Earnings Labs

Ampco-Pittsburgh Corporation (AP)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Fri, Feb 27, 2015

$10.19

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Liane and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Ampco-Pittsburgh’s Fourth Quarter and Year-End Earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker’s remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Rose Hoover, Executive Vice President you may begin your conference.

Rose Hoover

Analyst

Thank you Liane. Good morning everyone and welcome to our earnings call for the fourth quarter and full-year ended December 31, 2014. My name is Rose Hoover and I'm the executive vice president of Ampco-Pittsburgh Corporation. With me today are John Stanik, Chief Executive Officer and Dee Ann Johnson, Chief Financial Officer of Ampco-Pittsburgh Corporation; Rodney L. Scagline, Executive Vice of the President Forged and Cast Engineered product segment and Kerri Kenney, President of the Air and Liquid processing segment are also with us. Before we begin, I need to read the following Safe Harbor Statement regarding forward-looking information. Statements or comments made on this conference call may be forward-looking statement and may include financial projections or other statements of the Corporation’s plans, objectives, expectations, or intention. These matters involve certain risks and uncertainties many of which are outside of the Corporation’s control. The Corporation’s actual results may differ significantly from those projected or suggested in any forward-looking statement due to a variety of factors including those discussed in the Corporation’s most recently filed Form 10-K and subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake any obligations to update or otherwise release publicly any revision to our forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer Dee Ann Johnson.

Dee Ann Johnson

Analyst

Thank you Rose. Good morning everyone. Sales for the fourth quarter of 2014 were $74.6 million versus $77.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2013, a decrease of $2.5 million or 3.2%. Sales for 2014 were $272.9 million compared to $281.1 million a decrease of $8.2 million or approximately 2.9%. The decrease is primarily due to a lower volume of shipments and weaker pricing for our Forged and Cast Engineered Products group. Gross profit as a percentage of net sales was 19.7% in the fourth quarter of 2014 compared to 23.7% in the fourth quarter of 2013 a decrease of 4 percentage points. For the year gross profit as a percentage of net sales was 19.9% and 22.7% for 2014 and 2013 respectively a decrease of 2.8 percentage points. The decrease is primarily attributable to a lower volume of shipments and ongoing price discounting necessary to remain competitive for our Forged and Cast Engineered Products group. Additionally, during the fourth quarter of 2014, the Forged and Cast Engineered Products group recorded a charge of approximately $1.1 million to write-down inventory to its estimated net realizable value. This inventory was produced for an international customer but its likely not be sold. While not as significant for the year gross profit for the Air and Liquid Processing group for the fourth quarter of 2014 was hampered by product mix. Selling and administrative expenses were approximately $10 million for the fourth quarter of 2014 compared to $11.5 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 a decrease of $1.5 million or 13%. For the year selling and administrative expenses totaled $37.4 million for 2014 and $39.7 million for 2013 a decrease of $2.3 million or 5.8%, the decrease is primarily due to lower employee related costs and commission. In the fourth quarter of 2014…

John S. Stanik

Analyst

Thank you Dee Ann. Good morning everyone. Welcome to Ampco-Pittsburgh’s first quarterly call in quite some time. Before getting to the discussion about Q4 and 2014 to make a few points, I believe a few introductory comments are appropriate. Ampco-Pittsburgh Corporation operates two principal business segments the Union Electric Steel Forged and Cast Engineered Product segment and the Air and Liquid Processing segment. Union Electric Steel or UES mainly provides forged and cast rolls for the ferrous and non-ferrous industries. Our manufacturing facilities for UES are located in Pennsylvania, Indiana, the United Kingdom and via two joint ventures in China. The business has a long and proud history going back to the 1920s. The Air and Liquid Processing Systems segment contains manufacturing operations in Virginia and New York, which provides equipment including finned tube heat exchangers, centrifugal pumps, and large specialized heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems. All three elements of this segment market engineered custom equipment tailored to specific customer requirements in many industries including military, medical, chemical and the power industry. While not exhibiting much growth these three divisions are relatively stable with two being profitable in 2014, the remaining third one approximately breakeven. As Rose mentioned, my name is John Stanik, I am the new CEO for the company having started my position here on January 2, 2015. As I was not here in Q4, I’ve asked Rodney Scagline of UES and Kerri Kenney of Air and Liquid Processing to join me this morning to answer any questions regarding 2014 about details and marketing information performance backlog et cetera. Rose Hoover, will respond to any asbestos liability related questions and of course Dee Ann Johnson will handle financial questions. I will handle the forward-looking information. Little bit more about me, I have been a CEO previously for…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Gregg Hillman from First Wilshire Securities. Your line is open.

R. Gregg Hillman

Analyst

Yes, for each of your major divisions could you talk about how you are differentiated from the competition? And also can you talk about whether you have basically people in R&D area that can make a difference in future innovations in those divisions?

John S. Stanik

Analyst

Good question Gregg. Yes, we can’t speak to that. Let’s do them one at a time. I think in the UES business having been primarily a roll supplier, we believe that the quality and the performance of our products are superior and certainly one of the two or three best that are supplied in the entire world, we can justify that with operating performance measurements that demonstrate that our rolls less longer and require less attention. The other thing that we provide is a long history of service and customer support that differentiates us from our customers and finally and perhaps it’s important as the other two is our on-time delivery and first time quality performance which when you are running Rolling mills and when you are running large steel making operations you must have your rolls when you need them and they must be of a quality nature. Regarding the Equipment segment, our equipment is custom engineered and what that means is there really isn’t any standard design. So through our reputation, through our close communications with our customers, through our method of working with customers prior to them issuing their bids specification, we can work with them from an very early point in their selling cycle to help them identify the space they need, the budget they need, the other types of requirements for the installation that’s one point. Our equipment has a very major users list and has a long history in all three elements of excellent performance; long standing performance we make our HVAC systems with very strong materials of constructions that stand to test the time. Our pumps are utilized by the military, which generally is an enough of a statement and one of our largest customers is General Electric, who protects their very high investments in turbines with our pumps which are used for oil and auto.

R. Gregg Hillman

Analyst

Lubricating the turbine.

John S. Stanik

Analyst

Yes, so those are what I would say differentiate us, now does that mean we are best in the business and we should be getting more business, obviously the numbers don’t show that. So that is why we need to take some of this steps that I outlined just a few minutes ago. Regarding the second part of your question which is R&D, we are planning to invest more money in technological advances particularly in the Roll business and some of the other forged products that we’re marketing at this point in time to establish superior performance, longer roll longevity, et cetera and some new product development which we may have some news on in a relatively short period of time. On the other side, back to the Air and Liquid Processing System, we spend as a percentage of sales probably a higher number in that segment historically than we do in the UES side and we are kicking out new products which are based on what customers are telling us they want. Overall, to be very candid with you based on my experience, we are not spending enough on R&D and that’s an issue, but I can assure within the next few months that trend will reverse and we will be issuing more technological advancements in both segments.

R. Gregg Hillman

Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Justin Bergner from Gabelli & Company. Your line is open.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

Good morning John, welcome to the company.

John S. Stanik

Analyst

Thank you, good morning Jus.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

I just had a few clarifying questions, because there is a lot of information that came out pretty quickly. So apologies if I'm going over stuff that was already said. Were there any impairments taken in 2014 or the fourth quarter of 2014, or were you just referring to impairments in 2013?

John S. Stanik

Analyst

The impairments that you are referring to is for the Chinese joint venture in 2013 there were numerous hits for other things that I wouldn’t call impairments, we had some inventory for a foreign customer that they weren’t paying us so we stopped shipment and that was - what was it?

Dee Ann Johnson

Analyst

$1.1 million at the fourth quarter.

John S. Stanik

Analyst

Yes, $1.1 million, but other than that in the asbestos hit which is just the revaluation to add two more years of coverage for the law suites, those were the only things Jus.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. So the $1.1 million wasn’t an impairment change, but it did have one-time characteristics associated with dropping customer.

John S. Stanik

Analyst

Correct.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

Okay. And then secondly, you referred to I think the utilization rates being on the order of 75%, were you referring to the steel industry or are you are referring to your own utilization rates?

John S. Stanik

Analyst

No, the steel industry.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

Okay.

John S. Stanik

Analyst

Yes, I think yesterday they reported at something like 72 and Europe is less than 65, so these are very low numbers.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

Okay.

John S. Stanik

Analyst

Let me add one thing that I want to make sure I focus on; clearly there is a supplying demand imbalance in this business. And being a market leader, we have taken the step to reduce our capacity. And we are - this week idling temporarily, roughly all of our roll manufacturing capability at our Pittsburgh operation and we will manufacture the majority of our rolls in Indiana. So that represents nearly a 50% reduction in - now maybe 40% reduction in operating capacity for our company which under these marketing conditions I think is the proper approach to try and hold on to value in this very important business.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

Thank you. Is that a 40% reduction in both forged and cast rolls or is that one?

John S. Stanik

Analyst

That’s forged. Our cast rolls are primarily manufactured in the UK and they are doing okay right now. Now although we do have the FX issue, that’s plugging everyone in the international market, right now that has a US dollar base.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

Okay. And then one more question which is you talked about your product lasting longer. You know why is it that customers don’t realize that I mean just clearly if they realize that is something that you would think that, it wouldn’t be hard to justify paying a premium for. So how - that information does is sort of not widely visible?

John S. Stanik

Analyst

I think there is two answers to question. The first answer is we have the technology that can measure the roll deterioration, what’s the name of it Rodney.

Rodney L. Scagline

Analyst

You are talking about inspection upfront - fairly.

John S. Stanik

Analyst

Okay, but we can’t help customers pressure.

Rodney L. Scagline

Analyst

So we can measure at least initial quality of growth as far as internal soundness.

John S. Stanik

Analyst

Okay. The second part of the question or the second part of the answer to that question is that the purchase of the rolls is not now being made by the mills and the technical people. The purchases of the products are being made on a price basis, when we work with customers and I am again being very candid here, when we work with the mills, we work with the customers, there seems to be a very clear preference for our products. Unfortunately those people currently aren’t making the decisions and the purchasing department seems to be a little more heavily involved.

Rodney L. Scagline

Analyst

This is Rodney by the way and I’ll add a little bit to what John has said here. First of all one thing with roll life, it’s very dependent on the way that mills operate. So when mills operate continuously longer roll life is easier, you actually get more benefits because the roll will stay in longer, the campaign links are longer, when the mills only operating 60%, 70% range you actually don’t have the benefits, because the rolls come out of the mill during the mill downtime in which case you don’t have the benefit of the extended life. So there is certain parts that are working against this just because the mill utilization rates, but in addition to that not every mill even though it seems intuitive actually measures the performance and where on rolls. Some mills certainly do this, but other mills don’t and so we have a mix market in that respect.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

Thank you that’s very helpful. I’m going to throw one more question which is on the asbestos side. What where the underline drivers between the higher I guess behind the higher expected asbestos liability and I guess related insurance recovery?

Rose Hoover

Analyst

I don’t know so much to use the word drivers, but we value historically the liability and the insurance receivable every two years for a 10-year period. So when we value in 2012, we value to 2022, in 2014 we value an additional two years; we rolled that out until 2024. So you have additional claims lawsuits being found in that period and you have settlements claim lawsuits, defense cost and you have additional insurance recoveries.

Rodney L. Scagline

Analyst

Does it always go up Rose or does it sometimes go down when you revalue?

Rose Hoover

Analyst

We had one year where we had a credit because of insurance coverage.

Rodney L. Scagline

Analyst

So Jus the reason I asked Rose that question is one may ask why don’t we just try and estimate this all in one big lump sum and get it over with and we certainly ask that question internally, but the problem is that if there is a variability as people get older as people die who may have worked with this product, things change. So we are doing it in this method of measuring it every couple of years, revaluating it hopefully some of the years will go down and hopefully the damage won’t be too high, but I expect personally and I think Rose does that there will be increases in the future, its juts impossible to estimate what they would be.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

Okay I think I understand that but the stuff that has been paid out in prior years as you move forward two years that’s no longer part of the calculation.

Dee Ann Johnson

Analyst

That would drop off when we do the revaluation.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much.

John S. Stanik

Analyst

Welcome. End of Q&A

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And we have no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to John Stanik for closing remarks.

John S. Stanik

Analyst

Thank you Liane. I just had a couple of statements to make here. As I said earlier, I have been in this position before, not only as a CEO but in leadership of a company that’s struggling. While I'm still learning this business, I am confident about our prospects. Our balance sheet is strong, our people are remarkably enthusiastic and open to change and I absolutely believe in them. At this point, even with restructuring charges possible, I like our changes of 2015 showing improvement over 2014, thereby successfully stopping the recent history performance decline and beginning a new era for Ampco-Pittsburgh Corporation. Thank you for listening in and we’ll sign off now.

Operator

Operator

And this concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.