Matthew O. Williamson
Analyst · CJS Securities
Thanks, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to start by sharing a few of the new products that we've launched in the second quarter, and these are captured on Slide 11. We launched enhancements to several important software and system products in addition to expanding our line of proprietary ToughWash sign and label materials for the food and beverage market and other harsh environment applications. Next quarter, we begin shipping our new BMP21-plus handheld printer, our next-generation portable printer for the wire identification market, which we started to introduce to our distributors last month. We're very excited about this new product, which is a significant improvement to our popular BMP21 printer. Now let's turn to Slide 12 for the ID Solutions financial review. Sales increased 15.8% to $194.7 million in the second quarter. The acquisition of PDC contributed 13.8% to sales. Foreign currency translation decreased revenues by 0.5% and organic sales increased by 2.5%. Looking deeper into our second quarter results, our Brady Brand business in the U.S. experienced slightly positive organic sales when compared to the prior year as we experienced a slowdown in order patterns from our distributors in January. U.S. grew for a 10th consecutive quarter, albeit by a slower rate with growth coming from all major product lines. We saw particular strength from the product ID labels sales to our OEM customers, a theme common to other Brady regions. We also feel positive about our increased volume from our wire marking printer systems, which is offset by slower-than-anticipated sales in some other products. Mexico is a highlight, with double-digit growth, while Canada was slower-than-expected this quarter but still reporting modest growth for the fiscal year. Our business in Brazil is approximately flat this quarter when compared to the second quarter of the prior year. As mentioned last quarter, our Brazilian business is demonstrating signs of improvement with certain OEM customers. And our ongoing growth with our MRO business is demonstrated in January. Signs of improvement are seen in our customer service, product quality and overall business development. We're encouraged by our improvements but remain cautious about the near-term growth due to the economic headwinds in Brazil. Our business in EMEA continued its trend of delivering mid-single digit organic sales growth this quarter, which was slightly better than we anticipated coming into the quarter. This growth was driven by our business in the established Western European economies, as well as Central Europe where the economies appear to be on the mend. We saw growth from all product categories, notably product identification sales to OEMs and increased volume from some of our Safety and Wire ID products. We remain optimistic about the rate of growth and we expect to see low-single-digit organic sales growth in EMEA for the remainder of the year. Our Asian ID Solutions business saw double-digit growth this quarter, also driven by sales of product identification to OEM customers, particularly in China. We also saw a positive but less robust growth to our -- in our MRO business. We are investing in the growth potential of this region by expanding our production capacity and capabilities to continue meeting the needs of our customers. To build our share in Asia we are focused on building partnerships with key strategic customers and distributors, while taking share with our high-quality niche products. PDC, which is predominantly focused on the health care industry, had sales of $39.2 million in the second quarter, which was down approximately 5.6% from the same period in the prior year. PDC's health care business correlates with U.S. hospital admission rates, which we believe were down approximately 3% year-over-year in the second quarter. We are seeing steady improvement in our products tied to electronic medical records, offset by products tied to older medical systems. Looking forward, we do not anticipate a near-term rebound in U.S. hospital admission rates, thus any growth in health care will come from taking share with new and innovative products, sales programs and expanding the type of health care facilities we serve. Also, we continue leveraging sales synergies across the U.S. and Western Europe, primarily with our existing People ID products. In addition to our expansion in industries such as health care and focused geographies such as China and Central Europe, we expanded our sales force in the U.S. and Western Europe in addition to recent expansions of our team of sales professionals focused on strategic accounts. We believe we're on the front-end of these resources, beginning to generate results. Additionally, the keys to success in ID Solutions hinge on consistently exceeding the expectations of our customers, providing an unrivaled customer experience, supported by strong industry expertise, strong relationships with our distributor partners, and as previously mentioned, introducing a steady stream of innovative new products -- our new handheld printer being a great example. Segment profit increased 8.3% to $37.5 million in the quarter compared to $34.6 million in last year's second quarter. PDC was a driver of our increased segment profit, incrementally adding approximately $4.3 million in the quarter when compared to last year's second quarter. As a percent of sales, segment profit was 19.3% this quarter compared to 20.6% in last year's second quarter. PDC was dilutive to our segment profit percentage. Without PDC, our second quarter segment profit would have been 20.6% of sales this year, 21.8% last year. Segment profit was lower-than-anticipated due to a higher-than-expected facility-consolidation-related costs which include inventory write-downs, as well as some additional costs associated with our sales expansion. We expect similar costs in the second half of this year as well. As we look to the remainder of fiscal 2014, we anticipate that the trends of low-single-digit organic sales growth to continue, with growth coming from our Brady business in the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific regions. The risk to this low-single-digit organic sales growth guidance would be our U.S. business, where we saw a decline in order intake in the last several weeks of January, which is increasing our caution as we look to the remainder of fiscal 2014. Now I'll turn the time to Tom Felmer, who will report on Workplace Safety and provide his closing comments. Tom?