Kieran O'Sullivan
Analyst · Stephens Inc. Justin, please go ahead
Thank you, Ashish. We had another strong quarter with sales increasing 15% to a $148 million versus the first quarter of 2021. Demand remains solid across all end markets, especially in medical, industrial, and defense. Our global team continues to execute well and is dedicated to operational excellence and achieving our long-term goals. Our investments in business development and front-end sales are enabling us to expand our customer base and to cross-sell our products. Adjusted gross margin for the first quarter was 37%, up 400 basis points from 33% in the prior year, which was supported by the momentum we're gaining from diversifying our business. Operationally, we're seeing savings materialize from our restructuring activities. Ashish will provide more color on this in a moment. As we move forward, we will continue to evaluate and refine our footprint to optimize our ability to serve our customers, and to deliver improved operating leverage. We're also gaining traction with our CTS operating system with over 50 continuous improvement projects driving incremental value. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 23.5%, was up 350 basis points from 20% in the first quarter of 2021. Inflationary pressures and supply challenges negatively impacted our earnings in the first quarter. While we continue to be impacted by rising commodity prices as well as increased freight costs, we've been working alongside our customers to offset or share these cost increases. We remain confident in our ability to navigate this dynamic environment with our diversified portfolio even though we expect margin headwind pressure to persist. New business awards in the quarter totaled a $117 million, below our expectation due to the timing of certain awards from transportation customers. We remain confident in our robust pipeline of opportunities, and see good momentum for awards in the coming quarters. Further by continuing to focus on growth and diversification, we added four new customers in the quarter, two new industrial customers for temperature sensing, a new medical customer for ultrasound imaging, and a defense customer for an anti-tank missile application. We remain well-positioned in multiple end-markets that offer attractive growth prospects. In the Industrial market, we continue to see very good traction in Inkjet printing products that are used for industrial applications, such as printing on textile, ceramic tiles, and packaging material. Packaging material is currently an area that is providing particularly strong growth momentum for Inkjet printing products. Robust demand for temperature products across pool and spat, refrigeration and heat pumps resulted in several new business awards. And we had multiple awards in various applications for electromagnetic ceramic products, RF filters, timing products, micro actuators, and transducers with application to measure flow and temperature for predictive maintenance. In the quarter we shipped samples to a new customer for a flow meter transducer application, we are expanding our applications in cold and hot temperature sensing, and we added new customers and new applications from rapid cook ovens to commercial dishwashers. By combining our traditional direct sales model with TEWA's distribution strength, we anticipate sales growth synergies in the industrial end market. We experienced double-digit growth in distribution sales, where we see inventory levels up 20% from prior-year period and getting to more normal levels. In medical, we are seeing increasing momentum and long-term growth opportunities. Our targeted business development efforts continue to deliver, resulting in an expanding customer base. Some examples include a qualification order with a new customer for handheld medical ultrasound and a precision insulin pump dispensing application in clinical trials with another new customer. We see strong mid to long-term growth driven by traditional ultrasound technologies with wins across all regions in the first quarter. We also secured a new award for a drug delivery application and an award for a hearing aid product. Further, we received multiple temperature sensing awards with existing customers, ranging from incubators to critical freezer monitoring, disposable applications, and data loggers. Once we are able to complete the first perm acquisition, we expect further growth momentum from its customer base. For medical is the largest end market, as well as from our expanded technical capabilities and European footprint. In aerospace and defense, we're all reading about increasing defense budgets across the globe due to the current geopolitical environment. And we are well-positioned to address the increased demand anticipated from this end market over the next several years. We continue to see growth in undersea Sonar products in North America. Additionally, we received a prototype order for mine [Indiscernible] sonar product, and according new unmanned underwater autonomous applications. We had an RF filter program award for GPS, [Indiscernible], application and temperature wins in aerospace. In Europe, we are seeing initial growth traction in Sonar, and we successfully developed initial samples for a microwave bandpass filter for military applications with a new customer. As we have discussed, we continue to advance our M&A strategy, which is focused on expanding our geographic reach, adding momentum to our end-market profile, and increasing the richness of our customer base. As already mentioned during the quarter, we acquired TEWA Temperature Sensors. The addition of the TEWA acquisition strengthens our fast-growing temperature sensing platform in industrial applications, while also expanding our reach into the European market. We're excited to welcome the TEWA team to CTS. On a challenging note, we are all deeply impacted by the destruction we see perpetrated on the people of Ukraine. On my recent visit to the TEWA facility in Lublin, Poland, I was able to connect with one of our team members there. Our teammate is living this tragedy daily as her parents reside in Ukraine. Through our CTS Cares initiative, we were able to donate funds to provide medical and other support directly to her hometown. Earlier this month, we announced our agreement to acquire Ferroperm Piezoceramics, subject to obtaining regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions. Ferroperm specializes in the design and manufacture of high performance piezoceramic components for use in complex and demanding medical, industrial, aerospace, and defense application. The company is recognized for its high quality and innovative piezoceramic technology. Based in [Indiscernible], Denmark Ferroperm has established a strong customer base across Europe and North America. And its presence in medical therapeutics is complementary to our existing focus on medical imaging and diagnostics. We look forward to the Ferroperm team joining CTS and are excited about the growth prospects. As we have discussed before, our long-term strategic plan is focused on diversifying our end market profile. We plan to achieve this by expanding our range of technologies, products, customers, and geographic reach to accelerate the revenue growth of our non-transportation business while also strategically growing our transportation business. We believe this strategy is bearing fruit as we are seeing the diversification of our business, enhancing our quality of earnings despite the challenging macroeconomic factors we are facing. The TEWA acquisition and the anticipated Ferroperm transaction will further advance these efforts by supporting the growth of our non-transport revenue, with the potential of expanding this portion of the business closer to 50% of total revenues in the year ahead. We remain focused on continuing to strengthen our M&A pipeline in an environment for one might anticipate more reasonable valuations in the years ahead, given higher interest rates and the potential for a recession. Our track record of thoughtfully expanding ceramic technology to support diversification while at the same time leveraging our ceramic expertise to build and scale a temperature sensing platform, demonstrate the execution of our strategic plan. Adding technology that will enhance our EV offering also remains a priority. We continue to focus on acquisitions in the range of up to $50 million a year in sales, but we remain open to the right larger opportunities that will advance our long-term strategy. Deploying capital in line with our allocation framework is important. In the quarter, we repurchased approximately $4 million of CTS stock. In transportation, we continue to outperform the market. We are seeing robust demand in commercial vehicles, which we expect to extend into 2023. On the light vehicle side, while the sales softness remains given the supply side challenges across the industry, our positioning from a product and geographic standpoint has propelled us forward. We continue to focus on strengthening our light vehicle sensor portfolio, especially around EV platforms. Today, electric vehicle revenue ranges in the high single-digit percentage of our total light vehicle revenue. Our goal is to have greater than 25% of our light vehicle revenue coming from EV platforms by 2025. This goal is supported by our ability to transfer our legacy accelerator module and sensor products to electric and hybrid electric vehicle applications. We're also developing new products to integrate into existing and future EV architectures, such as our e-brake product, which has been prototype and represents a tremendous future growth opportunity, similar in magnitude to the existing accelerator module market. In addition, we are getting traction with our current sensing products and are working on potential position sensing products for EV motor applications. Our value proposition transportation is built on packaging position sensing for safety critical and harsh environments. For Chassis Ride Height sensing during the first quarter, we obtained awards for North America and Japanese OEMs. For passive safety sensors, we had wins with several tier 1 customers. On current sensing product, which is in development for one of our customers, it's also gaining traction as we secured another current sensing award earlier this month. In the accelerator module product lines, we had wins with customers in North America, Europe, and Asia. For commercial vehicle applications, we increased business with an existing customer. As you can see, we're also winning new EV platform business with our legacy portfolio. So far we have one new business awards for 26 EV platforms, five of which we secured this past quarter. Looking ahead, the supply chain shortages are expected to reduce vehicle builds by 2 to 3 million units this year. For the U.S. light vehicle transportation market, we expect approximately a 13.5 to 14 million unit range this year. On-hand days of supply are now closer to 26 days. European production has been revised down by almost 10% since the start of the Ukrainian war, and is now forecasted in the 15 to 15.5 million unit range this year. The Chinese market is expected to be flat this year in the 24 to 25 million unit range, with COVID related impact creating further uncertainties. Commercial vehicle demand remains solid, and is likely to remain robust throughout 2022. As I mentioned earlier, we continue to see solid growth in Industrial and Defense markets, as well as improvements in the Medical market and expect further benefits from the integration of our newest acquisitions. Overall, demand remains robust across all end-markets, and we feel confident in the long-term prospects for the business. While the supply chain showed some improvement this past quarter, recent events in Ukraine, as well as the COVID lockdowns in China impacted the industry. More recently, we have experienced challenges at the Mexico border impacting supply. Our teams are creatively navigating the current environment to ensure supply for our customers. And fortunately, we were able to maintain full operations this past quarter while ensuring a safe work environment for our employees during the lockdowns. All our plants remain fully operational. These supply disruptions when combined with significant inflation and the end of government stimulus have the potential to reduce demand. We are not seeing a reduction play out at this point other than the return to more normal inventory levels and distribution, which represents less than 10% of our sales. In fact, some industrial and automotive customers have confirmed demand through 2022 and into 2023. As always, we are monitoring the macro environment very closely. I'm proud to say in this very challenging supply chain backdrop, our teams are working and adapting with speed and agility to support our customers. In terms of guidance for the full-year 2022, we are updating our guidance to include the TEWA acquisition. Subject to my earlier comments on timing and conditions, we estimate the closing of the Ferroperm acquisition to occur in the next few months, and therefore are not reflecting it in our current guidance. Our updated guidance is for sales to be in the range of $550 million to $580 million, up from $525 million to $550 million. Adjusted earnings per share are now expected to be in the range of $2.20 to $2.45 compared to the previous range of $2 to $2.25. Now I'll turn it over to Ashish to walk us through our first-quarter financial results.