Brad Feldmann
Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Diane. Thanks for joining us on the call today. Today, I will review our first half fiscal year 2016 operating results as well as provide a segment and strategy update. Jay will cover detailed quarterly financial results, update our improved financial guidance, and provide non-GAAP reconciliations in more detail. On Slide 3, you will find an overview of our first half operating results. Sales in the first half of fiscal year 2016 were $679.8 million, up 3.4% from the first half of last year, including currency headwinds of $17.2 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the first half was $41.6 million, down from $60.2 million for the corresponding period last year driven by currency headwinds, lower profits on our new London contract, which no longer includes a usage bonus, decreased profits on a ground training systems which we were delivering in the Far East and lower high margin air combat shipment volume. Overall, however, we are very pleased about the improved financial performance in our transportation segment from the first quarter as expected. In total, our Q2 sales increased by 8% compared to the same period last year to $366 million and our adjusted EBITDA improved substantially to $30.3 million or 8.9% return on sales from the first quarter. We believe sales and profitability will greatly improve during the second half due to shipments of higher margin products in C4ISR and training systems, which will occur in our fourth quarter. As we have previously communicated, FY 2016 is a transition year for Cubic as we continue to implement structural and cultural changes throughout our organization. During the quarter, we successfully completed the on-time implementation of the first phase of our new ERP system to include SAP and Workday. Follow-on phases are on track, and we expect to increase effectiveness and efficiency as a result. Integration is proceeding as planned for our high margin high growth C4ISR acquisitions and we remain confident that we will add considerable value for our customers and shareholders. During the quarter, we started integrating marketing efforts between the legacy Cubic businesses and the acquired C4ISR entities and the initial feedback has been very positive. Overall, we expect FY 2016 to have higher sales and adjusted EBITDA compared to FY 2015, which is reflected in our revised guidance, and we continue to expect record performance in FY 2017. Moving to Slide 4, I’d like to update you on our business segments. In Cubic Transportation systems, we enjoyed improved financial performance compared to the previous quarter. Profitability has increased across the Sydney, Vancouver and Chicago contracts, driven by an improved performance as well as negotiated changes and upgrades to our existing systems. We expect this trend to continue in the second half. Recently, the Transport Minister of New South Wales announced that Sydney will trial open payments on their Opal system, similar to what we’ve done in London and Chicago. We are pleased as this trial could lead to revenue increases in FY 2017 and 2018 and is a cornerstone of the one account portion of our Next City strategy. In the Washington, DC Metro area, another contractors’ pilot effort to update the WMATA system was recently canceled, and the customer will likely make incremental upgrades to the SmarTrip system we have supplied. We believe there will be further consolidation in the transportation fare collection market. In addition, our organic opportunity pipeline continues to expand and we are confident, there are many opportunities to grow our transportation business. Most notably, the upgrade request for proposal, or RFP, for the system in New York City has been released. Our team is working hard on the proposal and we expect a decision on the award to come in fiscal year 2017. In Cubic Global Defense Systems, our training systems business continues to innovate to provide superior solutions for our global customers. In air combat training systems, we are very proud that our system is the live training solution for the Joint Strike Fighter. We are also working on the future of fighter pilot training with an R&D contract to update air combat, training by adding live virtual and constructive simulations capabilities, which will greatly enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of future training for the U.S. and our allies. In ground training systems, we are delivering the future of home station instrumentation system, and we are working to add indirect fire, synthetic ISR, cyber, social media effects to combat training centers. In virtual training, we are now delivering state-of-the-art immersive courseware to the Littoral Combat Ship program. We have parlayed this technology into our adjacent win with Emirates Airlines as well as our KC46 proposal, which we expect to be awarded later this fiscal year. The opportunity pipeline remains strong and we expect modest growth going forward. We have transformed our legacy secure communications business over the past year into a niche C4ISR business with the acquisitions of DTECH, TeraLogics and GATR Technologies. With these additions to the Cubic portfolio, we are now a prime contractor offering expeditionary communication solutions to multiple customers. DTECH and GATR Technologies are currently providing best-in-class solutions to the U.S. special operations command and the United States Marine Corps. We have recently won new contracts with the United States Army. TeraLogics is the prime contractor to the Defense Information Systems Agency, distributing demand high full-motion video products through a secure, massively-scalable cloud implementation to the Department of Defense. We are pursuing co-development with our customers to integrate cross-domain solutions, software-definable radios, and advanced antenna capabilities that will closely align with our customers’ mission. This impressive transformation of our data links portfolio into a niche C4ISR prime contractor communications business will deliver enhanced value for our customers and shareholders. The C4ISR business will have rapid growth and deliver higher margins going forward. In Cubic Global Defense Services, we are seeing gradual revenue and profit improvement. Additionally, we continue to pursue more best-value contract opportunities. The large U.S. Army Joint Readiness Training Center, or JRTC re-compete, is now underway, with the award expected later this fiscal year. We believe we are well-positioned to win, as we have been delivering exceptional value to this critical customer since 2001. This quarter, we won important training and IDIQ contracts, most notably supporting the Maneuver Center of Excellence Battle Simulation Center and the Joint Training Division of the Joint Staff Joint Forces Development Directorate. There is also a large opportunity set of ground-based services that we are planning to bid, and therefore, we expect growth in this segment going forward. Moving to Slide 5, I would like to reiterate our strategy and provide an update. Our overarching corporate strategic objective is embodied by Goal 2020. By continually winning the customer, we will grow the Company’s topline at 10% or more annually, in line with our historic performance, and we will grow our bottom line at a faster rate through our One Cubic efficiency initiatives. With that in mind, there are five key strategic objectives to our strategy. The first is winning the customer. Winning the customer is absolutely paramount to our success. We must do better with the customer than anyone else. We must deliver early, be more responsive and empathetic, discover key insights, and continuously innovate. We must provide our customers with superior solutions spurred by innovation and ultimate customer focus to earn their trust and loyalty. Our second strategic objective is our NextCity vision for the future of our Transportation segment. We intend to build NextCity globally. We are in the process of expanding from providing mass transit fare collection to deploying smart mobility information and payments across all transportation modes in a city. Our NextCity vision is anchored on three pillars. The first is called One Account, where we will focus on providing one account for all transportation payments, no matter the mode. The second is called Integrated User Experience, where we will provide transportation, multimodal payment and real-time journey information to mobile devices and other user interfaces in a personalized and predictive fashion. The third pillar is called Operations and Analytics, where we will synergistically and cost-effectively provide tools, applications, and analytics to manage and plan across all modes of transportation in the city. We believe this strategic initiative is in line with the future of transportation, and that its effective implementation will propel our transportation business to our target goals of 13% to 15% EBITDA margins, and 10%-plus compounded annual growth rate. Right now, we are making great progress implementing our NextCity strategy. And I would like to provide you with some highlights. Winning the New Hampshire toll contract opens an attractive adjacent market that is aligned with One Account. We are delighted with the Sydney contactless payment trial, as this will be yet another extension of the One Account initiative. We believe that this, along with the recent implementations in London, Chicago and Vancouver, will give us a technological edge going forward. There is already demand for our Chicago mobile solution from several other CTS customers. The North American expansion of our Traffic Management business represents the opportunity to grow our UK Intelligent Transportation System Road Instrumentation capability. The third strategic objective is to grow our C4ISR business. We are on track to achieve our goal of creating a niche $200 million-plus communications business with high-teen margins by the end of the fiscal year – a goal that we set for ourselves only last year. We are also exploring other C4ISR niche areas where we can add enhanced value. In addition to the acquisitions, progress includes winning and delivering on the initial phase of a key U.S. Army tactical satellite ground terminal contract; expanding our work for the Defense Information Systems Agency in providing full-motion video dissemination to combatant commands; continuing our strong performance in delivering innovative satellite communication and tactical networking solutions for the U.S. Special Operations Command; innovating on new technologies with our customers that will lead to further growth. The fourth strategic objective is to build our next training capability globally. We have a great training business that we are providing our customers with systems and services across the globe for over 40 years. We are implementing innovative high-fidelity integrated live virtual constructive gaming solutions across all domains of warfare that will help our customers enhance training readiness, efficiency, and effectively. We believe that our Training Systems business will see improved margins to 10%-plus EBITDA, and our Services Training business to 5% EBITDA margin, growing at more than 5% CAGR in the near-term. Key areas where we have made progress with our next training strategy include: developing and delivering simulations to support the integration of indirect fire weapons, cyber, synthetic ISR, and social media in the combat training centers; providing state-of-the-art immersive courseware using gaming technology. For example, we are awarded work for the LCS Mission Bay trainer this month with a value of $9.4 million. Continuing to build our virtual training expertise, we were recently awarded a follow-on Bradley training contract with a value of $13.4 million. We are continuing to strengthen our partnership with international customers in Canada, Europe, and Singapore. We will achieve increased efficiency and effectiveness by implementing our final strategic objective, One Cubic. One Cubic, as we have previously shared, is our strategy to rebuild our Company’s infrastructure to enable decentralized customer-facing functions and centralized support functions to allow for a scalable, efficient and effective enterprise. We know that we can create additional value by intelligently sharing our resources across the globe. Through this journey of changing the culture, we are now sharing analytics, visualization, and communications technology. We are also sharing geographic locations, talent, supply chain, factories, and processes. By implementing SAP and Workday, we will have all the data in one place, enabled by common processes instantiated in the system. We strongly believe that we will – that will lead to several efficiencies in SG&A expenses. We have committed to improving our margins by 2% to 2.5% through these efficiency initiatives. We will organically grow our Company through innovation. We are working hard to understand our customers' endpoints, and develop innovative winning solutions with our customers to shape specific demand early in the process, before request for proposal are released. We will focus our inorganic acquisition-related growth targets on companies that will synergistically drive great solutions for our customers in transportation and defense. We will exercise discipline to ensure that we do not pay more than our risk-adjusted cost of capital, and we will rapidly integrate these companies quickly and effectively to ensure growth and higher margins. We believe our Goal 2020 strategy and its supporting objectives will achieve significant value for our customers and shareholders. We are pleased with the progress to-date, and our team is excited the implementation will achieve great results in the future. I will now like to turn the call over to Jay, our CFO, to discuss our detailed financial results and improved guidance.