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Q1 2025 Flowserve Corp Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Brian Ezzell; Vice President - Treasurer, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance; Flowserve Corp

Scott Rowe; President & Chief Executive Officer; Flowserve Corp

Amy Schwetz; Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President; Flowserve Corp

Andy Kaplowitz; Analyst; Citi

Mike Halloran; Analyst; Robert W. Baird

Deane Dray; Analyst; RBC Capital Markets

Nathan Jones; Analyst; Stifel Nicolaus

David Ridley Lane; Analyst; Bank of America

Joe Giordano; Analyst; Cowen and Company

Unidentified Participant

Presentation

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Flowserve first quarter 2025 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Brian Ezzell, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations and Corporate Finance. Please go ahead.

Brian Ezzell

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Flowserve's first quarter 2025 business update. I'm joined by Scott Rowe, Flowserve's President and Chief Executive Officer; and our Chief Financial Officer, Amy Schwetz. Following Scott and Amy's prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions.
Turning to slide 2. Our discussion will contain forward-looking statements that are based upon information available as of today. Actual results may differ due to risks and uncertainties, refer to additional information, including our note on non-GAAP measures in our press release, earnings presentation and SEC filings, which are available on our website.
With that, I will turn it over to Scott.

Scott Rowe

Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin on slide 3. We delivered a strong start to the year in the first quarter, demonstrating the strength of our diversified portfolio and the exceptional performance of our associates around the world, operating under the Flowserve business system. Looking at some of our headline numbers.
Bookings grew 18% versus last year to $1.2 billion. Revenue increased 5% and adjusted gross margins expanded 180 basis points to 33.5%. We delivered adjusted operating margins of 12.8%, resulting in impressive incremental margins of more than 50% in the quarter. Adjusted earnings per share was $0.72 for the quarter, an increase of nearly 25% versus the prior year.
We entered the second quarter encouraged by our momentum, and we remain confident in our ability to execute at a high level. However, the current tariff environment introduces a new dynamic to our outlook, which I'll touch on in more detail shortly. We also recognize there is macroeconomic uncertainty as we look ahead.
Accordingly, we are reaffirming our full year guidance and remain focused on navigating the current environment while building on the strong results of the first quarter. Amy will provide additional details on the financial outlook later in the call.
Turning to slide 4. Our strong first quarter bookings performance resulted in a book-to-bill ratio of 1.07 times with outstanding growth in aftermarket bookings and nuclear activity. We continue to see outsized growth from our 3D strategy, with 3D bookings representing 31% of our total awards for the quarter. Record aftermarket bookings of almost $690 million represented the fourth consecutive quarter above $600 million. Our focus on growing the aftermarket business is paying dividends where our high service levels continue to translate into increased aftermarket capture.
In the quarter, our aftermarket franchise benefited from a roughly $50 million nuclear aftermarket order to upgrade a major nuclear power plant in North America. Our next largest award was a $42 million original equipment award also within the nuclear space for a new plant in Europe. Followed by a $36 million award for an energy project in the Middle East. In total, nuclear bookings were more than $100 million for the third consecutive quarter, and power bookings were up more than 45% versus the prior year. We also generated 28% year-over-year growth in general industries. These results underscore the ongoing demand for our products and services in critical industries.
Turning to slide 5. I I'll provide our view of how tariffs could impact our results and what actions we are taking to manage the current environment. As trade policy continues to evolve, we are focused on responding as quickly as possible to a very dynamic situation. We have clear visibility to tariff exposures down to the product family level, and we have a number of levers in place to mitigate the impact of the current tariff program.
Specific to US tariffs, the vast majority of the products we sell in the US are manufactured, assembled and tested within the United States. That said, we do import certain materials such as castings and forgings as well as some components like electronics and motors into the US. These items represent a single-digit percentage of our total cost of sales with the largest exposures to China, India and Mexico.
We also manufacture some products in the US for export to other geographies, but this activity represents a modest mid-single-digit percentage of our total sales and often comes with the ability to migrate this work to other non-US facilities. In total, based on tariff rates known today, we estimate the annualized gross impact of the new tariffs before any mitigating actions is between $90 million and $100 million.
Following the first round of tariffs in 2018 and the supply chain disruptions of 2022, we developed a more resilient and regionally diverse supply chain. As a result, we are better positioned to navigate these challenges than ever before with a focus on delivering the best value to our customers.
Our global footprint is an advantage in this environment, and we are leveraging our network to optimize the location of our work to help mitigate the impact of tariffs. We're also actively shifting sourcing around the globe to deliver the lowest cost, highest quality products to our customers.
In short, Flowserve is better positioned to navigate these challenges than ever before. We have also taken select pricing actions where needed to offset the impact of higher costs. In January, we executed our typical annual price increase. And in March, we raised prices again to offset the impact of incremental tariffs.
Additionally, we are utilizing change orders to reprice projects in our backlog as appropriate. We have a dedicated team focused on understanding the dynamic trade environment and ensuring that we are utilizing all of the available tools to mitigate their impact, such as USMCA and other trade agreements. Finally, we are tightly managing discretionary spending. And as we have in the past, we are prepared to move quickly to address costs if the macro environment changes.
Turning to page 6. We are also focused on the potential for tariffs to impact global market demand. Despite the increased uncertainty, our end markets currently remain healthy. Asset utilization for large process industries remain steady and maintenance spending has currently continued as expected. The spring turnaround season has been strong, and there have been no signs at this point that customers are deferring maintenance.
April bookings to date continue to look healthy across our run rate and aftermarket business. Our strong aftermarket business, which represents over 50% of sales, also provides some insulation from potential changes in near-term demand that might first impact project spending.
Our project funnel remains at an elevated level and increased sequentially in some of our largest end markets, including energy, chemical and power. Our nuclear opportunity funnel, in particular continues to grow even as large project opportunities have converted to bookings.
We are currently seeing a limited amount of project deferrals in select industries like mining and renewables. Our strong backlog at $2.9 billion is another advantage in this environment and provides a level of certainty for future revenues. At this point, we have not seen anything out of the ordinary with backlog cancellations and we expect 2025 to be in line with what we have experienced in past years. Overall, we have good near-term visibility, and we will continue to monitor the macro environment as we move through the year.
Turning to slide 7. Execution remains a key priority for us. We are leveraging the Flowserve Business System to drive consistency and results across the organization. The business system is a critical tool to help us navigate today's market volatility, something we did not have in place during the COVID downturn, and we're focused on leveraging a consistent and agile framework to run the business. Within the business system, CORE, our 80-20 program is accelerating with strong results in the first quarter, which were modestly ahead of our expectations.
As an example of our progress, I recently visited one of our US locations that manufactures pumps for the North American market. At that one site, we reduced SKUs by nearly 80%. These actions significantly reduce complexity and improve margins without having a significant impact on revenue.
By midyear, all of our product revenue will be utilizing the 80-20 methodology. For the year, we continue to expect the actions we are taking will benefit gross margins by roughly 50 basis points or more at the Flowserve level and then accelerate thereafter.
We remain confident in our ability to generate 200-plus basis points of margin expansion from the portfolio excellence program by 2027. In summary, I am very pleased with the strong start to 2025 and the progress we have made on executing our strategic initiatives. While we are mindful of the near-term macro uncertainty, our end markets are currently healthy, bookings have been strong, and our improved execution provides a solid foundation for continued success.
Let me now turn the call over to Amy.