Carrie Majeski
Analyst · Frontier Investments. Please say your question
I am going to start again by going through our Ag sector and starting with Art’s-Way Manufacturing, our largest business. In the second quarter, our sales for 2015 are $6,050,000 compared to $6,360,000 in 2014. This was a decrease of $310,000. Our income before tax in the second quarter for 2015 is $704,000 compared to $360,000 in 2014. That is an increase of $344,000, or 95%. The bulk of the decrease in sales comes from a decrease in the OEM blower sales, and this is really a timing issue from the first quarter to the second quarter. When we look at our blower sales year-on-year, we are actually showing OEM blower sales are up 2.5%. So, we just had so much more throughput in the factory in the first quarter compared to last year. Our sales of our Art’s-Way Manufacturing whole goods remained consistent quarter-on-quarter. Year-to-date sales for 2015 are $10,815,000 compared $9,144,000. This is an increase of $1,671,000, or 18%. Our year-to-date income before tax for 2015 is $1,302,000 compared to a loss of $71,000 in 2014. This is an increase of $1,373,000. Our backlog currently is sitting at $2,677,000 compared to $5,358,000. This is a decrease of $2,681,000. The sales of our grinder mixers are up approximately $2 million over last year. Again, this is due to accelerated deliveries in the first and second quarters and just having so much more additional throughput in the factories in quarter one especially over quarter one of 2014, but continuing that throughput into the second quarter of 2015 as well. Our income has much improved for both quarters and year-to-date. This is due to increased efficiencies and improved management of our slow moving inventories as well as that shift with the grinder mixer sales. Grinder mixers do have strong margins for us and that is reflected in our overall gross margins as well. We have seen a decrease in our incoming orders compared to the first quarter of the year, so we are making some alternations in our operations. Accordingly we have already cut the number of indirect positions in our Armstrong and West Union facilities, and we are running some reduced hours of our direct staff. We are currently running 32-hour work weeks. We have also offered an early retirement package to some of our staff to bring down the headcount as we continue to go forward here. We are pleased with the performance in the second quarter that we are being very proactive and reactive to the declining in the orders to try to maintain the positive numbers as we go forward. Due to the current economic condition, dealers are significantly decreasing the amount of units that they stock on their lots because they are currently sitting on a lot of self-propelled equipment. As a result, we are working on building our whole goods inventory so that when an end user has demand for a product, it will be readily available because we cannot depend on our dealers right now to carry that inventory for us. Universal Harvesters, sales for the second quarter of 2015 are $271,000 compared to $1,139,000 in the prior year. This is a decrease of $868,000. Income before tax at UHC for 2015 is a loss of $78,000 compared to income in 2014 of $138,000, so the decrease of $216,000. Their year-to-date sales for 2015 are $485,000 compared $2,160,000, a decrease of $1,675,000. Their year-to-date income before tax is a loss of $218,000 compared to $285,000 in 2014. This is a decrease of $503,000. Our backlog at UHC is currently sitting at $136,000 compared to $183,000 a year ago, a decrease of $47,000. We have pulled back our staffing levels down at UHC to the bare minimum, so we are really able to respond to customer orders as they come in and still deliver parts. But we are down to approximately 4 people on the shop floor at this point compared to 15 a year ago. We are evaluating the goodwill at UHC. We are currently sitting on $620,000 approximately of goodwill. It is likely given the economic conditions that we will have to impair some of this goodwill by year end. Art’s-Way International, their sales for the second quarter of 2015 were $114,000 compared to $109,000 in 2014. Their income before tax for the second quarter of 2015 is a loss of $109,000 compared to $46,000 in 2014. Their year-to-date sales numbers are $535,000 compared to $803,000 in 2014. This is a decrease of $268,000. Most of that decrease is really a spillover from 2013 which is the first year that we had purchased Art’s-Way International. We struggled getting into production right after the purchase. So, the pre-season orders really didn’t get delivered until 2014. So, those sales levels for the first quarter, especially of 2014 elevated because of that. Our year-to-date income before tax for 2015 is a loss of $179,000 compared to income of $95,000 in the prior year. Our current backlog is sitting at $628,000 compared to $576,000 in the prior year. This is an increase of $61,000 or 10%. We did just conclude our early order program for the snow blowers, and we had a 4% increase in Canada and in the U.S., where we sold very few snow blowers last year, just 20 snow blowers, we have sold 73 this year. The largest portion of that increase is to a distributor in the Northeast, where they experienced heavy snowfalls last year. So, they were able to move through a lot of their inventory, and the dealer is in need to restock his inventory there. Income numbers are off due to the shift in the sales that I mentioned earlier as well as the fact that we did move our operations from Clifford, Ontario to Listowel. The move took place over the month of May and June. So, we have a number of one-time costs in the quarter associated with that move. Moving to the total sales for the Ag sector, the second quarter sales are $6,365,000 compared to $7,562,000, a decrease of $1,197,000. The second quarter income before tax for 2015 is $538,000 compared to $542,000 in the prior year. Our year-to-date sales for 2015 are $11,681,000 compared to $12,004,000 in the prior year. Our year-to-date income before tax for 2015 is $937,000 compared to $301,000, an increase of $636,000. Our total backlog for the Ag sector is sitting at $3,316,000 compared to $5,994,000. Moving forward to the Ohio Metal sector, their sales for the second quarter of 2015 are $554,000 compared to $895,000, a decrease of $341,000. Our income before tax is a loss of $69,000 compared to a loss in the prior year of $2,000. Our year-to-date sales at Ohio Metal for 2015 are $1,351,000 compared to $1,806,000, a decrease of $455,000. The income before tax for 2015 is a loss of $83,000 compared to income of $64,000 in the prior year, so the decrease of $147,000. Our backlog at Ohio Metal is currently sitting at $547,000 compared to $499,000, an increase of $48,000. Revenues at Ohio Metal continued to be down due to the decline in the oil and gas industries. Last quarter, we announced that we had hired Dave Luellen as our new Director of Business Development. He will be working over all sectors. However, we have had him dedicate most of his time to Ohio Metals. He has been working solely with this entity, because they have been really neglected for about 10 years prior to the time that we purchased them. So, we are focused on adding sales reps and reenergizing the reps that we have. We have launched our new website and we have updated our sales and marketing materials. We attended the ISA Show, Industrial Supply Association Show in April and we are bringing all of our sales reps together for a sales meeting at the end of July. We are really focused on raising awareness and excitement about our brands and working to expand our current product offerings. We are known for a very quality product. However, the product that we deliver is rather narrow in scope. So, we do want to expand the product offering that we have while maintaining that name for quality in the industry. Moving to the Vessel segment, their second quarter sales for 2015 are $476,000 compared to $475,000 in the prior year. Their income before tax for 2015 is a loss of $11,000 compared to a loss of $85,000 in the prior year. Our year-to-date sales at vessels are $1,003,000 compared to $898,000 in the prior year. This is an increase of $105,000 or 11%. Our year-to-date loss for 2015 is $78,000 compared to $125,000 in the prior year. Our backlog is sitting at $472,000 compared to $235,000 in the prior year. Art’s-Way Vessels is a segment that we have really struggled with over the last several years and our goal this year is really to increase consistency through our sales in production cycle. We have now had two relatively good quarters in a row and we have a nice backlog coming into it. So, we feel like we are able to have that consistency certainly throughout the next quarter and hopefully through the rest of the year as well. I did want to just point out the fact that we did deliver a large job in the quarter that we had to give a price concession on due to a prior quality issue last year. And if we would not have had the price concession on that large job, this division would have been profitable for the quarter. So, we really feel like we are making some progress in our turnaround at Art’s-Way Vessels. Moving on to the Modular Building segment, our sales for 2015 for the second quarter are $409,000 compared to $537,000 in 2014. Our income before tax for the second quarter of 2015 are a loss of $104,000 compared to a loss in the prior year of $120,000. Our year-to-date sales at Modular segment for 2015 are $1,058,000 compared to $998,000 in the prior year, an increase of $60,000. Our income before tax in 2015 is a loss of $177,000 compared to a loss of $249,000 in the prior year. Our current backlog is sitting at $1,388,000 compared to $119,000 in the prior year. This is an increase of $1,269,000. We did just recently receive a large job for a number of Ag buildings going to one site. That job was for $819,000. So, that’s a large chunk of our backlog that we anticipate delivering by September of 2015. Our final report does remain strong for this entity with over 300 leads that were following. There has been a shift however to Ag buildings ticking over about 50% of the open leads. So, there is a definite shift from the research facilities to the Ag buildings. And so we are really chasing those sales and the sales of the Ag facilities seemed to close a lot faster than the research facilities. Dan continues to attend and present at many of the shows throughout the summer. That brings us to our corporate totals. Our corporate total for sales for the second quarter of 2015 is $7,804,000 compared to $9,464,000, a decrease of $1,665,000. Our second quarter income before tax for 2015 is $354,000 compared to $335,000 in 2014, an increase of $19,000. Our year-to-date sales in 2015 are $15,093,000 compared to $15,706,000, a decrease of $613,000. Our year-to-date income before tax for 2015 is $599,000 compared to a loss last year of $9,000 and that’s an increase to our income before tax of $608,000. And that concludes the numbers. Marc, I will hand the call back over to you.