Aaon Inc (AAON) 2024 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the AAON, Inc. fourth quarter 2004 (sic-2024) earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) For the call or for this call is being recorded on Thursday, February 27, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joseph Mondillo, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. And good morning, everyone. The press release announcing our fourth quarter financial results was issued earlier this morning; and can be found on our corporate website, aaon.com. The call today is accompanied with a presentation that you can also find on our website as well as on the listen-only webcast. Please go to Slide 2.

We begin with our customary forward-looking statement policy. During the call, any statement presented dealing with information that is not historical is considered forward-looking; and made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, each as amended.

As such, it is subject to the occurrence of many events outside of AAON's control that could cause AAON's results to differ materially from those anticipated. You all are aware of the inherent difficulties, risks and uncertainties in making predictive statements. Our press release and Form 10-K that we filed this morning detail some of the important risk factors that may cause our actual results to differ from those in our predictions.

Please note that we do not have the duty to update our forward-looking statements. Our press release and portions of today's call use non-GAAP financial measures as defined in Regulation G. You can find the related reconciliations to GAAP measures in our press release and presentation. Joining me on today's call is Gary Fields, CEO; Matt Tobolski, President and COO; and Rebecca Thompson, CFO and Treasurer. Gary will start off with some opening remarks.

Rebecca will follow with a walk-through of the quarterly results. Matt will then provide further details on the segments and about our operational strategy. And before taking questions, Gary will finish with our 2025 outlook and closing remarks. With that, I will turn the call over to Gary.

Prior to diving into the results, I want to briefly address the news that we announced last week related to CEO succession. As many of you know by now, I will be stepping down as CEO at our Annual Stockholders Meeting on May 13 and Matt Tobolski will be taking over the role. I will remain on the Board, and I also will become a special adviser to the company to ensure a smooth transition. Years ago, I was very transparent that a part of my strategy with the company was to put together such a strong leadership team that my services as leader will not be required any further. We've reached that point.

The team that we have put together over the last several years has been tested in many ways and has proven to be incredibly capable. I can confidently say this is the strongest leadership team this company has ever seen. Since the end of 2023, Matt has been leading the team and fully managing the day-to-day operations. Over this time, I took a step back from the day-to-day. I could not be happier how the team performed throughout this transition, giving me the utmost confidence that this is the right timing for this.

Matt is an extremely talented individual with a huge skill set. His bandwidth is incredibly large and he is a very effective leader. I have strong conviction he will be very successful and that this transition will be extremely smooth. Now please turn to Slide 3. As we look back on 2024: It was a year of both triumphs and obstacles.

Early in the year, we were coming off of a two year stretch of extremely strong organic volume growth and share gains. We said at the time that in addition to the year-over-year comps being tough, that 2024 was going to be a slower year to due to uncertainties and challenges related to the refrigerant transition, along with weaker macroeconomic conditions in the traditional nonresidential construction market.

While not everything went exactly how we expected, from an organic revenue standpoint, it was a flattish year which was generally in line with our projections. Peeling back the onion. There were a lot of puts and takes.

The BASX brand had a tremendous year driven by robust demand from the data center market and strong execution from our engineering and sales teams. The brand made a significant impact on the data center market with the industry's first large-scale development and sale of a custom-designed liquid cooling solution.

At the same time, sales of its air-side data center cooling equipment maintained exceptional performance. Net sales of BASX-branded equipment for the year were up 35.1%, and within that, BASX-branded data center equipment sales were up approximately 85%. Bookings of BASX-branded equipment in 2024 were up approximately 100%.

This performance led to the company's total backlog finishing the year up 70%. The AAON brand faced a more challenging year due to disruptions caused by the refrigerant transition and weaker nonresidential construction activity.

These headwinds resulted in softer demand and created challenges within production planning. Despite the obstacles, sales of AAON-branded equipment were down just modestly in the low single digits. Bookings of AAON-branded equipment was up in the mid-teens.

And backlog, at the end of the year, of AAON-branded equipment was up approximately 20%. Considering the tough year-over-year comps combined with the headwinds, we deemed the year to be a success. Please turn to Slide 4. Like the year, the fourth quarter performance was mixed. The bright shining star was that bookings were up approximately 62% and year up year-end's backlog finished up 70% to $867.1 million.

This was primarily driven by bookings of data center equipment, including the large $200 million-plus liquid cooling equipment order we booked late last year. We anticipate a majority of the total backlog will convert to revenue in 2025, positioning us for accelerated growth this year.

Sales and earnings in the fourth quarter were softer than we were anticipating. This was primarily driven by the AAON Oklahoma segment. The fourth quarter was the first quarter in which we only accepted orders for equipment configured with the new refrigerant.

Bookings of rooftop units in October and November were soft, causing us to throttle down production more than we anticipated. As a result, volumes were lower than expected. Margin degradation at the segment was exacerbated. The positive is this slowdown is temporary, and we believe we're closer to the end than the beginning.

The severity of the downturn since October should also result in a steeper recovery for us, as we deem most of this slowdown was a pushout of demand, compared to most of our competition which experienced a pull forward of demand.

I will now hand it off to Rebecca Thompson, who will walk through the quarterly financials in more depth.

Thank you, Gary. I'd like to begin by discussing the comparative results for the three months ended December 31, 2024, versus December 31, 2023. Please turn to Slide 5. Net sales were down 2.9% to $297.7 million from $306.6 million. The year-over-year decline was largely driven by the AAON Oklahoma segment which realized a decline of 16.1%.

This was partially offset by the AAON Coil Products segment which realized growth of 129.9%. Moving to Slide number 6. Our gross profit decreased 30.5% to $77.6 million from $111.7 million. As a percentage of sales, gross profit margin was 26.1% compared to 36.4% in 2023. The decrease in gross profit margin largely reflects lower volumes and the related deleveraging of fixed costs at the AAON Oklahoma segment.

We also had a temporary decline in gross margin for the AAON Coil Products and BASX segments as we build out additional capacity for future growth. Please turn to Slide 7. Selling, general and administrative expenses increased 0.7% to $48.2 million from $47.9 million in 2023.

As a percentage of sales, SG&A increased to 16.2% compared to 15.6% in the same period in 2023. The increase in SG&A as a percent of sales was primarily related to an increase in depreciation expense associated with investments we are making for long-term growth, offset by a reduction in profit-sharing expenses due to lower earnings.

Moving to Slide 8. Diluted earnings per share decreased 46.4% to $0.30 per share from $0.56 per share. The fourth quarter benefited from a large excess tax benefit of $4.6 million relating to stock-based compensation compared to $2.5 million in the same period a year ago. Turning to Slide 9. Our balance sheet remained strong.

Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash totaled $6.5 million at December 31, 2024. And total outstanding debt was $154.9 million. Our leverage ratio in the quarter was 0.57. We had working capital balance of $313.3 million at December 31, 2024, versus $282.2 million at December 31, 2023. The increase in working capital reflects necessary inventory purchases made to accommodate production of orders in backlog for early 2025.

Capital expenditures in the fourth quarter were $99.3 million, up nearly fourfold from a year ago. The increase was primarily associated with the $63.4 million spent in December on the closing of our new facility in Memphis. In 2024, capital expenditures totaled $213.2 million, up 94.7% from 2023. In 2025, we anticipate capital expenditures to be approximately $220 million. The majority of our investments will be related to getting the Memphis facility up to speed for production later this year.

I'll now hand the call over to Matt Tobolski, who will speak more in depth regarding the business segments and our operational strategy.

Thank you, Rebecca. Please turn to Slide 10. As Rebecca stated, much of the softness in the quarter was driven by the AAON Oklahoma segment. On the Third Quarter Call, we cautioned that we expected a temporary lull in adoption of new 454B refrigerant equipment after we stopped accepting orders of the legacy 410A refrigerant equipment in September and knowing that many of the state's building codes weren't updated to allow 454B equipment until the fourth quarter. As this is the first refrigerant transition that also had building code implications, it was difficult to gauge what the impact was going to be.

The downturn in demand following the refrigerant transition proved to be steeper, causing us to slow production in the quarter more than anticipated. This resulted in lower volumes in the AAON Oklahoma segment in the quarter.

We believe the downturn is temporary and was created by the refrigerant transition timing. As such, we chose to not reduce head count significantly to prepare for the rebound in demand. As a result, the impact was magnified from a profit margin standpoint.

Bookings were strong as we rounded up the year, resulting in a double-digit increase in the segment's year-end backlog. However, this preceded a modest price increase that went into effect on January 1, so some of this demand was a pull forward ahead of the price increase. The positive is this suggests there is pent-up demand in the market.

Furthermore, as of the end of January, the trailing three months of bookings were up in the mid-teens compared to the same three month period a year ago and backlog remained solid. We continue to believe, as we move through the first half of the year, we'll see continued improvement in demand.

That said, much of the fixed costs associated with the new Memphis facility will be included in the AAON Oklahoma segment. Until production ramps up to a certain level, which will likely not occur until Q4, this will be a drag on segment profits.

In the first half of the year, we anticipate incurring costs of $5 million to $7 million, with minimal revenues to offset. For the segment as a whole, we expect the first quarter will look similar to the fourth quarter and expect sequential improvement throughout most of next year. The AAON Coil Products segment had an exceptional quarter.

Sales and gross profits were up 129.9% and 88.9%, respectively. The strength was largely driven by the commencement of production of the new BASX-branded data center liquid cooling product. I'm extremely pleased with how our operations have performed here. We've added and trained a lot of people in a short period of time to scale up this operation and execute to the highest level for this customer. Due to engineering and design modifications requested from the customer, the initial ramp-up of production has been delayed a couple of months.

As a result, we now expect the majority of this order will be produced and shipped in the second and third quarter of this year. That said, we should see solid sequential improvement in sales and profits in the first quarter, with an acceleration starting in the second quarter. Sales and gross profits at the BASX segment were down 3% and 42.7%, respectively. Over the course of last year, the facility in Oregon has been working through some growing pains. There's a lot of demand and a lot of backlog, which is positive, but there is also limited capacity at this facility.

This resulted in some temporary operational inefficiencies and is why the margins have been subpar for a number of quarters. The positive is we've been working on this issue for a while and believe we are almost at a point where we should begin to see improvements. We are taking certain initiatives that will expand production throughput while balancing our head count appropriately.

The Memphis facility should also help greatly, as we will be moving some high-volume production from Redmond to this facility later this year, which will result in higher production efficiency in Redmond. We expect the first quarter will look similar to the fourth quarter and anticipate sequential improvement going forward.

As we stated in the past, we expect this segment will eventually return to margins we realized in 2023. Please turn to Slide 11. I want to finish by briefly running through our strategic priorities with you and how they pertain to our tactical approach today. We see our strategy existing within 3 main pillars. AAON's foundation is and has always been built upon the being industry leader in innovation and customization, which is pillar number one.

Maintaining the industry's highest class of engineers in solving our customers' problems through configurable and customized solutions is a foundational principle across the entire organization. We exemplify this today through various ways, most notably our highly technical, fully custom-developed data center solutions; and our cutting-edge semi-custom air-source heat pump units.

The data center liquid cooling solution that we developed last year was a product that was uniquely configured in a way the industry had never seen before. The product we provided was the exact solution that a customer was looking for, and it was something none of our competition was able to deliver. In the current time period, where the scope and design of data centers are rapidly changing, these engineering and manufacturing capabilities are immensely valuable.

Our air-source heat pump rooftop units sold under Alpha Class product family is another example of innovation. Today, we are one of only two manufacturers in the industry that provide certified air-source heat pump solutions that are operable down to 0 degrees.

Over the course of this year, we will be introducing heat pump solutions that are operable all the way down to negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit. This is instrumental in filling the growing demands from customers who are attempting to decarbonize and electrify their footprints of buildings. These are just two examples.

We have other innovations in development stages that we expect will be similarly as impactful, and we look forward to sharing them with you in the future. This leads me to our second pillar, which is to drive sustainable and robust organic growth. Today, our annualized run rate of production of data center equipment amounts to a little over $200 million.

Given the pipeline of data center development plans and growing demand for customized solutions in this ever-rapidly changing industry, we see this business growing to over $1 billion within a few years. In 2024, sales of our Alpha Class units amounted to a little over $100 million and was up year-over-year by approximately 40%.

With demand for this technology growing significantly in much of the country requiring these cold climate solutions, we think this business can grow by multiples in the next few years. These two catalysts alone are going to drive significant growth. And there are other initiatives we are focusing on that will also contribute to continued growth. This brings me to our final pillar, which is to be a best-in-class operator. Being a best-in-class operator, to us, means to consistently achieve high operational efficiencies, quality control and on-time delivery rates, all reflected by consistent gross margins.

To achieve this, while generating the robust growth rates we are targeting, we must carefully manage both our current operations and our capacity expansion plans. In order to do that, we reorganized the company late last year. This new structure will allow us to quickly grow into approximately 1 million square feet of new manufacturing space that we constructed and acquired last year, doing so while maintaining efficiencies and target margins.

With that, I will hand it back to Gary, who will walk through the outlook.

Please turn to Slide 12. Prior to walking through the 2025 outlook, I want to take a step back and talk about where we are in our business cycle and where we are going. Matt did a good job of speaking to where we are going, but I want to frame where we are from a higher-level perspective. The last five years, we have experienced tremendous amount of growth, growing organic revenue at a CAGR of 17%. It hasn't been a straight line, though, which it never is in business.

In 2020, we had an exceptional year. 2021 was flattish. 2022 and 2023 were phenomenal, and 2024 was flattish. Last year was an unusual year largely disrupted by an unprecedented government regulation that the industry had never experienced. The positive is most of the impact of that regulation is behind us.

I point this out because sometimes we get overly focused on three months worth of financials and sometimes lose the forest for the trees. We are at the early stages of another multiyear period of robust growth. The fundamentals of both of our brands, AAON and BASX, are extremely strong. BASX has a huge tailwind from data center development and its leveraging of its unique engineering and custom design capabilities. AAON also is in a strong position.

Our semi-custom designed equipment is of the highest-quality, best-performing, most energy-efficient equipment in the industry. Our advanced development of heat pump technology is revolutionary. Moreover, we're proving we can build our traditional equipment more efficiently than anyone, which is reflected in a narrowing price premium and strong margins.

Given the backlog and the fundamentals, we see both brands accelerating in growth over the next several years, resulting in annual growth similar to our trailing five year CAGR. We are investing and positioning this business for the long term.

The recent reorg and investments that we have made into the business should give you confidence that we will not only be able to absorb this robust growth but do so efficiently. With that, I will now walk you through our 2025 outlook. Please turn to Slide 13. For the year, we anticipate sales growth in the mid- to high teens at a gross margin similar to what we realized in 2024. SG&A as a percent of sales will realize a decline of 25 to 50 basis points.

CapEx will be approximately $220 million. For the first quarter, due to general seasonality, lasting impacts of refrigerant transition and ramp-up costs related to Memphis, we anticipate sales and earnings will be modestly down from the fourth quarter.

In closing, I want to finish by thanking all of our employees, sales channel partners and customers. I also want to announce that we will be attending Sidoti & Company's virtual small cap conference on March 13 and William Blair's conference in June. I hope to see some of you there at these events.

Thank you. And I will now open the call for Q&A.

(Operator Instructions)

Ryan Merkel from William Blair.

Hey everyone, good morning. Thanks for the questions. I wanted to start with the first quarter outlook for the Oklahoma sales. I think you said flat sales versus what you just reported in 4Q. And is the reason that you're seeing that, is it still pushouts because there's an inventory of R-410 in the channel? Is that the main reason?

Well, that certainly got an impact on it, Ryan. We did book very nice right there at the end of the year, but the lead time being what it is, it's towards the end of the first quarter before those accelerated bookings start hitting the plant floor.

So working off of backlog, we'll say, earlier in the month, earlier in Q4, that's why the run rate is still not accelerated. 410 had a whole lot to do with it. We kept that off, like we said back in September, so everything that we have in the backlog now is 454B.

And it is taking just a moment to get that momentum back.

Okay. And then in the quarter, BASX sales down year-over-year is a little bit of a surprise. I didn't catch the reason why is that, just given the big backlog.

Yeah, so on the on a BASX perspective, I think the one thing, Ryan, we have to really frame looking forward is thinking about this more on the BASX brand. And so the ACP the strong growth in ACP, that is really driven by BASX-branded equipment. So when we look at BASX as a whole, we're definitely seeing strong growth coming out of that overall business. Within the segment reporting, so the BASX segment as reported today, is really reflective of Redmond production.

And there are just fundamental limitations of capacity within that facility that are really kind of the throttle of what you're going to see from an overall sales perspective in that segment, but the demand to your point, the demand, the backlog from a BASX-branded product is extremely strong.

I got it. So yes, you're saying BASX as a whole if you include coil is still strong.

Correct. And that's really we talk about the kind of business unit realignment then and kind of future reporting. It's really trying to reflect that because, as we go forward, the BASX brand is going to really be the Redmond facility, the vast majority of Longview and really the bulk of Memphis from a ramp-up perspective. That is all for BASX-branded products.

Okay, one more and I'll pass it on, the outlook for mid-teens to high-teens growth in '25. That's a little below what I was thinking. Can you just unpack some of the assumptions there? I was thinking data centers, both BASX and coil, could be up 75% to 80%, again just given that backlog. And I think you mentioned you convert a lot of that.

And then I was thinking then, the Oklahoma side, you'd be up low single digits, mid-single digits, so correct me if what am I missing on that?

Yeah. I'd say the big driver is Oklahoma, I'll say, is the sort of piece that is offsetting that dynamic growth in the data center space. And so to Gary's comment earlier, coming off of the Q4 bookings, into Q1, you're going to see a little bit of a expected reduction from Q4 to Q1 when you look at the bookings conversion to sales in Q1 plus traditional seasonality in that segment.

So in Q1, we're just starting off at a weaker point than would be normal from in that segment. And as we look, there's still uncertainty exactly how the commercial markets, the macroeconomic market in nonres really recovers throughout the year.

And so we're just putting a little bit of caution in there with uncertainty around the Oklahoma segment. And so that's really where the kind of put and take is on the overall guide from top line revenue is yes, to your point, very strong expectations of growth within the data center segment, with a little bit of softness coming off of that in the Oklahoma segment.

And can we just put a finer point on that? And maybe you don't want to give too much detail, but is the Oklahoma segment going to be more flat in '25?

We're not bifurcating down to segment guidance at this point, but definitely it just again, when we started off kind of in that Q1 where we're starting off in Q1, obviously, it's going to put us a little behind from a year-over-year perspective.

Got it. All right, thanks, I'll pass it on.

Chris Moore from CJS Securities.

Hey, good morning, guys first, congratulations both to Gary and to Matt. Job well done. Maybe we can start on data center. There's been some talk of bigger players canceling or downsizing data center construction. What are you hearing from customers, potential customers on that front?

Yeah, I mean obviously there's been a lot of noise in the market around kind of what the data center outlook looks like. What I would say just from a fundamental visibility that we have, the market continues to be strong. It continues to strengthen. When we look at the pipeline visibility that we see in the marketplace, as a whole, we see capital expenditures remaining strong and in a lot of areas actually increasing.

And so from our perspective, everything we're seeing in the marketplace, everything we're seeing in various stages of conversation within the data center market and channel, the outlook, the strength and the investments continue to remain strong.

And really I think a lot of conversation around the deep seat conversations really we continue to be firm believers and really subscribe to the mindset that the ability to create more effective models creates demand. It creates a higher adoption of AI. And we'll actually be continuing to strengthen the investment, versus the adverse.

Got it. That's helpful. And you mentioned a $1 billion target. Is that a three to four year goal? Is that a five-plus-year goal?

Just any way to frame that?

Yeah, I mean we use it I'll repeat the words as we say. It's a few years basically is what we see of being able to get that to $1 billion. And so that's in the three to four year range is kind of where we see that target at.

Got it. That's helpful. And maybe just a question on rooftop, on pricing. So how much more expensive is your R 54B solution than the legacy 410A that's currently being sold? I'm just trying to get an understanding if it's if there's a big price delta.

Or it has to do with building code changes that would influence people to continue to buy the R-410A for a while.

So for us, the 410A is behind us.

Exactly.

We don't sell into a distribution channel where we prestocked and preloaded a big parking lot full of units. So there is no 410A left at AAON. That ended at the end of December. 454B is no more expensive from us. We had a 3% price increase that went into effect January 1.

That was just our annual price increase for everything that due to inflation, we'll say, but nothing specific to 454B has emerged.

Got it. No, I understood you're not selling the 410A anymore, but distributors can. And I'm just wondering. If you were going up against the 410A when trying to sell the 454B is really kind of what I was getting after, so...

Not materially, Chris.

Okay.

So not materially, Chris, okay, the people that buy units for a standard product like that are not our target client, never have been. It's never been material to our business. I'm not going to tell you that we don't lose a project from time to time to it, but it's not really measurable, what we would lose to 410A, because it's not ever been our target client that buys that style of unit.

So not only the more innovative application strategies that we've put in the market for the for several years in, like, DOAS units and humidity control and building pressurization control and effective filtration those have been our marquee applications, but the air-source heat pump is gaining a lot of share within the units that we're building today. And those are all built specifically for a project as well.

Okay, very helpful. Maybe just one last on price: So you guys have much more pricing flexibility than the average company on the 454B. From a market standpoint, any sense in terms of where you're priced versus the other 454Bs at this stage? I know you said you raised prices 3% in the year.

Yeah, We're just now getting into that season where we have good comparative data. And oftentimes, I've stated this many times, in the K-12 market, which historically has been 20%-plus of our utilization of our units, bid forms oftentimes will be AAON basis of design.

And then they'll list a matrix of other manufacturers and what their pricing is. Those bids have gone back to their normal cadence of February, March, April bids resulting in June and July deliveries.

So we're very soon and fact is, on next quarter's talk, I think we'll have empirical data to support where we're at with that, but we've not yet seen anything material in that regard.

Got it, very helpful. I'll jump back online. Thanks guys.

(Operator Instructions)

Brent Thielman from Davidson.

Hey, thanks, good morning, Gary or Matt, just on the potential kind of $1 billion in data center revenue here over the next few years, could you talk about does the current capacity, coupled with kind of Memphis coming online, permit you to do that? Is there more you need to spend to get there? And then also just a refresh on the time line that Memphis asset becomes available to you.

Matt, go ahead.

Yeah, When we think of kind of the total capacity that will be in place, I mean, obviously, within the Redmond segment, we sort of said that in the be low to mid-$200 millions is really kind of where that facility's sweet spot is from a capacity standpoint. We have Longview facility that we've added. And if you really just look at that from a potential capacity of that facility, it's more than 2x the space dedicated to data center production compared to Redmond. So more or less double that.

And then Memphis is basically equal to the combination of those two. And so you start looking at that and you're talking about overall capacity sitting in the $1 billion, $1.5-ish billion range once that's online. So the capacity investment in Memphis is really to support that objective that we see, with headroom on top of that. In terms of when it comes online. We look at Memphis and we'll be honest.

We're aggressive at trying to get production pulled pushed out of there. We actually built the first units at the beginning of the month in February. I say that with excitement but also caution because, obviously when we say we built units in Memphis, we really assembled units in Memphis.

And so we had a lot of parts coming from a lot of places but really working aggressively to ramp that facility up so that, by Q4, the equipment, the support equipment; and the team is really built out to be running not at that full capacity but definitely with a meaningful impact to financials by the end of the year.

Got it. Really helpful, Matt. Maybe just on BASX, I guess, specific to the Oregon facility, it sounds like you just essentially have some things to work through, inefficiencies right now. Could you just clarify when you think that business sort of returns to the margins you sort of expect out of it?

Yeah, I mean, in that segment, from today's reporting perspective, we expect we're going to see sequential quarter-over-quarter improvement in margin throughout '25. The reality is there's just when you attempt to put too much product through a facility is there's actually a negative implication, versus a positive, in terms of your ability to effectively manufacture; and the incredible demand for the product; and really the target for us to deliver on expectations from a lead time and a shipping perspective. We push that facility very hard to turn products for customers. And productivity in terms of number of units produced was certainly up in that last quarter, but it felt strain obviously from it resulted in strain from a financial perspective.

So we really think, throughout the calendar year, we're going to see improvements. And getting into 2026, we're going to be getting closer to being at that normalized margin rate that we're targeting.

Got it. Just last one, Matt or Gary, I guess. We're sort of two-third the way through the first quarter I just want to come back to rooftop. And could you discuss the order visibility you're starting to see for the new product? Is it still a wait and see in terms of that coming in excuse me, the new refrigerant product?

I'm just trying to get a sense since were good way to quarter.

No, it's beginning to accelerate. We were in Orlando, at AHR, just visiting with a lot of our sales channel partners. We didn't have any display there, but the general tenor was we're going to be seeing increasing orders on the normal seasonal basis that we had in years back. So I guess the way to frame that up is we're confident that we've got the right product at the right price for the rooftops, and we'll reassume our growth profile here shortly.

And just to add one piece to that too. In the prepared remarks, I want to just kind of reiterate one comment we made, which is when we look at the three months ending January 2025 compared to the year previous, for November, December, January bookings, they're up mid-teens year-over-year.

And so the normalization, the growth profile in there is certainly starting to reassume and kind of tells you where we're at from a competitiveness perspective in the marketplace. Where we caution that Q1 softness again really is about backlog conversion. That bookings cadence doesn't really start hitting, as Gary mentioned on the first question, until the latter part of Q1; and really makes a meaningful impact into Q2.

So we definitely see that product positioned well. It's just getting past that refrigerant transition to get the sales back to a normalized growth profile.

Just to add one more thing to that. Going back a few years ago, when we'll say the markets were relatively normal with lead times, bid activity and so forth and their seasonality. We would see in the range of 20% variance from the low to the high. And the bookings always led that by approximately 1 quarter. Well, here we are at about 17% on that bookings time frame that converts into units in Q2, so that historic roughly 20% seasonality increase for Q2 and Q3 looks to be valid once again.

But really helpful color. Thank you, guys.

Julio Romero from Sidoti & Company.

Good morning. This is Alex Hantman on for Julio. I know we spoke about more efficient models driving more data center demand, but I was curious if you could talk a little bit about demand for denser data centers. I know those are typically a little bit better suited to liquid cooling, so I would just love to have your take on that.

Yeah, certainly, in the data center space and really around the model development side, so the machine learning aspect of AI, that is pretty much all higher-density compute that's basically producing those models. And so that higher-density compute is pushing everything towards liquid cooling from a server perspective in that space.

I always like to really make sure we hammer this home because I think it's a little bit misunderstood kind of in the overall market perspective, but even when we have a true pure-play, as we would call it, liquid cool data center, which is what we're supporting with that Longview product, there is still a great amount of air-side cooling required in that data center. And so it drives growth.

That investment in AI and that investment in the machine learning side at higher densities is driving growth both in liquid cooling and air-side cooling, but definitely we're seeing a huge push in the higher densities within that AI space.

Great. And I know we talked a little bit on the call about decarbonization and that sort of end market potential. Previously, I think, you also mentioned clean rooms, so could we just get a little bit of an update on the development of that end market?

Yeah, the premium product, a cleaner market primarily been a data center BASX-driven product. So a lot of products from the BASX brand have gone into the clean room space, both in the semiconductor, the pharmaceutical as well as the EV and battery production facilities. I would say just as a macro perspective that market is, has been a little bit lumpy. And so it definitely has some ups and downs from a quarter-by-quarter productivity standpoint.

Those projects tend to be large-scale programs and they're not quite as consistent in growth rate as data centers. And so you definitely see a little more volatility in the orders, bookings and conversion, but we continue to see strong investment in the onshoring within the chip market as well as buildout of battery facilities that we continue to support.

Great, appreciate the. Call there. We'll jump back into the queue.

Timothy Wojs from Baird.

Good morning, everybody, maybe just on Gary, on pricing with the new R 54B system. It sounds like you took some price in Q1 but really just to kind of offset inflation, so could you just kind of articulate where you are in terms of the strategy around what you're going to do with price specifically for R 54B?

Yes. We're going to monitor it a bit longer. We'd like for bookings to strengthen a bit before we hit a price increase that could potentially be related to 454B. I think, with the uncertainty of the impact of tariffs, there may be price increases to offset additional costs for that. They may not be 454B specific, but we will be monitoring that.

We have a lot of capacity room in the Tulsa facility where we build the rooftop units, which is primarily where the 454B impact is at. And we want to get that plant loaded back up strongly. And if we have an opportunity to increase our price and thus our margin as a result of what others have for pricing pressure related to 454B, then I think we would very likely do that. It's interesting. I tried to figure out where their cost that they're declaring for 454B might be occurring.

And I said early on that the monitoring and mitigation device, the refrigerant leak monitoring and mitigation device, that's required for 454B units was something that we had invented in our own facilities and invented one for us, perfected it, got it UL certified. And we're manufacturing it at a very low cost relative to what we could go purchase them for.

Presumably, others are buying that component, as opposed to having developed their own, at this point in time. One or two others, on their calls, have cited that device as being one of the reasons that they've gone up. So I applaud our team for being innovative enough to come up with that device early to get it developed, get it certified; and put it into our system at a very advantageous price.

So that was one of the areas that I've seen others cite as to their price increase. And so that explains a little bit why we don't need the price increase possibly and may do, but I want to make sure that we get strong bookings. And once we get the bookings cadence go in the direction we need to go, then we'll look at being a bit more opportunistic to getting price increase.

Okay, okay, that's helpful. And then I guess just from a is there a way to kind of quantify any of the inefficiencies with some of the increased capacity at Longview and just some of the inefficiencies that you saw at BASX? Like, is there a number that you can put on it in terms of what those costs were in the fourth quarter and in 2025?

Well, I'll take the first stab at this and then let Matt build in a few more details. While we were ramping up and while we are ramping up Longview, there are certain things that we build and produce internally that we didn't have enough capacity yet to produce because the new machinery was still coming online, so we were outsourcing. We'll say powder coat would be one of those in particular. We didn't have a powder coat facility in Longview, so we were outsourcing that. Well, you can visualize making all these big panels.

And they're, well, fairly large pieces of sheet metal. Boxing them up, shipping them down the road even though it's only a few miles, but you still have the logistics of doing that. Having them powder coated, bringing them back. Certain percentage of them are damaged, not usable, because of the transportation logistics. And then just the overall inefficiency of that process.

So that was one in particular. In Memphis, as Matt spoke to earlier, we've produced units there, but we have no manufacturing equipment yet commissioned and operating there, so it's strictly assembly. So we've either built components at other existing plants that we own, or in some cases, we've outsourced some of that as well and brought it in. And we did that in order to meet our delivery requirements with some of those clients, so that the combination of the two puts pressure on the margins, but Matt, go ahead and tell more about Redmond in particular.

Well and I was going to touch on one more thing in the Longview space. And really, with the growth rates that you see in Q4 in Longview and really what we're talking about into the basically Q2 and Q3 with all the ramp-up of production, you also have a lot of pressures in the fact that you need to onboard and train personnel ahead of when you're producing.

And so all of that basically puts strain from an indirect overhead perspective as you're basically getting those team members up to speed and efficient in production. So all of that creates margin strains that definitely as we get to the volumes and we're in a more normalized state in Longview, you'll definitely see margins improve from a reduction of the inefficiencies and the extra labor costs but also just fundamental leverage. You're going to get a lot of leverage in overhead as we get to some of those higher volumes.

So Longview, definitely going into Q2 and Q3, you're going to see some great improvement in overall margin. In Redmond, yes. And to Gary's point, similar to Memphis, similar to Longview, with the demand and the product we were trying to get through, we just we had to leverage some outsourcing as well as a lot of just inefficiencies and basically getting projects out the door from a delivery expectation to our customers.

There's one thing that we hold really, really strong; and that is monitoring our commitments to our customers. And so sometimes, to get deliveries out when we're a little bit behind, it takes a little bit extra work, AKA costs, to get that done, so we've leveraged outsource partners inside the Redmond space as well, and some logistics, just trying to get all of that product produced.

That was expected. We have and we're kind of really at a point where all the equipment that was getting installed in Redmond is now installed. It is now operational. And really now we start to get the incremental leverage of efficiency off of these equipment installations, so really as we look forward, we do see kind of quarter-by-quarter improvements in that Redmond segment getting all of that outsourced inefficiency behind us, getting the equipment performing to expectations. And the really the great part is we've made the decision that Redmond is going to get to a certain point in terms of its overall throughput capacity and we're going to basically maintain that.

It's not going to be a continuous growth driver, which means we then convert from a capital programs perspective to efficiency programs. And so there will be a lot of effort throughout '25 to drive efficiency and therefore drive margin improvement throughout the calendar year.

Okay, okay, that's helpful. And then I have two other ones. Just the first is what is the year-over-year increase in D&A going to be just given the CapEx. And where does that kind of land? And then the second one is just given the data center reporting in terms of where the stuff is landing from a production perspective.

I mean I think it's actually pretty difficult for investors to kind of follow what's going on, so is there a potential or a thought process about maybe just kind of having the rooftop business be a segment and then having data center be a segment? Because I think just some of the complexity of the reporting right now is kind of weighing a little bit on what's happening.

So say I will answer your second, first, because I know Rebecca is going to get you to the solid answer on the first piece, yes. So on your second question, I mean, that is exactly why we announced the reorg kind of into the business unit philosophy going into 2025. We have some limitations in our systems today to allow the full reporting of that, but as we get through 2026, our goal is to do exactly what you're asking, which is to do financial reporting really around the AAON business unit, which is the rooftop and the commercial split systems; and then reporting around the BASX segment.

And in doing so, you'll be able to understand the BASX revenue across and basically the drivers of revenue and profitability that comes from all of our production sites. And so that is definitely the target for the end of 2025, going into '26, to get very easier-to-understand financial reporting around all those segments.

And then Rebecca...

Okay, yeah. So can you repeat your first question? Just so I believe it was about the D&A.

Yes, yes. Just with the because I think D&A in the like, if you look at the Q, I think the D&A number was probably up $6 million or something like that, $7 million, year-over-year. I guess, what is that supposed to be up in '25 as you bring on Longview and Memphis? And just where does that land on the P&L in terms of SG&A or COGS?

So it's going to land in both COGS and SG&A. A lot of the Memphis DD&A, that's going to be mostly in your cost of goods sold. And that's part of the drag on the gross margins that we alluded to in the earnings call, as far as like some of the fixed costs that are happening before we have the offset revenue, but we also have, as we've kind of also noticed or alluded to in many of the calls, investments in some of the back-office technology, catching up and doing automations. So you're going to see continued increases in DD&A, within the SG&A portion of the income statement as well, related to those investments. So I would think that the increase in DD&A in the next year (technical difficulty)

they could be consistent with our increase in sales.

Okay, sounds good. I'll talk to you guys in a bit thank you.

Thank you. Alright, so I don't see any further questions at this time. I will now hand the call over to Joseph Mondillo. Please go ahead.

All right. Thank you everyone for joining today's call. If anyone has any questions over the coming days and weeks, please feel free to reach out to myself. Have a great rest of the day and we look forward to speaking with you in the future. Thanks.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, today's conference call has concluded. You may now disconnect.