Earnings Labs

Avient Corporation (AVNT)

Q4 2012 Earnings Call· Wed, Jan 30, 2013

$36.14

-1.98%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-1.62%

1 Week

+4.32%

1 Month

+0.41%

vs S&P

-1.49%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the PolyOne Corporation Fourth Quarter 2012 Conference Call. My name is [Senal] and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only-mode. We will have a question-and-answer session at the end of the conference. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Cynthia Tomasch, Vice President of Planning and Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Cynthia Tomasch

President

Thank you, [Senal]. Good morning and welcome to everybody joining us on the call today. Before beginning, we would like to remind you that statements made during this conference call, which are not historical facts, may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements will give current expectations or forecasts to future events and are not guarantees of future performance. They're based on management's expectations and involve the number of business risks and uncertainties any of which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed and/or implied by the forward-looking statements. Some of these risks and uncertainties can be found in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as in today's press release. During the discussion today, the company will use both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the earnings release posted on the PolyOne website where the company describes the non-GAAP measures and provides a reconciliation of them to the most comparable financial measures. Operating results referenced during today’s call will be comparing the fourth quarter of 2012 to the fourth quarter of 2011 unless otherwise stated. Joining me today on the call is our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Newlin; Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Bob Patterson; and Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, Rich Diemer. Now I will turn the call over to Steve Newlin.

Steve Newlin

Chief Executive Officer

Well thanks, Cynthia and thanks again to everyone who’s joining us on the call this morning. We always welcome the opportunity to speak with our investors and analysts about PolyOne’s recent performance. I’m very pleased to share our fourth quarter results with you as it caps off another record year for PolyOne on many fronts. We delivered fourth quarter record adjusted EPS of $0.21 and that’s a 17% increase over last year, which marks our 13th consecutive quarter of double digit year over year adjusted EPS growth. Each of our four segments improved organic operating profits over last year’s fourth quarter. As has been the case throughout the year and well documented in the media, the extremely sluggish demand in Europe continues to be a challenge for companies. Our results reflect our effectiveness in moderating year-over-year declines in European business, improving specialty mix and curtailing and pruning of lower margin business. For the full year 2012 sales totaled $3 billion as we delivered record adjusted EPS of $1.20 a share. That’s an 18% increase over our prior record set in 2011. These full year results are particularly encouraging as they were generated by record-breaking performances in each of our three strategic platforms despite the previously referenced European headwinds. In 2012, 40% of the specialty platform earnings were generated in Europe compared to 52% in 2011 on a pro forma basis. Nevertheless all three platforms delivered record earnings and operating margins. Both our distribution and the specialty platforms achieved record annual revenues. As evidence of our mix improvement success during 2012 gross margins expanded from 16.6% to 19.5%. Healthcare continues to be one of our best performing areas of growth and it now represents 12% of total company revenues or $350 million in 2012. For those analysts and investors who know…

Rich Diemer

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Steve and good morning. It is my pleasure to provide more detail on our fourth quarter results and the many records that we achieved. We recorded fourth quarter sales of $679.4 million and adjusted net income of $18.8 million versus sales of $640.4 million and adjusted net income of $16.7 million for the fourth quarter of 2011. Adjusted EPS expanded 17% to a fourth quarter record of $0.21 versus $0.18 last year. These results are driven by earnings and operating margin improvements in all platforms. In fact, we achieved fourth quarter operating record – profit records in all three platforms. Sales increased 6% over prior year with the ColorMatrix acquisition and specialty price and mix offsetting the European demand challenges. Foreign exchange had an unbearable impact of 1% compared to the prior year. From an end market perspective, we experienced strong growth in healthcare, wire and cable, appliance, packaging and packaging end markets offsetting softness in European automotive and electronics. We continue to attribute this success to our investments in commercial resources, solid growth from new technology launches and the successful integration of ColorMatrix which continued to progress well. Regarding taxes, the pre-special tax rate in the fourth quarter was 39.4% compared to 30.7% in the fourth quarter of 2011 with the differential largely due to geographic mix in earnings. Also, in accordance with accounting rules, we did not recognize the 2012 R&D tax credit that was enacted in early January of this year which would favourably impact the EPS by a little over a penny. Special items in the quarter resulted in an after-tax charge of $16.3 million or $0.18 per share and included an unfavorable mark to market pension charge and increased year-over-year estimated earn-out from the sale of SunBelt, environmental charges and acquisition related expenses.…

Bob Patterson

Chief Operating Officer

Thanks Rich and good morning. I am very pleased with our fourth quarter performance both with respect to our financial results and our progress in broadening our specialty platform offerings. In the fourth quarter, specialty revenues increased by 14% over the prior year to $282 million driven by the ColorMatrix acquisition, price and mix improvement, new product launches offset partially by European demand weakness and adverse foreign exchange. Adjusted operating income for the specialty platform increased to a record fourth quarter level of $20.2 million which is a 20% increase over the last year. And as you know, our specialty platform has two segments, global specialty engineered materials and global color, additives and inks. And we break down the performance for each, starting with engineered materials, sales declined 2% versus prior year to $126 million in the quarter due to lower demand in Europe and the weakness of the Europe. However with the positive effects of our mix improvement strategy, engineered materials delivered adjusted operating income of $9.3 million, a 13% improvement over last year. Global color, additives and inks increased revenue by 30% to $156 million due to organic growth in Asia and the ColorMatrix acquisition and also offset partially by declines in European demand. Adjusted operating income for color reached $10.9 million, a fourth quarter record for the segment and representing a 25% increase over last year. A highlight for this segment is that all regions including Europe contributed to a 33% increase in organic healthcare revenues compared to last year. Shifting to our distribution platform, volume increases of 9% offset partially by lower prices associated with raw material price declines resulted in increased revenues of 6% over the prior year’s same quarter to $242 million. The most significant growth occurred in the healthcare and appliance end markets.…

Steve Newlin

Chief Executive Officer

Okay, thanks Bob. As you heard it was another good quarter to end another record year for PolyOne demonstrating solid execution of what we believe is a well developed strategy. And although we moved on to our 2015 targets which we announced at our investor day last May, since 2012 has concluded I did want to spend just a few moments reflecting on the goals we set back in 2007. First of all, operating margins. Our distribution platform exceeded our target range of 4% to 5% and achieved 6.4% operating margins for the year. PP&S delivered 9% operating margins nailing the target range of 8% to 10%. Without the help of housing start assumptions that in 2007 were much higher than reality. Specialty platform achieved 9.1% return on sales nearly tripling to almost a 600 basis point improvement over 2007 although just slightly shy of the target. Secondly, in 2012, we generated 45% of our operating income for the specialty platform, a dramatic improvement from 2007 and if you go back a little bit farther where it was about 2%, it’s a substantial amount of progress. Third, we drove our specialty vitality index to 51%, up from 21% in 2007, and that’s well above our target range of 35% to 40%. What’s really important about this is what it means is over half of our specialty platform revenues, over half were generated from products introduced in the past five years. And we think that’s something to be exceptionally proud of and creates great value for our customers and shareholders. Fourth, we improved our pretax return on invested capital to 17% from 11% in 2007 exceeding our target of 15%. So all in we're pleased with our performance against these targets especially considering the economic situation in Europe and the U.S.…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first call comes from Frank Mitsch with Wells Fargo Securities.

Frank Mitsch - Wells Fargo Securities

Management

Steve, you mentioned that 40% of your profits came from the specialty – from Europe in the specialty's region, that's down from where it was a year ago. That can be a function of a couple of things. One is much stronger growth outside of the European region, as well as a disappointing performance within the European region. So can you give us your spin on or your take on what's going on in Europe in your specialties business right now? And how has January trended for you there?

Steve Newlin

Chief Executive Officer

Yeah I will talk about specialty really kind of globally if you will, Frank to try and answer your question. I think it’s a great question. First of all, I am sorry about Asia because specialty business in Asia is doing very well. Next, the North America, the business is doing well. We have stronger markets here, we see auto continuing to improve, the housing improving, medical improving, our penetration into healthcare improving as well. So some really good activities. I was in Europe a week ago and I spent – it was one of those trips that you plan on and you know you’re kind of walking into a difficult environments, so I was sort of praised for a Debbie Downer type of trip. And I got to tell you I came away really energized with what our people are doing in Europe. In context, the economy is in rough shape, auto is Europe is in tough shape. And I think it's going to continue for some period of time. But what I am excited about is where our people are pursuing new business. We are in some long-term sale cycles and we are making outstanding progress working this collaborative approach that we have. I made a lot of high level calls and these were calls that were high, wide and deep where we’re talking with the right people, not just down in the bottles of purchasing but we’re having strategic discussions, about innovation, and about how we’re progressing on formulating and joint development agreements that we have in place and working. So I would say that is about Europe. I continue to see a difficult straits for Europe for the economy at least through the first half of this year. I expect some rebound in the second half…

Frank Mitsch - Wells Fargo Securities

Management

Well, that’s very helpful. I was also struck -- sticking with specialties, I was also struck that the vitality index went up to 51%. It was 46% in the third quarter. I mean that’s a very large number. And typically, as you're getting new products, you would anticipate higher margins and so forth. Would you envision 2013 being a year where you get to the specialty margin goals that you guys fell just shy of here in 2012?

Bob Patterson

Chief Operating Officer

Well, we’re not making a specific comments about 2013 from a guidance standpoint outside of our guidance we provided in the press release on double digit EPS expansion but we do believe that a big contributor to that expansion will be improving margins in all of our platforms.

Frank Mitsch - Wells Fargo Securities

Management

I’ll take that as a definitive yes. Thank you, Bob. And then lastly Rich, you alluded to the fact that the geographic trends led to a spike in your tax rate. Where specifically were you seeing that movement? And what sort of expectations do you have for 2013 along those lines? Yeah 39.5% is something that you don't typically see out of PolyOne or anybody.

Rich Diemer

Chief Financial Officer

There is no doubt about that Frank. I think we saw an elevated tax rate as the year progressed and it was exacerbated in the fourth quarter, part of that is that little bit of small numbers and that is the weakest quarter for the company and there was a distinct shift from where have forecast our income in the quarter and more of a domestic tilt to it in the fourth quarter. But I would tell you that as we look forward we are saying – giving a range of 34% to 35% for next year and we feel it will be more balanced next year. So I think that was really a December phenomena – fourth quarter phenomena and it was exacerbated. Just in December Europe always shuts down a little bit, early in December but we saw a more of that this year.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Laurence Alexander with Jefferies & Co. Laurence Alexander - Jefferies & Co.: I guess first question, can you talk a little bit – obviously still a little bit of a detached relationship from Spartech, but can you talk a little bit about how you think the two businesses compare in their ability to pass through raw material volatility?

Steve Newlin

Chief Executive Officer

I will take that on the first. I think there is – there are couple elements to this. What we had to do, Laurence as you know at PolyOne, there is a lot of training, this is art, there is a science of pricing but then there's art of execution. And that means that we are going to have to spend the same time pitching the Spartech sales force to discipline of selling price in the art on selling price increases. It’s a matter of capturing the full costs, understanding the value proposition, where the touch points are and it’s pretty complex but we’ve got this down to a science and I think we've been demonstrating this as you’ve seen raw material increases really the last five years here and margin expansion through all that. So I think there are two elements of it. One is where – what’s your value proposition to customer and how much uniqueness do you have. And they have a lot of uniqueness, these are often customized formulations that they have. But I think the mindset is something that we will not change. We aren’t about passing through, we’re about – when you sell something and you have a cost associated with it, you’re supposed to an enterprise make profit on that, and that’s how we view our business. So as costs go up while we try to be lean, while we try to purchase efficiently, we still know that over time we’re going to invest in R&D, we’re going to get increases in compensation, and we will continue to create value for customers that we will have to capture. So a lot of this comes down to execution more than anything else. I don’t think there is any higher degree of sensitivity in the…

Bob Patterson

Chief Operating Officer

You’re right about that Laurence. First of all, with respect to that example, our businesses are incented on really a pre-tax basis, and so the tax effect being a corporate matter, you’re right that we don’t breathe easy just based on swing in tax rate but yeah every year, we develop a strategic plan which most of the current year forecasts and adds on four years, and that really is well aligned with the objectives that we outlined in our investor day in May, and aligned with the objectives that we set for 2015. Of course we have an annual budgeting process which develops interim goals to get us there but for our business units those are aligned to profitable sales growth as Steve mentioned tax arena per se. But what I really like about our internal communication is that it is perfectly aligned with what we tell our analysts and our investors and when you look at our goals as we set them for 2012, they are exactly the same that we set for ourselves internally and they will be again for 2015.

Rich Diemer

Chief Financial Officer

I think the operative element of the compensation and the targeting for the businesses is operating income. Although we are adding top line to that as well, and then the third and lesser element is working capital, and these are activities that are well within the domain and control that the business unit has. And that’s how we encompensate and evaluate, reward and recognize the business unit leaders and their teams. I hope we are answering your answers.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mike Sison, KeyBanc.

Mike Sison - KeyBanc

Management

In terms of the outlook for '13, looking for EPS growth double digits, do you expect all your segments to grow double digits? And if you do, can you maybe give us an idea of maybe which ones are going to lead the growth, which ones will lag the growth or some feel how the segments can do in '13 versus '12.

Rich Diemer

Chief Financial Officer

We do expect all of our segments to deliver double digit growth, that’s an internal objective that we have in our own goal setting process, and it aligns well with Laurence’s question on incentives. We’re not giving specific guidance by segments but directionally I think that’s a fair statement to make. Steve made an observation in earlier remarks that we don’t see recovery in Europe any time soon as possible, we could see something towards the second half of the year. So I would expect volume growth and then also the revenue growth to be driven by North America, Asia in the first half and hopefully picking up from that in Europe in the second half.

Mike Sison - KeyBanc

Management

And then I had a specific sort of thought on engineered materials. The business has been a little bit under $50 million for the last three years in terms of op income. You've shown the double-digit growth in the second half of the year. But specifically, to grow that business, to sort of get it back and to broach that $50 million and really grow that business, is it really just relying on Europe? Or are there things within your control next year that could really keep the momentum that you showed in the second half of the year?

Steve Newlin

Chief Executive Officer

I like the question, and I know Bob wants to jump in here but let me go pretty quickly. First of all, we’re not going to rely on Europe really. I can’t let this company be in the hands of some regional economy or even global economy, it’s our job to grow whatever environment that we are in. We have been doing that. So how do you manage that? Well, first of all, what’s going on in Europe right now is we are making unprecedented number of successful sales calls. I had a great trip there, and why it was exciting was who we’re calling on, what the message is, the kind of dialogue we are having and the amount of activity that we have on new technology launches that have taken place in Europe. So those are going to come in. I can’t tell you exactly what but because every sale cycle is a little different, some of these have very protracted trial processes. Others are moving quite quickly, they are reacting to challenges and I think that works in our favour. So I am feeling pretty darn good about our position in the context of a weak European economy. That said, we do other things to drive our growth in EM and there is a lot of new technology and product launches globally. I would say it’s unprecedented in our engineered materials space. There is so much work being done around light weighting and material change out and displacing metal in blast and aluminium for that matter. The acquisition of Glasforms gives us unique opportunity, this was a – this is a great little company and it’s down in Birmingham, Alabama and they have done a wonderful job with technology. Actually they have – they don’t have critical mass, the market is tough globally, or even throughout the U.S. Again we’ve got a handful of sellers to manage $50 million worth of business, and you have all of our feet on the street out there that can enable and participate in the sales of some high value added products that are unique, they are new, they are fresh, and they are in growing markets, like oil and gas production for example, and wind turbine et cetera. So these are reasons that I feel really excited about, especially engineered materials business. I think it’s the place in our company where we can demonstrate incredible, it’s one of the place we can demonstrate incredible value add for our customers. And you can very carefully and precisely document and get agreement upon how much quantify the value that we’re creating for those customers. So sorry, Bob, but –

Bob Patterson

Chief Operating Officer

Yeah, I want to point out also for – before anybody becomes one with engineered materials performance, let me just give some highlights. For the fourth quarter operating income as percentage of sales improved from 6.4% to 7.4%, that’s a 13% increase in operating income but when you dig into the P&L little further there, you will see that we actually added $3.5 million of SG&A year over year. So that operating income increase didn’t come at the expense of investment and in fact, we continue to invest in this business to grow, I think it’s a very important observation about the platform and that year over year there is no doubt Europe just had the single largest influence on the results in both engineered materials and in color organically but it hasn’t stopped us from investing in commercial resources and you could see that in the P&L. So when you look at those year over year results that’s just encouraging to look at where we made those investments too.

Steve Newlin

Chief Executive Officer

Just to add one final comment on this and I like Bob’s point because it’s a good one. But every cloud has its silver lining and I think the challenges in Europe have really gotten the attention of our management team there to develop skill sets in average players and to deal with some participants that weren’t really effectively out there selling new business. We have a much more aggressive sales force, they are making the right calls on the right people, they are talking about the right thing. It is very impressive and it’s a dramatic change from even two years ago. So I think our future there will be just fine.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Kevin Hocevar, Northcoast Research.

Kevin Hocevar - Northcoast Research

Management

Could you talk about ColorMatrix for a second? You've had it now for a year, so just wondering how it's gone compared to your expectations. And as we head into 2013, has there been any change in your outlook there? I think a couple quarters ago you said it might get $0.12 or something like that in terms of accretion next year. So wondering if there is any change to that based on what you've seen.

Bob Patterson

Chief Operating Officer

Hey Kevin, this is Bob. First of all, we’re really pleased with how the integration of ColorMatrix has gone this year in terms of how our two businesses are working together and collaborate on new technology and product launches. We’ve continued to – we’ve invested in the business the way that we certainly would, in fact, we added $3 million in commercial resources and we announced the expansion in South Africa, all that’s really going well. I’d say the one potential surprise for us this year is it’s just been the impact on Europe and ColorMatrix has not been immune to the recessionary conditions there. So when we started the year we guided above $0.04 to $0.06 of EPS accretion from ColorMatrix and they did just get inside of that range. And the real like I said delta being really Europe in terms of the factors keeping us from going above that in terms of what we saw in the summer. So and at this point we haven’t made any changes to our future estimates on the ability of ColorMatrix to deliver in the future. The only caveat I would say is that Europe continues to remain sluggish for all of our businesses and we need to what we can to stroll outside of that.

Kevin Hocevar - Northcoast Research

Management

And sticking to Europe, I think there was some restructuring that you're going through, or announced maybe a quarter or two ago. How much did you save in 2012? And then how much more incremental savings do you expect to get in 2013?

Rich Diemer

Chief Financial Officer

This is Rich, Kevin. I think we spent 9 or $10 million, that was the plan to get to similar amount of savings. It was substantially done earlier in the year, I think we had $1 million of spending in Q4 and we expect to get the payback that we anticipated when we launched the program.

Kevin Hocevar - Northcoast Research

Management

And then, and finally, distribution closed out the year really strong and what has appeared -- it seemed to be a bit of a seasonally weaker quarter. Operating profits were in line pretty much with the other three quarters of the year. So, just wondering, was there anything incremental that happened in distribution in the fourth quarter that, say, didn't happen? Like any new business wins, mix improvements, cost savings, anything like that, that we should expect to carry forward into 2013 and really get these high 6%, almost 7% type margins going forward?

Bob Patterson

Chief Operating Officer

Well, we continue to believe that mix improvement is an important part of the distribution strategy as well as our other platforms. So I think you can continue to expect improvement in 2013 over ’12 in that regard. And there isn’t really – what I have grown to learn really here in the business is that that can be hard to draw conclusions in terms of what happens in December in any one year. And sometimes you can see some activity having a little faster in one year than the other, just based on where people believe prices are going to go in the next year. And there may have been a little bit of that in December but nothing I would really draw specific attention to.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Dmitry Silversteyn, Longbow Research.

Dmitry Silversteyn - Longbow Research

Management

A lot of my questions have been answered but I'd like to follow-up on the PP&S business. You talked about the volumes in that division being up modestly in the fourth quarter. But if you look at 2012 overall just on an annual basis, can you talk about how PP&S did with respect to volumes? And also what your expectations are for 2013, given the continuing recovery in housing and automotive and appliance markets? As well as what your pricing expectations are as far as being able to pass through or needing to pass through, lower raw material costs, if you expect the raw materials to decline.

Bob Patterson

Chief Operating Officer

This is Bob. We did see pretty significant improvement in margins in PP&S this year on slightly volume and that really does lend itself to mix improvement in the same way that we talked about in our other businesses. I think what’s an important observation to make is that when we are in the early stages of what we see as a housing recovery I think we are going to continue to be selective about the types of business that we pick up versus what you might have seen PolyOne do back in 2004, ’05, or ’06 the last time housing really picked up and so one observation I would like to make as we got a lot of questions about housing is that while housing starts were up, or in the magnitude of 25% this year. Sales as reported by the analysts were up about 7%. So it’s not a one correlation on housing starts and vinyl, we still believe there is a high correlation between our business and starts but just not to the extent that what we saw in ’04, ’05, and ’06. So hopefully that helps. Lastly let me just make another observation, PP&S continues to do a great job with lean six sigma executing on a black belt projects and delivering from a sourcing saving standpoint and being disciplined about price management and those have been helpful from a margin perspective as well.

Dmitry Silversteyn - Longbow Research

Management

On the distribution business, you guys were expanding in China and also in Costa Rica, can you update us on where those expansion stand and what kind of expectations do you have for those little outposts and also – I was just going to say broadly speaking, on your expectations for pricing of the resins that you buy and sell through the distribution business?

Steve Newlin

Chief Executive Officer

I will speak to the geographic expansion first. We did greenfield a distribution facility in Shanghai in July of 2011, so this year was really our full year of operation and generated about $10 million of revenue there. So it was actually a really good first year for us and recall that our workers were principally serving that healthcare space for specific customers who asked us to get started in that region. Costs Rica, we actually expect to follow a pretty similar pattern, again being pulled there by the healthcare base and customers that we already have. So I am expecting similar results in the first year, year and a half of operations there, what we saw in Asia.

Bob Patterson

Chief Operating Officer

I’d just add, the question on POD has come up couple of times, the volume for the quarter was up 9% there. They had some raw material declines which were substantially passed through but still had some margin expansion. It looks like key raw materials are going to be up in the first quarter especially propylene substantially beat them to double digits. And we’re getting some reductions in PiO2 but that’s more of a impact on specialty than anything else. So there is still steady state when it comes to raw materials and I think you have to be nimble and adaptable and move quickly on the rise and fall of raws, I think we’re really good at managing this. So good volume growth in the quarter for POD, I think that the investment in number of people that we made for feet on the street in that business is improving and I think our execution is improving in that space as well.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Christopher Butler, Sidoti & Company. Christopher Butler - Sidoti & Company: You just touched on my question a little bit, but in terms of raw materials for the rest of the business, could you talk to and what kind of benefits you may have gotten in the fourth quarter that may go away as we see these costs come up?

Bob Patterson

Chief Operating Officer

We’re expecting sort of low, mid single digit type increases in 2013. As you know in our distribution business sometimes there can be a bit of a favourable benefit just on timing but not much of that because we have so low inventory on (inaudible) about 12 times a year. It’s actually really hard to pull that out in the fourth quarter because it’s seasonally our weakest quarter of the year and that’s true for PP&S and distribution. So there is nothing of order of magnitude of a 0.2 in the fourth quarter that we don’t see replicating in 2013.

Steve Newlin

Chief Executive Officer

Yeah I would add that really compared to Q3 we saw a 1% to 2% increase in the raws and that’s driven by some of the large feedstock, PVC was up 70% to 80% on average over the quarter, PCM I think was up high single digits over Q3 and propylene monomer was up 6 to 10%. So I won’t exactly say we had benefits for the quarter, year over year there were some declines certainly that we were able to capture and we share some of this. But I think the fourth quarter saw a little different trend in the year and I think we managed it very effectively as evidenced by our margins. Christopher Butler - Sidoti & Company: And coming back to Europe, on the third-quarter conference call you sounded a little bit more optimistic on the environment, showing some sequential improvement. That seems to have changed in the rhetoric this time around. Is that just seasonality, not getting as clean a look with the December quarter?

Steve Newlin

Chief Executive Officer

I wish it was seasonality and your observation and comment is correct, Chris. Yes we have been pretty good at sort of seeing challenges ahead of time, it goes back I think the last five, five years sometimes has been early observers in terms of where the economy is going in, and I will tell you we missed the fall in Europe, but I think we have adjusted and handled it as well as we can, I don’t think – it’s always as Bob said hard to segregate seasonality from reality at times and we really don’t want to hang our heads on any – we don’t want to be misled to thinking as seasonality, we are racing for what we think is continued softness. I mean if you look at automobiles, auto builds are very poor in Europe and we’ve got a fairly auto based business. Auto production for the quarter was down over 11% in Q4 and for the full year 6%, so not a really any reversal of a trend. But like I said earlier I love our position right now in Europe. I really am energized by what our people are doing to capture new – exciting new business opportunities and I think the raw material – the new product launches that we have – have just launched and are launching in Europe are spot on for the needs of this economy. So yeah, we were a little surprised that we thought that Q3 and 4 of ’11 were so below that our base was going up that comps would improve but what we didn’t expect was a further deterioration in especially in auto in Q4. So our mission is to sell plenty of new business to offset that and still grow, and I think we are on the right track to do that. Christopher Butler - Sidoti & Company: And just, finally, with the acquisitions, can you give us a sense of CapEx and depreciation for 2013?

Rich Diemer

Chief Financial Officer

This is Rich. Excluding Spartech our CapEx for next year will be in the 50 to 55 range, and that continues to run in the two-thirds of our D&A. So D&A is estimated between 75 and 80, and so that includes the Glasforms, excludes the Spartech. On Spartech what I would tell you is that CapEx we would anticipate to be in the 20 to 25 range and once the deal is closed, we will give you more of a feel on that. We get our acquisition accounting in mind, we will give you more of a feel of D&A as it relates to Spartech.

Steve Newlin

Chief Executive Officer

Hey listen, thanks for all the questions. I am sorry, we have to cut this off. We’ve got a pretty tight schedule with the global employee meetings today. We had our full hour here. We appreciate the interest, thank you for your time. Thank you for joining us today and we look forward to updating you on the first quarter results for our call that’s scheduled in early May. Thank you all very much.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the presentation. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.