Earnings Labs

AstroNova, Inc. (ALOT)

Q3 2019 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 21, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day. And welcome to AstroNova's Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2019 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. David Calusdian from the Company's Investor Relations firm, Sharon Merrill Associates. Please go ahead, Mr. Calusdian.

David Calusdian

Management

Thank you, Erica. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Hosting this morning's call are Greg Woods, AstroNova's President and CEO and David Smith, CFO. Greg will discuss the Company's operating results. David will take you through the financials. Greg will make some concluding comments and then management will be happy to take your questions. By now you should have received a copy of the earnings release that was issued today. If you do not have a copy, please go to the Investors section of the AstroNova Web site, www.astronovainc.com. Please note that statements made during today’s call that are not statements of historical facts are considered forward-looking statements within the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions that could involve risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, actual results could differ materially, except as required by law. Any forward-looking statements speak only as of today, November 21, 2018. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. For further information regarding the forward-looking statements and the factors that may cause differences, please see the Risk Factors in AstroNova's Annual Report on Form 10-K and other filings that Company makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I will now turn the call over to Greg.

Greg Woods

Management

Thanks, David. Good morning, everyone and thanks for joining us. This morning we announced strong results for the third quarter of fiscal 2019, primarily reflecting continued robust aerospace industry demand for our flight deck printers and associated supplies. In particular, the Honeywell printer product line and new contracts for our ToughWriter brand printers were standouts. The performance of the business in fiscal 2019 underscores our success in leveraging the elements of the AstroNova operating system to drive long-term value for customers, shareholders and team members through innovative product development, superior quality and lean business processes. During the quarter, we generated record revenue of $34.2 million, an increase of approximately 19% from the same quarter last year. Our operating profit margin was 6.9% of revenue, up 120 basis points from last year's Q3. And we reported diluted earnings per share of $0.20. David will provide additional details on our financial results later in the call. But first, let me provide some context around our third quarter results, beginning with Product Identification. Geographically, we saw a nice acceleration in orders from the Americas and Asia, and we added several new dealers in all regions, further strengthening our global channel build out. Revenue came in 6% higher than the same period a year earlier, with gains across both QuickLabel and the TrojanLabel platform. In the quarter, we introduced a number of new products and technology enhancements during the major fall tradeshow season at both the Labelexpo Americas and PACK EXPO International trade shows, both held in Chicago this year. These shows were very successful for us with strong booth attendance and record lead generation that position us well going forward. Of note, we premiered the Kiaro! QL-120 our new narrow format desktop color label printer that we announced earlier in Q3. We also…

David Smith

Management

Thanks, Greg and good morning, everyone. As Greg noted, revenue in the third quarter increased 19% from the prior year, primarily reflecting another strong quarter for Test & Measurement. We also continued to show leverage at the operating expense line. Domestic revenue was $21.5 million, an increase of 19% and represented 63% of the total revenue. International revenue was $12.7 million, also up 19% year on year and accounted for 37% of total sales. By product category, consolidated supplies revenue in Q3 was up 19% from the prior year, hardware revenue increased 39% and revenue from service and other grew 8.5%. Gross profit in Q3 was $13.9 million, an 18% increase from $11.8 million in Q3 2018. Gross margin was down 30 basis points to 40.7%. Operating expenses of $11.5 million were up 13.6% from the third quarter of last year. But as a reminder, customer related intangible assets acquired from Honeywell are amortized in the sales expense and that accounted for the majority of the year-over-year increase. Q3 operating expenses, as a percentage of revenue, declined by 150 basis points from the same quarter last year. Looking at revenue by segment, Product Identification increased 6% over the prior year on higher sales of printer hardware and supplies. Test & Measurement was up 51% from the same period last year. Product Identification generated operating income of $2 million for segment operating margin of 9.3% compared with $2.7 million or 13% in Q3 last year. The difference relates primarily to investment this year in new products and growth initiatives. Test & Measurement generated operating income of $3.2 million or a segment operating margin of 25.4% compared with $1.6 million or 18.9% in the prior year due to the benefits of the Honeywell transaction and better results in the Test & Measurement…

Greg Woods

Management

Thanks, David. In summary, we begin the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019 with good momentum. Our Test & Measurement business is performing well, led by contributions from our Aerospace product line, including Honeywell and ToughWriter. New products and enhancements in our Product Identification segment expand our capabilities and our reach into new markets. We continue to expect the second half of fiscal year to outperform the first half with gains in both Product Identification and Test & Measurement. AstroNova’s future is bright. Now, we’ll be happy to take your questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question, caller please go ahead. Mr. Ryan, you can begin.

Dick Ryan

Analyst

Greg, you mentioned an acceleration of orders in the Americas and Europe for Product ID side. Can give us a little more perspective and is your -- is the investment in the new Tech Centers is that helping to drive the order churns here?

Greg Woods

Management

Actually, I said Americas and Asia, because they are - those two areas. But as you’re aware, we’ve added a number of those Innovation Technology Centers. And in the quarter, we did open up the one in Mexico City, which certainly was a help in that area and in the Asia area it had more to do with ongoing business that we’re developing and started to accelerate in terms of higher-level of orders and larger orders in that part of the world.

Dick Ryan

Analyst

Any tariff issues presenting any headwinds for you guys at all at this point?

Greg Woods

Management

It’s not a big factor for our business, because we don't do a lot of manufacturing and importing from carriers that are being hit by tariffs. So it’s something we keep an eye on but it’s not meaningful at this point and we don’t expect it to have a significant impact going forward.

Dick Ryan

Analyst

On the Test & Measurement side, the printers are you shipping direct yet to any of the end customers or is that still a work in progress going through Honeywell?

Greg Woods

Management

No, we’re doing that and that’s what I meant with the contract transfers. For people who aren’t aware until we actually move it into a direct ship mode, we actually ship still through Honeywell, which of course they charge us a fee for that service. So at the end of October, we had some nice decent sized agreements actually transfer to direct ship, so we got a little bit of benefit for that a last couple of weeks of October. But of course those will carry on and we’ll keep adding more as we move forward.

Dick Ryan

Analyst

Is there a way to quantify what kind of a drag that is, at this point?

Greg Woods

Management

We can’t -- by the terms of the agreement, we’re not allowed to do that but it’s a reasonable pickup in profitability when we can avoid that double shipping and service charge on a per printer basis.

Dick Ryan

Analyst

And how far are you through the process, I may have missed that, next couple of quarters, is that it? But I mean do you have the bulk of the larger customers in now or what’s the…

Greg Woods

Management

It’s hard to quantify it exactly. I’d say we have more than a third of them in right now. But there’s little ones and there’s large ones. So in terms of dollar value, it’s hard to know exactly where that’s going to head. But some of them are just going to -- some like for example in China, and they tend to take longer to get the contracts actually transferred. But we’ll keep working through it. So we should see a steady improvement in the profitability as more and more of these things tick into our column.

Dick Ryan

Analyst

Okay, great, again congratulations on a good quarter, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thanks very much, Mr. Ryan. Our next question comes from Steve Busch of the Everglades Resources Incorporation.

Steve Busch

Analyst

So just a couple of questions and what’s the realistic addressable market size for that new flexible food label packaging product? Is there some size you can disclose?

Greg Woods

Management

It's hard to quantify what our piece of that would be I mean just knowing general stats for the packaging market, flexible packaging is still over $30 billion but it includes all the equipment that goes into making those plastic bags. And it’s things -- think about your snack foods or things that are in flexible packaging so there’s no labels on those flexible bags, but what this do is print on that film that is turned into the bags for the food or medical products or whatever they might be. So it’s brand new area for us. So it’s a technology breakthrough in the sense that we weren’t able to print on this type material that can be used in these machines because you heat seal those packages. So prior to this material breakthrough, we didn’t have a way to even enter that market. So we’ll know more as we go forward but what I can say is there’s a lot of interest at the tradeshows this fall. People haven’t seen it -- before, we actually had a TrojanLabel machine feeding directly into a vertical form fill and seal machine, making plastic pouches, which is pretty impressive for people who came to the booth.

Steve Busch

Analyst

Interesting. I mean do you’ve a goal for the first year or just feeling your way?

Greg Woods

Management

Yes, it’s early to know right now. I mean the main thing was an R&D technology breakthrough to try and figure out a way. We've looking for about a year and a half on how to actually do this and materials -- it’s lot of chemistry actually, material sciences. So now we’ve got it it’s a question of well -- meeting with the packaging companies and the brand owners and moving into that market. But yes, with such a large market we would expect that it should have nice impact but these things take time.

Steve Busch

Analyst

So we’ve had some nice increase in hardware sales. Do you expect our consumable side to increase at a higher rate going forward or…?

Greg Woods

Management

Yes, that’s certainly our goal. We still have – like we mentioned in some prior calls we’ve the toner based products decreasing still, which is a bit of a drag. We’re still seeing a nice steady increases in the inkjet, both labels and inks. So that’s still on a very nice upward trend. And the toner based product, we discontinued those about four years ago. So it’s not too surprising to see that continue to dwindle.

Steve Busch

Analyst

Good luck. You guys are doing a great job.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Christopher Hillary of Roubaix Capital.

Christopher Hillary

Analyst

I just wanted to ask if you care to share some comments on how you see today’s results in relation to your longer term targets, particularly on your operating margins?

Greg Woods

Management

Yes, well as you see, the margins did improve year-over-year and even quarter-over-quarter. So we’re looking at a steady march in that direction. We've got a number of initiatives that are underway with respect to both on the gross margin side of things, as well as the operating expense leverage that we expect should continue to march us in that direction of our goal.

Christopher Hillary

Analyst

And then maybe just -- do you have any color on how you view the M&A pipeline as it changed much given the way in which the backdrop has shifted a bit over the last, I don’t know, couple of months?

Greg Woods

Management

Are you referring to anything specifically or what do you mean by backdrop…?

Christopher Hillary

Analyst

Just whether or not you feel like the opportunity set has improved or stayed the same or…?

Greg Woods

Management

The names change, as you might guess. But each of the three businesses, we’ve got a decent number of items that we’re looking at. Obviously, nothing in detail that we can discuss but we actually in the Aerospace area see a number of additional opportunities, but Product Identification, test and the data acquisitions there’s typically 20, 25 opportunities that we’re looking at any given time and typically three or four of those are relatively serious. But as you might guess, most of these -- if you look at -- it start with set of 100 at the beginning of the year, most of those never make it to the point of being seriously considered, whether it’s due diligence or price or other issues we discover as we go through our diligence.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. That concludes today’s question-and-answer session. Mr. Gregory Woods, at this time, I would like to turn the conference back to you for closing remarks.

Greg Woods

Management

Okay, thank you. Well, thank you everyone for attending and for your time and interest today in AstroNova. We look forward to keeping you updated on our progress, and everyone out there have a wonderful Thanksgiving, Bye now.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s call. Thank you for your participation. Have a Happy Thanksgiving, and you may now disconnect.