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Russell Fleeger

Thanks Joe. Our fully diluted earnings per share were $0.67 for the first quarter of 2025 versus $0.70 for the first quarter of 2024. While down from the prior year, we were pleased with the results from our base business.
Moving to slide 6, first quarter 2025 consolidated sales were $455.2 million, a year-over-year decrease of 1%. The sales decrease in the 1st quarter was primarily due to the negative impact of foreign currency translation and lower volumes in the distribution and water system segments, partially offset by the incremental sales impact from recent acquisitions as well as favorable results in the energy system segments.
Franklin Electric's consolidated gross profit was $163.9 million for the first quarter, up from prior year gross profit of $163.6 million. The gross profit as a percentage of sales was 36% in the first quarter, and improvement of 50 basis points compared to prior year.
Selling general and administrative expenses were $119.6 million in the first quarter of '25 compared to $115.6 million in the first quarter of '24. The increase in SG&A expenses was primarily due to employee separation costs related to an executive transition and the additional expense of our 2025 acquisitions, including various deal related costs.
Consolidated operating income was $44.1 million in the first quarter of 2025, down $3.8 million or 8% from $47.9 million in the first quarter of 2024. The decrease in operating income was primarily due to the higher SG&A costs previously mentioned. The first quarter 2025 operating income margin was 9.7% versus 10.4% in the first quarter of '24.
Moving to segment results on slide 7. Water system sales in the US and Canada were up 2% compared to the first quarter of '24. At a product level, sales of groundwater pumping equipment increased 6%, and sales of water treatment products increased 7%. While sales of large dewatering equipment decreased 8% and sales of all other surface pumping equipment decreased 7% when compared to Q1 2024.
Acquisitions contributed a 1% increase in sales and were offset by the negative impact of foreign currency translation. Water system sales and markets outside the US and Canada decreased 2% overall. Foreign currency translation decreased sales by 5%, and recent acquisitions added roughly 4%.
Excluding the impact of acquisitions and foreign currency translation, sales in the first quarter of 2025 increased low single digits in EMEA, were roughly flat in Asia Pacific, and we're down low single digits in Latin America.
Water systems operating income was $43.4 million, down $3.7 million versus the first quarter of 2024. The decrease was primarily due to lower gross margin and higher SG&A costs, primarily related to our recent acquisitions, as well as the negative impact of foreign exchange.
The operating income margin was 15.1%, a year-over-year decrease of 130 basis points. Distribution's first quarter sales were $141.9 million versus first quarter 2024 sales of $147 million a decrease of 3%. The distribution segment sales decrease was primarily due to lower volumes and the negative impact of commodity price declines.
Distribution segment operating income was 2.1 million for the first quarter, a year-over-year increase of $0.3 million. Operating income margin was 1.5% of sales in the first quarter, and improvement of 30 basis points versus the prior year.
Energy system sales in the first quarter were $66.8 million, an increase of $4.7 million or 8% compared to the first quarter of '24. Energy system sales in the US and Canada increased 10% compared to the first quarter. Outside the US and Canada Energy system sales decreased 6%.
Energy systems operating income was $21.9 million compared to $18.8 million in the first quarter of 2024. The first quarter, 2025 operating income margin was 32.8% compared to 30.3% in the prior year, an improvement of 250 basis points.
Operating income margin increased primarily due to favorable geographic mix of sales, as well as price realization and cost management. The effective tax rate was 25% for the quarter compared to 22% in the prior year quarter. This change in the effective tax rate was driven by an increase in foreign earnings taxed at rates higher than the US and less favorable discrete items and had an impact on EPS of approximately $0.03.
Moving to the balance sheet and cash flows on slide 8. The company ended the first quarter of 2025 with a cash balance of $84 million, and with the $64 million outstanding under its revolving credit agreement. We used $19.5 million in net cash flows from operating activities during the first quarter compared to $1.4 million in the first quarter of 2024 as we invested in higher inventory levels to get ahead of potential tariffs. We also invested $110 million for the barns and pump and acquisitions during the quarter.
The company purchased about 56,000 shares of its common stock for approximately $5.4 million in the open market during the first quarter of 2025. As of the end of the first quarter of 2025, the total remaining authorized shares that may be repurchased is about $1.3 million. Yesterday, the company announced a quarterly cash dividend of $0.265. The dividend will be payable May 22 to shareholders of record on May 8.
Moving to slide 9. While our underlying demand remains strong and plans to manage the tariff environment are in place, we are adjusting the lower end of our EPS guidance by $0.10. We are holding our full year sales expectations of $2.09 billion to $2.15 billion but adjusting our GAAP EPS to a range of $3.95 to $4.25.
While we have price and mitigation plans to account for the tariffs, this range reflects some further restructuring and growth investments we plan to take in '25, uncertainty in the market, and some added expense and accelerating adjustments to our supply chain.
Now I will turn the call back to Joe for some additional comments.

Joe Ruzynski

Thanks, Russ. Turning to slide 10, I'd like to bring back our value creation framework which we introduced last quarter. Our framework framework is anchored on four key pillars growth acceleration, resilient margins, strategic investments, and top tier talent.
For growth, we're leveraging our strong customer relationships focusing on high growth verticals and utilizing our global presence to introduce new innovative solutions across our various markets. Our margin integrity is supported by our efficient operating system and data-driven tools. Strategic investments, including M&A enhance our competitive positioning, and our commitment to attracting, developing, and retaining top talent drives our value engine forward.
Moving to slide 11, I want to highlight an increased focus on new products and innovation in the markets we know well and the ones we feel are growing faster. We've launched a series of initiatives in the past year to increase our velocity, focus on fewer, more impactful launches, and use our new product development methodology to increase our speed to market. We have some aggressive goals for '25, and expect this trend to continue over the next few years.
Here are a few examples of exciting new products in dewatering, building up recent acquisitions and incorporating new features to bring these products and dewatering systems to new markets. And two new solutions for our energy system segment.
The first, our oversight solution is an innovative system to help our major marketers remotely monitor and recover critical systems during power disruptions. The second, our new optimizer product which detects potential circuit breaker deficiencies and enables proactive maintenance actions.
Moving to slide 12. During the quarter, we executed two strategic acquisitions, Pump [Enge], a dewatering pumping business focused on the mining industry and the dewatering market based in Perth, Australia, and Barnes to Columbia highlighted here, a serial pump manufacturer based in Bogota, Colombia with assembly locations across Latin America.
These two acquisitions enhance our product portfolio, expand and enhance our channel reach, and add vertically integrated businesses, including good foundry capacity in regions which Franklin Electric already has a strong presence. Welcome to our new team members.
Before we open it up for Q&A, I want to take a moment to address the current tariff environment and how we're managing through it. At present, we're in a strong competitive position and we feel good about where we stand.
We have yet to see any broad-based impacts of demand, though it's possible that we see some pressure as customers react to a changing trade landscape. That said, our business is largely in region for region and centered around replacement demand, which historically tends to be resilient even in periods of broader economic softness.
We continue to remain highly engaged with our supply partners and customers, and we're monitoring forward indicators closely. While our guidance incorporates all known tariffs, we expect that we will have more visibility in the medium to long term tariff environment and we'll be prepared to talk about any future impacts when we speak again in July.
Within our supply chain, we moved selectively to position inventory for success. While a slight Q1 drag on working capital, we felt it was prudent to best position our business to mitigate potential tariff unknowns. We were also active on the cost and pricing front, working to reduce our costs where we can and diligently pass along costs where appropriate.
Our team has historically done a fantastic job of navigating through various economic cycles and periods of uncertainty, and I'm proud of their execution this quarter. We put our proven playbook to work, and we feel we have an opportunity to gain share in regions with meaningful manufacturing footprints. We've taken thoughtful actions on inventory, pricing, and cost optimization and remain confident and optimistic about our competitive position.
We will now turn the call over to Andrew for questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator instructions)
Ryan Connors, North Coast Research.

Ryan Connors

Good morning. A few questions here. Yeah, so wanted to actually start on the energy segment, really just remarkable margins there. Almost a third of the profitability really on operating income in the quarter. So should we be extrapolating that type of margin or is that mixed benefit that really boosted it in the first quarter, which we should we expect that to kind of normalize as we move into the middle part of the year?

Joe Ruzynski

Yeah, I think Ryan on that, what we've said is, we don't expect the same growth that you've seen over the last five or six quarters, but we do expect to hold those margins at a strong state. And really the reason there's a couple of reasons for that.
One is, we've migrated that business to smarter solutions for our end customers. So you see a general movement to those products and a lift that that provides to margins, so a little bit less on the commodity side, more on the smarter solutions. They also did a great job managing price, managing productivity, which contributed to their Q1 result. We would expect those margins to stay strong, but not to see the continued increase that you've seen over the last four or five quarters or so.

Ryan Connors

Got it. Okay and then secondly on the on the water segment you talk about healthy order trends which is great to hear. But you yourself also mentioned you're investing in inventory. Any sign that there's some kind of a tariff pull forward associated with that order growth or you think that's really organic?

Joe Ruzynski

Well, we tend to think it's organic. We've looked for bullwhips in the supply chain. We've looked for people making big polls ahead. I think, related to the inventory positioning, we use the term selective for a reason, and that is, products that we felt were most exposed. We've got a relative to some of our peers, a relative small exposure to China, but we still wanted to make sure that we were positioning ourselves well and it turns out that was prudent.
We look at our channel, we see some selective positioning and selective build up, but it's not across the board, and our view of inventory in the channel is that it's at a relatively stable position. So some of that increase, we made sure that our channels were well stocked and we were prepared for it, but we haven't seen a huge poll in our channels and we don't think we're sitting on heavy inventory in the channels from a historical standpoint as we get ready for busy season and especially related to to the tariff environment.

Russell Fleeger

Yeah, and if I just add on that, a significant chunk of our build of inventory if you look on a sequential basis on a quarter-over-quarter and a quarter over 2024 quarter was the two acquisitions that we made in March, and we ended 2024 at the lowest level of total inventory in the last three to four years.
We generally have a fairly sizable build in Q1 to get into the busy season. Now some of that season was delayed in our distribution business because of the weather that Joe spoke about, but we feel pretty good about the inventory level and where we sit right now.

Ryan Connors

Got it okay. And then just a couple others on distribution. Is M&A still a priority there? I know we were very active in M&A for a while. It seems to have slowed down. Is that due to there being a lack of assets for sale, or is it just less of a strategic priority? Curious on the M&A there and then also with distribution, what does the weather comp look like in the second quarter? I know that's a headwind in 1Q just trying to get a sense of the set up for the second quarter.

Joe Ruzynski

Yeah, well, we'll take those in order. I think on the first one, we're always still active and staying close to the market if there's a good acquisition for us in the distribution space. One thing, we've been working on and I alluded to it in the script, is, we also feel that we've got some benefit in terms of how we serve because we've got a great footprint and bringing some of those efficiencies after the last three, four years of acquisitions, that's a, it's a key focus for us, but we're not opposed to doing another deal in that space.
I think our focus right now is serving the market, building those efficiencies and making sure that we can execute kind of unparalleled. So, yeah, that's where we sit right now for acquisitions. I think related to the weather pattern in Q2, we feel we're in a better position where we then coming into last year, we've kind of seen a flip in terms of one of the wettest years last year that we've gone through and a year that looks more normal this year and we definitely see that.
I think if you look at the move to a weather pattern that's drier. We see that benefit starting to show up in some of our regions. I think the blip in the upper Midwest related to some of the frost restrictions, it was just basically due to a very warm winter last year where the restrictions came off earlier and we got that benefit in March and this year it was pushed out three, four weeks. So, but Q2, from what we can see right now, we feel good about the weather pattern, obviously hard to predict, but that's kind of where we sit right now.

Ryan Connors

Yeah, okay, super. Thanks for your time this morning.

Joe Ruzynski

Thanks, Ryan.

Operator

Matt Summerville, D. A. Davidson.

Matt Summerville

Yeah, morning. Couple questions I just want to make sure I understand the tariff exposure while you're seemingly able to mitigate it. I guess I want to understand if it were to go unmitigated, what would your current tariff exposure look like.
And then you know help me help me sort of understand how the groundwater business is performing in North America when you think about it in terms of the residential side of it and the ag side. And then I may have a follow up.

Joe Ruzynski

Sounds good. I'll take the tariff overview and then I'll turn it over to Russ. He can give you some more detail on groundwater. Tariffs obviously have been in place for the last few years, so coming into this year, as we do every year is to make sure that we're more than accounting price plus productivity to offset inflation and we had a good start to the year.
We added not quite $60 million of exposure over the course of liberation day and some of the other tariffs that were put on. So that is, that was the target for us to make sure that we mitigated and offset and we've had a series of increases. We've tried to be thoughtful and measured in terms of what we can account for in internally and what we need to pass along, and most of those actions have been taken.
Clearly it's hard to predict exactly what's going to happen with tariffs, as Matt, you've been on these calls here in the last few weeks. What we wanted to do is to make sure that we kind of played forward a few different scenarios for what could happen, and I feel we're in a strong position this year to do that.
So again, offset for this year we feel we're in a healthy spot. And in addition we're looking to to take some other actions to make a few other changes to our footprint and supply chain just to make sure we're in a better spot to serve customers as we go forward.
Russ, do you want to cover groundwater?

Russell Fleeger

Yeah. Your question on growth in groundwater. So on the residential side in the first quarter, resi was up about 11%, ag was up about 3%. Now I will caution that residential number does include some sales to our distribution partners at Headwater that you will see in the eliminations. But that aside, the market was strong for us in mid single digit growth. So pretty strong there and the order book is largely held up as well.

Matt Summerville

Thanks. And then just as a follow up to to the question on the order book, can you maybe talk about what your organic book to bill looked like in water in Q1. And then from an M&A standpoint, Joe, I think you've indicated in the past, maybe a willingness to explore something a bit more transformational for Franklin. Maybe just an update on your thought there and and how that funnel may be developing for you guys. Thanks.

Joe Ruzynski

Yeah, I'll start with that last question. It's a good good question. As I probably have told you before, as a CEO in his first year, there's a lot of good ideas that come our way and myself with Jon Grandon our Counsel and his team, we're staying very close to what we think is going to be a nice funnel and some good opportunities.
I think, we've got opportunities in two spaces. Obviously some of the strategic bolt ons that put us in a strong position around the world. You saw that in Q1, we'll continue to look for for those deals. I think related to something that's more strategic, yeah, we are open to it. I think, our position with a healthy balance sheet and the ability to be smart about these deals puts us in a nice spot. So we're working on on networking, we're working with our partners to make sure that we've got good visibility to what may be coming up, and yeah, we're still positive about that and some of the noise and some of the disruption, here over the last 60 days, we're making sure that we're prudent with capital, but I still think that, there's going to be opportunities to do something more strategic and we're keeping our ears to the ground.

Matt Summerville

And then any quantification you have on organic book to bill and water in the quarter. Thank you.

Joe Ruzynski

Oh yeah, sure.

Russell Fleeger

On the book to bill was above a 1 for the quarter our backlog, I will caution again the backlog incorporates some of our industrial business with fleet, but it was up mid to high single digits in the quarter.

Matt Summerville

Got it. Thanks guys.

Joe Ruzynski

Yeah, thank you, Matt.

Operator

Walter Liptak, Seaport.

Walter Liptak

Alright, thanks. Good morning guys. Just a couple of follow ups. First on the the tariffs. I wonder if you could help us understand the supply chain that you have from China. And any percentages that you give us of cost of goods sold things like that, do you still have ample supply and it sounds like you can pass along any kind of tariff related pricing. Is that the correct way to think about it?

Joe Ruzynski

Yeah, that's correct. Well, our overall percentage of COGS from China is under 10%. So we're not hugely exposed there, and some of our opportunity or some of that exposure, I would say hits us in a couple product areas that we worked to try to mitigate before coming into the second quarter, hence our comments on some inventory poll. And I think there's further opportunity to do that.
I referenced the Barnes deal. One of the things that we love about the Barnes deal is giving us added foundry capacity in the Americas that we can take our tools and look at repositioning. So we're continuing to do that. We're going to make some investments to go faster, and we feel good about that ability to protect ourselves from any future noise or disruption there, specifically to China. So, yeah, that's the view on China and our exposure and some actions there. Was there another question?

Walter Liptak

Yeah, I mean, and then just kind of a follow on to the sectors. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about just the resi sounds like it's a better footing. Why do you think you're seeing better growth this year, maybe talk a little bit about how April's going. And then with the groundwater and ag, how is, it seems like it's a lot hotter and drier this year and not an easier comp. How's the visibility as you're getting into the second quarter.

Joe Ruzynski

Yeah, maybe just start on resi and we can then give a couple of comments on just groundwater and ag overall. But resi, obviously housing starts and sales aren't the driver for that growth for us. So what we've done here over the last few years in the water treatment business and then in the water business is really to focus on how we serve on making sure that we've got the right footprint and putting ourselves in a good position to grow.
So we view that as, we're taking some share in that resi space, but all of our indicators were positive in Q1 and continue to be positive in April. So any boost, any help, anything that comes our way from an overall macro standpoint would be in addition to that, but we feel good about our position thus far and resi continues to stay strong.
I think your question, back to my weather comments earlier, just groundwater in general, municipal ag, et cetera, we think is, at least from a weather standpoint, it's a more supportive environment this year than it was last year. So, those are trends that we're looking out for on a daily and a weekly basis here, but from what we see right now, hotter and drier, I think is is an accurate representation.

Walter Liptak

Okay, great. Okay, thank you.

Joe Ruzynski

Thank you.

Operator

Mike Halloran, RW Baird.

Michael Halloran

Hey good morning, guys. So just want to clarify the guidance as you think about the year from two respects. First, are we implicitly saying pricing up some organic demand down some to kind of hold that revenue range, or we just saying we don't totally know yet, so keeping it as an offset against each other is fair.
And then secondarily maybe just some thoughts on how you're expecting the cadence thing to play out through the year, this is just relatively normal seasonality based on what we know right now and then we'll adjust as we, as the uncertainty does or does not hit the P&L.

Joe Ruzynski

Yeah. To your first question, Mike, that's a good assumption you're making, which is pricing will be up, but we expect for some pockets of our products that, that would push down some of the organic growth, so that is roughly the offset that you see, which is why we're holding sales because there'll be some lifts of price but obviously some pressure on volume and and that pressure comes in a couple very specific segments, so we're keeping a close eye on that, but that is the offset that we've made as we put that guidance together.
In terms of the cadence, yeah, some seasonality and distribution in in quarter one, the busy season as we see it right now, our indicators are, it looks generally positive. So we see momentum, as I mentioned before as we kind of exited the quarter, we see order rates, largely in line with what we expected as we get into the end of April here.
I think the back half for us is, obviously a lot can change the world is a moving place here, but for the most part we feel good about our plans, where we can see a little further out in terms of backlog, take for an example, the energy business, strong backlogs and feel relatively good about the next couple quarters.
I think it's harder for us to see in that distribution business where it's obviously shorter cycle, but what we tend to look there is is that short cycle trends obviously leading indicators we talk to and put a heat map together for our major customers, the drillers, et cetera. And there's a general confidence there in terms of the outlook and in terms of the order book.

Michael Halloran

And two more just related to that. Remind me what the percentage of replacement is for your distribution and your water businesses on the more submersible side of things.

Joe Ruzynski

It's north of 70%, 75%.

Michael Halloran

Okay. And then lastly, just in light of all the tariffs, maybe just a thought from your perspective and on how your footprint is positioned competitively, all else equal.

Joe Ruzynski

Yeah, well, one is we're, I might comment on in region for region, it's important for us. We've never been a big, build a huge factory across the world and then move products. So labor arbitrage and really chasing that product has never been Franklin's key focus. We've worked on putting manufacturing footprint close to where we serve.
Now that's not pure or perfect, but in general that's been part of our strategy. When I look at some of our investments and Russ alluded to a few investments that we want to accelerate and make sure that that we get well executed this year, we're expanding our manufacturing footprint in Turkey. We're expanding our manufacturing footprint in India. Both of those are largely to serve those regions. In some cases, it's to serve the Middle East and to serve a few other places.
In addition, when we looked at Barnes, we looked at that vertical capability and how we would make good use of that foundry, not only for what is now a very nice and sizable market for us in Latin America, but obviously to serve Mexico, Northern Latin America and the US. So those are in process right now and we're working on taking advantage of that.
I think from a footprint standpoint, those are some strategic advantages that we have. We've also looked at, I know as other companies have in terms of what makes sense to move or to shift. For us, it's more about assembly and supply chain, not a major shift in our manufacturing strategy overall.

Michael Halloran

Great. Really appreciate it. Thanks.

Joe Ruzynski

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And I'm showing no further questions at this time. So with that, I'll hand the call back over to Chief Executive Officer, Joe Ruzynski for the closing remarks.

Joe Ruzynski

Thank you very much and thank you everyone for joining us today. I'd like to close out by sharing that I'm very pleased with our team's hard work and execution during this very busy first quarter. We feel good about our start to the year and how we're positioned as we enter the second quarter. We are widening our guidance on the low end of EPS, but have plans in place to address tariffs, solve problems, and serve our customers every day.
We feel good about our strategy. It's the right one, and we're focused on improving our margins, finding the next best acquisition, and delivering great new products to our customers. Our expectation is for a great year of progress and strong performance. Thank you, everyone, and have a great week.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This does conclude today's program, and you may now disconnect.