Cooper-Standard Holdings Inc. (CPS) Q2 2013 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Cooper-Standard Second Quarter 2013 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded this morning, and the webcast will be available for replay later today. I would now like to turn the call over to Glenn Dong, Treasurer of Cooper-Standard. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning. Please note that certain information in this call may be forward-looking and contain statements based on current plans, expectations, events and market trends that may affect the company's future operating results and financial position. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that cannot be predicted or quantified and that may cause future activities and results of operations to differ materially from those discussed. For additional information, we ask that you refer to the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This call is also intended to be in compliance with Reg FD and is open to institutional investors, security analysts, media representatives and other interested parties. A reconciliation of certain non-GAAP financial measures used during this call can be found in the appendix of this presentation and in our press release of August 7, 2013, which has been posted on our website and furnished on our Form 8-K with the SEC. The purpose of this conference call is also to answer questions from stakeholders. We would ask that media inquiries be handled separately from this call. Such calls should be directed to our corporate communications group, whose contact information is available on our website and in our earnings press release. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Jeff Edwards, Cooper-Standard's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Okay. Thanks, Glenn, and good morning, everyone. For today's call, I'm going to start with an overview of the industry and then go onto some quarter highlights, as well as talk to you a little bit about our growth strategy. And then, we'll turn it over to Allen. He'll go through more of the details on the financial performance for the quarter before we open it up to questions. As you can see on Slide #4, there haven't been significant changes in what we're really seeing across all the regions since the last quarter. In North America, the vehicle production obviously remains very strong. Europe, we continue to experience headwinds, although not beyond what we anticipated. We have -- we also have seen some signs of stabilization in Europe. And overall, again, the markets are really performing as we expected and as we forecasted. Moving to Asia. China continues to grow, of course. But it's also obvious to us that there is softening taking place within that region and we anticipate that continuing through the year. In South America, Brazil continues to be a bit volatile, and we're seeing signs of the headwinds from an economic perspective in Brazil. Probably it will get stronger as we go through the rest of this year, especially. Moving on to Slide 5. Talking about some of the highlights -- key financial highlights for the quarter. Certainly, the strategic plan that we're implementing is gaining traction and yielding solid results. Most notably, in our continued double-digit adjusted EBITDA margins, we're seeing good improvement there. Sales have increased 6.8% over the same quarter 2012. So we're rising a little bit beyond the market there. We're seeing the industry at 62% versus Cooper-Standard at 68%, which is in line with our expectations and what others in…

Thank you, Jeff. On Slide 9, we show our second quarter and year-to-date sales compared to the same period in prior year. For the quarter, Cooper-Standard generated sales of $784.7 million, up 6.8% when compared to the same quarter in the previous year. Sales in the quarter were favorably impacted by $3.2 million in foreign exchange movement. All regions showed improvement, resulting from increased vehicle production in North America and Brazil and share gains in Europe. Year-to-date sales increased by $32.5 million to $1.532 billion compared to $1.5 billion during the previous year. Sales in North America are just over $400 million for the quarter, an increase of $12.8 million from the previous year, reflecting increased vehicle production levels. The European operations generated sales of $283.6 million in the quarter, a $19.5 million increase or 7.4% when compared to the same quarter in the previous year. Our sales in the quarter included $5.4 million of favorable foreign exchange. The sales increase comes from the period when vehicle productions were relatively flat year-over-year in that region. As I mentioned in our last earnings call, Europe continues to be a major focus for us, as we address the region's fixed cost and over capacity issues. Our Serbia initiative, as mentioned by Jeff, is part of our strategy to address some of the cost issues. Sales from our Asia-Pacific operations were $50.7 million in the quarter, up 3.9% from the previous year, driven mainly by increased volume in the region. In Brazil, we reported $50.3 million in sales, up $16 million from the same period a year ago, while overcoming $2.7 million of unfavorable foreign exchange movement. Sales from our nonconsolidated joint ventures continues to perform nicely, generating sales in the quarter of $112.6 million, up 12% from the prior year. Turning to…

Okay. Thanks, Allen. Just to reiterate, with the challenges ahead in Europe and really elsewhere that I mentioned earlier, we still have a lot of work to do and that's okay. And that said, I'm pleased with the strategic plan we're implementing, and it's gaining traction and yielding solid results. Going forward, we'll continue to look for ways to position the company for profitable growth, and we're focused certainly on exceeding our customers' expectations and enhancing our operational execution for them. I'm confident that we have now the right people and the right resources to achieve the objectives that we've laid out. We'll now open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] We have no questions at this time. This concludes our conference call. You may now disconnect.