3M Company (MMM) — Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you and good morning, everyone and welcome to our third quarter earnings conference call. With me today are Bill Brown, 3M’s Chief Executive Officer; and Anurag Maheshwari, our Chief Financial Officer. Bill and Anurag will make some formal comments then we’ll take your questions. Please note that today’s earnings release and slide presentation accompanying this call are posted on the homepage of our Investor Relations website at 3m.com. Please turn to Slide 2. Please take a moment to read the forward-looking statement. During today’s conference call, we will be making certain predictive statements that reflect our current views about 3M’s future performance and financial results. These statements are based on certain assumptions and expectations of future events that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Item 1A of our most recent Form 10-Q lists some of the most important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from our predictions. Please note throughout today’s presentation, we will be making references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures can be found in the attachments to today’s press release. With that, please turn to Slide 3, and I’ll hand the call off to Bill.

Thank you, Bruce, and good morning, everyone. First, I’d like to take a moment and welcome Anurag to his first 3M earnings call. Anurag recently joined 3M in early September after serving as CFO of Otis. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Anurag off and on over the past 20 years and look forward to his leadership and partnership as 3M’s CFO. Earlier today, we reported strong third quarter results with non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.98, up 18% on 1% organic revenue growth. Our overall company margins increased 140 basis points to 23%, and free cash flow was $1.5 billion, with conversion of 141%, and we returned $1.1 billion to shareholders during the quarter via dividends and share repurchases. These results extend our strong 2024 operating performance with non-GAAP earnings per share over the first three quarters, up 30% on 1% organic revenue growth. As a result of the team’s strong operational performance and disciplined capital deployment, we raised the bottom end of our full year earnings guidance by $0.20 to a range of $7.20 to $7.30 versus a prior range of $7 to $7.30 per share. During our Q2 earnings call, I described our top three priorities: number one, driving sustained top line organic growth through both reinvigorating innovation and improving commercial excellence; two, improving operational performance across the enterprise; and three, effectively deploying capital. As I mentioned in July, getting more productivity out of our R&D investments is going to take some time, but we are beginning to make progress on both R&D effectiveness and efficiency. A lot of our recent efforts have focused on the basic blocking and tackling and improving the fundamentals of our R&D and commercialization processes. For example, we have taken actions to improve enterprise-wide visibility on specific investments in our product development pipeline. And we are driving new rigor and discipline into product launch calendars and raising accountability for post-launch sales performance. We are fast-tracking projects for low-risk product line extensions, eliminating non-value-added activity from our engineers’ workload by offloading or outsourcing administrative tasks, and increasing pipeline velocity through efforts as simple as reducing the time to set up an SKU from 100 days on average last year to about 60 days this year. To address bottlenecks and drive productivity in the product development process, we are shifting capital spending within our existing budget to fund upgrades of R&D facilities to allow us to scale rapidly from lab to pilot to manufacturing. Finally, we are shifting about 100 people within R&D to focus on new product development, including those who are rolling off PFAS-related projects and adding more than 50 new engineers in the fourth quarter to high priority focus areas such as specialty materials and films for the automotive, aerospace, electronics, and semiconductor markets. After a decade-long slide in new product introductions, we bottomed out and are starting to turn the corner with new product launches expected to be up about 10% this year with a further acceleration next year. I recognize these are only initial steps on a long journey toward bending the organic growth curve. In the meantime, we have to improve how we execute at the customer interface. We are working through the details of how we staff, train, and incentivize our sales force, price our products, leverage our distribution network, and capture cross-sell opportunities, and we’ll share those details as they evolve. One area where we’ve seen continued progress is delivering on-time in-full or OTIF to our customers. I know we’ve lost business and have paid fines due to poor delivery performance. I’m encouraged by the steady improvement we’re making, ending Q3 at 89% OTIF, up 5 points since the beginning of the year and 10 points above Q4 of 2022. As we push harder on OTIF, we are getting more visibility on the weak links in the value chain from the performance in our factories, to our suppliers and to our logistics providers. In our factories, we are looking harder at the reliability of our assets and our capacity to surge. We’ve now implemented a common metric to measure operating equipment efficiency, or OEE, across the major assets in our 38 largest facilities. Utilization on these machines, going back to the beginning of the year, averages around 50%, well short of best-in-class companies, indicating opportunities to free up capacity to better respond to quick turn orders by optimizing changeovers and improving maintenance practices. When it comes to our suppliers and contract manufacturers, we are implementing more rigorous standards and expectations for on-time performance, which has been running in the low 60% range for the past few years and is now in the low 70s. A common theme in all of these discussions is the need for significantly higher demand visibility and forecast accuracy, which has been running in the mid-60% range, 10 to 15 points below expectation and well below best-in-class companies. We recently kicked off a project to redesign our forecasting process and we are in the early stages of a 15-week sprint to test and tune our demand plan for two large divisions using different analytical tools. Initial results through the new model show a lot of promise in improving forecast accuracy, which will allow us to level load our factories, reduce inventory throughout the value chain, and improve on-time delivery to customers. This back-to-basics focus on fundamental approach lays the groundwork for a more holistic look at network complexity. While we have closed facilities in the past and have a few more in flight today, gaining maturity in our OEE metric will allow us to take a fresh look at consolidation opportunities at both the site and the work cell level over time. A critical enabler of our OpEx agenda is the depth and capacity of our operations leadership team and we continue to onboard new talent, particularly in the areas of quality, materials planning, and continuous improvement. These efforts are all part of a broad operational transformation at 3M, the foundation of which is a safety-first culture. While our injury rate has improved versus last year, it’s not where we want it to be. Earlier this month, we launched a company-wide campaign called Journey to Zero that engages every employee in our drive towards an injury-free workplace. Turning to capital deployment, through 9 months, we have generated $3.5 billion of adjusted free cash flow with conversion of 102%, after investing $1.7 billion in R&D and CapEx. We have returned $2.7 billion to shareholders, including share repurchases of $1.1 billion. Our balance sheet remains strong, and we are actively reviewing our portfolio with a few small businesses now in the early stages of a sale process. Overall, we are making progress on the three priorities that I’ve laid out, and I’m encouraged by the energy and desire of our team to win by delivering for our customers and creating value for our shareholders. With that, let me turn it over to Anurag to provide more details on the quarter and our updated guidance.

Thank you, Bill. Starting with overall company third quarter performance on Slide 4, total adjusted sales were $6.1 billion, with organic growth up 1% or up 2% excluding geographic prioritization and product portfolio initiatives. These results reflect end market trends that were largely in line with expectations, including mixed industrial markets, strong growth in electronics, a decline in automotive OEM build rates, and continued softness in consumer retail discretionary spending. Looking geographically, adjusted organic growth was led by Asia-Pacific, up mid-single digits, driven by our electronics business. The U.S. was flat with strength in home improvement and commercial branding and transportation, offset by a tough comp in personal safety as self-contained breathing apparatus benefited from significant supply recovery last year. EMEA was down low single-digits due to the decline in global car and light truck builds. Adjusted operating margins expanded 140 basis points to 23%, driven by benefits from improved organic growth, continued productivity, and restructuring. This strong operating performance, along with benefits from below-the-line items resulted in adjusted EPS of $1.98, up 18% or $0.30. Turning to revenue by business group on Slide 5. Safety and industrial sales were $2.8 billion, with organic growth of 0.9%. The growth was primarily driven by the industrial adhesives and tapes division, which saw particular strength in bonding solutions for electronic devices. In addition, we saw growth in roofing granules and electrical markets, while the balance of the divisions was down slightly due to ongoing market softness and unfavorable prior year comps. Transportation and electronics adjusted sales were $1.9 billion, up 2% organically. Our electronics business delivered high single-digit organic growth as consumer electronics and OEM customers ramp production volumes ahead of the upcoming holiday season. The automotive and aerospace division's organic growth was down mid-single-digits in the third quarter. The auto OEM business declined in line with global car and light truck builds, while aerospace delivered strong growth driven by bonding and acoustic solutions. Year-to-date, our total auto OEM business was up 4% versus a 2% decline in global car and light truck build rates. We continue to gain penetration with adhesives, tapes, display films, and electronic materials on multiple new auto OEM platforms. Looking at the rest of the transportation and electronics, Advanced Materials grew high single-digits with strong glass bubble demand for light-weighting applications in transportation and oil and gas markets. Commercial branding and transportation was up low single-digits driven by demand for graphics and pavement markings. Finally, the consumer business sales were $1.3 billion. Organic sales declined 0.7%, which included a 2.3 percentage point headwind from portfolio prioritization. Home improvement delivered mid single-digit growth driven by new products in our command portfolio, introduced for the back-to-school and holiday seasons. The remaining divisions within the consumer business declined due to portfolio prioritization actions as well as retail customers continuing to be price-sensitive and value-focused. Through the course of the year, the consumer business has improved, and we expect the trend to continue in the fourth quarter. Turning to Slide 6. As mentioned, on an adjusted basis, we delivered Q3 operating margins of 23%, up 140 basis points and earnings per share of $1.98 or an increase of $0.30. Operational performance, including organic growth, along with ongoing benefits from productivity and restructuring contributed 160 basis points to margins, while foreign currency was a headwind of 20 basis points. These items, combined with acquisition and divestiture impacts, contributed $0.14 to earnings. The remaining $0.16 of EPS growth was driven by last year’s high tax comp, along with benefits from net interest and a lower share count. Turning to cash, we generated solid adjusted free cash flow of $1.5 billion in the quarter, driven by strong income generation and positive working capital flows while continuing to invest capital to support growth and sustainability. Conversion for the quarter was 141%. Overall, we have had very strong year-to-date operating performance. We have expanded margins by 380 basis points, grew EPS by 30% on 1% organic growth, and generated $3.5 billion of free cash flow with conversion of 102%. Based on this performance, we are updating our full year 2024 guidance on Slide 7. We expect our full year adjusted organic growth to be approximately 1%, with business group estimates unchanged, with safety and industrial flat to up low single-digits. Transportation and electronics, up low single-digits, and consumer down low single-digits. Full year adjusted operating margins are expected to be up 250 to 275 basis points versus the prior range of 225 to 275, driven by continued momentum from productivity. The operational benefit, combined with lower net interest expense and share count, gives us confidence to raise the lower end of our EPS guidance by $0.20 to a range of $7.20 to $7.30. Finally, our expectation is that we will continue to deliver robust cash flow with strong working capital performance in the fourth quarter. With year-to-date conversion at 102%, we expect that the adjusted free cash flow conversion performance will be 100% or more for the full year. Before we turn to Q&A, I want to take a moment to thank the 3M team for the warm welcome. I am excited for the opportunity ahead of us and look forward to working with the team as we execute the priorities Bill has laid out. With that, let’s open the call for questions.

Hey, good morning, everybody, Bill, Anurag and Bruce.

Good morning, Scott.

And congrats to all on a good start here. Yes, I want to talk a little bit about this operational transformation; it seems like a pretty heavy lift, but obviously, you’re making some progress, but last quarter, you spent some time on supply chain, not in prepared remarks, not as much this quarter. How big of an opportunity is that kind of step two or step three down the road in getting the supply chain reoriented? And how big of an opportunity do you think that is, Bill, now that you have had a little bit more time in the seat?

So, Scott thanks for the question. Look, we continue to make good progress across all of the elements in our operations. Our cost of goods sold is $13 billion, and a big piece of it is supply chain, so obviously, that is a high degree of focus. We are looking to drive 2% net productivity, net of inflation across all those elements, including in supply chain. We have about 25,000 direct suppliers, including 4,000 contract manufacturers. Our teams are working hard to consolidate that and drive performance. We continue to do a good job on this. I think we are at the front end of what I would say to be a long journey. I think we get a lot of value out of basic negotiations. I think we have a lot more opportunity as we think more about value engineering in our product; that’s a relatively small component of our overall supply savings. So, the teams are working very, very hard on this. Again, as I step back across all the $13 billion, if you drive and get 2% net, you’re talking about $650 million more or less of $250 million, $260 million worth of net productivity. There is a lot of value there that we can capture year-over-year. I spent a little time in my prepared remarks talking about one of the key levers, because I think it’s both a growth and operations level—that’s delivering on-time in-full. And we are doing a very good job in our factories. The team is performing well, but it’s pointing out some opportunities to drive better supplier performance. We have seen some improvements over the last year, but I think there is a lot more to do in terms of driving the full value chain performance improvement, including with our supply base.

That’s helpful. And Bill, you talked a little bit about needing to change the incentive structure a little bit. Will you—do you think you’ll have a new incentive structure and compensation plan in place for 2025? And what does that really mean? Does that mean kind of increasing the variable component? Can you really dial in kind of to where you want it this quickly?

Good question, Scott. I think look, before we get to the comp plan, I think what’s going to be more important for us is to make sure we have very clear objectives across the management team deep in these organizations, so we all understand what we’re accountable to achieve to shareholders and to one another. I think that’s step one. I do think we have an opportunity to get a little more crisp on our objective-setting process. Of course, the back end of that is compensation plans; I think you will see some adjustments in our ‘25 compensation plan. We are out speaking with shareholders about that based on the results we had earlier this year in our AGM. But yes, we’ll continue to look at our comp plans, not just at executives, but as it flows into the organization. Importantly, with our between 5,000 and 6,000 salespeople out there, we will continue to look at whether we have the right incentive structure to drive the right behaviors across the full 60,000-plus people in the company. So Scott, there are going to be changes that will be made, and we’ll talk more about that as they come to fruition in the coming months.

Okay. Thank you, Bill. Best of luck, guys.

Thank you, Scott.

Good morning. I guess I’ll ask two questions. Follow-up on Scott’s questions. Just, Bill, what are your views on centralization inside 3M? I know Mike pushed for a lot of centralization, which was a departure from what his predecessor Inge Thulin has done, which ran the company in a very decentralized way. I would love to hear how your operating philosophy has evolved since you joined the company. That’s part one. And part two, we are just getting a lot of questions on insurance recovery related to PFAS and combat arms, particularly given the new side of the carrier where they indicated that they could recover insurance in excess of their cost. Any sort of publicly available updates on where you are in the process of insurance recovery would be helpful? Thanks so much and congratulations on a good quarter.

Great, Andrew. Thanks for the questions. I mean, first of all, I think about 2.5 years ago, Mike did consolidate all of our factories and supply chains under a common leader, under Peter Gibbons; I think it was the right thing to do. It allows us to look across 110-plus or minus factories and close to 100 distribution centers and really look at performance metrics and how they compare with one another. It’s a network; they flow together. So artificially separating them by a business group or by geography did not make a lot of sense. So you leverage the power of the whole by looking at all of the operations together. If you call it centralization, I call that global coordination. I think that was the right step, and it was smart to do that. We are reaping the benefits of that. And going forward, the value we’ll be able to get out of operations is because of that organizational change. So I think it was the right step. The move to globally coordinated business units, depending upon the business, some we run globally, some we run regionally, but all within those three broad business groups. I also think that was good. There will probably be some adjustments in how we structure the business groups over time, perhaps within the three business groups. There are certain geographies that stand out that we are really focusing heavily on and want to put a little more attention on. But generally, I think Mike was taking the right steps, particularly in the supply chain area. As for insurance recoveries, just quickly, in Q3, we’ve covered $54 million in insurance recoveries between combat arms and public water suppliers, with year-to-date recoveries at over $175 million. Recovery efforts continue, and I know it’s top of mind given what other folks are talking about. We are active in arbitration and litigation with multiple insurers. We intend to ramp up our recovery efforts in the coming days and weeks, and we do expect our insurers to honor their policy obligations to us in full. The difference with others is our liability that we settled for is quite a bit higher than our total insurance value, so it’s a little bit different than others, but we are ramping up our efforts and starting to recover, and we’ll update investors each quarter as we recover more on insurance.

Thanks very much.

You bet.

Thanks. Good morning. And Bill, thanks for the update. These are really helpful. On the insurance point, I just wondered if you could clarify what the total coverage would be from a product perspective. And I understand that you are working on ramping up the recoveries there. But my first question is really around the two points of net productivity. You’ve got a lot of initiatives in play here. You’ve got the supply chain nationalization, OTIF target improvements, OEE improvements, and a lot of other things as well. Any sense on what’s more important here? Is the supply chain driving the bulk of that 2 points in the next two or three years? Any sense there? And do we need some heavy lift restructuring to achieve those targets?

Thanks for the question, Nigel. I don’t think I can say much more on the insurance recoveries or how much we are getting, other than what we’ve captured to date, but I think we’ll update you on that as we go. We expect that to ramp better. But look, when I step back, I mean, look at $13 billion worth of cost of goods; half of that is supply chain. You’d expect that the bigger parts of our productivity are going to come out of supply chain. We have seen restructuring benefits flow through in our factories; that is also a factor. We continue to drive lean activities in our factories, and you are seeing the benefits of lean production, lean operations across our factory network. Last time, I spoke quite a bit about the amount of waste we generate in our company. It’s—yield loss, however you want to characterize it, 5% of cost of goods. It’s quite substantial. We are getting at that; you are not going to get big, big dollars every year, you get it in tens of millions and chunks over time. We are running kaizen events continuously to go get it. We’ve more than doubled the number of kaizen events this year over last and expect that to continue going into next year. All of these pieces will drive that net productivity. The teams are at it. We are pushing hard. I would say stepping back, the biggest part is going to come out of the biggest part of the cost base, which is supply chain.

Okay. Bill, that’s helpful. And then maybe Anurag, congratulations on the new role, just wanted to maybe get a bit more color on Q4, especially it looks like 1% organic growth very much on trend, but it looks like the Q4 margins are coming in about 20.5% at the high end, quite a big step down Q-over-Q. So just want to make sure that’s the right math and any below-line color would be helpful?

Great. Thanks a lot, Nigel. I think you covered it. The Q4 margins are pretty much in line with what we expected. Sequentially, Q4 has been lighter than Q3 margins by about 300 to 350 basis points due to seasonality, which translates into lower sequential revenue of about $200 million, lower under absorption in the factories due to shutdowns, inventory management, and timing of cost and investments. Overall, it’s pretty much in line with what we expected. But if you kind of take a step back, we raised the bottom end of the guide by $0.20 or the midpoint by $0.10, and that is largely because of the focus on productivity. We have seen really good progress on that, plus the share—benefits from share repurchase and the higher cash flow generation, which is leading to a higher interest income or lower net interest expense. Putting all of that together, we are making progress across these areas and Q4 is pretty much in line.

Hey, thanks. Good morning, everyone, and welcome aboard, Anurag. I just wanted to come back a little bit in the neighborhood of some of these earlier questions. Predominantly, I just want to get a sense of the fact we are kind of at the tail end of the prior restructuring. I think you did $165 million of spending in the first half and had something like $110 million to go in the second half. So I am trying to get a sense if that is still on track? And then, Bill, of these very numerous and granular things that you are laying out here, are we seeing much benefit from that in 2024, or is this really sort of laying the groundwork for 2025 and a lot of the margin expansion in 2024 is really the underlying prior restructuring plan?

Hey, Jeff, it’s good questions. First, on the restructuring, we are on track. Your numbers are right, $165 million in the front half and about $110 million or so in the back half of the guidance—that’s about where we are at. There is a little bit more that will tail into next year to complete the program. Some of the gross margin and net margin improvements this year are coming from restructuring; they are also coming from a lot of productivity programs that have been in flight, some ramping up and have more focus and effort in the last 5 or 6 months, but a lot of these things are going to be realized over time. This is a football metaphor—it’s a couple of yards and a pile of dust in lots of ways to get the ground game going on operations excellence. It’s a multi-quarter, multi-year journey. I think we’re still in the early innings of becoming operationally excellent. The bulk of the opportunities are ahead of us, which is why I think as I look out the next 1, 2, 3 years, we should continue to see margin growth coming out of a lot of what’s happening across our factory network. There are a lot of levers to pull. There are no big winners, no big hitters here that drive a big one-timer in a particular quarter; it’s getting better at all of these things every quarter, quarter after quarter, and then extending that sort of philosophy on operational excellence across the rest of the enterprise. There is no reason why being good and reducing waste and improving throughput doesn’t extend to how we run R&D, how you run a legal function, HR function, finance. When you do that across the whole enterprise, you really start to become a much better company. Between now and then, we’ve got a lot of room to go and a lot of opportunity ahead of us.

Great. Understood. And then just thinking about kind of the capital deployment question, you stepped up on buyback a bit in the quarter in spite of writing a sizable liability check. How should we think about just managing kind of the outflow of cash on repurchase and/or dividends against the backdrop of sort of the schedule of liability payments? I mean maybe it’s kind of a question about what’s the comfort level on minimum cash or something like that as you are operating going forward?

I’ll start, and this is Jeff, and I’ll turn it over to Anurag, as the new CFO, to offer his thoughts because I know he has been putting a lot of time on this. Yes, we did step up here in Q3 on repurchases. It’s at about $700 million. It’s $1.1 billion year-to-date. Look, we are generating good cash flow. We don’t see on the horizon, going out through next year, big liability payments that aren’t already on our balance sheet. So we’ve got an opportunity to deploy capital. I think we were smart in doing that here in Q3. We have got capacity. We ended Q3 with a pretty hefty cash balance. Our leverage ratios remain pretty attractive. We’ve got an open authorization from the Board. So look, we took advantage of that here in the third quarter, and we’ve got more capacity to do more. I feel pretty good about where we stand today. But maybe Anurag, as the new CFO, can comment on his thoughts on just the strength of the balance sheet.

Sure. Jeff, I really believe that our capital structure is actually solid from a cash balance, leverage, cash flow generation, and optionality perspective, which allows for optimal capital deployment and allocation. As Bill mentioned, we have a very hefty cash balance. We ended the third quarter at $7.3 billion, which is more than 2x of the working capital requirements of the business. On leverage, it was a net leverage of 0.8x at the end of the third quarter, and more importantly, maintaining a strong investment-grade rating with ratings of A3 or A minus. Throughout the quarter and the course of the year, the cash flow generation has been robust. For the first 9 months, we generated $3.5 billion of cash flow, and that’s after investing $1.7 billion on R&D and CapEx. We do expect in the years to come that as earnings grow, we make progress in working capital, especially in the area of inventory, this will increase our cash flow and keep the conversion higher than 100%. Also, we have optionality in terms of the 19.9% stake in Solventum and any other future portfolio reshaping we do. Putting all of that together, it’s a strong capital structure. We have optionality, flexibility to invest in the business to drive growth and also to return capital to shareholders. That’s an active discussion we’re having and we’ll probably come more about it and talk more about it over the next few months.

Great. Appreciate the color. Thanks a lot, guys.

Thanks. Good morning and welcome, Anurag. Maybe, Bill, a lot of very good color on the specific sort of tools around driving operational excellence, but maybe trying to tie it together. I think at a conference for about 6 weeks ago or so, you talked about getting gross margins for 3M into the high-40s. Right now, you are sort of at 42-ish or so rate, including some charges. So, is the right way to think about the medium term, maybe sort of 400 or 500 points of gross margin uplift on the sort of total enterprise level? And then operating expense inclusive of SG&A and R&D, that’s sort of staying relatively stable in the low-20s as a share of sales as you sort of squeeze out more efficiency and returns from the R&D?

Yes. So Julian, it’s a good question. We are running kind of in the low to mid-40s right now and gross margin in the 43%, 44% range, plus or minus. There were points in time in the past where we were in the high-40s, excluding healthcare. It’s certainly achievable in our business structure today. It’s tough to project, and there are lots of dynamics here. You’ve got the mix happening in the business; you have new products coming in. We’ve got kind of as next year with the exit of PFAS manufacturing. There are some under-absorbed costs within those factories we’ve got to take care of. Eventually, Solventum is going to move some of their production away or in the TSAs will wind down. We’ve got to absorb that. Lots of pushes and takes. That said, I’m focused on growth and margin expansion for sure; working both levers across both of them. As I step back, we need to drive growth, which is also a margin driver because of a high drop through we get on incremental volume. That’s kind of the way I see the future playing out. I don’t think today I’ll get much more specific. We’ll lay this out more clearly to investors as we turn the corner in ‘25 and come back and host an Investor Day towards the end of February. I think we’ll have a little more clarity in laying this out a lot more clearly to investors at that point. But that’s the math as I see it today, Julian.

That’s helpful. Thank you. And just circling back on your top line comment just there, so you’re moving at about sort of a point of organic growth through the second half year-on-year, just wondered how you’re looking at the overall demand environment into next year? When we think about the netting off of NPIs picking up versus your pruning efforts about 100 points this year, how are you thinking about the net of those two items over the next 12 months?

Well, look, 1% organic this year isn’t what we should be aspiring to. Again, it’s the middle of the range we set a couple of months ago. It’s traveling in the order of where the market happens to be. IPI is running around 1%, 1.1%. It’s 1.2% for the year, steps up a little bit going into next year. GDP is projected in the 2.5%, 2.7% range. Again, that’s kind of in the same line next year. So it’s low single-digits. Overall, we are performing in line with that, including auto build, semiconductors, electronics, all this consumer, all that together trending in line. I look at NPI, and as that matures, early good signals were up 10% on the number of launches this year over last. We see that rate accelerating 25%. Stepping back, we’re still significantly behind how many products we’ve launched in the marketplace versus our peak days. We’ve got to get that R&D engine moving again, which is essential to improving our growth rate. This will start to bear fruit next year, maybe at the end of the year and into ‘26. It’s critical to achieve growth before expanding. Tighten around OTIF also, as we know we are losing business by not delivering it on-time in-full to customers.

Great. Thank you.

You bet.

Yes, thanks. Good morning, guys.

Good morning.

Maybe just a little bit more on some of the portfolio review comments you made at the beginning, Bill. Any thoughts on what types of businesses could be considered non-core? If there is anything chunky coming or if these are all kind of like smaller divisions or businesses that you are looking at?

Yes, Nicole, thanks for the question. Look, I mentioned last time that I did this very purposely; we are going to take a fresh, dispassionate look at the portfolio. That’s what you would expect me to do coming into this new company. But let me step back—the lens that I’m looking through is a strategic lens at the moment to think about the portfolio. It’s about where we can leverage technology in innovation to differentiate and win at the customer interface. It’s clear that technology differentiates 3M. People join the company because of innovation. I’m really looking through a lens of whether we can leverage investments and the capabilities we have in material science and technology to make something different versus competitors and solve needs that others can’t. We have a few businesses that are small. If and when we transact on them, you won’t notice it in the overall report. There are a couple of points of revenue. It’s relatively small, but it’s a start. It’s the things I thought were near term and the ones we could take advantage of today. Our evaluation continues. Again, as I turn next year, we come up in front of investors. I expect I’ll be standing there talking about a matrix that looks like what parts of our portfolio perhaps don’t fit for us over time. It’s not for today, but we are looking at what other things may belong with us that aren’t currently owned by 3M. It’s a holistic assessment. We are in the very early days, but there are a couple of deals we are pushing on right now, early stages, but it’s the direction we want to head in over time.

Okay, got it. That’s clear. Thanks, Bill. And then maybe just on the business trends, what did you guys see in China in the quarter? Any thoughts on 3M’s ability to benefit from stimulus activity happening there?

So, China for us is a pretty good-sized market; it’s about 10% of our sales. Year-to-date, we are up about 11%, more or less, a little bit higher than that in the first half, a lot of it driven by automotive, up mid-single digits here in the third quarter, pretty much in line with, I think, where the market is in China. We feel pretty good about what’s happening there, and a lot of it is driven by automotive. Roughly half of what we do in China is for export, and roughly half stays within China. Both are performing reasonably well. We will see as we get into next year, what happens to the overall economy as we can read where the GDP happens to be forecast for next year. There is a lot of stimulus activity and a lot of conversations around geopolitical issues. But we remain bullish on the economy there and our ability to compete. We have more than 5,000 people on the ground and 7 factories, and I believe we have a good ability to be a strong participant over time in China.

Hey, Nicole. Just to quickly clarify, the strength has been in electronics in China, not automotive. All-in, we are up about 11% year-to-date. Ex-electronics, we were up roughly about 3% organically.

Thanks, Bruce. I will pass it on.

Sorry, didn’t come through very clearly. Can you hear me now?

Yes, we hear you, Steve.

Anurag, thanks, congratulations, and looking forward to working with you here. Just wanted to delve into price a little bit more in this algorithm of productivity and gross margin. Where does price play into that? And are you expecting to get back to that kind of a positive margin price-cost spread going forward?

Well, it’s a good question. I mean this year, we are seeing positive price. It’s about half our organic growth, more or less, plus or minus 5% or thereabouts. We are covering material inflation this year. We are back to where we were, kind of pre-pandemic levels, slightly higher than that during the pandemic, because obviously, inflation was spiking there. As I step back on this, we should get pricing, particularly as we drive new product introductions and bring differentiated products into the marketplace. I see it in two pieces: one is we have an opportunity to get better at more surgical pricing, so pricing to the volume generated. I made a comment last time that we’ve got opportunities to tie volume rebates, discounts, etc., to price. We’re working very hard on that, as well as tightening down on what we call gross to net and all the pieces between that volume discounts, market development funds, and rebates, which could be quite substantial. I think we’ve just had a better opportunity to get pricing. But looking forward into next year, we should continue to be able to at least cover the material cost inflation in our price.

And just to add to that, Steven, as Bill mentioned, our price should cover cost inflation for us going forward. The one way to think about margin expansion moving forward, clearly, volume is the biggest driver for us in terms of operating leverage that we have, and the net productivity that we are driving. Volume and that productivity should be the critical margin expansion drivers.

And that you view price-cost as separate from that productivity, I would assume?

Yes, correct.

So, then I am just wondering if you got all of these kind of good guys going your way and assuming like the economy doesn’t like go to hell. What is the—like R&D is flat; you should get SG&A leverage? You’re talking about this productivity, price-cost is not a headwind. What is the headwind to margins going forward? What’s the negative?

Yes. So, the negative is essentially inflation that we will see over there, which is wage inflation moving forward. But besides that, you shouldn’t see anymore; of course, FX is there, which we don’t know which way that could move. Overall, for this year, it’s basically four pieces. It’s a quarter of volume, a quarter of the restructuring cost, which came down lower compared to last year; it’s a quarter of the TSA reimbursement and a quarter of net productivity. If you go into next year, there will be a little bit lower on the restructuring cost charges. But again, it’s going to be more volume and it’s going to be more on the productivity side, with the biggest headwind being on inflation and potentially FX, depending which way it goes.

Sorry, one last one—how much is labor as a percentage of your costs again?

Labor is close to $10-ish billion, yes; $8 billion to $10 billion.

$8 billion to $10 billion, okay. Alright. Thanks a lot.

Hey. Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

Could you give us a little more color into your consumer business? I think you talked about that it’s getting a bit better. Could you elaborate on what you are seeing there? I think that business tends to be first-in, first-out in the historical cycles. I know you are focused on pricing in that segment; maybe that segment could be the most competitive in terms of pricing. Can you make the pricing improvement you need in that segment?

On consumer, we were down about 3% in the first half, down about 70 basis points in the third quarter. But keep in mind, it has about 230 basis points of headwind associated with some of the portfolio prioritization efforts that the team is working on. If you go back Q1 to Q2 to Q3 and then head into Q4, it’s becoming less negative in terms of organic growth and it’s trending to perhaps be positive in the fourth quarter. For the full year, we’re down low-single digits; overall, it’s mostly a USAC business, a USAC retail business. USAC retail sales is down about 50 basis points; for the year, it’s down about 80 basis points. The parts of the portfolio in the quarter had pretty good growth in our Command Strips home improvement. That was up partly due to some new product introductions in that space; they are performing pretty well there. The other parts of the portfolio were flat to down. They offset the positive trend in home improvement. We see good improvement trends going into the fourth quarter. It all depends on what happens in the holiday season as we get through the next couple of months. The trend line is moving up in terms of its organic growth rate.

Helpful. And then Bill, maybe just stepping back, you have talked a lot about growth through innovation. But how far are you pushing 3M as to focus their innovation on maybe what I would call the right markets? It strikes me that there are just a few big global markets that are driving growth right now.

Yes, we are spending a lot of time thinking about where we spend our precious $1 billion in R&D for sure and making sure it’s going after the right areas as part of our overall governance process and how we are developing our strategic plan. It’s to focus on those markets where we have a right to win, where we can actually earn value; we have a strong return on investment in these spaces. The team is pushing on this, and this is a big focus of mine and a big focus of the team.

Thanks.

Hi. Good morning all and welcome to Anurag. Just wanted to come back to the rationalization efforts. I think it was a point of drag in the quarter, a point for the year, perhaps just isolating rationalization and leaving out some of the new product launches and other growth. Should we be thinking about another point of headwind next year as you continue the simplification efforts, or is it something less as we proceed and advance forward here?

No, Brett, it should decline substantially going into next year. I mean we will lap the year, so there will be a little bit of drag effect for things that happen in the course of ‘24. But we shouldn’t see significant headwind from portfolio or geographic prioritization going into next year. Our intention—Anurag haven’t talked about this, but our intention would likely be to not speak so much about that in our ‘25 results. It’s something that really companies do just at a normal practice as you continue to look at your portfolio; you add something, take some things out, replace things. As I turn this year, I think we will probably talk less about the portfolio shifting that going all up inside the company on SKUs and geographies and things like that.

Alright. Makes sense. And then just a follow-up on NPI and the launching of new products, 10% growth next year. Just wanted to better understand the associated costs and where those introductions are aimed at the segment level. Should we be thinking of a commensurate level of R&D step-up, or are you able to achieve this with repurposing the spending base?

No. So, it’s within the existing spending base. As we go into ‘25, we will come back and talk more about where we see R&D. A couple of things were happening: one is just a shift within where we spend our R&D. It comes in kind of three buckets: about a third that goes into corporate research, longer term horizon things, basic technologies; there’s a third that’s incremental line extensions/new product introductions; there’s a third that’s cost reduction, PFAS fixes and all those kinds of things. There is going to be some shift that’s going on between those pieces. That middle bucket used to be around 40%, it dropped below 30%, that piece is coming back up; it’s now above—now around 32%, 33%. The middle bucket on new products is where we are shifting money to drive new product introductions. To be clear, the number of new product introductions this year in ‘24 is up 10% over last year, and we expect that 10% will accelerate in 2025. The large part of our investment in new product introduction is going to be mostly in our safety and industrial business and transportation electronics business. There is some that goes into the consumer business. You will see more going into next year. You will see more introductions coming out of new product investment. But the lion’s share of it is really in those other two businesses.

Great. Congrats on the performance. Thank you.

Hi. Good morning. I wonder if you can elaborate a little bit more on the operating equipment efficiency comments you made. When you talked about 50% utilization, well short of best-in-class, just in terms of any clarification of what kind of best-in-class would look like, as well as what your targets are over, call it, the next six months or 12 months there?

Sure. Yes. Look, operating equipment efficiency is a fundamental metric. Companies that do manufacturing have implemented this over many, many years. It’s a relatively new concept for us. We have 38 large factories; it’s about 75% of our volume and about 80% of the assets in those factories have OEE implemented. You can implement it, but actually build it into the way the machine runs; it will take some time to do that. It’s not a manual process; it’s actually built into the way the machine runs. If it’s running 50%, we should be running at best-in-class companies in the 80% range or north of that. We are well short of that. The implication is how do you handle surge volume? It’s fundamental in figuring out how you can spend capital in the right places. We are starting to measure now, and as we get into ‘25, we will mature this. We will talk about it in the second quarter of next year.

And then also just wanted to ask on electronics demand trends. I think you commented that organically up high-single digits. So, earlier in the year, some spec in tailwinds, but it seems like still growing at a good clip as you move later into the year. Any color there on whether what you are seeing is trending with the market, if you are seeing any sort of share gain or taking advantage of pricing opportunities out there with the electronics growth?

The electronics was up pretty good. Year-to-date in the quarter, we had some back-end wins. I think we are growing at slightly higher than the market. We are watching pretty carefully what happens in the holiday trends and the upcoming fourth quarter. We are pretty pleased with where we have been so far. It comes from a lot of the sophisticated films we have created that are going into various electronic devices. They are very sophisticated—multilayer optical films, optical adhesives, things that allow LCDs to look like OLEDs in terms of screen performance. This drives our Auto-E business. It’s an important technology allowing us to perform well in electronics as a whole. We like the trends. We are watching what happens in the holiday season and will see what happens going into next year. We are doing pretty well in semiconductors; we are growing well above the market. It’s a key trend for us this year, doing well in data centers; not a big part of our business, but we’re pleased with that. Overall, specific to electronics, we’re outgrowing the market due to spec-in wins and technology.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone, and welcome, Anurag. Bill, I think you mentioned earlier that you were honing in on redesigning your forecasting and demand planning across, I think, two of your businesses. I am just curious, what are some kind of initial thoughts on improvements you think you can make? And then why not focus a little bit more holistically across the entire portfolio at this point?

This will eventually go across the entire portfolio. But stepping back, we are sitting where we are not delivering to where we want to be on-time and full for customers. This is my pride in where we’ve gotten; it’s not where it needs to be. We have 100 days of inventory at the same time. So how do you fix this? The demand signal must be strong to drive the factories. Our forecast accuracy isn't very good. We kicked off a project to redesign our forecasting process—we are in a 15-week sprint to test and tune our demand plan for large divisions. Initial results through the new model show promise, which will allow us to level load our factories, reduce inventory throughout the value chain, and improve on-time delivery.

Yes. That’s super helpful, Bill, in detail. Do you think by February, you will have some sense of what type of opportunity this presents for the organization?

Yes, we will know by February the results of the two big divisions we are working on. We can estimate as we roll it out to other divisions as well, connecting the dots on how it affects performance, costs, delivery, and inventory level.

Okay. Good. Thank you.

You bet.

Thanks for getting me in here. Bill, on the last call, you talked about how you believe the business should be growing in excess of GDP. I think to a prior question, you talked about better growth maybe into the back half of ‘25 and into ‘26. Is that just simply a function of the investments that you guys are making in innovation that’s going to allow you to start outgrowing the end market, and it just takes time? Or is there also an assumption that maybe the consumer and the served end markets get better into the back half of ‘25 as we kind of see that pickup in growth?

So Chris, our crystal ball is not going to be any better than the various prognosticators out there. Without putting a timeframe on it, it comes into two levers: one is getting the R&D machine running, which is going to take time. Our development cycle is a year or more in launching a new product. But there are initiatives already in place to have a near-term effect selling and pricing. When you put all that together, can we grow at GDP or more than that? We will describe that as we go. I want to walk before I run here, and that’s where I see us standing today.

And just to add, we have consistently grown three quarters 1%. As Bill said, we'll give more color over there. We can grow operating margin at a pretty healthy clip given all levers we have. As we go into next year, we do have certain headwinds from higher pension expense, lower interest income. We can mitigate that through share repurchase. But that's a $0.30 headwind for below-line items. With productivity benefits, we can see margin expansion next year while driving top-line growth, and we will give more specific detail as we move forward.

Appreciate that. And then if I could just follow-up on some of the portfolio pruning. Is it fair to assume that whatever business the company decides to leave, they will get paid for it? Not—no more organic exit, or at least nothing very sizable in terms of organic exit? I understand maybe certain SKUs or product lines can come and go.

Yes, there’s going to be, over time, natural portfolio pruning in terms of SKUs, which will be absorbed within your normal organic growth contributions. That is a distinct from selling businesses, which we will look at and evaluate cash effects, dilution effects, etc. There will likely be less conversation about portfolio shifting in next year than this year.

Appreciate that. Thank you.

You bet.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for fitting in, and welcome to Anurag.

Thank you.

This came up in the local paper, but it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the challenges you are facing, both operationally and culturally, to get the 3M employees back to the office. You all have been fully remote for longer than most companies. I know you have announced some initiatives, but would love to hear some color there.

Well, so look, we need to grow our business. We need to innovate. We need to solve problems for customers. I do think you problem solve and innovate better in person. We are going to maintain flexibility in our workforce. We have asked our largest sites at our most senior people to be on site wherever they report on Tuesday through Thursday with some flexibility on Monday and Friday. This is an opportunity for us to continue to build our culture, build our relationships, and problem solve as a team. I think it’s the right step. Many of our customers have moved in this direction previously. We are allowing flexibility but encouraging bringing people back at our larger sites, including here at 3M Center.

Got it. And then just a last question—will you be bringing back the new product vitality index? It’s a measure that 3M had at one time but went away from it. What’s your thought there?

No, I am happy to talk about it. I know there were reasons we pulled away from it. We don’t want to oversell or build it into a comp metric. The reality is it’s an important metric because we have pulled back from introducing new products to the marketplace; we know that. I talked at some detail about how many NPIs have come down over time and where we are at last year, going up 10% this year. The net effect is our product portfolio in the marketplace is aging. Our NPVI on a 5-year basis is running just over double digits—10%, 11%. We used to be 25%, 30% for more innovative companies in that range. I am not going to say when we get back there; it’s on my mind. We need fresh offerings to the marketplace, so we ought to be better than low double digits in terms of Vitality Index. I am happy to discuss that over time, where it’s happening, and why it’s important.

Thank you.

You bet.

Thank you very much to all of the analysts for joining today and asking a number of very good questions. I want to thank all 3M-ers for their dedication and their hard work on behalf of our customers and our shareholders throughout the quarter, throughout the year, and I look forward to speaking with all of the investors as we get into late January to issue our Q4 results, and in late February, we will host an Investor Day, likely here in Minneapolis. Have a very good day, everybody. Thank you so much.