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Q1 2025 Illinois Tool Works Inc Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Erin Linnihan; Vice President of Investor relations; Illinois Tool Works Inc

Christopher O'Herlihy; President, Chief Executive Officer, Director; Illinois Tool Works Inc

Michael Larsen; Chief Financial Officer, Senior Vice President; Illinois Tool Works Inc

Vlad Bystricky

Tami Zakaria; Analyst; J.P. Morgan

Julian Mitchell; Analyst; Barclays

Stephen Volkmann; Analyst; Jefferies

Jamie Cook; Analyst; Truist Securities

Joe O'Dea; Analyst; Wells Fargo

Avi Uresawitz

Nicole DeBlase; Analyst; Deutsche Bank

Presentation

Operator

Good morning. My name is Lacey, and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the ITW's first quarter earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Erin Linnihan, Vice President of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Erin Linnihan

Thank you, Lacey. Good morning, and welcome to ITW's first quarter 2025 conference call. Today, I'm joined by our President and CEO, Chris O'Herlihy; and Senior Vice President and CFO, Michael Larsen. During today's call, we will discuss ITW's first quarter financial results and provide an update on our outlook for full year 2025. Slide 2 is a reminder that this presentation contains forward-looking statements.
We refer you to the company's 2024 Form 10-K and subsequent reports filed with the SEC for more detail about important risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. This presentation uses certain non-GAAP measures, and a reconciliation of those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is contained in the press release. Please turn to slide 3, and it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to our President and CEO, Chris O'Herlihy. Chris?

Christopher O'Herlihy

Thank you, Erin, and good morning, everyone. As you saw in our press release this morning, ITW delivered a solid start to the year as we outperformed our underlying end markets with flat organic growth on an equal days basis in a steady demand environment.
We continue to execute well in controlling the controllables as enterprise initiatives contributed 120 basis points to operating margins of 24.8%. In addition, GAAP EPS of $2.38 came in ahead of our planned expectations.
Importantly, we continue to make progress on our next phase key strategic priorities as we remain laser-focused on building above-market organic growth fueled by customer-backed innovation into defining ITW's strength on par with our world-class financial and operational capabilities.
As we've said many times before, ITW is built to outperform in uncertain and volatile environments because of the unique advantages that we derive from our powerful ITW business model, our diversified portfolio of differentiated products and services, our decentralized close to the customer structure, and our considerable financial strength.
In addition, when it comes to tariffs, we believe that ITW is better positioned than most as the tariff impact is largely mitigated by our 90%-plus produce where we sell manufacturing strategy. That said, ITW is obviously not immune to tariffs, and our people are reading and reacting rapidly and decisively, working closely with our suppliers and customers to mitigate the impact of tariff increases.
These strategic adjustments and ongoing pricing actions are projected to offset the cost impact of tariffs and, therefore, be EPS neutral or better by year-end. Looking forward and based on what we know today, we are maintaining our EPS guidance for the year without incorporating the upside from our first quarter results and more favorable foreign exchange rates.
While the impact of tariffs and customer demand is obviously not known at this stage and uncertainties remain, we will continue to leverage our financial strength to remain invested in the focused execution of our long-term strategy.
In concluding my remarks, I extend my sincere gratitude to our global ITW colleagues for their unwavering dedication to serving our customers and executing our strategy with excellence. Now I'll turn the call over to Michael to provide more detail on the quarter as well as our guidance for 2025. Michael?