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Q1 2025 Whirlpool Corp Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Scott Cartwright; Head of Investor Relations; Whirlpool Corp

Marc Bitzer; Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer; Whirlpool Corp

James Peters; Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and President - Whirlpool Asia; Whirlpool Corp

Laura Champine; Analyst; Loop Capital

Sam Darkatsh; Analyst; Raymond James

Michael Rehaut; Analyst; JPMorgan

Susan Maklari; Analyst; Goldman Sachs

David MacGregor; Analyst; Longbow Research

Mike Dahl; Analyst; RBC Capital Markets

Rafe Jadrosich; Analyst; BofA Global Research

Eric Bosshard; Analyst; Cleveland Research

Presentation

Scott Cartwright

Good morning, and welcome to Whirlpool Corporation's first-quarter 2025 earnings call. Today's call is being recorded. Joining me today are Marc Bitzer, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Jim Peters, our Chief Financial and Administrative Officer. Our remarks today track with the presentation available on the Investors section of our website at whirlpoolcorp.com.
Before we begin, I want to remind you that as we conduct this call, we will be making forward-looking statements to assist you in better understanding Whirlpool Corporation's future expectations. Our actual results could differ materially from these statements due to many factors discussed in our latest 10-K, 10-Q and other periodic reports.
We also want to remind you that today's presentation includes the non-GAAP measures outlined in further detail at the beginning of our earnings presentation. We believe that these measures are important indicators of our operations as they exclude items that may not be indicative of our results from ongoing business operations. We also think the adjusted measures will provide you with a better baseline for analyzing trends in our ongoing business operations.
Listeners are directed to the supplemental information package posted on the Investor Relations section of our website for the reconciliation of non-GAAP items to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. (Operator Instructions)
With that, I'll turn the call over to Marc.

Marc Bitzer

Thanks, Scott, and good morning, everyone. During the first quarter, we delivered a solid performance, and we're pleased with our progress to date. With a 2% organic growth and almost 6% EBIT margins, our business is largely on track despite a macro environment that became more challenging.
We are also reiterating our annual guidance just reconfirmed our dividend in line with past payouts. The tariffs represent, in the short term, a manageable headwind, largely in the form of higher component costs and the market preloading by Asian competitors.
Asian appliance produces significantly increased imports into the US ahead of the tariffs in the first quarter and fourth quarter, essentially loading the US industry. This market disruption will likely continue into Q2 as competitors attempt to sell through their inventory.
However, once we already announced tariffs fully kick in, this will turn to a significant tailwind for Whirlpool as a domestic producer. No matter how you look at it, Whirlpool with its 10 large US factories is a net winner of a new tariff policy.
With our strong domestic footprint, we produce 80% of our domestic sales in the US. No competitor is en close to that level of domestic production. As we will explain to you later, the newly announced tariffs are critical in closing preexisting loophole that gave our Asian competitors an unfair advantage over US domestic production. The tariffs will finally help create a level playing field for Wool.
Irrespective of the tree environment, we remain focused on the things we control. We successfully implemented pricing actions and structurally drove cost out of our business. Even more important, we are excited about the initial market response to the huge wave of new products we're introducing this year, all of which is expected to expand ongoing EBIT margins in the second half of 2021.
Turning to slide 6, I will provide an overview of our first quarter results. We achieved 2% organic net sales growth, which, as a reminder, excludes the impact of currency and the Europe transaction, driven by strong momentum in our SDA Global and MDA Asia businesses.
Global EBIT margins expanded 160 basis points year over year driven by previously announced pricing actions in MDA North America and MDA Latin America, along with continued cost takeout. We also experienced approximately $17 million unfavorable impact from our minority stake in Beko Europe B.V., which was offset by an interest rate swap benefit of approximately $30 million.
We delivered approximately $200 million free cash flow improvement versus prior year, driven by the Europe transaction expected. Ultimately, we delivered ongoing earnings per share of $1.70, and maintained our dividend of $1.75 for both Q1 and Q2.
As mentioned before, we expect similar market dynamics in the second quarter as we experienced in the first quarter with Asian competitors preloading ahead of tariffs and working through elevated inventories. Our inventories within the trade, on the other hand, are at healthy levels and we're fully focused on executing the already announced price increases.
With the full effect of the tariffs coming into place in July, we expect a more stable competitive landscape in the second half, an environment in which we can leverage our US domestic production to its fullest extent. This will put us on track to accomplish our full year ongoing margin guidance.
Turning to slide 7, I will provide an overview of our first quarter ongoing EBIT margin drivers. Price/mix favorably impacted margin by 50 basis points, driven by our successful pricing actions in MDA North America and MDA Latin America. Our cost takeout actions delivered 100 basis points year over year, led by our continued manufacturing and supply chain efficiencies and our organizational simplification actions.
Raw materials were initially flat as expected. Marketing and Technology had an unfavorable 25 basis point impact as we continue to invest in our products and brands. In the first quarter, the Brazilian real depreciated approximately 20% compared to prior year, resulting in an unfavorable margin impact of 50 basis points.
European transaction positively impacted the first quarter by 75 basis points. We are pleased to have expanded margins year over year by 160 basis points despite the challenging market dynamics, which I explained earlier. And now I will turn it over to Jim to review our first quarter segment results.