Gayla J. Delly
Analyst · Deutsche Bank
Thank you, Don, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. Benchmark continues to execute well in a challenging end market environment. Admittedly, our revenues were slightly lower than consensus but within our guidance. Given the weak demand witnessed in the portion of the computing sector and the positioning of inventory for the new telco program ramps in October, we were pleased overall with both our revenues and earnings performance. As we guided last quarter, our third quarter revenues would be, and in fact, were essentially flat, based on slowness in summer spend in Europe, typical third quarter seasonality in IT spend, and customer caution. These scenarios played out much as we expected. We experienced growth in 3 of the 5 sectors we serve during the third quarter, and based on current forecast from our customers, we expect to see growth in all sectors during the fourth quarter. Our performance for the fourth quarter and moving into next year will be driven by translating our bookings over the past 18 months into production revenues and the integration of our recent acquisition. Both of these key activities are well underway. We are also pleased with our operating margin performance this quarter. We are making significant investments. First, in support of further revenue growth as we ramp the sizable number and level of programs that we have booked over the past 6 to 7 quarters, and, in our acquisition and integration activities during the third quarter. We continue to see solid bookings in the nontraditional markets. Many of these we are supporting from design to production and while these programs have a longer ramp phase, they also enjoy a much longer life cycle. We are excited to add these important products to our program mix. As we migrate these programs into production and complete the integration activities, we are currently aligned to achieve our 4% operating margin target in the second half of 2014. This is 2 quarters later than we had anticipated, primarily associated with some timing changes on the ramp moving a bit to the right, and also with our integration efforts. New bookings. Let's turn to Slide 8 for our third quarter 2013 business wins. We had another strong quarter of program bookings with both new and existing customers. Our new bookings represent new products to Benchmark and these do not include revision updates or re-spins of existing products. During the third quarter, our new bookings included 29 new programs, 7 of these are engineering projects. Our new bookings have an estimated annual revenue run rate between $145 million and $170 million. Looking at acquisition and integration focus. As Don noted, we completed the acquisition of the EMS operations of CTS earlier this month. We welcome the customers and employees new to the Benchmark family and we look forward to future growth together. This acquisition supports our strategic commitment to expand our portfolio of leading customers in nontraditional and highly regulated markets, and importantly, strengthen the depth and scope of Benchmark's new product express [ph] capabilities on the West Coast. This is a structural alignment in our combined team's approach with the key focus on customer engagement and serving the customer. We look forward to expanding our global design and solution services with our newest customers. The employee and customer integration process is well underway and we're pleased with the progress thus far. Looking at fourth quarter guidance, let's move to Slide 9. As we discussed last quarter, we will begin to realize revenues from several of our new program ramps during the fourth quarter. Based on the current forecast from our customers, our fourth quarter guidance is as follows: Revenues between $685 million and $715 million; diluted earnings per share excluding special items between $0.34 and $0.38. The following items are excluded from the guidance. Estimated restructuring, integration and acquisition-related charges of approximately $2 million and estimated insurance recoveries, if any. We will continue to balance our near-term financial performance and our investments in support of our long-term growth goal. Our guidance reflects an improvement in our operating margin to approximately 3.7% at the midpoint and also reflects a higher than anticipated tax rate at 23% for the fourth quarter, as Don indicated. Looking at the overall markets, let's turn to Slide 10. Overall visibility from our customers and a read from the marketplace indicate no significant change from last quarter. Our customers remain positive, but also realistic related to the short-term and near-term prospects for their business. The energy and customer excitement we see today is supported largely by their innovative new products being introduced into the marketplace. Now to provide some color on each of the industries we serve, I'll begin with computing. In computing, we did see weak demand for some of the products late in the quarter, resulting in lower than anticipated revenue levels in Compute. However, within this sector overall, this softer demand was offset by revenues from new computing programs. So net-net, this resulted in quarter-over-quarter sector revenue increase. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, we see increased sales in computing based on continued new program ramp, as well as seasonality in the December quarter. Looking next at telco. As we stated in our last quarter call, we witnessed the greatest volatility in the products and programs we support within the telecommunications sector. During the past 2 quarters, we saw delays in several new program ramps related to the timing of end market transition. These programs have now launched. The outlook from our customers for 2014 remains positive with a combined impact of some expanded telecom infrastructure spend and also growth from new bookings in this sector. Next, taking a look at industrial controls. We saw improvement last quarter supported by an increase in capital project spending and we categorize this sector's performance as stable going forward. We view this sector as one that provides slow and steady growth over time for Benchmark and we believe that Benchmark has a long runway of positive opportunities to provide both topline revenue and bottom-line margin growth in support of this sector. Looking next at the medical sector. We remain excited about the level of new business we're winning in the medical sector. Let me share a bit of backdrop on the rollout I expect to see in the medical sector and the programs we have won. Clearly, these ramps, given the regulatory requirements in this sector, take the longest period of time from award to revenue recognition and even more so yet, for those in which we are engaged in the design phase. This causes a level of nonlinearity in the revenue stream for medical during the key -- current key transition and ramp period. But we, with our customers, are committed to successful product launches, which are on the roadmap over the next 12 to 18 months and in some cases, even longer. This is a long time frame in comparison to other technology products, but these products normally are followed by a much longer life cycle. Our customers in this sector have expressed some general caution based on the U.S. medical insurance and equipment marketplace unknown, but remain positive overall. For the fourth quarter, we expect to see slight improvements in this sector in 2014 and as these new products and customers begin to ramp, we expect to have more visible improvement in revenue in the latter portion of 2014. In Test and Instrumentation, next, this sector is influenced by the semi-cap market space. We saw improvements in demand during the quarter and expect to see a similar level of improvement in the fourth quarter. Our customers in this space are generally optimistic for next year. We are performing very well for these customers and the investments in the semi-cap space that we have made over the past 3 to 4 years position us well to grow with these customers in the future. Next, let's move to Slide 9 -- Slide 11. In summary, our solid third quarter results were demonstrated for Benchmark. We're pleased with the results we achieved. We have a focus on profitable growth. With our strong operational performance for our customers, we see the ability to build sustainable growth next quarter and further into 2014. As we stated last quarter, we are not waiting for the macro environment to drive growth. Our customers remain somewhat cautious in the current environment but continue to eagerly support the transition of their new programs with Benchmark from design to production. We also have the opportunity to leverage cost as we continue our integration processes. As we look forward, we expect to return to year-over-year growth in 2014. And as we stated, we have a line of sight to achieve our 4% operating margin in the second half of 2014. Our new program wins, diversification and acquisition activity provide us the opportunity to leverage cost and give us confidence that our margins are on path. Looking at capital allocations, this is the key focus area for Benchmark. As Don said, we have $437 million of cash on the balance sheet with $107 million of this in the U.S. We continue to look at and evaluate the most tax efficient methods to manage our non-U.S. cash balances. Regarding capital allocation, we continue to invest in our business and create returns for our shareholders. We have deployed nearly $100 million for strategic acquisitions that provide long-term and strategic growth opportunities during 2013, and we have returned $31 million to shareholders through our share repurchase program, which is ongoing. We will continue to invest in our organic growth, strategic acquisitions and will also look to complete our repurchase of $57 million remaining in our authorized share repurchases. As we've stated last quarter, the common denominator for our future strong foundation is strong execution in all areas of our business. Execution on our acquisition integration, our productivity, management and improvement and continued improvements in our new bookings overall. The execution is not achievable without the continued support of our phenomenal customer base and the innovative products that they allow us to support. We also require the continued commitment of our loyal and flexible employees who continue to position Benchmark as the solutions provider of choice for design and manufacturing services. With that, I'd like to open the floor up for questions. Operator?