Greg Lovins
Analyst · Citigroup Global Markets. Please go ahead
Thanks, Mitch, and hello everyone. We delivered a solid start to the year with adjusted earnings per share of $1.48, in line with our expectations. As expected, pension settlement charges, almost entirely non-cash, drove a loss in reported income. Reported earnings per share was a negative $1.74, including a $3.13 per share hit from the pension settlement charges, net of tax. We grew sales by 2.4% on an organic basis, as currency translation reduced reported sales growth by 4.4 points in the quarter. And adjusted operating margin increased by 30 basis points to 10.9%. And we realized $5 million of net restructuring savings in the quarter. And note that we are still incurring transition costs associated with the European restructuring with savings ramping up in the second half of the year. Turning now to cash generation and allocation, we generated $7 million of free cash flow in the quarter, which was up roughly $27 million compared to the prior year, and recall that free cash flow in the first quarter is typically negative, driven primarily by the timing of employee incentive and customer rebate payments. In the first quarter, we effectively settled the liabilities associated with the termination of our US pension plan. The cash cost to complete this transaction was significantly better than expected, reflecting competitive market conditions for the purchase of annuities. As we've discussed, we've increased our pace of fixed capital and IT-related spending for a couple of year period, with gross capital spending expected to be up by about $25 million this year compared to last year, to support our organic growth and margin expansion plans. We do expect capital spending to then moderate over the next few years, consistent with our long-term capital allocation strategy. And we continue to return cash to shareholders as we repurchased roughly 0.9 million shares at an aggregate cost of $89 million and paid $44 million in dividends in the quarter. Our balance sheet remained strong. Our current leverage position gives us ample capacity to continue executing our disciplined capital allocation strategy, including investing in organic growth and acquisitions, while continuing to return cash to shareholders. We are well positioned to take advantage of any dislocations in the market should they occur over the next few years. So turning to the segment results for the quarter, Label and Graphic Material sales increased by 1.4% on an organic basis, driven by prior year pricing actions, as the volume mix declined modestly. LGM's high value segments continued to outpace growth of the base business, led by specialty and durable categories which were collectively up high-single digits on an organic basis. Breaking down LGM's organic growth in the quarter by region, North America was up low-single digits while Western Europe was roughly flat. Emerging markets also grew modestly as strength in South Asia and Latin America was largely offset by organic sales declines in China and Eastern Europe. Operating margin for the segment was down 50 basis points on an adjusted basis to 12.5%, due to the margin impact of raising prices to offset raw material inflation combined with transition costs associated with the European restructuring. Ongoing productivity initiatives, including material reengineering offset the impacts of lower volume and higher employee-related costs. At this point, we've covered the cumulative effects of the roughly 18 months of raw material cost inflation that we've experienced through a combination of both pricing actions and material reengineering. Globally, raw material costs were down modestly on a sequential basis in the first quarter and our outlook assumes relative stability through the balance of the year. Shifting now to Retail Branding and Information Solutions; RBS delivered another quarter of strong topline growth, up 7% on an organic basis, driven by both RFID and the base business. Total RFID sales were up by more than 20% for the quarter. The vast majority of which benefited the RBIS segment, with faster growth among European brands and retailers. Adjusted operating margin for this segment expanded by 220 basis points to 12.4%, as increased volume and lower currency related costs more than offset higher employee-related costs in the quarter. Turning to the Industrial and Healthcare Materials segment, sales declined by 1% on an organic basis, driven by the decline in global auto production as automotive applications globally represent about a third of IHM's total sales. Outside of automotive, Industrial categories were up mid-single-digits on an organic basis. And Healthcare categories grew at a low-single-digit pace with mid-teens growth in medical applications. And we made good progress on the margin front in IHM. Adjusted operating margin increased by 200 basis points to 9.5%, driven by productivity improvements. Focusing now on our outlook for 2019, we have maintained our guidance for adjusted earnings per share to be between $6.45 and $6.70. We have trimmed our outlook for organic sales growth to roughly 3.5% in light of the softer start to the year. With the midpoint of our EPS guidance range assuming that organic growth for LGM comes in below the long end of its long-term target range, while we continue to expect that RBS will come in above the high end of its long-term range, reflecting continued strength in RFID. We've outlined some of the other key contributing factors to this guidance on Slide 9 of our supplemental presentation materials. In particular and just focusing on the changes from our assumptions in January, at recent exchange rates, currency translation represents a roughly 2.5 point headwind to reported sales growth for the year, with a pre-tax operating income hit of $27 million. This is up modestly from the $25 million we anticipated previously. We estimate incremental pre-tax savings from restructuring, net of transition costs, will contribute about $40 million to $45 million, up from our January estimate of $35 million, as we have now completed planning that was still in process at the start of the year. Due to the timing of these actions and related transition cost, roughly 70% of the full year net savings from restructuring will be realized in the back half of the year. And as I mentioned, total pre-tax charges associated with the settlement of pension liabilities came down to roughly $450 million, with an after-tax EPS hit of roughly $3.15, almost entirely in the first quarter. In summary, we delivered another solid quarter and remain confident on our ability to deliver on our long-term goals to achieve GDP plus growth and top quartile return on capital. And we'll now open up the call for your questions.