you heard from Karen earlier in the call, this is the last earnings call of her illustrious career in investor relations spanning 72 quarters. I know I speak for Bob as well when I say that we have been proud to have her with us here at Badger Meter for the last 26 of those quarters.

Moving into our first roles as public company CEO and CFOs, we knew it was important to have an accomplished professional with us who could help create and drive a successful strategy, deliver clear messaging that employees and investors alike can rally around, and who also happens to be a great person to work with. The only choice for us was Karen. While she'll be missed by all who have worked with her, we are all happy for her to begin the next chapter of her life after leaving a great legacy behind here.

Equally, we're excited for Barb to step into the role officially and put her own mark on things moving forward. For that operator, please open the line for questions.

Karen Bauer

That was not in the- That's a reminder. My prepared reminder.

Ken Bachor

That's.

Conference Call Operator

a reminder.

Karen Bauer

Thank you.

Conference Call Operator

That's a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question on today's call, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. And the first question today comes from Andrew Krill from Deutsche Bank. Andrew, your line is open.

Please go ahead.

Andrew Krill

Hi, thanks. Good morning, everyone. And congrats to Karen on your retirement.

I was hoping, wanted to ask for just any more color you can provide on the, you know, especially favorable products. Customer mixed benefits, I know you call it out SaaS, growth, but just anything else would be helpful because the margins are just, you know, so outsized and impressive. And then secondly, you know, if we were to assume the tariff backdrop was somewhat safe, stable from here, you know, should we be expecting gross margins to moderate all the way back to the 38 to 40% range in 2Q, or is this more of like a worst case scenario.

Ken Bachor

Thanks. Yeah, so obviously quite a bit to unpack there and in this pretty uncertain environment. The one thing that I think everyone should be excited about is that even in this, you know, really crazy environment, we feel really strong about the floor of our margins, which we talked about for years now about the durability and realness of the positive structural mix.

So going forward, we certainly expect that in a tariff situation that we considerly, that we currently consider manageable, we feel like we're in pretty good shape going forward. I'll let Bob give any more detail on some of the mix and some of the particularly favorable things, but overall feel great about the ability to manage and in the state of the business.

Bob Rockledge

Yeah, hopefully you can tell from the prepared remarks that, you know, essentially a lot of things went in our favor in the first quarter. And so while we're absolutely proud of the result, we're in this tenuous or uncomfortable position of almost apologizing for that great margin against the backdrop of potentially increasing input costs, particularly which in the short term, the mitigation actions that we talked about can't be implemented immediately, right. They can be implemented immediately, but the effect will lay essentially the input cost increase, which is near immediate.

And so that's a long way of saying, there are certainly aspects of what drove the outcome in Q1, the .9% gross margin that are durable and will sustain. And there are elements that are more episodic and or mix specific or customer specific that we can't expect to happen each and every quarter. So I think another way of saying that is if we're not for essentially this backdrop of tariff input cost pressures, I think given our last four quarters of margin performance, we'd likely be re-declaring a new line.

It's just very difficult to do that against this backdrop with uncertainty, particularly in the short term.

Andrew Krill

Very helpful. And then Seth, could you just touch on the front logs of activity you have. Is your core customer showing any signs of potentially pulling back on spending or delaying spending with all the uncertainty.

Or is again, just the replacement driven nature of your business and the ROI still compelling enough that the kind of business as usual as much as it can be.

Ken Bachor

Yeah, so we're not seeing or hearing from customers any anything on pullbacks. I think it's important to forget the 100 years of history that talk about this being a very durable replacement driven market. You just look at the last five years, even in the COVID year, where essentially we lost an entire quarter, we still grew 4% even in the COVID year.

And then if you wanna consider tariffs, maybe against the highly inflationary year that followed two years later, we were up 14% back here. So I think given some of the really difficult environments you've seen the last few years, the customer is particularly around the benefits that come from ROI and the technology adoption of our other products, as well as the replacement driven when the meter is due to be replaced to replace it, just because it's also in difficult times it serves as the cash register. So that's the last thing they got if they do have budget problems.

So we still feel as positive on the outlook as we did through those other difficult times.

Andrew Krill

Great, thanks.

Conference Call Operator

so much. The next question comes from Nathan Jones from Stephen. Nathan, your line is open, please come ahead.

Nathan Jones

Good morning everyone and congratulations to Karen from me. I guess the first question I'd like to ask you, so Bob, are we on the stairway to heaven yet.

Bob Rockledge

I would say again, if you track our gross margin over time, so Nathan's question is referring to a comment that I often make, which is, the margin profile is not a stairway heaven because there's obviously some of the dynamics that this quarter particularly are favorable, sometimes are unfavorable. And so, and again, that we largely play in a competitive environment that while rational, we're all trying to steal each other's lunch from the best of our ability, which has proven difficult over time. That being said, I think again, we have a great input here of a result.

I think hopefully the way I answered the previous question rings true here as well is that a lot of things went right in this quarter. There are certainly some of those that are durable and other of those that will be episodic and could go the other way next quarter. But yes, there's definitely a positive trend.

Ken Bachor

I like how you kind of pulled the real positive side.

Nathan Jones

out there. I guess a more serious question around the tariffs. Are you guys able to quantify what you think the aggregate impact to your COGS input here is and just confirm that you believe whatever that number is, you'll be able to cover with price.

Ken Bachor

Well, so that's a difficult question. If you could just tell us how this is gonna play out, we can tell you exactly what it would be. So like everybody else, we've watched the news every day.

It's.

Unknown

gonna stay exactly where it is now.

Ken Bachor

Okay, if you're gonna say it's gonna stay exactly the way it is now, I would tell you that our current situation is not competitively disadvantaged and it's managed.

Bob Rockledge

The synopsis for that answer is the title on slide five. Manageable, some lag effects contained within our normal range and competitively leveled blanket.

Nathan Jones

I mean, it sounds like the kind of message, I don't know, maybe I'm making numbers up here, but each kind of a less than mid single digit kind of impact overall to your costs.

Ken Bachor

Well, it's a multi factor variable question, right. Because then there's also the targeted pricing actions that we take to mitigate and all those different pieces. So I think it's probably prudent to think about the range that we provided and the strength that we feel about the floor.

And remember that through a myriad of difficult operating environments, we've been, I think, extremely, our employees around the world have done an extremely great job managing the ups and downs in difficult times. And I think we're prepared to do it again.

Nathan Jones

Fair enough. Is there any perception that customers might've pulled forward some orders into the quarter in front of potential price increases or in front of potential supply chain disruptions or anything like that, or did it kind of progress through the quarter as you would expect it to normally.

Ken Bachor

So two things to remember is that 75% of our revenue is direct to end users. And end users really, in many ways, cannot pull forward because they can't really put them into meter pits or homes faster and they don't have the warehouse space that typically hold it. So a large portion of the revenue really doesn't even have that leverage pull.

And then the 25% that goes through distribution, we've not seen large pull forward orders. So it was a pretty normal order environment.

Nathan Jones

Normally it's good in this environment. Thanks very much for taking my questions. Yeah, thanks.

Conference Call Operator

The next question comes from Jeffrey Reeve from RBC. Jeffrey, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Jeffrey Reeve

Thanks. First, I just wanna say thanks to Karen for all your help and insights and wishing you the best in your retirement. Could you guys provide some comments around the health of municipal budgets today.

How are you seeing utilities prioritize AMI investments in the current backdrop. And maybe more broadly, what's the risk that broader price inflation in other areas of utilities budget could crimp meter demand.

Ken Bachor

Okay, I'll start. And I think that was about three questions so I'll ask Bob to fill in what I guess. But the first part on municipal budgets to remember is with 50,000 utilities in the United States and the myriads of different ways that utilities can fund investments, there's no one size fits all answer to that.

But in general, one of the things we feel great about with our sales model is selling 75% of our revenue directives. We talk to customers on a very constant basis and we're continually asking them about their budgeting cycles, whether that's in the short term this year or the three to five year outlooks. And what we're hearing in general, specific back to metering is if a utility is facing budget issues, oftentimes they will reprioritize their budget to do their metering replacement.

Because clearly with it serving as the cash register, if you're due for your meter replacement, you're gonna do it for a myriad of reasons. Either it's an older system and you're looking for more efficiencies in the reeds to capture non-revenue water or eliminate waste and conservation. And then secondly, if you're into a longer term drive-by or AMI offering, those are battery powered devices and when they go dark, they need to be replaced.

So that's where, when I talked earlier about the inflationary period in COVID, I think it's been proven just within the last five years or twice that when times are tough, this is not the area that utilities cut. If Bob's giving me the sign, so I think he thinks I got it.

Jeffrey Reeve

Yeah, no thanks. Curious if there's an opportunity or maybe greater customer reception to alternative pricing models like a meter as a service in this backdrop.

Ken Bachor

So generally again, if I compare it to the other difficult times over the last five years, yeah, sure, you might have some that would look at that but I would say in general, the buying habits have not changed. Got it, thank.

Nathan Jones

you. Thanks.

Conference Call Operator

Jeffrey. The next question comes from Scott Gray from Seaport Research Parts. Scott, your line is open, please come ahead.

Scott Gray

Yes, hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question and my hearty congratulations to you, Karen. You've done great jobs in both of your positions that I've known you.

I wish you the best of luck. I wanted to ask a couple of questions around some of the statements that you make in the press release and then reiterated here, Ken. Specifically, you talk about the company's ability to manage certain tariff related cost challenges and you've amplified on that in the presentation here.

I'm just wondering if you can provide some color on what the triggers are where certain becomes, or manage certain becomes, well, this is more than what we expected. Like would a trigger be a rollback in the USMCA. Is it steel tariffs. Is it the electronic components piece.

What would be the one or two or whatever many triggers that would have you concerned about your ability to manage.

Ken Bachor

Yeah, so for us, we called out the Mexico facility by name. So clearly we're very proud of the operation we have there. We wouldn't be leaving there.

So if there were some change in the USMCA, that would have an impact that we would have to consider pretty seriously. And the other areas that we looked at, I think it's really well known about our linkage to copper and I called out bismuths. So anything that's particularly damaging in that area that would happen in the future would be something that has to be considered.

Those are the two primary ones.

Scott Gray

Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you. And then my follow-up is simply, really you indicated that you're talking to customers frequently daily.

And you said that they're not looking, that you haven't heard anything about pauses or delays in deployments and what have you. I'm wondering though, if on the mix within the orders that you're seeing right now, whether it's price, the mixed trade-up with AMI, with radio, AMI with communications and software, leak detection, all of these trade-up factors that can go into your sales per unit, have any of these elements changed. In other words, has something become in this quarter in particular, what was sort of the standout on mix.

And then more importantly on the orders, has that changed the mixed components.

Ken Bachor

Yeah, as we've talked about for many of the years, from quarter to quarter, it can be generally sometimes a whole different set of utilities. There can be the mix of small versus medium versus large. There's the turnkey elements.

There's so many factors that you really can't point to one. One of the things I'm particularly proud of though, is that our software business is becoming a pretty meaningful part of the portfolio. And you saw that grow again, 25% in the quarter.

And that's a very positive structural change that provides tremendous benefits for customers and does a lot of good work for us on our continuous improvement move forward on margin enhancement.

Scott Gray

Okay, so I think I hear you saying that. Fundamentally, it's got no real changes. Well, I think I, yeah, I'm hearing that.

And I get the second quarter guidance. I'm just, the mixed components are so important for your sales and earnings, so I just had to ask if there was any specific change that you're seeing in present order rates. And it sounds like your answer to that is no.

And it's because there are so many factors at play.

Ken Bachor

That's right, that's right. So, the thing that I would hope to have people take away from this is that as we've talked about the structural mix for years, and we've kind of stubbornly stayed in our range, is that we've given you a view into what's possible here. And it's all of these levers continue to be strong and we continue to take our one step forward at a time approach to how we manage and how we communicate that these drivers are real.

And this is a quarter where you just saw more of them come together than it does in many quarters. Appreciate.

Scott Gray

it, thank you both.

Conference Call Operator

As a reminder, that's staff followed by one on your telephone keypad to ask a question today. The next question comes from Rob Mason at BAD. Rob, your line is open, please go ahead.

Rob Mason

Yes, good morning. And my congratulations to you, Karen as well. Certainly appreciate all the help over the years.

Hey, Ken, I just, I wanted to maybe clarify. Have you already notified customers of price increases that you plan to take or is that forthcoming.

Ken Bachor

So that's still forthcoming. So we're being very, very prudent in making sure we understand the situation, making sure that we're being very fair with our customers. I want to be clear, this isn't something that we're happy about or trying to do price grabs or trying to be the first in the market.

Your question, yeah, some competitors have notified customers that we've heard of. Many of our distributors are hearing from several of their other suppliers of other things that they sell, whether that be piping or valves or those types of things. So it's getting out into the market.

And this is one of those things where that's why we're confident that our ability to recover prices manageable, because it's already happening. It's just we haven't been on the lead of raising people's prices.

Rob Mason

Understood. Well, maybe as a follow on to that, I know, frankly, inflation risk and the ability to handle that's always a consideration for you. But when you think about some of these AMI projects or multi-year deployments and contracts, does it require you to do something different or are the customers asking for anything different in terms of allowing those to go forward.

I guess I'm thinking of the upfront decisions around those to make sure that both sides are protected in that sense. Does that, has that changed.

Bob Rockledge

Yeah, I would say there was an evolution with the inflationary pressures of 2021 and 2022 where multi-year price hold requests were very common from utilities in the past. And I think we learned from past, as well as navigating that inflationary environment to push back on that more aggressively. And I would say competitors have done that as well.

So I would say that the benefit of the current situation is some of that historic practice or requests or common understanding changed two, three years ago. But absolutely we've got the lesson learned from past cycles as well as the ongoing desire to keep as much flexibility as we can, realizing that not all customers are created equal and there'll be difference amongst customers.

Rob Mason

Understood. If I could sneak in one more real quick, Bob, just, I know you said that you didn't really notice a change in customer order patterns, cadence beyond the normal, but your receivable line was up a fair amount. Sequentially, I was just, what would have caused that.

Understand acquisition probably contributed some, but just curious.

Bob Rockledge

Yeah, so a small piece of that is the addition of smart cover, as you just alluded to. And I would say the remaining amount is simply, I would say time indifference between the path of sales in Q4 versus Q1, nothing there in terms of kind of a risk element or anything like that, it's simply timing as the sales fell in the quarters, respectively Q4 versus Q1.

Rob Mason

I see, okay, thank you. Yeah, thanks Rob.

Conference Call Operator

Just a final reminder, that's staff followed by one to ask a question today. We have no further questions, so I'll hand the call back to Karen for some closing comments.

Karen Bauer

Thank you for everyone, Teverem for joining the call for your planning purposes, the second quarter 2025 call scheduled for July 22nd. I will obviously not be on that call, so let me take a minute to first thank Ken and Bob for giving me the opportunity to lead IRDR Badger Meter, along with their unwavering support to drive ESG and strategic planning initiatives here in recent years. I also want to thank all of my Badger Meter colleagues, you've given me the easiest job on Wall Street with your world-class execution, supporting our customers and delivering phenomenal results day after day, quarter after quarter and year after year.

And finally, a thank you to our analysts and investors, past and present for the many interesting and informative discussions over the years, the diversity of your styles, viewpoints and questions ensured I was never bored. So with that, I'll wrap up the first quarter call, Bob and I will be around to take your follow-up, thank you.

Conference Call Operator

This concludes today's call, thank you very much for your attendance, you may now disconnect your lines.