Legrand's Brian DiBella, C-Suite Series: Leducation 2025

You got it, Randy. Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here.

Well, I think the first thing that has really become clear to me and certainly at this event is the power of relationships. So in business, we always talk about people doing business with people they like, but the importance here of the connection from manufacturers through the agents to lighting specifiers and engineers is really how things get done. And I've really been impressed and I think it fits well with Legrand's values. As far as where the market is going, clearly some bumps right now with slowdowns in construction, but I think the long-term outlook is still very favorable. I think controls are becoming a more and more important part as we look to have spaces become more efficient, more flexible, enabling good productivity, good healing, good learning, you name it.

Yeah, well, I think there's a lot of different points of view on that one. For us, I think the technology is becoming more accessible, more affordable, more reliable, and so the ability to really have controls become responsive. The biggest challenge I think we always talk about is that as soon as that building or that room is commissioned, it's no longer accurate because people start coming in and messing around with it. I think now with when we go all the way to AI, but even more basic forms of technology to make those spaces a little bit more responsive. I think it's here today. I think it's up to us to figure out how to work together as an industry to bring those flexible efficient spaces to life.

So we have five lighting brands plus the controls business which is Wattstopper and Excelium for us.

Yeah, that's something we work very intentionally at. I'll start at the top. Each one of our lighting brands and lighting businesses has a president and that person wakes up every single day thinking about their business. So they think about Kenall, they think about Focal Point, they think about Finelite and that's all they do. They have a team of product people, engineers, marketers that do the same. They're just focused on their single business and they interface with the market as an individual business. Now, there are opportunities in the back office to maybe be more efficient with finance or with systems, but the things that touch the market that make a difference in terms of those relationships that I mentioned earlier, the things that make a difference relative to product innovation, those are focused and that is again what those people at the top of the organizations do every single day.

Well, we're happy with it. We have no intention of changing it. And again, I think it's just being smart about making sure the things that touch the market, the things that customers value that make a difference, that there's one person and a team around that person that are focused and we think focused wins every day, right?

We so purchasing is a mix. Think about things like office supplies, travel arrangements. So I'll call it indirect items. So the real back office part of things, if we can negotiate better deals on rental cars and airplane tickets, why not? When it comes to the materials, the components that go into our product, that's local. So again, it's a both answer. It's not an either or. So we look for the things that again are going to have customer value that those are owned by the business. But again, if there's something like cell phone contracts, airplane tickets, office supplies, printers, IT technology, we want to get the best benefit of scale, not just of our lighting businesses, but of Legrand overall.

USA.

Yes. I mean it's a wide open subject just tariffs.

And although we manufacture most of our lighting products here in the US, we're still expecting to be impacted by the tariffs. We went through this in Trump's first term, and I'll use the example of the steel and aluminum tariffs that have already been put in place. They happen. People that are importing metals have to pay higher prices, but the US producers also raise their prices because they can. And so it ends up causing inflation for the entire market regardless of where you're making product. Beyond that, I think there are going to be challenges for the industry overall because there are so many things that got moved from China to Mexico or even to parts of the US, but there still might be components. There might be electronics in particular that are still coming from Asia. So even if we're doing end product assembly and fabrication here, there's still going to be materials that are coming in that make these solutions that are going to be affected by tariffs. And again, I think there's only so much you can do to mitigate that when ultimately you have to just pass the price along to customers and to the market. And we've been holding off, but we can see the signs now. More and more price increases coming out. The metals have already started to increase in price, even domestic suppliers again because they see the opportunity to raise prices. Hopefully, they put those additional profits back into new capacity. But for now, it just means more cost for the industry.

What? Closing comments. Okay. Well, I would say for the industry, I'm very bullish on lighting. I think the things I've seen here certainly we're very proud of what we're doing but just seeing where technology, design, function are coming together. We're all returning to office more. We are much more focused on the environment that we live, work, and learn. And I think light is a big part of that. It helps a space look more beautiful. It allows us to be more productive, more comfortable, more at ease, to heal, you name it within those spaces. And I think the advance of technology from a control standpoint is going to make spaces more responsive to us, more responsive to our needs. So I'm looking forward to what's in front of us from an industry perspective.

Well, there's this three little letters called NDA. So look, Legrand is always looking to continue to grow. It's one of our core foundations to be a business that's growing, dynamic, moving with the market. Lighting controls, very compelling space for us. So I think as the right opportunities come up, you can absolutely anticipate continued pattern from Legrand relative to that.