Joseph Armes
Analyst · Liam Burke with Wunderlich Securities
Thank you, Tom. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on the call today. Our performance in the fiscal second quarter reflected 3 dominant trends affecting our business. First, strong organic sales exhibiting above market growth for products serving the HVAC, plumbing and architecturally specified building products end market. Second, the continuation of weak demand for products serving commodity and rail end markets. And third, a reduction in operating costs from our restructuring and integration efforts as we work to position our company for long-term growth and profitability.
Putting this all together, before taking into account higher independent public company costs, which were not included in our prior year comparable, our segment-level adjusted operating income was relatively flat with the prior year despite lower sales. Including independent public company costs, our adjusted operating income was $11.5 million compared with $14.1 million in 2016.
In our Industrial Products segment, sales were up 15.7% compared to the prior year, driven by strong demand for our HVAC, plumbing and architecturally specified building products. HVAC end market sales continue to exhibit strong growth year-over-year as we remain focused on innovative, high-demand products such as ductless mini-split accessories, refrigerant locking caps and condensate cut-off switches. As a point of reference, our net sales of HVAC products through the first half of fiscal 2017 have already surpassed our total net sales of HVAC products in fiscal 2014. HVAC continues to be our largest and fastest-growing end market.
Industrial Products segment growth has also been bolstered by the success for our large smoke-containment curtains as we are seeing the benefits of the R&D investment we made in the past 3 years. And Chris will discuss this in more detail later during our call.
Turning to our Coatings, Sealants & Adhesives segment, similar to last quarter, declines in railcar production negatively impacted our segment-level operating results. This led to an 18% decline in segment revenue and a corresponding 45% decline in our segment-level adjusted operating income. We are working diligently to rightsize our cost structure, commensurate with current demand by reducing segment-level costs and rationalizing our manufacturing footprint. However, we are also focused on the long term, and we've made solid progress toward diversifying our end markets to drive top line growth.
On our last quarterly call, we announced segment restructuring plans, and we remain on track to provide annual savings of approximately $2.5 million to $3 million by the end of fiscal 2017. And during the quarter, we began implementing a plan to discontinue production in our Syracuse facility by the end of the fiscal year.
In our Specialty Chemicals segment, I'm pleased to report that during the quarter, we completed our capital investment to move production from Jet-Lube Houston to our Rockwall, Texas production facility. All jet-lube production in the quarter took place in Rockwall, which at the onset experienced some production challenges as our team adjusted to a new production facility. This resulted in approximately $1.5 million of reduced volume in the quarter, thus growing our backlog, but we expect to recapture this volume during the balance of the year. The benefits of restructuring were evident in our segment financials during the quarter as our adjusted operating income improved 9% year-over-year despite a 23% decrease in segment-level revenue, resulting from weaker end-market demand and production challenges.
Putting the balance of the year in context, volume in energy-related end markets appears to be stabilizing. We expect to benefit from the recapture of lost volume in the balance of the year, and our comps become more relevant beginning in the third quarter as we lap the sharp decline in drilling activity in the prior year.
Next, I would like to provide some details by end market. Beginning with commercial and residential construction, we continued to benefit from positive market activity. As I noted, this has been supported by strong demand for our architecturally specified building products, and we expect this level of activity to continue in the second half of our fiscal year. Our focus in these end markets is to leverage our market position, continue to drive above-market organic growth, expand margins through our procurement programs and pursue complementary bolt-on acquisitions that leverage our distribution network and expertise.
In our energy-related end markets, oil prices have stabilized somewhat and market activity appears to be normalizing, although at a lower level. We are not anticipating a significant uptick from these volumes, and we have taken appropriate restructuring actions to improve the profitability -- our profitability in these end markets.
As I mentioned earlier, in addition to the movement of all Jet-Lube Houston production to our Rockwall facility, we are also in the process of moving the Jet-Lube Canada production to Rockwall. In total, we estimate these actions will capture a total of $5.5 million in annual savings, and we have already achieved approximately $1.4 million of those savings in the first half of fiscal 2017. We anticipate the second half of fiscal 2017 will deliver another $1.5 million to $2 million of savings with the balance of the savings being achieved in fiscal 2018, yielding the full run rate savings.
In addition, we have recently decided to discontinue manufacturing at our U.K. facility by the end of fiscal 2017. While it is too early to estimate an exact cost savings target, we're confident that there will be incremental savings from this closure.
In rail end markets, we are exposed to 2 distinct cycles for separate products. In our Coatings, Sealants & Adhesives segments, our rail exposure comes from coatings for OEM production of new rail cars. This production volume has come under substantial pressure in the past several quarters, mostly driven by indirect effects of lower commodity prices. Through the end of the second fiscal quarter, our sequential volume is approximately flat, but marks a significant decline year-over-year.
Similar to the oil markets, we believe the market conditions are normalizing, but we do not expect any meaningful improvement in the short term.
Our second rail exposure comes from track lubricants in our Specialty Chemical segment with volume primarily dependent on track volume. This end market has also been under pressure from indirect exposure to lower commodity prices and was stable compared to the prior quarter, but down year-over-year.
Looking to the balance of the year, our channel checks do not suggest any further deterioration in volume, but we do expect lower volumes to persist in the near term.
Before turning the call over to Gregg, I'd like to touch on the M&A markets and our overall capital allocation strategy. We completed the spin-off from Capital Southwest just over a year ago and commenced operations as a public company with minimal debt and flexibility to fund our acquisition strategy. In recent quarters, we have remained very disciplined regarding M&A, being conscious of elevated valuations. This has caused us to consider alternate uses of cash, and in the first half of fiscal 2017, we paid down approximately $17 million in debt.
In addition, this morning, we announced the board has authorized a $35 million share repurchase program to be completed over the next 2 years. This action reflects our commitment to disciplined capital allocation and provides an additional mechanism to create value for our shareholders. The strength of our balance sheet allows us the opportunity to add this element to our capital allocation alternatives without precluding other activities such as accretive bolt-on acquisitions.
Overall, we're pleased with the progress we continue to make as we position ourselves for growth and profitability. Looking back a couple of quarters ago, we were in the process of integrating 6 private companies into 1 larger public company. I believe that we've made tremendous progress in this, but we are still not there yet. Despite a challenging environment in several of our end markets, we continue to enhance and grow our customer relationships and leverage our capabilities as a combined company.
With that, I'll turn the call over to Gregg Branning for a closer look at the numbers.