In a conference call with investors,David G. Nord, Hubbell Incorporated,Chairman, President & CEO, told investors that pricing actions continue to gain traction.
He went on to say, “Lighting business grew at 2%. There was balance between the resi and commercial and industrial has in the business. Lighting, too, executed on price, which is quite good news for us. They covered both the tariffs and material inflation experience to have a positive price cost, and we were able to expand margins after solid contributions from Lighting into the segment.”
In the Q & A portion of the call, William R. Sperry, Senior VP & CFO explained that Hubbell has been investing in Lighting, as over the last several years by taking some of their fixed costs out and reorganizing the business. He stated, “We’ve been investing in the front end on the agent side, and it’s good to see those investments paying off right now, for sure.”
When asked about the agent side of the business by Christopher Glynn from Oppenheimer, Sperry responded, “Well just over the last couple of years, we had added and strengthened our representation on the front end in specific markets in, for example, the Southeast, in the Midwest, not on the West Coast, Chris. So those are — that’s not new news, that’s just yields on investments we’ve made over the last couple years.”
David Nord, added, “But I think importantly, Chris, that’s something that Kevin and his team focused on, one of the reasons that contributed to our underrepresentation was our inability to actually perform at a level that good agents were expecting. So the first was to get the operations in line and performing with the right product mix and the right service levels, which then made it easier for us to be able to convince good agents to move over to a good company with Hubbell Lighting.”