Fortive - Q1 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Thank you for standing by. My name is Brent, and I will be your conference facilitator this afternoon. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Fortive Corporation's first quarter 2023 earnings results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, simply press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. I would now like to turn the call over to Ms. Elena Rosman, Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. Rosman, you may begin your conference.

Elena Rosman (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Brent, and thank you everyone for joining us on today's call. With us today are Jim Lico, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Chuck McLaughlin, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We present certain non-GAAP measures on today's call. Information required by Regulation G are available on the investor section of our website at www.fortive.com. Our statements on period-to-period increases or decreases refer to year-over-year comparisons on a continuing operations basis. During the call, we will make forward-looking statements, including statements regarding events or developments that we expect or anticipate will or may occur in the future. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, and actual results might differ materially from any forward-looking statements that we make today.

Information regarding these risk factors is available in our SEC filings, including our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2022. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and we do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Jim Lico.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Thanks, Elena. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'll begin on slide three. We had a strong start to the year, delivering better than expected revenues, margins, and earnings in the first quarter. At 9% core growth, we're demonstrating strong execution of our strategy, building leading positions across our customers' critical connected workflows. Our ability to deliver strong growth and continued margin expansion is directly tied to our culture of continuous improvement and dedication to the Fortive Business System. As a result, we expanded adjusted gross and operating margins by 80 and 100 basis points respectively, taking margins to a first quarter record expectations for further margin expansion this year and into the future. Free cash flow in the quarter reflects our normal seasonality as well as the timing of China collections that pushed into April.

Overall, our teams have done an excellent job managing working capital in a more challenging supply chain environment as seen by our outstanding performance in 2022. By harnessing our unique competitive advantages and strong execution capabilities, we are confident in our outlook and are raising and narrowing our full year 2023 guidance. Turning to slide 4. I wanted to provide an update on what we're seeing and what we expect over the course of 2023. Starting on the left in the current environment, hardware product orders were better than expected, down mid-single digit, and backlog was more resilient with a book-to-bill of 1.0 in the first quarter. Our software businesses continue to see good growth, benefiting from strong customer value propositions, driving double-digit growth in our SaaS revenue streams.

While industry challenges remained in our Healthcare segment due to China, consumables growth in March reaffirmed recovery is underway. We expect momentum to continue and accelerate growth and profitability throughout 2023. Moving to the right-hand side of the slide. We are seeing traction on our new product launches favorably aligned to secular drivers, including Fluke's latest family of solar tools and Tektronix's leading power and electronic test systems. Together with continued software strength and recovery in healthcare, we expect to sustain core growth in the second half. Combined with favorable pricing, cost savings, and discrete productivity initiatives to span all segments, we expect over 75 basis points of margin expansion in the year.

Lastly, we expect robust free cash flow growth again in 2023, which together with our very strong balance sheet, gives us confidence that our attractive M&A funnel will provide opportunities to enhance earnings and cash flow compounding in the future. Turning to slide 5. We want to take a minute to remind you of all the work we've done to transform our portfolio and create focused segment strategies favorably aligned to a number of strong secular trends, has resulted in a more resilient Fortive with enduring growth and further margin expansion opportunities. As a result, today we have a stronger collection of businesses with a more diversified end market mix and durable recurring revenue profile that includes leading healthcare and software franchises.

Together with our enhanced innovation capabilities, we have focused our portfolio around multi-year mega trends, including automation, digitization, the electrification of everything, and improving healthcare trends to name a few, all to reduce the overall cyclicality of our businesses and provide more tailwinds for growth by expanding into new markets. As a result of these mega trends, we see continued growth across our portfolio, including the more durable software and services businesses, as well as the non-recurring portion, given the sizable amount of backlog some of our product businesses are working through while continuing to see resilient demand. Finally, our portfolio quality is reinforced by the substantial improvements we've made in gross and operating profit, working capital, and free cash flows % of revenue, driven by the rigorous application of the Fortive Business System. Turning to slide 6.

FBS is a powerful mindset that makes continuous improvement a way of life at Fortive. We drive deep engagement across our teams and hold them accountable for delivering on high expectations. With Kaizen activity accelerating, we saw significant results across the portfolio, including material improvement in delivery and past due backlog reduction in our hardware products businesses by improving planning and reducing part shortages with the Fortive Material System. Fortive software system deployment in our SaaS companies, including ServiceChannel, Accruent Provation, is accelerating delivery of software features to customers, driving customer value and resulting in higher renewal rates and pricing gains. Our record gross margins in the first quarter were driven by a significant expansion of Kaizen events in the quarter, approximately double the number the prior year, setting us up for improved performance throughout the year. Turning to slide seven.

Fortive has made sustainability a priority since its founding. It is inextricably linked to our company's shared purpose, values, and business strategy, which you'll read more about in our upcoming 2023 sustainability report to be published in May. This year's report will further highlight how our commitment to sustainability is grounded in our culture of Kaizen, leveraging the power of FBS to innovate products and services that enable more sustainable outcomes. You will also hear how our team has strengthened our responsible sourcing initiatives, ensuring robust review of the labor and human rights practices across our supply chain, and how our strong and inclusive culture is creating a community where everyone belongs, which is positively reflected in our latest employee engagement and inclusion, diversity, and equity performance.

In summary, we are accelerating progress towards a more sustainable future for Fortive and our customers, as well as the environment and the communities in which we operate. We invite you to review our report next month. I'll now provide more details on each of our three segments, beginning with Intelligent Operating Solutions on slide 8. IOS grew core revenue by 10% as our connected workflow strategy drove better than expected performance in the quarter. The segment saw good growth in all regions, with mid-single-digit growth in North America and Western Europe and mid 40% growth in China, lapping prior year shutdowns. Solid core growth in each workflow and strong FBS-driven execution resulted in 300 basis points of operating margin expansion, taking operating margins consistently above 30%.

Looking at our performance drivers by workflow, in Connected Reliability, Fluke core revenues grew by low double digits, with mid-single-digit orders growth in the quarter, and point-of-sale remained positive in all regions. Fluke is benefiting from lean portfolio management, driving record revenue attainment in Fluke's new product launches, including the SMFT-1000 solar tester, which are benefiting from strong demand in the energy, renewables, and electric vehicle markets. Elsewhere at Fluke, eMaint posted another record quarter with strong double-digit growth. We are seeing accelerated customer adoption of the X5 CMMS system with enhanced connected worker capability also closed the largest deal on record with a strategic enterprise customer. EHS revenues grew by mid-single digit with both Industrial Scientific and Intelex providing solid contributions. Industrial Scientific saw strength across all product lines, including iNet. Orders growth outpaced sales driven by new product launches and cross-sell activity.

Intelex posted another quarter of strong SaaS growth with low double-digit ARR growth. Moving to Facilities & Asset Lifecycle. We had high single-digit growth in the first quarter, driven by high single-digit SaaS revenue growth. Customers continued to shift larger projects to Gordian's Job Order Contracting platform. While the wind-down of end-of-life programs at Accruent and the business model change at ServiceChannel lowered core growth, revenues exceeded expectations at FAL as customers continued to seek more productive and digitized solutions to optimize their facilities management. For example, a large worldwide retailer is migrating multiple manual processes to the Lucernex real estate management platform at Accruent, and a large enterprise customer is leveraging ServiceChannel's automation services to save hundreds of thousands of dollars on mismatched invoices. Turning now to slide 9. Precision Technologies delivered another quarter of strong double-digit core revenue growth.

Core revenues increased 14%, driven by high single-digit growth in North America, low double-digit growth in Western Europe, and high 30% growth in China. PT also delivered 190 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion, with higher volume and strong price realization more than offsetting continued inflation and FX. Some highlights of the quarter include greater than 20% core revenue growth at Tektronix. Orders were better than expected, benefiting from bookings growth and electric vehicle testing programs. This and strong point of sale in all major regions drove double-digit growth across its product businesses in the first quarter, which continued to see good demand for recently introduced entry-level and mainstream scopes. Sensing Technologies reported low single-digit growth, as expected, driven by another quarter of strong price realization across all businesses and continued broad strength in cultural.

Pacific Scientific EMC reported a second consecutive quarter of greater than 20% growth as the business continued to deploy FBS to improve operational performance. Moving now to slide 10 in Advanced Healthcare Solutions. Core revenues were flat as the improvement in elective procedure volumes outside of China was offset by some supply chain challenges at Fluke Health Solutions and the expected headwinds in China, elective procedures, and the wind down in Russia. By major region, North America was up slightly, and Western Europe grew mid-single digits, offsetting a high single-digit decline in China. China elective procedures recovered in March, exiting the month at approximately 90% of normalized levels. Our outlook continues to assume that China elective procedures return to normalized levels in the second half of 2023.

In the first quarter, AHS adjusted operating margins declined 260 basis points as a result of FX headwinds, supply chain challenges at Fluke Health, lowering contribution margins, and higher than expected inflation. Some highlights in the quarter include we exited March with stronger ASP consumables growth, reaffirming recovery post-COVID is underway with sales outpacing the market in most regions. Double-digit growth at Censis was driven by its CensiTrac SaaS offering. Censis is also seeing strong demand for its Censis AI productivity platform and continues to drive productivity improvements through the application of FBS tools, which have accelerated the time from bookings to revenue. FHS saw solid demand for equipment orders and dosimetry services despite continued supply chain constraints that stalled equipment shipments. Provation continues to perform very well with another quarter of double-digit growth driven by its Apex SaaS offering.

Apex is seeing continued high customer demand with substantial first quarter orders and a greater than 3 times the average revenue uplift from licensed migrations. Following a strong start to the year, we continue to expect that Provation's growth will accelerate through 2023, supported by customers looking to further standardize on Provation across their health systems. In addition to our remarks on the first quarter performance, we thought it would be helpful to provide more detail on our expectations for the AHS segment for the remainder of this year. The headline is that we expect sequential improvement in both revenue and adjusted operating profit margin as we move through the year.

Specifically on revenue, we expect favorable price in addition to the recovery of elective procedures in China, resolution of supply chain challenges at Fluke Health Solutions, and normal healthcare seasonality to drive higher volumes over the course of the year. As a result, we expect core growth will go from low single-digit in Q2 to mid-single-digit in the second half of the year. On margins, in addition to the uplift from higher volumes and favorable price, we see compounding tailwinds from the benefits of the productivity initiatives taking second half margins to approximately 25%. Go-to-market changes in ASP consumables in North America will improve performance and enable closer connection to our customers to better serve their needs, transitioning from a primarily distribution model to direct to the customer.

All these actions will have carryover benefits in the years to come, positioning us for accelerated growth and profitability as the general healthcare environment continues to improve. With that, I'll pass it over to Chuck, who will provide more color on our first quarter financials and our 2023 outlook.

Chuck McLaughlin (SVP and CFO)

Thanks, Jim. Hello, everyone. I will begin on slide 11 with a quick recap of our first quarter revenue performance for Fortive. We generated year-over-year core revenue growth of 9%. FX was 230 basis points of headwind to growth. Turning to the geographies, we saw another quarter of strong revenue growth in each of our major regions. North America revenue was up mid-single digit with growth in all three segments. Western Europe revenue grew high single digit with mid-single digit growth at IOS and AHS and double-digit growth at PT. Asia revenue increased in the 20% range with low 30% growth in China, driven by strength in both IOS and PT as we lapped easier prior year comps.

Growth in China was partially offset by a high single-digit decline in AHS related to lower elective procedures due to COVID, as we expected. Our high-growth markets together posted strong core growth of almost 20%. Turning to slide 12, we show operating performance highlights for the first quarter. Adjusted gross margins increased 80 basis points to 58.4%. As Jim mentioned, FBS-driven productivity and price realization more than offset inflation, leading to record gross margins in the first quarter, which was complemented by higher volumes. Adjusted operating margins expanded to 100 basis points to 24%, while adjusted earnings per share increased 7% to $0.75, reflecting strong volume conversion, partially offset by higher interest and taxes. Free cash flow is $150 million.

While first quarter is typically our lightest free cash flow quarter, receivables were negatively impacted by slower China collections in the quarter, which has since recovered in April. Turning now to the guide on slide 13. We are raising and narrowing our previous 2023 guidance to reflect outperformance in the first quarter. For the 2nd quarter, we anticipate core revenue growth of 2.5%-4.5%, with an FX headwind of approximately 0.5 point. Adjusted operating profit margin is expected to increase 3%-7%, with margins in the range of 24.5%-25%. Adjusted diluted net earnings per share guidance of $0.78-$0.82, flat, up 5%, includes higher year-over-year interest and tax expense.

Free cash flow of approximately $285 million reflects approximately 100% of cash conversion in the quarter. For the full year, we now expect core revenue in the range of 4%-5.5%, which continues to reflect year-over-year foreign exchange headwind of just under 1 point of revenue. Adjusted operating profit is expected to increase 6%-10%, with margins in the range of 25%-25.5%. We are increasing our adjusted diluted net EPS guidance to $3.29-$3.40, which represents an increase of 4%-8% and includes higher year-over-year interest and tax expense as previously expected. Free cash flow is expected to be approximately $1.25 billion, representing conversion in the range of 100%-105% of adjusted net income and 21% free cash flow margin.

Turning to slide 14, we've consistently said that the Fortive of today is delivering a higher and more profitable growth. There is nowhere that this shows up more than in our free cash flow. Between 2019 and today, we have more than doubled our annual free cash flow. We expect to continue to further enhance our compounding model with over $5 billion of capacity for M&A, enabling us to continue to invest appropriately in our businesses to further position Fortive for long-term value creation. With that, I'll pass it back to Jim to preview our upcoming Investor Day and provide some closing remarks.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Thanks, Chuck. I'll now start to wrap up on slide 15. Our team is thrilled to be back in New York for our first in-person Investor Day since 2019 to be held on May 25th. We are looking forward to highlighting our progress, executing our strategy, and the results it has yielded over the last seven years, building on our strong foundation and enduring principles that underpin our execution capabilities. We will showcase how our businesses have leveraged FBS tools to innovate, take advantage of the secular tailwinds, accelerating progress across our five critical customer workflows. This is translated into relevant product innovations, helping to solve our customers' toughest safety, quality, and productivity challenges, and contributing to sustained strong growth for Fortive.

In the spirit of setting high expectations, we will set long-term targets, looking out 3 and 5 years, culminating with the evolution of our strong free cash flow, porting us ample opportunities to further accelerate our strategy. We are actively fueling our future success by building on the transformation, progress, and learning that has taken place since our inception, unlocking future value for Fortive. Wrapping up on slide 16, the combination of portfolio work we have done and the productivity initiatives we are implementing in the first half of 2023 prepare us for the continuing evolving macro environment and set us up for differentiated performance again in 2024.

As you saw in today's press release, we're also continuing to build on our exceptional leadership culture for the Fortive of the future by expanding Tami Newcombe's responsibilities to include the Advanced Healthcare Solutions segment, in addition to her current role as segment leader of Precision Technologies, succeeding Pat Murphy, who will retire at the end of the year. As you heard today, FBS is more robust than ever, with powerful new capabilities to bring breakthrough innovations to market for our customers faster and drive enhanced business results. The evidence of this is reflected in our strong financial performance, including our free cash flow, the currency we use to measure our success. These factors culminate in the powerful formula for value creation, enabling Fortive to make a real difference in the world and deliver exceptional value to shareholders. With that, I'll turn it back to Elena.

Elena Rosman (VP of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Jim. That concludes our formal comments. Brent, we are now ready for questions.

Operator (participant)

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star followed by the 1 on your telephone keypad. Your first question is from the line of Julian Mitchell with Barclays. Your line is open.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Good afternoon, Julian.

Julian Mitchell (Managing Director and U.S. Industrials Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe the first one, sorry to be boring and predictable, but the AHS, you gave us some very good detail on that sequential improvement through the year. I guess a couple of things I just wanted to clarify on it. One was, maybe the scale of the productivity savings in the second half. Is it sort of $15 million-$20 million, something like that you're getting in the AHS, even in the back half? Just wanna make sure we understand the scale of the importance of China for AHS. Is it about sort of 10% of the business?

Chuck McLaughlin (SVP and CFO)

Julian, I'll take the first part of that. Productivity, we probably expect to do about $10 million in the first half, and that generally has a 6-month payback. Probably see a like amount in the second half there. Annualized is gonna be a little, obviously a little bit bigger.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Yeah, and on the China aspect, yeah, it's about 8%-10% of the business overall. You know, as we said in the prepared remarks, maybe a little bit more color there is that, you know, we obviously started pretty low in electives in the first part of the quarter, January-ish. Got better through the quarter. We exited around 90. You know, we'll see a little bit of continued improvement. I think at this point, it's fair to say we sort of see electives as kind of being back to normal going into the second quarter.

Julian Mitchell (Managing Director and U.S. Industrials Equity Research Analyst)

That's helpful. Thank you. Just switching tack to the overall product hardware orders. You'd said those were down about mid-single digits in the first quarter. You know, is there any sort of interesting movement as you go sort of month to month and any clues on how you're thinking about the second quarter? If we look at the Precision Tech business specifically, and I suppose Tektronix in it, you know, you've had one or two, you know, cautious comments perhaps from some companies who might be peers in recent weeks. Have you seen anything shift in the market outlook for Tektronix or product hardware within PT?

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

First of all, I think, you know, as we said, the quarter for orders for the product businesses came in better than expected. Book-to-bill being 1 was better than we expected. What we saw in the quarter was pretty consistent through the quarter. Obviously, you know, the numbers from a year-on-year perspective get a little bit better simply because of the way China affected those businesses last year. I think when we look at point of sale, Julian, point of sale was good throughout the quarter, and it was good on a global basis at Fluke and Tech. We think those things are good and feel really good about, you know, sort of the strength. I think maybe the other highlight is that Fluke grew mid-single-digit orders.

We said that in the prepared remarks, but I think that's a highlight for sure. A little bit of maybe that came out of the second quarter, which, you know, quite frankly, I think just de-risked the second quarter for us. I think we feel good about that. We're certainly out there watching for things, but we feel good about the order trajectory right now. The, you know, the 2-year stacks are still very strong, you know, sometimes we've got to be a little careful about that. I would say the last thing is that roughly $350 million of excess backlog that we talked about at the beginning of the year is still remains intact.

You know, that, you know, we tried to highlight that on one of the slides relative to the backlog protection. I think on the, you know, at Fluke Industrial, which is kind of typically the canary in the coal mine, things look still pretty good and, or, you know, really still good. And we still maintain the backlog protection that we went into the start of the year.

Julian Mitchell (Managing Director and U.S. Industrials Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Thanks, Julian.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Jeff Sprague with Vertical Research Partners. Your line is open.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Hey, Jeff. How are you?

Jeff Sprague (Founder and Managing Partner)

Hey. Good day, everyone. Hey, how's it going, Jim? Back on AHS, I'd like to deconstruct a little bit more what happened in the quarter. Obviously, it was a very large margin miss. You addressed it a little bit to Julian's question, but if you think about the climb out into the back half, how much of that is really in your control? You know, you mentioned favorable prices. I assume that's the supply chain questions. I wonder if you could give us a little comfort or confidence that that in fact is resolved and anything else to just give us some visibility on how we get to those numbers in the back half.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Yeah. Yeah. Jeff, I'll take the first part of that. There's three main things that happened in health in first quarter. You mentioned about Fluke health supply chain, that was a hit. FX, strengthening dollar, it shows up more here in one of our more global businesses. That was a part of it. You know, also just thinking about the mix effect of lower consumables from China as we had COVID really hit maybe a little harder than we thought there in the first part of first quarter. Those three things are the main reasons we came in short versus our guide for in the health sector.

Yeah, Jeff Sprague, I would just say as we move through the year, really I think 3 things that are definitely in our control. Number 1 is the productivity. Chuck McLaughlin outlined that on Julian Mitchell's question, I think is in hand in that regard, that we're, you know, we've got that. Number 2 is really around price. We've had 3 quarters now of better price. The trajectory on price continues to be good. I think in that sense, we're leaning into that, and team's done a great job relative to that, principally at ASP, by the way, in that one. Finally, a little bit better growth, as we said, electives now normalizing here back to normal. You know, we see that continuing to improve.

We mentioned the go-to-market change that we're making at ASP in North America to go more direct, which really I think gives us closer to customer care and really I think really helps us from the standpoint of really making sure that our sterilizers are running actively. We think those are certainly things that are within our control. We're after it. I feel good about the team and the work they're doing. In that sense, it'll get better in the second quarter. As we said, it'll step in to the second half with continued improvement. You know, and I think the other thing that gets missed in AHS was the quality of the quarter in Censis and Provation. Those businesses are obviously 2 of our higher margin businesses.

You combine that with some of the supply chain fixes that we've got in place at Fluke Health, which is really our highest margin business within health. Those three things are gonna continue. You get the help at ASP, like I just described. You get the continued work at the some of the other businesses. I think that you know, really bodes well for continued improvement throughout the year.

Jeff Sprague (Founder and Managing Partner)

Then, totally shifting gears, just PT strategically, right? If, I don't know if you're gonna end up, you know, commenting specifically on National Instruments, right? It looks like you were there at or near the altar. You haven't deployed capital there really actually since Danaher bought Tektronix really, right? And maybe you were on the verge of doing your biggest deal ever by an order of magnitude. I just wonder if you could frame that up for us, what your thinking is or was, and, and maybe the strategic direction of that particular segment and business over time.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Yeah. We've had a couple of small bolt-ons in both Sensing and in Tech over the years, and those have been helpful to a lot of the success, quite frankly, that we're seeing as an example. Keithley probably being the biggest capital deployment that we did a number of years ago, and that is really, you know, obviously a real success for us at Tech. That was a little while ago. Sense forward if you will, a couple of small bolt-ons in Sensing, but not much. I would say, you know, just relative to, you know, the National Instruments process, we won't comment on that.

The interest in that from others certainly I think speaks to the story that we've been telling at Tektronix and you see it in the quarter, you see it in the back quality of the backlog. It's just the attachment of our innovation capability to some of these secular drivers in auto, EV principally, as well as in power. Those are, I think speaks well to the organic strategy and the investment we've made there at Tech in particular. I think it's, you know, as we look forward, one of the things that I just remind everyone, you know, we had said we'd move Tech from a low single-digit through the cycle grower to a mid-single-digit grower through the cycle. I think we feel very good about that.

To the extent that we can find ways to accelerate the capability throughout PT, we'll continue to look for those things. Great. Thanks for the perspective. Thank you, Jeff.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Steve Tusa with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Hi, Steve.

Steve Tusa (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. How are you?

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Great.

Steve Tusa (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Just on the management reshuffling a little bit here. Can you talk about how, you know, you came to that decision and a lot of responsibility for Tami. They're two kind of pretty different businesses. Is that, is that a permanent solution or should we expect another step in that evolution?

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Well, I think it's certainly the solution that we feel really good about. I mean, I think our talent development process. You know, if you go back a lot of years, you'd see us ebb and flow a little bit relative to those jobs as well as the jobs below that in group president and operating company presidents. Our talent development is, I think, in really a good place. Every one of our group presidents was internally promoted. 80% of our current operating company presidents were internally promoted. I think, you know, when we really feel good about the structure, it's not just what we have at the segment level, but it's within those group presidents and operating company presidents. We've quite frankly never been stronger in that regard.

Gives us the degrees of freedom to do some things throughout the leadership structure. I would also say that when you sort of look at it's pretty balanced from an operating profit perspective and from a just sort of served market standpoint. If we look at the split of responsibilities, yes, two segments to one segment. When we look at a served market, IOS has half the served market. Profitability is pretty close. That ebbs and flows with deals. I think we're in a very good place relative to the structure that we came to. In part, it's not just the most senior jobs, it's also the quality of folks that we have across the board.

We had all of our presidents in last week for our quarterly leadership summit with them. I couldn't be more proud and of the work they're doing and quite frankly, where we stand relative to the quality of leadership at the operating businesses.

Steve Tusa (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

In terms of the portfolio is concerned, I mean, you guys have done a lot of re-engineering over the years. Is there a, you know, progress on that order? You seem to be in roads that have been, you know, subtract, I guess, from the portfolio. Are you in any way, shape, or form still kind of evaluating things there for maybe divestitures or spins or anything like that? I mean, I'm thinking really, Tektronix, especially in the context of what's just happened here in the last several weeks with Emerson and National Instruments.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

I think You broke up a little bit, but I think at the end, I think we got it. I think when we look at the 3 segments we have today, the quality of businesses we have, the execution that's going on, we feel good. I think, you know, certainly the National Instruments process, if you will, ending with Emerson doesn't really change the market structure. We feel good about what we're doing at Tech, and we'll continue to run the play there that we think is really good. That's obviously a part of our success right now is the strong execution that we've had at Tektronix over the last several years.

Steve Tusa (Managing Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks a lot.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Thanks, Steve.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Scott Davis with Melius Research. Your line is open.

Scott Davis (Founding Partner, Chairman, and CEO)

Hey, good afternoon, now this afternoon, Jim and Chuck and Elena.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Hey, Scott.

Scott Davis (Founding Partner, Chairman, and CEO)

I know there's just so much you can say about National Instruments, but it was, I think as Jeff said, kind of a pretty darn big deal versus kind of your history. Is there anything that we should be taking away as far as your willingness to make bigger bets? Was this kind of a one-off unique? I know the gross margin structure was pretty attractive, but, you know, I think historically you guys have generally looked at assets coming out of PE or pieces of assets coming out of bigger companies, but not necessarily looked at buying other public companies as really a big part of the M&A strategy. Has that changed at all, Jim and Chuck, or is this or should we not read too much into this and...

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

I think, you know, we'll have a real opportunity as well to talk about this in May at the investor conference. I think, you know, the $40 billion roughly of served market that we have today, you know, kind of when we look at the M&A opportunities funnel, if you will, we've always talked about breadth and depth. Breadth meaning all three segments, operating companies, ability to accelerate strategy, depth meaning size. You're exactly right. What we've done is the deals sort of in the middle and a few, you know, some bolt-ons on the lower part of that, if you were to think of that as a triangle. With the bigger deals at the top, and there's fewer of those. That's always gonna be the case.

You know, I won't speak specifically to any one company or process in any way, shape, or form. What never changes is the fact that we're gonna continue to scan the landscape for opportunity to accelerate strategy. We're gonna be disciplined about what we do. We're gonna look for outstanding financial opportunities to just continue to build the portfolio the way we have. I think our 2022 performance speaks to the quality of that, and I think our first quarter speaks to that. You know, that's what we're gonna continue to do and I think the when we talk about breadth and depth, that means, you know, there's a variety of different kinds of opportunities.

You know, the most opportunities are always going to fall in those sort of bolt-on and mid-tier opportunities just because, you know, simply because there's a lot more of them. You know, we're looking to accelerate strategy in a few different businesses, and that's where those opportunities are.

Chuck McLaughlin (SVP and CFO)

Fair enough, Jim. Hey, just to clear something up. What was the Fluke Health supply chain issue? I don't recall hearing an explanation on that.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

You know, one of the things and maybe more broadly, I think we handled our supply chain challenges. We've said we're kinda down to those sort of one-off issues that occurred through the portfolio. The fact that we, you know, did 50% more organic revenue in the quarter speaks to the quality of the teamwork we had around Fortive to deal with those challenges really, really well. We did get caught on a couple of quality in what we call our quality assurance equipment business in Fluke Health. You know, literally one component that we were shorted at. We'll clean that up in the second quarter. You know, we feel good about the work we're doing, quite frankly.

Supply chain challenges are down to, you know, what often is called the golden screw. There are a few of those, but I think we're doing an outstanding job more broadly when you not only look at the core growth beat in the quarter, but also the 80 basis points of gross margin expansion, which I think, quite frankly, I think is gonna stand up well against most people.

Chuck McLaughlin (SVP and CFO)

Fair enough. Best of luck. Thanks. See you guys.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Thanks

Chuck McLaughlin (SVP and CFO)

... at Analyst Day.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Yeah. Look forward to it.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Andrew Obin with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Hi, Andrew.

Andrew Obin (Mananging Director of Equity Research)

Hi, guys. good afternoon.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Good afternoon.

Andrew Obin (Mananging Director of Equity Research)

Can you guys hear me?

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

We can.

Chuck McLaughlin (SVP and CFO)

We can, yeah.

Andrew Obin (Mananging Director of Equity Research)

Excellent. Excellent. Just a question. As I'm sort of looking at the sequential guidance for IOS and PT growth and looking at the comps, just trying to figure out, you know, it seems there is a step change down. I apologize if I missed it, but I was just wondering, you also commented that the order book looks good, March looks good. Why this step down? I was wondering specifically if there was some sort of clearing out of things in the backlog. Was sort of, you know, the proverbial golden screw becoming available, or is there something else happening? You guys certainly don't sound particularly more pessimistic about the macro into the second quarter. Thank you.

Chuck McLaughlin (SVP and CFO)

Andrew, I'll take that. you know, the biggest thing is really what happened last year. It's really the comp. you know, if you remember that, Shanghai was shut down at the end of first quarter and a lot of that revenue showed up in Q2. When if you adjust for that comp, actually first quarter and Q2 look pretty similar, you know, from what we're doing this year. If you interrogate the, you know, the two-year stacks, you actually start seeing some acceleration even into the second half here. You're right. We Things came in on balance better than we expected in first quarter, and we're optimistic moving forward.

Andrew Obin (Mananging Director of Equity Research)

Okay. Gotcha. You're sort of saying take a look at a 2-year stack as opposed to 1-year stack.

Chuck McLaughlin (SVP and CFO)

No. I'm also saying look at the first half this year versus the first half last year. There was a lot of revenue missing in first quarter that showed up in Q2, so it's really a tough comp. If you look at that, you'll really see that shutdown that happened in the last week of first quarter of last year is really what explains most of what you're talking about.

Andrew Obin (Mananging Director of Equity Research)

Okay. I'll take it offline. Can I just ask a question on Provation? Did we hear that right, that the SaaS version is 3 times revenue uplift? How fast is the SaaS conversion going, and what's the SaaS versus license mix? Thank you.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Yeah. We. You did hear it right. We're at about 3x right now. We would expect the early migrations to be maybe slightly a little bit higher than maybe what the downstream ones. We're actually ahead of the game on new bookings relative to the SaaS, so that's good. We, you know, all up, just Provation, things are, you know, better. We thought 2022 was better than expected, and we started the year off well. We are seeing a little bit of extended discussions with customers, I would say.

Maybe more broadly, you know, there are certainly in the software world, there's a little bit more funnel activity, things sitting in the funnel a little bit longer, just given maybe so how, you know, typical start of the year. We still have good confidence in the projections we have for what we have in software. We had a very good ARR quarter. We feel good more broadly about software in general.

Andrew Obin (Mananging Director of Equity Research)

Okay. Thanks so much.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Thanks, Andrew.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Josh Pokrzywinski with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Hey, Josh.

Chuck McLaughlin (SVP and CFO)

Good afternoon.

Josh Pokrzywinski (Equity Research Analyst)

Just wanted to dig in a little bit on implied second half for PT, especially with the backlog holding up really well here in the first quarter. Looks like.

Volumes would be kind of flat, maybe even down. I know the comp gets a little wonkier there, but just trying to triangulate, you know, the book-to-bill still being good with, you know, with the basically kind of, you know, no growth second half.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Yeah. It's really about the 2-year stacks. We had really accelerated growth in PT in the second half of last year, Josh. It's, you know. I think we, as we said, you know, the book-to-bill coming into the quarter is better. You might say maybe that slightly de-risks the second half a little bit, but it really is. You know, we will see a little bit lower growth in the second half in PT on absolute terms, but it's really the comps. We, you know, we really see continued performance relative to the market going, you know, first half to second half for sure.

Josh Pokrzywinski (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. That's helpful. Just on the order intake, again, I know you're surprised that, you know, the book-to-bill was 1 in the quarter, any sort of right sizing of the order book as lead times start to improve a little bit? You know, customers basically just saying, "Look, I still want everything, but now that it's not as urgent." You know, was there any kind of air pocket push out, you know, that you see as a function of that?

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

I mean, I think what we've seen is point of sales remain strong. Some of that, particularly Tektronix, is probably the backlog coming down, but we still have excess, you know, that excess backlog, which is really customer demand, it's not inventory. It's still very much in, you know, very much in demand from customers. At Tech, in particular, we have very little distributor inventory or channel inventory, if you will. We feel good about the demand being actual demand or the backlog having actual demand to it. We haven't seen those air pockets yet. You know, we continue to watch. We have a watchful eye just given, you know, what we see in the macro and those types of things.

so far the demand is real and point of sale stays strong, and that point of sale stays strong on a global basis.

Josh Pokrzywinski (Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. That's helpful. See you guys next month.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Deane Dray (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you. Good day, everyone.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Hi, Deane.

Josh Pokrzywinski (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, Deane.

Deane Dray (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Hey, I wanna circle back on the page 5, the concept about backlog protected, it came up in Julian's question too, is it was my sense that some of this backlog build the excess or outside backlog, you know, like Fluke short cycle wouldn't typically see much in the way of backlog, but you've got it now. To me, that seems it's more transitory. As supply chains heal, that'll come down. How much of this backlog protected would be transitory by definition, or you just think there's a certain amount that carries through each year on the kind of book and ship over a couple of quarters? Thanks.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

It's a great question. I think number one is if we take Fluke in the industrial business, we don't have a huge amount of excess backlog in that business. Point of sale remains strong. I think what we're seeing is just continued good execution from the Fluke team. The sort of backlog protected on that slide is mostly at Tech and in Sensing. In Tech, I think it's we don't anticipate that excess even burning down this year, Deane. I would say in some respects, we're probably gonna run with excess backlog in perpetuity. I think in both cases, it's really about the secular drivers that exist that we've really tried to build the business around.

We're seeing better performance as an example in Western Europe, and I think that's really because of, you know, the sustainability electric vehicles, you know, all the power, a lot of the grid upgrades, some of those things. Those investments are very much happening in Europe, and we're taking advantage of those opportunities. We like the durability, if you will, of the backlog. Some of it is excess, and that's why we call it that way, and some of it's a little bit of imprecision relative to what it'll be like long term. We do see when we interrogate that backlog on a pretty regular basis, we like the durability of it and the resiliency of it pretty because of the secular drivers that we listed on the right side of that page.

We think, you know, we're in a better position for the year because of the strategic moves we've made over the last few years relative to those secular drivers.

Deane Dray (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Great. That was really helpful. Just as a follow-up, and I might have missed this, did you comment on carryover pricing benefits and whether you plan any further pricing actions over the near term?

Chuck McLaughlin (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, Deane, this is Chuck. We had about 4.5% of price in first quarter. Much of that is carryover, but we continue to be active at, you know. We've still got inflation coming at us, so maybe it won't be as high. I would expect that inflation is gonna moderate from the rate suite increases from last year. There's still inflation coming at us, and so we'll still be deploying price as we go through the year.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

The other thing that we continue to see opportunity for is the FBS tools related to price. We still see even the price that we put into the marketplace, still opportunities to realize that price at a higher rate, Deane. You know, we're gonna continue to do the things Chuck just described. As we mentioned earlier, health will continue to improve price, which we feel good about.

It's also the realization, and I think, We've always had good realization, as you know, knowing us for a long time. I think our ability to continue to do that and apply FBS to that is something that we'll continue to do throughout the year, even in places where maybe we don't put as much into the marketplace, we're gonna continue to work on the price realization.

Deane Dray (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Nigel Coe with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Hi, Nigel.

Nigel Coe (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone. Yeah, thanks for the question. I wanna go back to Tami taking leadership at AHS. You know, Jim, are you looking for a change in the way that AHS is managed? I have no idea what that means. It's a bit of an open question, but, you know, if you think about accelerating growth or improving the consistency of the margin performance, supply chain, etc, are there things that Tami can bring to bear from her time, you know, running Tektronix that can actually improve AHS?

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Yeah. I think anytime we get a new leadership into a role like that, Nigel, we see a new set of eyes, and that's always a good thing. You know, when we hired Olumide a few years ago, I think we got a new set of eyes on IOS, and you're seeing that quality of performance play out in IOS right now. He's brought some new skill sets to the role. Pat's done some things over the last year that he's had help that are definitely sticking. Tami will bring the same thing. That's the expectation. I think, you know, we benefit from sometimes those new perspectives.

Nigel Coe (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. Just going back to the whole kind of National Instruments situation. You know, if you think about what National Instruments might have given you, if you had bought that business, are there things you can do organically to accomplish those things maybe on a longer term basis? Obviously, you've, you know, you've done a good job of extending the kind of the vertical markets that Tech plays in over time. Are there things you can do to extend down into more the validation or maybe the production phases, of your customers?

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

I think.

Nigel Coe (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

are there bolt-ons...

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

You know.

Nigel Coe (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Are there bolt-ons you can do? Yeah.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

There, I would say regardless of the process, our strategic thinking around Tech has been very focused on the secular drivers, not to bear too much re-repeating on that. It's been around changing the vertical focus, as you know well, and that's played out. Some of that has been, you know, innovation efforts, that we would certainly look to add to, if opportunities, you know, become available. We would never say never to... That doesn't really change anything that's relative to what's been going on in the external environment. You know, that's why we do strategic plans every year. That's why we, you know, that's why we really kind of come with a different emphasis every year. We feel good about the strategy at Tech.

To the extent that we've got bolt-on opportunities, there, as well as any of the other businesses that we have, we're always gonna be looking at those opportunities to accelerate strategy into the markets. You know, as an example, we would. You know, power is a good example. We would love to do more in power. If we found an M&A opportunity that did that, we would certainly look at it. Keithley is a good example, although it was a few years ago. It's really extended our ability to do some things relative to power. You know, we're bearing the benefits of the fruits of that work today.

Nigel Coe (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. Thanks, Jim.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Thanks, Nigel.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Andy Kaplowitz with Citigroup. Your line is open.

Andy Kaplowitz (Managing Director and U.S. Industrial Sector Head)

Good afternoon, everyone.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Hi, Andy.

Andy Kaplowitz (Managing Director and U.S. Industrial Sector Head)

Jim, can you talk a little bit more about what you're seeing by region? I know you mentioned you expect China to slow a bit, it's continued to be really strong for Fortive. I think last quarter you said Western Europe might grow a little more slowly, you just mentioned some secular trends holding up well in Europe. Would you say these trends are proving more durable than you know, originally thought? Do you see an extended CapEx cycle in the U.S. from trends such as electrification and onshoring?

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Yeah. I definitely think China will slow. We've had so many good years of China and obviously we just posted a, you know, 30% kinda quarter. It was probably gonna stand up pretty well. I think in that sense, we'll digest some of that growth here through the year. I would expect China to slow in the second half a little bit, particularly because of the tough as well as tough comps. It's part of that tougher comp conversation we had relative to the segments. I think Western Europe is holding up. That's for the reasons I said. Broader Europe is slowed a little bit. That's in the context of everything that we've got in the guide is the expectation that probably Central and Eastern Europe is a little slower.

Some of that having to do with the war, some of it obviously has to do with us getting out of Russia, but it's also just a little bit of slowing. The Western European investment in a few countries has held up pretty well. I still expect North America to be a good region for us, you know, partly because our software and a lot of our durability is in North America. I think when we You know, it's probably still too early to tell, to be very specific. You know, my expectation probably when we get to the end of the year is that North America probably is the most durable of all the regions.

Andy Kaplowitz (Managing Director and U.S. Industrial Sector Head)

Helpful, Jim. I wanna ask an AHS question maybe in a different way. You mentioned China elective procedures at 90% in March. Maybe a little bit faster improvement from where you started the quarter, and you did mention overall consumables better in March. I know Invetech is still somewhat weak, which I think is still somewhat difficult comparisons versus during the pandemic. Do you think by the second half of 2023 that, you know, maybe normalization from the pandemic actually happens, whether it's you improve staffing at your customers, better consumables for you, or an improved Invetech, so just the markets around you change?

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Yeah, we do. I mean, we even saw some green shoots in March, quite frankly, in US consumables as an example, which had good growth. Yeah, we think that you're exactly right. We think the second. You know, it's gonna start to get a little weird still comparing to 2019 here by the time. I think as we get into the second half, I think we'd probably say our bet right now is that it's normalized. There'll still be labor shortages. If you recall back in our start of the year call, we said, "Hey, we thought 2023 would be better than 2022. 2024 would be better than 2023." I think some of that continues.

you know, that's gonna continue through the year. Our self-help's gonna get better as well, as I said earlier in the call. I think the combination of things getting a little better in the marketplace as well as our self-help start to see the traction of that. I'm confident we'll start to see the benefits of those things playing out in the second quarter and then into the second half.

Andy Kaplowitz (Managing Director and U.S. Industrial Sector Head)

Appreciate the color.

Operator (participant)

Your final question comes from the line of Joe Giordano with TD Cowen. Your line is open.

Joe Giordano (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Hey, guys. Nice to see you again here.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Hi, Joe. Sure.

Joe Giordano (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

On the pie chart that you have for revenue where you had, like, the backlog protected that Deane was referencing earlier, just curious, like, the biggest piece of that is recurring X software. Just, like, if we go into, like, a more, like, a real recession, how, like, how recurring is that business in a good time versus how recurring is it in a bad time? Is there slippage as customers get tighter with their wallet?

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

I think it holds up pretty well. I think, number one, there's a couple of big pieces in there, right? Consumables at ASP is a big piece. iNet, our EMC business is in there, which is long-term contracts. So we've got a number of... Of course, broadly defined services. Though it should hold up well, and we feel good about... It held up very well in the first quarter as an example, with really good growth. You combine that with software and then even the healthcare hardware. We've got a good portion of the portfolio that we think is really resilient.

You combine that with roughly 25% of our hardware non-recurring, which is backlog protected, we feel pretty good. As mentioned earlier, the secular drivers in, you know, the entire product side also provides some another good insurance policy here. We've, you know, we've really run the playbook that we've talked about so many times. We're prepared for a number of scenarios. We took some restructuring earlier, productivity initiatives earlier in the year as you know. We've upped that as well. We feel like we're building scenarios around what could happen. It's hard to predict the future, but the portfolio was built many, you know, over the years to in most cases, to deal with a lot of these challenges, and we think we're well prepared for them.

Joe Giordano (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Fair enough. Then just to follow up on the discussion about the cyclical businesses. Like, IOS and PT both came in quarter ahead, you know, pretty solidly ahead of what you suggested in your guidance for Q1. The full year guides on the growth side are pretty much the same. A little bit bump in 1, but pretty much the same. How should we think about that? Is it kind of a lower view of the second half? Like you mentioned the backlog is still really high. Just curious how we should interpret that.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Yeah, I think the first half doesn't change all that much. Chuck kind of talked about that a little bit. I think, you know, think about de-risking the second half. It's a little bit of de-risking. And if things continue to play out as positively as they have, you know, there might be some opportunity. I think right now let's see how things play out. As we said, on a two-year stack, the hardware business, the product businesses do get a little bit better given the tougher comps in the second half. Where we stand today, I think, you know, I think most people would be envious of the start that we had for the year, and we feel good about that.

Joe Giordano (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thanks, guys.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back over to Mr. Jim Lico.

Jim Lico (President and CEO)

Thanks, Brent. Thanks everyone for taking the time today. We know, it's a busy schedule for all of you. We appreciate, we appreciate the questions. We certainly appreciate the interest. I hope from the words from Chuck and I, you heard, as well as the prepared remarks. Hopefully, the presentation was helpful as well. We're off to a good start. We feel good about it. There is certainly, some uncertainty out there in a number of ways. We feel well prepared for it. We'll look forward to the for follow-up questions that can give you more color on that to the extent, we can be helpful. We're really looking forward to sharing our story more longer term at our investor conference.

We think it's an opportunity for us to really demonstrate a lot of the things we've talked about today relative to how that plays out, the strength of the financials, but also the strength of the strategy, which really continues to help us. We had a great 2022. We think it's also gonna help us post a good 23. We'll look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks, everyone. Take care.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.