DSG: '23 a 'very successful year'
In announcing its financial results for 2023 and fourth quarter ended December 31, 2023, Distribution Solutions Group Inc. (DSG) reported its full-year revenue was $1.57 billion, an increase of $419.0 million or 36.4% compared to 2022.
Bryan King, CEO and chairman of the board said, “By most any standard, 2023 was a very successful year for Distribution Solutions Group. The Company's profitability grew significantly while also generating over $102 million of cash from operations. We expanded topline revenue to $1.6 billion, up more than 36%. Comparable sales, including Lawson for all periods, increased almost 24% for the full year despite a choppy sales environment in a few end markets, resulting in 3% organic growth. On a two-year stacked basis, organic revenue grew by almost 17%. For the full year, we ended with $157 million in adjusted EBITDA, up nearly 28%, and our adjusted EBITDA margins were 10.0%, a testament to DSG's ability to create value by broadening our scale and footprint.
“2023 reflects an acceleration of growth through a disciplined execution of our strategic initiatives with accretive acquisitions, organic growth and the successful roll-out of key operational initiatives," he continued. "We took deliberate actions in 2023 to improve the return profile of the Company and create long-term enterprise value through a disciplined capital allocation strategy. This strategy included the acquisition of Hisco and the related $100 million rights offering, the return of capital to shareholders through an expanded share repurchase plan and our continuous focus of managing working capital to generate significant operating cash flows. As evidenced in 2023, our asset-light model that generates meaningful cash flow allows us to re-invest into high ROI initiatives and accretive acquisitions as we further drive long-term shareholder value.
“Fourth quarter revenue grew by 23% primarily due to acquired revenue from Hisco. Although our organic revenue contracted by 6%, our two-year stacked organic revenue grew by 10%. The current quarter decline was primarily due to continued softness in the technology end-market, delayed maintenance spend most notable in the renewable end-market, and delayed capital spending in the current interest-rate sensitive environment. Excluding these end markets, organic revenue grew by approximately 1% in the fourth quarter. This gives us confidence that business headwinds are isolated to these categories, mostly within the OEM and Industrial Technology verticals. Macroeconomic impacts and seasonally fewer selling days negatively impacted the margin profile of certain verticals for the quarter."
2023 Full Year Summary
- Revenue was $1.57 billion, an increase of $419.0 million or 36.4% compared to 2022. On a comparable basis (including 12 months of Lawson in 2022), pro forma revenue grew 23.7%. Organic revenue grew 2.9% for 2023 versus 2022 and the remaining increase driven by acquisitions.
- Operating income increased $1.2 million from the prior year to $43.0 million, after the effect of non-cash acquired intangible amortization and $50.5 million of non-recurring acquisition related severance and retention costs, stock-based compensation and other non-recurring items. Adjusted operating income, excluding these non-cash and non-recurring items, grew 27.0% to $93.4 million compared to $73.6 million in 2022.
- Non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA grew to $157.0 million in 2023, or 10.0% of revenue, compared to $123.0 million or 9.7% of comparable pro forma revenue in the prior year. As expected, Hisco's operations pressured the 2023 adjusted EBITDA margins by approximately 50bps.
- GAAP Diluted loss per share was $0.20 for the year compared to earnings per diluted share of $0.21 in the year-ago period. Non-GAAP adjusted diluted earnings per share was $1.42 compared to $1.47 in the prior year on higher weighted average shares of 44.9 million in 2023 versus 35.1 million in 2022.
- The Company ended 2023 with total liquidity of $298 million, consisting of $99.6 million of cash (restricted and unrestricted) and $198.3 million of availability under its credit facility with net debt leverage of 2.9x. Uses of cash for 2023 included net capital expenditures of $18.7 million and share repurchases of $3.6 million at an average price of $26.09.
2023 Fourth Quarter Summary
- Revenue increased $76.4 million, or 23.2%, to $405.2 million which includes $97.3 million of incremental revenue from 2022 and 2023 acquisitions. Two-year stacked organic revenue in the fourth quarter for 2023 and 2022 increased 10% despite organic revenue softness in the 2023 fourth quarter being down 6.4%. The revenue headwinds were isolated to the technology end-market and project-related verticals that are both more sensitive to high interest rates connected to capital spending.
- Operating loss was $0.3 million, which included $10.4 million of non-cash acquired intangible amortization and $17.9 million of non-recurring severance (primarily acquisition related) and other acquisition-related retention costs, stock-based compensation and other non-recurring items as compared to operating income of $12.7 million in the prior year quarter. Adjusted operating income, excluding these non-cash and non-recurring items, was $17.6 million compared to $20.1 million in the year-ago quarter.
- GAAP Diluted loss per share was $0.35 for the quarter compared to diluted loss per share of $0.05 in the year-ago quarter on higher depreciation and amortization expenses and establishing a valuation allowance on certain deferred tax assets in 2023. Non-GAAP adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.22 compared to $0.32 for the same period a year ago.
- Adjusted EBITDA was $33.9 million compared to $34.0 million in the prior year quarter. As expected, Hisco operations pressured adjusted EBITDA margins in the 2023 quarter by approximately 35bps.
- The Board of Directors announced an increase of $25.0 million to the existing share repurchase program, expanding the Company's availability to $29.0 million at December 31, 2023.
View more at https://investor.distributionsolutionsgroup.com/news/events.
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