Littelfuse - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Executive Summary

• Q4 2024 was in line with company guidance: net sales $529.5M (down 0.8% YoY), adjusted EPS $2.04, while GAAP EPS was a loss of $1.57 due to $93M of non‑cash goodwill and intangible impairments; free cash flow was a strong $134.8M.
• Management signaled the electronics destocking cycle is behind them; Electronics book‑to‑bill reached its highest level since Q2’22, with Passives firmly above 1 and power semis still below 1 but improving.
• Q1 2025 guidance: sales $520–$550M, adjusted EPS $1.70–$1.90, and ~26% adjusted tax rate; for FY 2025, FX/commodities a ~1% sales headwind but ~$0.22 EPS tailwind, capex $90–$95M, and Elmos/Dortmund fab volumes contributing ~2% sales growth with neutral EPS.
• Catalysts/risks: improving order trends in Electronics and HVAC/industrial safety strength vs. continued softness in power semis and European industrial demand; non‑cash impairment centered on EV charging exposure highlights near‑term industrial headwinds.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Electronics destocking largely complete; “book‑to‑bill is at its highest level since the second quarter of 2022… Passives… above 1” (power semi below 1 but improving).
  • Strong cash generation and balance sheet: Q4 cash from operations $160.6M, FCF $134.8M; year‑end cash $724.9M and net leverage 1.2x.
  • Transportation and Industrial margin progress: Transportation operating margin 9.0% in Q4 (full‑year expansion of 530 bps); Industrial Q4 operating margin 17.1% (+440 bps YoY) with HVAC and safety strength.

• What Went Wrong

  • Non‑cash impairments ($93M) led to GAAP EPS loss; primarily related to Industrial controls & sensors and Automotive sensors (weak EV charging infrastructure trends).
  • Electronics profit mix: Q4 Electronics operating margin 12.3% (below historical peaks) amid elongated cycle and power semiconductor softness, especially tied to Europe/industrial end markets.
  • Macro/segment headwinds persist: continued soft power semi demand and European industrial weakness; management expects a gradual industrial recovery and mixed transportation backdrop entering 2025.

Transcript

Meenal Sethna (EVP and CFO)

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Littelfuse Fourth Quarter 2024 earnings conference call. This call is being recorded. At this time, I will turn the call over to the Vice President, Investor Relations, David Kelley. Please proceed.

David Kelly (VP of Investor Relations)

Good morning, and welcome to the Littelfuse Fourth Quarter 2024 earnings conference call. With me today are Dave Heinzmann, President and CEO; Meenal Sethna, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Greg Henderson, Littelfuse Board Director and incoming CEO. Yesterday, we reported results for our fourth quarter, and a copy of our earnings release and slide presentation is available in the Investor Relations section of our website. A webcast of today's conference call will also be available on our website. Please advance to slide 2 for our discussion. Our discussion today will include forward-looking statements, and forward-looking statements may involve significant risks and uncertainties. Please review yesterday's press release and our Forms 10-K and 10-Q for more details about important risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. We assume no obligation to update any of this forward-looking information.

Also, our remarks today refer to non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measure is provided in our earnings release available in the Investor Relations section of our website. I will now turn the call over to Dave.

David Heinzmann (CEO)

Thank you, David. Good morning, and thanks for joining us today. Let's start with highlights on slide 4. In the fourth quarter, our performance and results came in as to be expected. Both sales and earnings were within our prior guided range. The consistency of our performance reflects our global team's strong operational execution and unwavering focus on our diverse and broad customer base, as we delivered solid quarterly results within a mixed environment across our end markets. For full year 2024, we continue to deliver design-win momentum and drive new product innovations alongside our global customers while navigating a choppy environment. We believe our steadfast commitment to our customers positions us to deliver continued long-term and secure growth. We exited the year with the electronics shipping cycle behind us and signs of distribution inventory replenishment emerging.

Notably, our electronics segment book-to-bill is at its highest level since the second quarter of 2022. Our magnet business book-to-bill is above 1, and while our semiconductor remains below 1, we observed improved order rates in the quarter relative to levels seen earlier in the year. These order rates are gradually improving and continue to see broader design wins across our diverse technology offering and end market exposures. We remain confident in our content trajectory as a key enabler of sustainability, competitiveness, and safety megatrends. We also strove for improved operational performance in 2024 and delivered meaningful profitability advances across our businesses, driving solid second-half margin expansion. Into 2025, we continue to align our cost structure to reflect current business and market conditions, while positioning our company for a recurring growth and further margin expansion.

Finally, we generated strong free cash flow conversion in 2024, while our balance sheet at year-end was well-positioned to support our long-term growth strategy. Taking a step back, we are confident our actions in 2024 will support growth and solid earnings expansion in 2025, as well as meaningful long-term momentum beyond the new year. I want to thank our global teams for their continued efforts and persistent hard work in the fourth quarter and throughout 2024. Now let's turn to our end markets and design activities, starting with the Electronics on slide 6. Electronics market trends were mixed and improved through the fourth quarter. Data center remained a strong growth driver, and was further driven by AI applications. Medical demand was mixed, while demand for consumer products, appliances, and building technologies remained subdued.

Yet, as the quarter progressed, we observed some emerging signs of stabilization, particularly in North America and Asia regions. Broadly, electronics end market design and activity remained healthy, and we delivered another strong win rate across a broad set of applications in the quarter. Of note, we saw strong active opportunities and conversion in China, driving meaningful quarter expansion in the region in the fourth quarter and full year 2024. In North America, we continue to observe some ongoing design wins and quarter conversion delays, but pickup in order trends late in the quarter was encouraging. Turning to our electronics end market design wins in the quarter, we secured a meaningful data center win for a cooling application in North America and an infrastructure application in Japan. We secured data center, server, and compute wins in North America, China, and Taiwan.

We also delivered global wins for appliance applications that utilize our broad technology capabilities. Similarly, we secured business for multiple building technology and automation applications in regions including North America, China, Taiwan, and India. Finally, we delivered key wins for medical applications in North America and Europe in the quarter. Moving on to transportation end markets and design wins on slide 7. Starting with our passenger car exposure, we benefited from our global positioning and balanced technology offering, which helped to offset slightly lower global car build in the quarter and ongoing pruning actions associated with sensor products. We delivered solid growth in China as we leveraged our technology expertise, experienced local teams, and strong partnerships with local OEMs. Outside of China, solid wins for our low-voltage products partially offset weaker North American and European production volumes and EV sales.

In 2025, we believe our exposure to multiple sector growth drivers and ongoing innovations with our global customers position us to offset likely continued soft global car build trends. Concerning our commercial vehicle exposure, while soft underlying markets continued in the fourth quarter, we delivered solid volume expansion and continue to drive favorable pricing. Into 2025, we see some initial, albeit early, signs for improvement in certain commercial vehicle markets led by construction and heavy-duty products, with recovery likely weighted in the back of the year. Given our strong content offering and continued traction with customers, we remain confident in commercial vehicle positioning, and are excited about long-term opportunities across our broad exposures. In the quarter, we secured solid wins in transportation business across both passenger and commercial vehicle end markets. For passenger vehicles, we secured several meaningful high-voltage opportunities with customers in South Korea, China, and Europe.

We also delivered multiple low-voltage fuse wins, including in North America, Europe, South Korea, and China, which demonstrates the global scale of our business. Finally, we secured state-of-the-art application opportunities for customers in China and Europe. For commercial vehicle end markets, we secured several construction and agriculture equipment wins for customers in North America and Europe. We also delivered multiple recreational and specialty vehicle wins in the quarter. Turning to slide 8, industrial markets and design activity. In the fourth quarter, we observed mixed end-market trends across our broad industrial exposure, with a negative but for continued strong HVAC and industrial CP application demand. However, we observed continued soft industrial equipment, battery automation, and charging infrastructure trends. We continue to see more pronounced softness across our industrial power assembly offerings, where we have more meaningful exposure to weaker European and Asian industrial products.

Broadly, we observed solid order rate momentum late in the quarter, and into 2025, we see an improving period of likely gradual industrial recovery. Importantly, our industrial sector growth drivers remain intact, and we see continued strong design wins for renewables, automation, and industrial safety. Concerning our design wins in the fourth quarter, we secured meaningful renewable opportunities, including for a solar application in North America and for a solar and energy storage application in China. We also secured several commercial HVAC wins in the quarter, and our teams continue to leverage core residential HVAC technology expertise to drive new market expansion. In Japan, we secured a win for a rail traction drive application that will utilize our semiconductor capabilities. Finally, we delivered a variety of wins across heavy industrial markets, including construction, mining, and oil and gas in the quarter.

Across our businesses, we continue to partner with our broad customer base to drive innovative solutions for a diverse end market exposure. We will remain focused on operational execution as we strive to deliver leading performance in 2025. I'll now turn it over to Meenal, who will provide additional color on our financial performance and outlook.

Meenal Sethna (EVP and CFO)

Thanks, Dave. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Please turn to slide 10 to start with details on our fourth quarter results. Revenue in the quarter was $530 million, down one% versus last year's total, and flat organically. The product line pruning actions we discussed reduced sales by two%, in line with our expectations in the prior quarter. GAAP operating margins were negative 6.9% and include $93 million in non-cash goodwill and intangible impairment charges. The charges are primarily related to the impairment of certain assets affected by ongoing weak EV charging infrastructure trends. For the quarter, adjusted operating margins finished at 12%, and adjusted diluted margins were 18.1%. The fourth quarter GAAP diluted loss per share was $1.57, and adjusted diluted earnings was $2.40. Our fourth quarter GAAP effective tax rate was negative 30%, and adjusted effective tax rate was 13%.

Now we turn to slide 11 for full year performance. We finished the year with sales of $6.2 billion, down 7% in total and organically versus last year. GAAP operating margins were 7.8%. Adjusted operating margins finished at 12.9%, and adjusted EBITDA margins were 18.9%. For our FX and commodities, we had a 30 basis point unfavorable impact on margins. We drove improvements in our cost structure in 2024 and are pleased with our resulting margin trajectory, with our second-half operating margins exceeding 220 basis points from the first half of the year. Finally, full year GAAP diluted EPS was $4.51, and adjusted diluted EPS finished at $8.48. Our full year GAAP effective tax rate was 31%, and adjusted effective rate was 21%. Please turn to slide 12 for updates on capital allocations. We delivered strong cash generation in 2024.

In the quarter, operating cash flow was $161 million, and we generated $135 million in free cash flow. For the full year, operating cash flow was $368 million, and we generated $232 million in free cash flow, driving cash conversion well over 100%. Our strong performance also reflects our ongoing focus on working capital management. Into 2025, we continue to target 100% free cash flow conversion, aligned with our long-term goals. We ended the quarter with $725 million in cash on hand, a net debt of $641 million at the time. Our balance sheet remained strong, and we have continued flexibility in capital deployment. We continue to prioritize our free cash flow for thoughtful acquisitions, and we'll continue to return capital to our shareholders through our dividend and periodic share buybacks.

For the full year 2024, we returned $108 million of capital to shareholders, including $67 million through cash dividends and $41 million through opportunistic share repurchases. We'll remain disciplined in our capital allocation strategy as we strive to maximize long-term shareholder value. Please turn to slide 13 for our product segment highlights, starting with the electronics product segment. Sales for this segment were down 4% organically and 12% for the quarter and year respectively. Versus prior year, sales across passive products were up 9% organically for the quarter and down 1% for the year, and semiconductors declined 13% and 20% for the quarter and year. Our solid passive product sales growth in the quarter reflects stabilizing demand trends in our orders and channel partners. Within our this quarter product exposure, we saw stabilizing demand for our protection products, which continued to soften across our semiconductors.

Operating margins this quarter were 12.3%, while EBITDA margins finished above 19%, both in line with our expectations. We finished the year with segment operating margins of 14.2% and EBITDA margins of nearly 21%. Moving to our transportation product segment on slide 14, segment organic sales declined 1% throughout the quarter and the year, which is a decline across global car build and commercial vehicle end markets. Segment sales remained low, impacting 6% versus last year for the quarter and 5% for the year, from pruning actions we've been undertaking. In the passenger vehicle business, sales declined 4% organically in the quarter and came in short for the year. Fourth quarter sales were negatively impacted by planned auto sensor product pruning and ongoing global car build declines and our softness of the cycle in China.

For commercial vehicles, sales this quarter were up 4% organically and down 1% for the year. In the fourth quarter, we delivered volume growth and favorable pricing despite continued end market weakness, which was more than offset by the impact from pruning actions. For the segment, operating margins were 9% and over 10% for the quarter and year respectively, while EBITDA margins finished at 14.5% for the quarter and 15.6% for the year. Foreign exchange and commodities were a headwind for the full year, unfavorably impacting margins by 110 basis points. We've maintained our focus on cost reductions, pricing, and pruning initiatives drove 530 basis points of operating margin expansion for the year. We believe these actions position us well for continued margin growth into 2025.

On slide 15, industrial product segment sales increased 12% organically for the quarter, declined 1% for the year, mitigating well to a number of weak industrial end markets. Fourth quarter sales benefited from strong HVAC growth, solid data center momentum, and continued industrial safety expansion. Segment operating margins finished at 17.1% in the quarter, expanding 440 basis points versus prior year level, while full year margins finished at 13.9%. Adjusted EBITDA margins were 20.8% in the quarter, while full year margins finished over 18% for the year. We delivered strong margin expansion in the quarter, led by continued solid execution and strong contribution and volume growth. Our improved industrial segment margins throughout 2024 also reflect our operational execution and solid volume growth. We expect continued growth and margin momentum into 2025. Please move to slide 16 for the forecast.

As we start 2025, we continue to see a mixed macro environment. Within electronics, we expect a passive product recovery with ongoing soft semiconductor sales in the first quarter. We expect ongoing industrial segment momentum while we see a mixed underlying transportation backdrop during the year. We expect a low single-digit global car build decline, with signs of modest commercial vehicle market recovery projected for later in the year. With these assumptions, we expect first quarter sales in the range of $520-$550 million. This includes about a 2% headwind for FX versus the prior year. We're projecting first quarter EPS to be in the range of $1.70-$1.80, which includes a tax rate of 26%. Potentially, a higher tax rate represents a 32% headwind to earnings, as we benefited from our retroactive tax holiday expansion in the fourth quarter.

With current FX and commodity rates, we are expecting a modest 1% benefit to EPS versus the prior year. Please turn to slide 17 for additional full year 2025 outlook. We expect solid earnings expansion, reflecting our low positioning, recent cost scaling actions, and ongoing focus on operational execution. At current rates, we expect FX and commodities will represent a 1% headwind to sales, with a 22% benefit to EPS. Also, as we announced earlier in December, we completed our acquisition of the Dortmund semiconductor fab from Elmos Semiconductor. The acquisition also includes a multi-year capacity sharing arrangement with Elmos. For 2025, we expect about a 2% total sales growth through volumes with Elmos and an initial EPS impact from this arrangement.

On other modeling items, we're assuming $59 million in amortization expense and $35 million in interest expense, about two-thirds of which we expect to offset through interest income from our cash investment strategy. We are estimating a full year tax rate of between 23% and 25%. As a reminder, ongoing Pillar Two tax legislation is a headwind on tax rates, but we continue to evaluate opportunities to improve our rate. We also expect to invest $90-$95 million in capital expenditures. As we turn the page to the new year, we believe our ongoing momentum with customers on design wins and product innovation positions us well for long-term growth. Our focused execution and cost scaling actions have enhanced our operating model, positioning us for solid earnings expansion in 2025 amidst the dynamic environment.

Our strong cash generation focus and our well-positioned balance sheet also give us both flexibility and confidence that we aim to deliver long-term top-tier growth and earnings expectations. In closing, I would like to recognize our employees and partners for their meaningful contributions and unwavering commitment to Littelfuse. I would also like to thank Dave for his outstanding leadership at Littelfuse. It's been a pleasure working with him for the last decade, and I'm grateful for our strong partnership. I wish you well in retirement. I'm glad to know Greg over his nearly two years on our board, and I look forward to partnering with him as we enter the next phase of the Littelfuse's growth journey. I remain excited for the meaningful opportunities that lie ahead. And with that, I'll hand it back to Dave for some final comments.

Thanks, Meenal.

In summary, while we navigated a difficult environment in 2024, our unwavering focus on our customers and our persistent push for operational enhancements have positioned us to deliver solid growth and earnings expansion in 2025. With our diversified business model and broad cash value offering, we are confident in our ability to drive long-term top-tier value for our shareholders. Finally, I just want to say a few words as I will soon be wrapping up a 40-year career with Littelfuse. It's been an amazing journey with a truly exceptional company. I want to thank the board for their continuous support over the years, and I also want to thank all of the Littelfuse employees who work tirelessly to deliver on our long-term growth strategy. It's been an honor to lead you all, and I am confident in your positioning and contributing to meaningful long-term success.

I'm also grateful to be leading the company in such good hands. Greg and I have worked closely together over the last couple of years to bring the ideal skill set and leadership track record to lead this company into the next stage of growth. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Greg, who's going to say a few words.

Greg Henderson (Board Director and incoming CEO.)

Thank you, Dave. On behalf of Littelfuse, I want to thank you for your leadership and congratulate you on an impressive 40-year career at the company. For the Littelfuse employees listening on the call, I look forward to working with you all as we begin the next chapter of the Littelfuse's growth story. As a talent and investor community, I'm excited to meet many of you in the coming months, and with that, I'll turn the call back to you, Dave.

David Heinzmann (CEO)

Thanks, Greg.

Operator, we are ready to begin the Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now begin a question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, just press Star 1 on your cell phone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press Star 1 again. If you are calling to ask a question and are listening via speakerphone on your device, please raise your hand so that you ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. Again, press Star 1 to join the queue. And our first question comes from the line of Luke Junk with Baird.

Luke Junk (senior research analyst)

Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Dave, just to start with, congratulations on your 40-year career at Littelfuse and upcoming retirement. Absolutely well deserved.

Thanks.

In terms of the quarter itself, to start with here, Dave, Greg, if we could just put a finer point on Meenal and passive, the quarter sounded pretty positive based on your comments, Dave. Plus, maybe just what you're hearing from distributors qualitatively as you begin to see some of the stocking in the passenger vehicle as well.

Yeah, sure. Luke, I think in general, it's taking a look at the overall electronics, and what we would say is fundamentally the inventory growth has largely continued at this point. I stated that in the prepared remarks. Book-to-bill for the first time since early 2022 are now above one in electronics as a whole. Passive and our protection book-to-bill are firmly above one.

While the power semiconductor portion of our business is a little more challenged with some of the heavy industrial focus, particularly in Europe and China, so it's still below one, but it's improved nicely over the last quarter. Through the course of the quarter, while we saw end of the year above one, we also saw continued momentum improvement going into through January. We remain pretty positive about the general direction there and kind of getting some of the correction cycles behind us. Conversations with our distribution partners range all over the map from individual kind of markets they're serving and things like that. I think what they're seeing generally is fairly stable book-to-bill, stabilizing book-to-bill, with a bit more positivity coming in North America and in Asia. Europe continues to still be pretty sluggish. We don't see Europe necessarily turning into a so.

But there's some ups and downs in North America and Asia alone. That's helpful. And then, Dave, if we could double-click on those road signs of financial recovery relative to power semi and what has been weaknesses, is there any more texture in terms of markets? Should we assume that it's from a geographic standpoint? Also related to North America and Asia, Dave?

David Kelly (VP of Investor Relations)

Yeah. If you look at industrial more broadly, you have power semi, which we talked about being very industrial-heavy. There, where I think it's kind of stabilization coming, there tends to be more in North America and Asia, where we're seeing that kind of stabilize. As I stated earlier, Europe continues to be heavily off there. A lot of machine automation and things like that that are going on in Europe or global support, that continues to be a bit sluggish there.

On the other industrial portion in our industrial segment itself, we have a very solid quarter there and for the C&I quarter, right, where we serve industrial areas, and so we continue to see strength in safety applications. It's been a really nice growth area for us. We've seen the HVAC space begin to show improvements there, and we're making progress and kind of moving from more residential focus to commercial focus there, getting nice design wins and growth in that area so we're seeing those spaces, particular applications and markets and regions where we see stronger momentum, and that's starting to show up and then Meenal, with the gross margins showing some really significant strength in the third quarter, coming out sequentially here in the fourth quarter, still finishing the year above the level you were expecting.

Can you just help us understand kind of what's in the market profile in the back half of the year as we step into 2025? I guess I'm just trying to tease out what sort of base we should use to build our '25 model year position in the transportation segment.

Meenal Sethna (EVP and CFO)

Sure. Thanks, Luke. So I'd say, one, we're really pleased with the progress that we've made through transportation here at the start of the year at mid-single-digit range and have worked our way up. And we've been talking about a number of actions that we've been undertaking to really get to the point where we're at finishing the double digits for the year. I would say going into 2025, we continue to feel very confident about the margin expansion of this work that we've done in 2024 and continue to do in 2025 around that basis.

We've been talking about for a while finishing off some filtering work, some other cost reductions that we're taking, so we feel good, and we feel those actions will mitigate some of the headwinds that you hear swirling around the declining car build that we're expecting through the year and a little bit of the volatility around foreign exchange and commodities, but in that sense, we feel good for continued margin expansion going into 2025 and the actions we have been taking and are continuing to take,

Luke Junk (senior research analyst)

and then if I could just sneak in a last quick question. This is more just modeling. Historically speaking, incentive comp has had a heavier impact just seasonally in the second quarter based on how you paid for it. Should we expect that to be the case again this year, Meenal?

Meenal Sethna (EVP and CFO)

Great question.

The incentive comp will be a little bit more of a run rate when we think about Q2 as opposed to that outsize spike that we've had. And we get into a little bit more around the Q2 guide. We'll give you a little bit more color on that. But I would expect it would be a little bit more dampened than what we've seen historically.

Luke Junk (senior research analyst)

Okay. I'll leave it there.

David Heinzmann (CEO)

Thanks for the questions, Luke.

Operator (participant)

All right. Question comes from the lineYour line is open. Hi. Good morning. Congratulations, Dave, on your retirement and Greg in the new role. We look forward to working with you. I just wanted to kind of go through the guidance for Q1. I think it implies margins are roughly flat sequentially.

Could you just talk through the puts and takes on margin performance and how margins should progress through the year, especially if we do see some volume recovery?

Meenal Sethna (EVP and CFO)

Sure. So you're thinking more from the sequential perspective, just a little more color as we think through the year. Yeah. What I would say is that we've always talked about, for us, one of the biggest factors as we think about margin recovery has typically been around volume, strong volume, strong conversion rates on that. While we're not waiting for that, we're definitely working on continuing to drive growth. We've done a lot of work in terms of, as I mentioned earlier, just around pricing cost adjustments and other cost reductions and some different work. So I would expect that we'll see as we work through 2025, we'll continue to see margin expansion going forward through the year. Appreciate the color.

One of the markets we talked about seeing the benefit this quarter was HVAC. Do you expect because you're since I've talked about some pre-build there, do you expect that to lead to a bigger profit and demand in the first quarter? And how does that impact industrial growth? I want to. Thank you.

David Heinzmann (CEO)

Sure. Yeah. Obviously, with the refrigerant change requirements coming and things like that, there's some concerns whether is there pre-build going on in preparation to kind of get mixed results when you read from the OEMs and the distributor survey. We've seen good improvement there. But I don't believe we're going to have a share pocket for a couple of reasons. One is we've also been pivoting a lot of energy towards taking the technologies that we're selling into the residential space into the industrial space as well.

So we're getting nice Teccor or heat tape design wins into the industrial HVAC space, which we think if there is any kind of bubble or a slowdown in the residential, we can backfill that with the industrial growth there. So in general, we feel continued profitability. Perfect.

Thanks for the question.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, Tore. Appreciate it. Next question from Christopher Glynn with Oppenheimer. The line is open.

Christopher Glynn (senior equity research analyst and Managing Director)

Hey, Dave. Good morning and Dave. Wishing you the best for a great retirement. I wanted to ask about you talked about cost scaling action. Sounds like a little different characterization than straight cost restructuring. Does that refer to positioning the assets for very high conversion margins as growth returns? Is that what the cost scaling action refers to?

Meenal Sethna (EVP and CFO)

Yeah. Chris, Meenal. So I'd say a couple of things.

It's one, as we've been talking about, where we are in terms of our growth trajectory right now. We're definitely expecting 2025 and to see that with growth. But in the meantime, where we are today, we're really just. I'll call it right-sizing our cost structure to align to the pace of our business pace to where we are today. Some of that are our cost reductions. We've also spent a lot of time around discretionary cost reductions. We've been talking about definitely different parts of the business. We've been doing a lot of what we call footprint work, whether that's relating to manufacturing and supply chain. So we've been trying to optimize that as we normally do. So it's really for us to be a combination of all. So my reference for scaling is more aligning our cost structure to the current state of things. Okay.

Christopher Glynn (senior equity research analyst and Managing Director)

Then commercially, I feel you've been growing the last couple of quarters now in down markets and I believe with some concentration of overall pricing actions at the company falling within CV. I know you talked about price there. Is that really the full delta versus market, or does content have good momentum on CV even during this broad-based lull in global CV markets?

David Heinzmann (CEO)

Yeah. Chris, I think both have an impact. Clearly, we've been working to kind of look at customers and product applications and products that we've done some pruning on and that usually if you take that approach, you'll see that pricing actions kind of drive those activities. So that's certainly positive. Often you find when you're doing that that customers stick around and are willing to pay the higher prices. And that's certainly a benefit.

We've also seen we have a fairly niche business in commercial vehicles. So our ability to gain share, get into new applications, we feel that's been a positive for us. It will continue to be an opportunity for us, particularly as we focus on kind of high-growth applications and margin profiles on technologies and products that we have for commercial vehicles. So I think it's actually both. I think we've been outperforming the market because of our performance with customers and engaging with customers and supporting them and also from pruning actions.

Christopher Glynn (senior equity research analyst and Managing Director)

Great. Thanks. And then could you give a little bit more detail on the impairment, the acquisition that might have been related to, or did it cut across?

Meenal Sethna (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, Chris. Thanks, Meenal.

And so the impairment that we took, and I think we noted in our comparison slide, it was a $93 million impairment covering some goodwill and intangible assets, and it's almost all related to certain assets within our industrial segment, and we've been talking about for a while that we've seen some downturns in a number of different industrial markets, particularly we're seeing this in the EV infrastructure space, all into our industrial segment. We took a look at projections, market projections, our projections. We don't see substantial near-term recovery coming, so it's part of the normal accounting assessment you have to go through when you come to some of those conclusions. We went through our forecasting and basically took a non-cash charge in the fourth quarter to assess the goodwill and how all the math works there.

Christopher Glynn (senior equity research analyst and Managing Director)

Great. Thanks, Meenal. Thanks for the questions, Chris. All right.

Operator (participant)

Question from David Williams from The Benchmark Company. Your line is open.

David Williams (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good morning. Thanks for the question. And congrats on your retirement to you. So you've got the 40 years. You should take the time and really enjoy that. So I guess I want to ask, if it hasn't been already, but what's the impact of potential tariffs to your business? Just kind of given Canada and, of course, the discussions around EV. Anything with the new administration that gives you concerns or thoughts around that, please?

David Heinzmann (CEO)

Great. Great question, David. And certainly, the volatility, the potential tariffs and geopolitical actions take place. That's certainly an area that gets our attention. We spend a fair amount of time looking at scenario planning and things. However, I would say the tariff situation itself, first of all, we're kind of waiting to see how it plays out exactly.

But it's not new. Back in 2017, we went through these sorts of issues. And over the last several years, we've worked really hard to make sure our manufacturing footprint is aligned to the regions where the primary source of our customers are. So we try to align closer to customers over that time. So we've gotten better with that in the last few years. When tariffs do come, they do come. We have a historical experience on that where we engage with our customers and try to work through solutions for the customer. It goes to customer right away. But sometimes supply chains can be a little complex and there's movements between the customer and ourselves that we can do to address those things and reduce the impact of tariffs. And where we can do that, we absolutely do those things.

That's all being done kind of at the business unit level, right? Where they're dealing with individual customers. And at the end of the day, if we get to the points where we can't solve those issues with customers, then we will pass those costs along to customers and pricing etc. So while it certainly has an impact to us, we're fairly confident in how we've worked through it in the past and minimize the impact on the business timeframe and continue to do that.

David Williams (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks for the color there. And then maybe just on the five-year strategy update, I know you guys were going through that and scheduled maybe to give some more color around the analyst day. But I'm curious how you're thinking about that, having gone through the five-year strategy. How does that fit with this longer term?

And maybe, Greg, if you're able to chime in there, I would love to hear your comments. But any color just around that strategy going forward beyond just the 2025? Thank you. Yeah.

David Heinzmann (CEO)

No, I think it's a good question. And obviously, as we've postponed the investor day, we just felt it was best to give Greg the opportunity to get his feet on the ground, really understand the business significantly. We didn't think it was best necessary to have it. He'd come in and kind of share with you where we are at on our current five-year strategy and where we're headed. So we felt it was prudent to give a little bit of space to do that and give Greg some time to learn a little bit more from the inside as opposed to the board level on that. But Greg, maybe you have a couple of comments?

Yeah. Thanks. And thanks for the question. So for me, I'm really very excited to be here. And I think, as Dave mentioned, I think it was a great way for me to enter the company coming from the board. I've been working with Dave and been able to meet the leadership team over the last year and a half. So from my perspective, Littelfuse is a great franchise. We have a strong global market position. We have great technology people. And I'm excited to get out of that next phase. So we will be continuing to meet you, talk to you, roll out more of that as we go forward.

David Williams (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Congratulations on the move there and looking forward to working with you as well. Thank you all.

Operator (participant)

Thanks for the questions, David. All right. Questions from the line of William Kerwin with Morningstar. The line is open. Hi.

William Kerwin (Senior Equity Analyst at Morningstar)

Thanks, everyone, and Dave, let me echo all the congratulations on a tremendous career and a warm welcome to Greg coming in very soon. Just wanted to add one more on margins, specifically for the electronics segment. I think that came in a little bit below where the expectations were coming into the fourth quarter. So just curious what was going on there. Is that more of a spending dynamic or a passive dynamic? And how do you expect that segment to particularly market to evolve?

Meenal Sethna (EVP and CFO)

Sure. Thanks. It's a great question, so here's what I would say. When we take a look at our electronics segments over the years, and that's the one we've always talked about that goes through these market cycles that are further exacerbated by the distribution inventory cycle we go through.

Those higher down cycles, we've seen our margins drop into the 15%-10% down at the low points in terms of volumes. In this particular case, as we've gone through this down cycle, which has gone a little longer than anyone was expecting, the excess inventory that we've seen, not just in distribution channels, but in EMSs and OEMs, and then just this elongation of timing has really had a bit of a further effect on margins for us. I'm confident as we look ahead to 2025, when we start to see recovery in the way we talked about passives in our protection. Semiconductor book-to-bills now are trending well over one, that from a 2025 perspective, the volume for us really drives margin recovery and we've proven the incremental margins that come out of that.

So I feel good about our trajectory, margin improvement across electronics, and we'll see a couple of things we go through here.

William Kerwin (Senior Equity Analyst at Morningstar)

Okay. Terrific. Thanks, Meenal. And maybe a longer-term one from me as a follow-up. Just curious, in the electric vehicle space, how you're seeing the dynamics over the next five years as OEMs move to higher-voltage drivetrains and knowing that that provides a good amount of content uplift for you. And even if there are maybe some short-term fits and starts here with EV programs, are you seeing that momentum continue in terms of rising from, again, 400 volts towards 800 volts, etc.? And then maybe just your view on heavier vehicle application too, whether that's ag equipment, semis, etc.?

David Heinzmann (CEO)

Sure. So electrification of vehicles is really a lot of it's come in positive negative over the last couple of years. Yeah.

I think our position is that electrification will happen, right? It's going to happen over time. It will happen at a slower rate than we had hoped maybe a couple of years ago. We've always had a bit more conservative view at the adoption rate than maybe what the market has viewed. So we're in it for the long haul. We're developing products for high-voltage applications. We're in a good position there. For us, content at the higher the voltage, the higher the content for us. So as voltages go from 400 to 800 to beyond, those are all positive content opportunities for us. Look, in the fourth quarter, 94% of the EV growth was in China. And the rest of the market was relatively flat. We're positioned well in China. We have strong relationships with OEMs.

And while the high-voltage side, we have more competition there, we continue to win on the low-voltage side in the electronics applications of Chinese OEMs. So even if we don't get all the high voltage in China, which we do win, but not the same rate we win in other parts of the world, the content growth in EVs in China will continue to be a good story for us in the long term. I think we're well positioned for that over time. And that's kind of we're committed to supporting that as it happens. Now, on the commercial side, it's a lot more variety of approaches that are taking place.

And electrification on the commercial side could be everything from electrifying hydraulic mechanisms, let's say, infrastructure and agriculture equipment, which is not necessarily a full EV, but electrification of the movement systems in vehicles passes great content for us and creates opportunity for us moving from hydraulic to electrical. And certainly, truck last-mile applications and great opportunity there. We're well positioned there and we're seeing nice opportunities there. So we're in it for the long haul. I think over the next five years, it will continue to be a content driver for us. We're making the exact case of it. I think we remain agile and we'll respond to that as the markets fall.

William Kerwin (Senior Equity Analyst at Morningstar)

Great. Thank you so much. Thanks for the questions, Will. Again, if you would like to ask a question, just star the number one on your telephone keypad.

Operator (participant)

We have a question from David Silver with CL King. The line is open.

David Silver (Davi Senior Managing Director & Director of Equity Research)

Hi. Thank you. First, yeah, my congratulations to Dave on a long, successful career and also to Greg. I just would have a big question. I'll call it kind of a look back or look forward type of question. First, as a sell-side analyst, I know we're often guilty of a very narrow or short-term focus. Dave, you've been with the company in a very long time and grown up with it, I guess. I was just wondering if you could look back maybe three to five years, maybe from the beginning of the pandemic, just as a point in time.

I was wondering if you might be able to call out one or two of the longer-term or more structural changes that you have implemented that you would say really position your company well here and now looking ahead. And then secondarily, I do wonder if you could maybe point out one or two of the major challenges or opportunities that you think Littelfuse needs to adapt to or succeed at in order for it to reach its long-term growth goals.

David Heinzmann (CEO)

Thanks, David. And yeah, I have kind of grown up in the business. I walked into the doors at Littelfuse when I was 20 years old. So I've spent my career with the company and have learned from a very early stage of different applications and products and markets we serve as those have evolved over the years.

Certainly, if you look at the last three to five years, and it's been a pretty interesting three to five years on pandemic situations, geopolitical situations, things like that. It's been fairly dynamic. But what I would say is the keys for us have been identifying even prior to three to five years ago, what are the long-term positive megatrends that are going to drive opportunity for Littelfuse, not in the next three years, but in the next 10 to 20 years? And making sure we're aligning our strategy to facilitate and play a role for our customers to support our customers as we go on that journey. And so I think that has been really important for us. Our investments have been in those areas. Our focus has been in those areas. They've served us well.

I think looking forward, the reality is those trends, anything, are stronger today than they were five years ago or ten years ago when we identified them. So I think we need to be well positioned to participate in these long-term trends. Yeah. Your question on challenges or whatever, certainly, I think geopolitical situations create more challenges. But we have a really strong team at Littelfuse, strong experience. We're not overly dependent on a singular application or a singular market. We've become more diversified over time. I think that will actually serve us well. If you run a global business, the diversification and the place that we have and the strength of our capabilities and our products and our team will serve us well and our markets well for a long time.

David Silver (Davi Senior Managing Director & Director of Equity Research)

Okay. Great. Congratulations again. That's all for me. Thank you. This is a question-and-answer session.

Operator (participant)

I would like to call back over to David Kelley for closing remarks.

David Kelly (VP of Investor Relations)

Yeah. Thank you and thanks, everyone, for your questions today. That does conclude the Q&A. Everyone have a great day. Thank you.