Hubbell - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 2025 delivered adjusted EPS of $4.93, up 11% y/y, on net sales of $1.484B (+2% y/y); GAAP operating margin expanded 160 bps to 22.7% and adjusted operating margin to 24.4%.
• Revenue modestly missed consensus ($1.484B vs $1.507B*), while EPS and EBITDA significantly beat (Adj. EPS $4.93 vs $4.40*, EBITDA $384.6MM vs $347.9MM*) — strength in Grid Infrastructure and data center-exposed products offset weak Grid Automation/meters.
• Management raised FY25 outlook: diluted EPS to $16.25–$16.75 and adjusted EPS to $17.65–$18.15 (tax rate 22.0–22.5%; organic sales growth 4–6%; ~90% FCF conversion), reflecting price/productivity and FIFO accounting harmonization (+$0.30 first-half EPS impact).
• Accounting change to FIFO reduced Q2 COGS by $29MM ($0.42/share) and 1H COGS by $20MM ($0.29/share), improving quarter-to-quarter margin matching amid cost inflation — a transparency and comparability catalyst.
• Board declared a $1.32 quarterly dividend payable Sept 15, 2025; near-term stock narrative: guidance raise, margin resilience despite tariffs/metals inflation, and data center demand tailwinds vs continued meter softness.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Grid Infrastructure organic sales +7% with high-teens orders in 1H; distribution returned to growth, supporting H2 trajectory (“we can say that the channel destock has concluded”).
• Electrical Solutions organic +4% with margin expansion (Adj. OI +9%; adj. margin 22.5%), driven by data centers and “compete collectively” commercial alignment.
• Price/productivity exceeded cost inflation; management proactively implemented two price actions, expecting ~3 pts of FY25 price (“we feel we are ahead at this split second”).

What Went Wrong

• Grid Automation sales down ~13% as larger AMI projects rolled off; sequential stability only at a lower base, with growth expected to resume in Q4.
• Tariff and metals inflation (copper/steel/aluminum) added cost pressure; price covers OP dollar-for-dollar but is “not margin-friendly” in the near term.
• Revenue slightly below consensus (–$23MM vs*), reflecting metering weakness and timing of price realization; organic growth only +2% for the quarter.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, and welcome to Hubbell's second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your answer phrase. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 1 again. We ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. I will now like to turn the conference over to Dan Innamorato. You may begin.

Dan Innamorato (VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Strategy)

Thanks, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release announcing our results for the second quarter of 2025. The press release and slides are posted to the investor section of our website at hubbell.com. Joined today by our Chairman, President, and CEO, Gerben Bakker, our Executive Vice President, and CFO, Bill Sperry. Please note our comments this morning may include statements related to the expected future results of our company. These are forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Please note the discussion of forward-looking statements in our press release and consider it incorporated by reference into this call. Additionally, comments may also include non-GAAP financial measures. Those measures are reconciled to the comparable GAAP measures, which are included in the press release and slides. Now, let me turn the call over to Gerben.

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Thanks, Dan. Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss Hubbell's second quarter 2025 results. Hubbell delivered double-digit adjusted earnings per share growth in the second quarter, driven by strong organic growth in grid infrastructure and electrical solutions, as well as year-over-year adjusted operating margin expansion of 120 basis points. We are raising our full-year outlook today, and we remain confident in our ability to deliver attractive financial performance for our shareholders over the near and long term. As detailed in this morning's press release, our results and outlook this morning are presented on a FIFO basis. Bill will provide you with some additional details in a few minutes, but this transition enables a greater consistency of cost accounting method across our businesses and better matching of expense and revenue recognition, particularly during inflationary periods.

While raw material inflation and tariffs are driving incremental cost inflation relative to our initial outlook, you will see throughout today's presentation that we have been proactive in driving price and productivity across our portfolio, and we are well-positioned to achieve positive price-cost productivity in 2025. In utility solutions, performance in the quarter was highlighted by 7% organic growth in grid infrastructure. Transmission and substation markets remained strong as our utility customers invest to interconnect new sources of load and generation on the grid. Distribution markets returned to growth as the recent customer inventory normalization cycle has run its course, and our sales growth in the quarter recoupled to reflect solid end-market demand driven by grid hardening. Grid infrastructure orders remained strong, up high teens year-over-year in the first half and supporting our expectation for strong organic growth in the second half.

While grid automation performance was weaker than anticipated, strong growth in our higher-margin T&D components product categories drove favorable mix dynamics in the quarter. In electrical solutions, we delivered mid-single-digit organic growth with continued adjusted operating margin expansion and 9% adjusted operating profit growth. Our segment unification efforts and our strategy to compete collectively are driving outgrowth in key vertical markets, most notably evidenced by strong data center growth in the second quarter. From an operational standpoint, we continue to simplify our business to drive productivity and operating efficiencies, which we are confident will drive long-term margin expansion. While the macroeconomic and inflationary environments remain dynamic, Hubbell is well-positioned in attractive markets with a leading portfolio of brands, and we are proactively managing our cost structure and pricing actions to drive continued profitable growth.

Now, let me turn the call over to Bill to provide some more details on our financial results.

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Thanks, Gerb. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Maybe before my comments, if I may be just off a personal note of support, any of you who were in Midtown yesterday, a rifle being discharged at Park and 52nd Street is a pretty disturbing day. I just hope you and your people are all okay. I'm going to start my comments on page four of the slides that you hopefully have found. I'll start with our adoption of a unified FIFO-based inventory accounting standard. Our previous state had been, in very rough terms, half LIFO, half FIFO. That was really just an outcome of companies we had bought or companies we had sold. We just brought them on in their prior standards. We thought this was a good time to make the effort to harmonize that with maybe three specific benefits.

The first being, running the company under a single methodology, I think, allows us to simplify our business reviews and have everybody running the same way. I think, secondly, in an inflationary environment, because of the fact that our pricing typically takes about a quarter to get into the revenue stream, we find this creates a better match of the timing of when new higher costs are recognized and when those new prices are recognized. Previously, we created a distorting lag and asked you to be patient. I think now we can offer you a more accurate recognition of our margin in the quarter that it's happening. I think, third, I'm hoping it puts us, from your perspective, on the same footing as our reporting peers. Hopefully, it makes it easier for you all to make comparisons and contrasts and better judgments.

Obviously, none of this destroys or creates profits during a cycle. It's just a timing of when the expenses are recognized. The implications you can see on the right-hand side of the page was a $29 million decrease in COGS in the second quarter and a $20 million decrease in COGS for the first half. You see the impact on the first half of 2025 was about $0.30. That's equivalent to the range in guidance that we've made, and that Gerben is going to talk about more at the end of the conversation. The other implication is to accelerate some tax payments to be made over the next several years. Interestingly, those payments will be more than offset by what we're expecting to be cash benefits from the new Big Beautiful Bill tax legislation that was recently passed in early July.

All of this, we just wanted to remind on the bottom of the page, we feel the obligation to continue to put out a high-quality reporting framework. We think a more harmonized standard continues to contribute to that. We are just calling out here, reminding everybody that we do things like fully burden our segments with corporate costs. We include restructuring costs in our results because we feel they are an important part of our ongoing performance, and we as well recognize the benefits. Enough, hopefully, on accounting. Turning to the performance, I am on page five. Our sales were up in the quarter 2% to just under $1.5 billion. There was general strength in our electrical segment. In the utility side, the strength was on the grid infrastructure area. In the grid automation, we had a weak quarter of double-digit contraction.

If you put the electrical segment and the infrastructure side together, you would have a mid-single-digit growth rate, and that grid automation piece providing a couple of point drag to the overall sales results. Second column, you see adjusted operating profit. The dollars up 8% in the quarter to $362 million, and the margins widened by 120 basis points to 24.4%. If we talked about the drivers there, interestingly, we tend not to talk about mix very frequently with you all. It so happens that the area of contraction in grid automation and Aclara is towards the lower end of the spectrum of our margin of our portfolio versus the areas of growth, namely burning and grounding and connectors, and T&D area of utility happen to be quite high margin areas. There is, to just the market growth, just a natural mix benefit.

As well, we continue to manage price cost very well, and as well the FIFO impact, as we discussed on the previous page. The third column there is adjusted earnings per share. You see grew on a dollar basis 11% from $4.93, outgrowing the operating profit growth with some non-op tailwinds. Last year's tax rate was a little bit higher. I think, as we have been talking about with you all during the first half of the year, we bought some shares, about $225 million of share repurchases. That creates a little bit of non-op lift as well. On the fourth column, you have the free cash flow. Good growth in the quarter. Importantly, we feel continuing to track to the 90% conversion that we are targeting to achieve through the operating year of 2025. Let's disaggregate the enterprise results into the two segments.

On page six, we'll start with utility. You see 1% growth there to $936 million, all of that growth being organic. That unpacks into the two pieces. One is the grid infrastructure, the more hardware side of the business. That's about three-quarters of the segment. You see 7% growth there. That disaggregates into double-digit growth in transmission and substation. Continued very healthy demand there. The distribution side, that last mile connecting to the house or the building, growing at a mid-single-digit rate of sales. Important to note that year-to-date our orders are up high teens in this area. I mentioned that importantly when Gerben gets to our guidance and our outlook for the balance of the year. Certainly, that order book is influencing very heavily how we think about providing you guys guidance here at the halfway point.

I think we continue to see the trends of grid modernization and electrification alive and well. Very good news. I think additional good news and quite noteworthy to see that as the distribution products grew, we can say that the channel destock has concluded. I'm sure you are as happy as I am to not have us discuss that any longer with you all. That feels good to emerge from that. Grid automation at a 13% contraction, about a quarter of the total segment. We've had some rolloff of large projects that were not backfilled. We really have a situation where we have been coming out of a heavy backlog year that was created when the chips weren't available the year prior to that. We've had some erratic comparisons to be made.

I think when we get to the outlook, we'll talk a little bit more about, I think, how grid automation feels to be in a stable and growing environment finally. On the operating profit side, on the right-hand side of the page, you see the dollars grow by 7% to $239 million in the quarter. Margins up 140 basis points. Driven by continued price realization, managing price-cost quite effectively. Again, good mix there between the infrastructure growth and the grid automation contraction. Solid bottom line performance for that segment and good growth trends inside the core piece of grid infrastructure. We'll talk about electrical segment on page seven. You see a solid quarter turned in by the segment. 4% sales growth to $545 million. Largely organic, but there was. A small contribution from the Ventive acquisition, which you'll remember, which was wireless infrastructure products.

As we think about driving that mid-single-digit growth, data centers continues to be a very significant contributor to our balance of systems product portfolio that's exposed there. The light industrial markets were very strong for us for our connectors and grounding products. Heavy industrial, certainly more mixed and non-res, a little bit soft. As we look to the right side of the page on the operating profit, 9% growth in dollars to $124 million. Margins up a point to 22.5%. They're dropping through incrementals on their volume, managing price cost, and they continue to push productivity. I think you all remember Mark Mikes leading this segment, doing a good job on competing collectively on the top side, working around some Salesforce realignments that we think have been successful in vertical market selling and cross-selling and continuing to work some channel conversions.

On the cost side, continuing to become more and more efficient as we create a real segment rather than a series of vertical businesses. What I think Mark's pulling off here and his team is consistent multi-year momentum in the electrical segment, and we see it continuing to grind upwards and improve. We're very pleased with his results, and I think he's got still years to go on that improvement side. On page eight, I'm going to talk about the markets as a setup, and Gerben's going to come back and talk about our outlook and guidance and kind of have these market perspectives maybe as input into the top line of his guidance comments that he'll share. What you see in the inside of both of the circles is roughly 4-6% organic sales growth.

It's roughly equal between the segments, and it's roughly equal contributions from price and volume, though a little bit price skewed versus volume skewed there. If we start with electrical on the right, we think the second half will be quite similar to the first half. You'll see from around 10 o'clock to around 3 o'clock there in the circle, we're a little more cautious around heavy industrial and non-res, contemplating flat contributions for the year. As you work down, you start to see light industrial, renewables, you're seeing low and mid-single-digit contributions. Clearly, the star of the show continues to be data centers, and we're anticipating 30% growth there. On the left side, you've got our utility markets. What you see from about 10:00 to 4:00, you see the grid protection and the electrical distribution. High singles and mid-singles.

I'll just note that electrical distribution of mid-singles, it maybe looks modest next to the transmission and substation, but that is an inflection. Just to remind us coming off of its destocking, and so that's quite good for us to see that rebounding. The mid and high teens performance of substation transmission markets, we just see continued strength there. Our positioning is very good. I think our sales growth is going to continue to be strong. Telecoms worth mentioning as another inflection point. I think you all recall us going through last year with some significant contractions there in the enclosures business driven by telecoms. Again, quite encouraging to see them finish out any of the overstocking situation, plus potentially any market weakness that was combining with that, to return to growth. That's quite good. You see the Aclara piece of meters and AMI down 20.

I think that's worth maybe some comments. Clearly, the large projects and a lot of the backlog that we were fulfilling from that point in time when in the previous year, the chips had become unavailable, it was difficult for us to ship. Those got fulfilled and created quite a difficult compare for last year. We've in response managed cost, really working to moderate the decrementals there. I think if I were to describe the position that Aclara is in, I would say the last three quarters have been quite flat sequentially. We think that's, we're kind of down to that stable base of smaller projects, MRO, good business with union co-ops and the more public utilities.

We think we're expecting that in the fourth quarter, Aclara will return to growth and be able to have a steadier operation moving forward as we've sort of absorbed this reaction to that heavy backlog year in the prior year. With those pieces, I'm going to turn it to Gerben and have him synthesize that into our outlook for you.

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Great. Thanks, Bill. We are raising our full-year adjusted earnings per share outlook to a range of $17.65-$18.15. This represents a raise of $0.30 at both the low and high end of our prior outlook range. We anticipate 4-6% organic growth and full-year adjusted operating margin expansion to drive high single-digit adjusted earnings per share growth at the midpoint of our range. This outlook is consistent with our long-term financial framework, which we believe will deliver differentiated returns for our shareholders over time.

We are confident in our ability to navigate through near-term macroeconomic and inflationary uncertainties to deliver on these increased financial commitments in 2025. We are seeing strong evidence of secular growth megatrends in the largest, highest margin areas of our portfolio, which we believe will underpin strong performance in the second half of 2025 and over the next several years. We are confident that Hubbell's unique leading positions at the intersection of grid modernization and electrification, combined with structural opportunities in our operating model and capital deployment potential, will continue to drive long-term shareholder value creation. With that, let me turn the call over to Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to ask the question, please press star 11 on your telephone, then wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again.

Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Jeffrey Spreed with Vertical Research Partners. Your line is open.

Jeffrey Sprague (Founder and Managing Partner)

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Just on electrical distribution. The return to mid-single-digit growth. I'm just wondering if that is your view of what the underlying market is growing. And we should view that as sort of a steady-state growth rate from here. Or do, in fact, you think, even though you're not talking about inventory in the channel, it still might be an issue and it's perhaps muting the growth rate? You grew through it this quarter, right? The question is, is mid-single-digit growth really kind of the sustainable growth rate from here?

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah, Jeff, maybe I'll start with, I think the short answer is yes. Mid-single-digit is the underlying growth rate.

What we see reflected of end-user demand is what they're actually hanging on the infrastructure. It does improve on the second half, though, based on just easier comps, right, compared to last year. Yeah, we believe fundamentally, longer term, this is a mid-single-digit growth area with a combination of MRO replacement and grid hardening.

Jeffrey Sprague (Founder and Managing Partner)

And then on the return of growth in Aclara in the fourth quarter, I guess that would also mostly just be a comp issue. Putting aside comps, do you actually see a pickup in activity there, project or otherwise, that would create a situation where we could expect some growth out of that business in 2026?

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, Jeff, the trajectory in the last few quarters has been quite flat sequentially. That is the start to get flat.

As you look out and you see pipeline, I think it is not at all unreasonable to think of it as a low single- to mid-single-digit growth from this kind of new lower base.

Jeffrey Sprague (Founder and Managing Partner)

Just on tariffs, I am sorry if I missed it, but can you share with us what the tariff impact embedded in your results are, how much pricing you are getting against that, and maybe just a little bit more color on price in the two segments?

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. We got a couple of points of price, Jeff, in the first half. We are in the second quarter slightly ahead of tariffs on a price-cost basis. We are expecting more tariffs to hit third quarter and more price to hit. We feel that we acted pretty early and we feel that the market kind of accepted those increases based on the tariff logic.

Those prices have stuck reasonably well. We are feeling good about our ability. There is no question it is a challenging environment and having the regime change quickly and with quite little notice, maybe something being put on and being delayed. Nonetheless, I think we are managing that quite well using price. We feel we are ahead at this split second.

Jeffrey Sprague (Founder and Managing Partner)

Yeah. Okay. Thanks. I will leave it there.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Tommy Mall with Stevens. Your line is open.

Tommy Moll (Managing Director)

Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions.

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Hi, Tommy.

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Good morning, Tommy.

Tommy Moll (Managing Director)

Wanted to start with a conversation on copper specifically and commodities more broadly, but copper has obviously had a big move here. The question arises, what, if any, impact do you contemplate for this year's earnings?

If I can just make it a two-parter, maybe more broadly, where are you exposed versus well covered just in terms of the hedge strategy across all the commodities that would be meaningful here? Thank you.

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, Tommy. I would say if I answered it backwards, we use the price lever as the way to hedge against commodities and metals. We feel not exposed. We actually feel well covered. When we introduced this framework last quarter, we were taking your question about the commodities. Even though we may not be paying tariffs, we were considering that metal inflation to be tariff-related because a lot of it was caused by producers being able to take advantage of a price umbrella. There have been movements. Our exposure is copper, steel, aluminum, all of those. I hear you on copper.

There is maybe some uncertainty going forward, and yet we continue to be confident that we can use price there, Tommy. We have very active ongoing dialogue with all of our customers and distributors talking about that. I think that dialogue is being well informed by analytics and price charts and all of that. I think the raise to guidance you should assume from us to mean we feel confident that we can cover that kind of inflation with price.

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Maybe more specifically, if copper is up more recently, if that remains a fact, it will require additional pricing. Under the new construct of FIFO, we have the time, right? You will see a delayed impact of that copper cost coming through, and it gives us the time to price for it.

Copper is one example, but we continue to see, whether it is reciprocal tariffs or whether it is steel and aluminum here recently that went up, just a very dynamic environment. It starts for us on the cost side and what we can do to mitigate these actions. This is supplier negotiation, both sharing some of this cost or delaying the impact. It is supplier moves or reshoring. It is trade organizations that we use to help with exemptions. It is just all-out effort. It is truthfully a responsibility that we have for our customers to offset some of these costs with cost actions and productivity. Of course, as well, using prices where needed to be price-cost neutral. I would say very dynamic. Your copper, for example, is just one of various areas that we are looking at and proactively managing to.

Tommy Moll (Managing Director)

Thank you both. For my follow-up question, I wanted to ask on the EPS guidance you provided. There are some moving pieces this quarter. The LIFO FIFO discussion has gotten sufficient airtime. Also, there was the $0.50 contingency or sensitivity from last quarter that is no longer part of the conversation today. My question is, if you think purely from an operational perspective. Would you say things have gotten better, worse, same in terms of the earnings expectations for this year? Thank you.

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. I think I would say that. We continue to be on track to deliver the operational performance that we had promised at the beginning of the year, Tommy. I would say that implies overcoming some new costs from tariffs, and it involves overcoming some slightly more challenging first-half volume. We view that as a bit of an accomplishment operationally to be able to do that.

To your point of removing that contingency, we also feel is good in removing that uncertainty from our investors' expectations.

Tommy Moll (Managing Director)

Thank you. I'll turn it back.

Operator (participant)

Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Snyder with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Toby Okwara (Associate)

Hi. Thank you for the question. This is Toby O'Carroll on for Chris. Wanted to ask for a little bit more color around the end markets. I know that data center seems like it's remaining strong. We haven't really seen anything negative there. Any other areas of green shoots that have shown up, particularly on the electrical side? Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Yeah. Certainly, I think for us, green shoots-wise, we've been talking, I think, for the better part of this year and probably extending into last, how we thought demand was always in reasonably good shape.

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Yet we were seeing some channel overstocking that was creating us making kind of fewer shipments than was being ultimately installed. That started for us in wiring device, and we worked our way through that now fully a year plus ago. It felt like the distribution, that last mile of utility product, kind of was still working against us. We feel really happy to say we think we're through that. It is not a green shoot in that demand has changed. It is just a green shoot in the amount of shipments we'll be able to make to replenish the fact that the channel has kind of right-sized itself. By channel, I'm extending through a distribution customer to the end utility. I also would point out the enclosures area, where telecom had been creating some static, and we've seen that area revert to growth.

Year over year was flat in the second quarter, but sequentially up from the first quarter. We are quite confident that bottomed in Q1. There are some nice green shoot improvements in. Where we'll be able to ship, which aren't the exact same as that there's been market inflection, right? It's just demand needed by the end customer. We do think things have changed meaningfully here at the midway point of 2025.

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Maybe the only thing I would add to that is on the light industrial side of electrical, that's continued to be very resilient with some of the projects, some of the reshoring there with the Fernley specific product, the grounding connectors, is holding up really nicely.

Chris Snyder (Executive Director)

Thank you. This is Chris. I wanted to follow up on price. Last quarter, you guys kind of planned for two price increases.

I believe the first was in April, and there was a second one that was expected later in the quarter. I'm assuming that second one maybe didn't go through or got pushed out. Can you just kind of remind us on that second price increase? When is it coming? And I guess how material could it be when we think about the organic guide into the back half? Thank you.

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. Chris, you broke up a little. What we heard was a question about the price that was pulled in the second quarter and was there price pulled maybe towards the middle or end that hasn't yet been seen in shipments. That is true. I think I might have heard you say, "Was that price increase delayed?" I would say it was not delayed. It was implemented, but it hasn't yet shown up.

The two points of price that we're seeing in the second quarter should actually grow incrementally in the second half due to the phenomenon that you're describing.

Chris Snyder (Executive Director)

Could you kind of tell us where that price ultimately will go to in Q4 as we look at about a fully realized basis? Thank you.

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. I mean, I think we're describing 4-6% of sales in the full year. We're anticipating maybe 3 points of price in the full year, with 2 in the first half. That's kind of the construct, Chris, that we've got.

Chris Snyder (Executive Director)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Julian Mitchell with Barclays. Your line is open.

Julian Mitchell (Equity Research Analyst)

Hi. Good morning. I think my first question, I just wanted to understand better, perhaps, the moving parts around operating margin expansion in the second half.

It looks like there's not much of an expansion, I think, year on year dialed in, and that's presumably that sort of FIFO-related tariff hit coming through. I just wondered if you could confirm that. Is the sort of when thinking about Q3 versus Q4 dynamics, anything to call out there? I noticed R&R spend a bit higher in Q3. Should we expect a sort of better year-on-year margin performance in the fourth quarter because of price and less R&R spend?

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, Julian, you made a number of good points. First of all, we are expecting our mix to continue to be favorable in the second half. We are anticipating, as you mentioned, several things you mentioned. One is some of those tariff costs coming through, being offset by price dollar for dollar. Unfortunately, that is not always margin-friendly. It is OP neutral, but not margin-friendly.

Thirdly, we are anticipating some extra investing in the third quarter, both in restructuring and other investment areas. You actually called out a number of the drivers there. I agree with your analysis, it is exactly how I see it.

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah, it is actually a very good representation of exactly what is going to happen. Maybe the only point I would make a comment on is on the investment, because clearly we are very, very focused on our cost to manage through this dynamic environment. I would also say we are not losing focus on our long-term needs and ambitions and the investments that we are making.

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Whether it is in restructuring, whether it is in new product development, whether it is in some of the areas of AI where we are looking at how can we gain efficiencies in our business longer term, we are really balancing areas where we are taking cost out of this system, both structurally and shorter-term actions, against where we need to continue to make investments. You will see some of those in the second half.

Julian Mitchell (Equity Research Analyst)

That is helpful. Thank you. Maybe looking out a little bit further, I think you mentioned just now the full-year organic sales guide embeds a low single-digit volume increase and a sort of faster pace of volume growth in the second half of the year.

As we sort of look out beyond this year, is that low single-digit volume increase the right sort of placeholder, or do you think you can sort of sustain that second-half exit rate for some time into 2026?

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah. I would say think about it as consistent with what we provided in the investor-day framework, which is kind of mid-single-digit for a portfolio longer term.

Julian Mitchell (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Joe O'Dee with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Joe O'Dea (Managing Director)

Hi. Good morning. Good morning. Could you just talk about the trajectory of growth within grid infrastructure as we move from first half to second half and coming off of first half orders up high teens?

As we look at what, I guess, easier comps and distribution and the order strength, just how you're thinking about the back half growth rates and things like transmission, substation, distribution to get to something that seems like it would be a low double-digit organic growth rate in the back half of the year for utility?

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, Joe. I think it starts with continued strength. We showed you those pie slices on page eight. Transmission and substation has been growing, and we just see that just continuing through the balance of the year. You have a really nice contribution in the mid and high teens there from a very substantial part of the business. I think secondly, as you noted, for distribution to now have started growing, and because of the de-stock dynamic, they're starting to face some easier comps.

That de-stock will, if it gets to mid-single digits for the year, it's going to have above that in the second half of the year. I think the more wild card is Aclara. The third quarter will be, say this is not to confuse, the third quarter will be the fourth quarter of its contraction. As it hits the fourth quarter of 2025, it's the point in time, and that was what Jeff Sprague was asking about, right? That now allows it to return to growth even on sequentially kind of flat. All of those things are coming together where you see teens order book, and you start to see easier compares for Aclara, and it starts to create, Joe, that kind of second-half trajectory that you cited.

Joe O'Dea (Managing Director)

Got it. That's helpful. I just wanted to shift to capital deployment. We see continued activity on the repo front.

Just in terms of the M&A pipeline side of things, any characterization of how that looks? Do you think about likelihood of any activity there in the back half of this year?

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. Your question is timed to the hour or so. We just closed this morning on a small bolt-on acquisition. It's in the utility space. It makes enclosures for water utilities and helps them collect and sense data and communicate that data. Small, but a good sign to your question. We also, in the quarter, sold a small business that was not really contributing to the growth and margin profile that we aspired to. I use those as two small examples of us continuing to tend to the portfolio and weed out and add. Even if it's small, we think those are good moves to make.

They end up not creating a huge financial contribution to this year, but we think are good for us in the long run. I think maybe more generally, the pipeline continues to be quite active. There are a number of private equity firms who have invested in our space. One thing we probably can all count on is as soon as they buy something, in that, whether it's three, four-year timeframe, they'll be looking to sell. That creates some opportunity for us. I would say our business development teams are quite busy looking at things. Obviously, to the extent we have something to talk about, we would. It certainly is our intention to continue to invest in acquisitions. The pipeline has businesses and assets that we find attractive. At the same time, I think our cash flow continues to grow.

You did see us, I think, to prevent the balance sheet from getting a little lazy, you did see us buy $225 million of shares in the first half of the year. You probably would have seen that average more in the 40-ish, 50-ish dollars a year range. It's a slightly maybe more balanced capital allocation than in the past. We continue to be quite interested in acquisitions, Joe.

Joe O'Dea (Managing Director)

Maybe the only thing I would add, our focus for these deals is in the higher growth areas of our portfolio that we've aligned on. Think T&D, think data centers, think light industrial, all those markets that are growing higher. There's a good pipeline of deals. I think there's reasonably good availability of deals. They're both on the bolt-on as well as some larger ones in there.

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

I feel good that we have availability of these deals and that it continues to be focused on becoming more important, increasing our portfolio to the customers we serve in these attractive markets. I appreciate the details. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Brett and Lindsay with Wazuhu. Your line is open.

Brett Linzey (Senior Analyst)

Hey. Good morning. Just wanted to follow up on the grid automation and specifically the meter side. Encouraging to see that sequential improvement. I guess as you think about that. Stability you're pointing to, is it mostly just the MRO side, or are you beginning to see some RFPs start to ramp back up on new projects that could be slated for next year?

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah. I'd say the way the business is now, it's mostly on the MRO and smaller projects, I would say.

This business is very highly focused, and it's always been on the more public power market, the co-ops and the munis. I would say both in MRO as well as the more traditional projects. We are seeing some larger projects in the pipeline right now. We're quoting those. That remains to be seen whether we win these or when they will hit. I think as we provide certainly the guidance here for the balance of the year and our comments into next year, it's a much more stable business. It's more the ongoing MRO and projects that we're seeing.

Brett Linzey (Senior Analyst)

Great. And then just shifting back over to the electric transmission and the substation piece, very strong growth. You talked about the good run rate into the back half.

Thinking about the bouncing-off point, as you assess some of the project queues and then your win rates separately on these projects, can you sustain that double-digit growth range into next year based on your current visibility in those businesses?

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah. Maybe I'll start with just our position in these markets, right? If you think about our portfolio in transmission and substation, I mean, this is where some of our core strength comes from both the offering that we have, the portfolio that we have, the relationship, and the specifications that we have. We see these projects. I mean, once some of the largest transmission projects that are being built in the U.S., we are Hubbell as a supplier. The visibility, I would say, is good. It's out there. It's multi-year that we're seeing there.

This concept of high single-digit growth that we said in investor day, we see visibility to that certainly in the next few years.

Brett Linzey (Senior Analyst)

Okay. Great. Thanks for the color.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Chad Dillard with Bernstein. Your line is open.

Chad Dillard (Senior Analyst)

All right. Good morning, guys. I was hoping you could bridge the old versus new earnings guidance. I think you had $0.50 of tariff before. Where does that go? How much is a FIFO versus LIFO transition? Anything you can call out on the core business or anything else? Thanks.

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. Let's just use page nine as the way to bridge. At the very. Beginning of the year in January, we had a 4-5% growth rate with a point of price. So there was 3-4 of volume. Now.

We're 4-6% of growth with kind of 3 points of price, so kind of 2 points of volume. So we're getting to. Our goal with a little bit less volume, Chad, right? So that's really the first point of note. Secondly. All that contingency from. Tariff risk has been removed. I think that's. Important to note. Thirdly. There's been. 30 cents in the first half of the year. Of benefit to the switch to FIFO. And that's been added to the guidance. So. I think the way I would bridge it is saying. We're operationally getting to the same point in January as we said. We've overcome. The tariffs in doing that through getting a little more price. That's come at the expense perhaps of a little bit of volume. But the margin and price-cost management is allowing us. To get there. And so. I think that's how.

I would bridge the pieces.

Chad Dillard (Senior Analyst)

Great. That's really helpful. And then with the change in tax laws, I think one of the offshoots is that there's going to be a lot more manufacturing construction. So I think you've talked about your content as a share of the project being, I think, somewhere around mid-single digits. So how does that change if you're going to be moving into more manufacturing versus, I guess, the baseline?

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

I'm not sure we understand the question there, Chad. You're talking about systems control type applications?

Chad Dillard (Senior Analyst)

Yeah. Systems control.

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah. I mean, traditionally, we said it's a low single-digit percentage of cost in terms of components. And what we traditionally make, a systems control type business would be higher than that, obviously. I'm not sure it changes the overall blended rate for the segment. But. Certain businesses, yeah, it'll be at the higher end of that.

So if you're looking at the substation space, for instance, we'd make up more than that low single digit if you include systems control.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Please stand by for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Christopher Glynn with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Christopher Glynn (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Thanks. Good morning, guys. I'm curious about. An HES question. You talked about continued progress with the Salesforce alignments and some channel conversions with. Years to go. Just looking to elaborate on that a little bit. And specifically, are you suggesting that. Channel share and distribution pickup runway. Has several years of progression there?

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. Just I think starting with. Sort of the journey that we're on, Chris, and good morning.

Mark, as you'll recall, helped us really take the utility segment and take a number of acquisitions and really create a business out of it rather than a series of verticals. He's now had a couple of years in the electrical segment leadership role. He's really doing the same thing. One of the first initiatives that was pretty important was realigning the Salesforce. Rather than have Salesforce dedicated by product, it's now dedicated by geography. There's more cross-selling. We think that's leading to a really good customer response. They find it easier to do business with us. It's better for us because we get more selling time in front of the customer that's kind of cross-selling. Part of that also included creating some vertical teams around specialty verticals, data centers being the most obvious. We found those to have been successful.

Rather than us selling a product through distribution to data centers, we're now more aware and can sell a broader basket of products. To us, that initiative on the commercial end, A, has been successful to date. I'm saying it's still immature in its implementation and will get better and will improve, I think. That's why I said I do think there's years ahead. My years ahead also implied some of the efficiency things that Mark's doing, taking out redundancies in staffing and the like. There's both kind of a commercial front-facing element to what he's doing as well as a back-end infrastructure overhead kind of element to what he's doing. We're sort of, it's just not a silver bullet, boom. It's kind of a, we grind it upward. I think you've seen examples. You've seen it in evidence already over the last year or two.

Christopher Glynn (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Agreed. Great description. Thanks, Bill.

Bill Sperry (EVP and CFO)

Okay.

Operator (participant)

Please stand by.

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Can we take one more question and then close it out? Sorry. I have some technical difficulties on my end. I'm seeing the chat, so. All right. Take one more and then close it out.

Operator (participant)

All right. Our final question comes from the line of Patrick Baldman with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Oh, hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. On the second half of the year, I was wondering if you could help me think through how to envision organic volumes ramping at the utility segment. Does it go from, I don't know, low single-digit organic volume growth in the third quarter to something in the double digits in the fourth quarter year over year?

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Certainly not on a volume basis, Pat. If you're talking organically, again, you can kind of do the math on first half, second half.

Volumes will ramp through the year, and particularly again in the fourth quarter on some easier compares. Price will be a steady incremental contributor as the year progresses.

Patrick Baumann (Analyst)

Okay. So volumes in the fourth quarter don't get up to double digit?

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah. That wouldn't be reflected in guidance, no.

Patrick Baumann (Analyst)

Okay. Maybe I'm just doing the math wrong on the price and organic growth stuff. Sorry if I missed this. This is a cleanup. I'm just backing into a margin guide for the year expansion of 50 basis points. Is that in the ballpark? And then on the segment, should we think about electrical being above that rate and utility below that?

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Yeah. You're in the ballpark for the full year. Again, the segment drivers are going to be both impacted by the FIFO and LIFO transition. But yes, probably a little bit more in electrical than utility.

Patrick Baumann (Analyst)

Maybe just last one, sorry, another cleanup. So I think the EPS is a little bit shifted last year. And with the accounting changes this year. Any way to think about the EPS growth in the back half of the year split between third quarter, fourth quarter? Any color you want to give on that?

Gerben Bakker (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Not really. Again, it's going to be based on the volume discussion we just had. It'll probably be the biggest driver.

Patrick Baumann (Analyst)

Okay. I'll leave it there. Thanks a lot for the time.

Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the call back over to Dan for closing remarks.

Dan Innamorato (VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Strategy)

Great. Thanks, Luanda. I'll be around all day for follow-up calls. Thanks, everybody, for joining us.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.