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Donaldson Company, Inc. (DCI)

Q4 2007 Earnings Call· Mon, Sep 17, 2007

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Amanda, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone for the Donaldson Company Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year End Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator’s instructions. ] Thank you, Mr. Sheffer you may begin your conference.

Richard Sheffer

Management

Thank you, Amanda. And welcome everyone to Donaldson’s 2007 fourth quarter conference call and webcast. Following my brief introduction Tom VerHage, our Vice President and CFO will give us a brief review of our record fourth quarter operating results. Tom will then turn the call over to Bill Cook, our Chairman, President and CEO who will discuss our positive outlook for fiscal 2008 and the business conditions shaping that view. Following Bill's remarks we’ll open up the call to questions. Before I turn the call over to Tom, I need to review our Safe Harbor Statement with you. Any statements in this call regarding our business that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. And our future results could differ materially from the forward-looking statements made today. Our actual results may be affected by many important factors including risks and uncertainties identified in our press release and in our SEC filings. Now I’d like to introduce Tom VerHage, Tom.

Thomas R. VerHage

Management

Thanks, Rich. And good morning, everyone. Now as you saw in our press release late yesterday, we closed out the year with a fine quarter, thanks to our continued strong sales growth, and an improved operating margin in comparison with the third quarter. Since I'm sure you’ve all had a chance to read our press release, I don’t want to take your time this morning, summarizing items that are disclosed there. But I do want to emphasize a few points that you may want to consider in your analysis for fiscal '08. Sales in both our engine and industrial segments came in at the high end of the range that we provided at the end of our third quarter. As we previously mentioned, our fourth quarter this year included an extra week of sales for our US operations, which had the impact of increasing sales by $16 million. Gross margin for the quarter improved to 32.4% from a disappointing 31% in the third quarter. We discussed three reasons for the lower gross margin last quarter, and I’ll give you a brief update on the comparative impact of these items between the two quarters. First, startup and restructuring costs dropped by nearly $2 million. One driver of this reduction is that our new Dust Collector Plant in the Czech Republic is off to a great start, reducing our need to subcontract the assembly of these units at a higher cost. Secondly, we had unusually low margins in some gas turbine and industrial filtration projects in the third quarter. We did not have a repeat of this situation in the fourth quarter. And we did experience some progress in the fourth quarter in optimizing our distribution processes, particularly with our new distribution center in Belgium. This area continues to be a global…

William M. Cook

Management

Thanks, Tom. Good morning, everyone. Before I talk about our outlook, I want to add a few more comments to our fourth quarter highlights. Maybe to start, it was a great quarter but not a surprise as it really fit right in with our long-term strategy and operating philosophies. But there were a couple of notable milestones that we look at. One is that it was the first time that our quarterly sales exceeded $500 million. And the first time that our quarterly EPS exceeded $0.50 per share. And obviously, the combination of both of those helped us to deliver our 18th consecutive year of record earnings. Now, I'll talk a little bit about our two businesses, our engine and industrial. And I’ll start with engine and talk about Europe first, where business conditions were very good, a combination of the overall strength of the European economy as well as growth through new business at both, some of our existing and new customers. In local currency our European engine business was up 13% in the quarter and up 17% for the year. And again that isn’t local currency without the positive impact of translation. So 13% in the quarter, 17% for the year. Very good numbers. We also saw very good growth in our engine aftermarket across Europe. We have one… for example we have one initiative in emerging markets where we are adding distributors in Eastern Europe, Russia and the Middle East. And in total, this initiative… our emerging markets initiative grew over 30% during fiscal '07. This is just one great example of how we’re growing by adding new and more distribution by making additional market share gains and also continuing to diversify our business geographically. In Asia, our off-road equipment and aftermarket segments also had strong quarters…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from Linc Gordon with HB Wellington [ph].

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Good morning. I’d like as many of the international numbers, as I could. International sales, as a percent of the total and of the different product lines, if possible?

William M. Cook

Management

Sure. One second. Rich.

Richard Sheffer

Management

Yes, the international sales were 53% of our total this year.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay.

Richard Sheffer

Management

And what was the second part of your question, Linc?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

By product line. How much was Asia? How much was Europe?

Richard Sheffer

Management

Okay. If you give me two seconds, I will have that for you.

William M. Cook

Management

Do you have any other questions while Rich works on that?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

No. That was basically it. I’ve gotten… been looking at the details of these markers.

William M. Cook

Management

Well, we'll let Rich work on that. We’ll come back during the call. And we’ll go to the next question, and keep things moving, if that’s okay?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Sure. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Bill Harrison with Robert Baird.

Bill Harrison

Analyst · Robert Baird.

Hi, good morning.

William M. Cook

Management

Good morning, Bill.

Bill Harrison

Analyst · Robert Baird.

In your industrial segment, you mentioned the gas turbine business is expected to be up 7% to 8%. Is any lumpiness expected, any lower margin business in the backlog?

William M. Cook

Management

I think the first part of your question was lumpiness? Is that right?

Bill Harrison

Analyst · Robert Baird.

Yes.

William M. Cook

Management

It doesn’t come in equally by quarters. So there is, during the year, there is a variation by quarter in terms of how the sales come in. So that’s the first part of your question. Second one, in terms of low margins, we don’t see any unusual margin business in the backlog, no.

Bill Harrison

Analyst · Robert Baird.

Okay. And then I guess in terms of pricing, do you have any strategies implemented for ’08, and is this embedded in your guidance?

William M. Cook

Management

Whatever pricing we get is embedded in our guidance. Generally, our prices are going down over time, not up. So, we don’t count on pricing to grow our top line.

Bill Harrison

Analyst · Robert Baird.

Okay. All right. Great. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Scott Graham with Bear Stearns.

Scott Graham

Analyst · Bear Stearns.

Hey, good morning.

William M. Cook

Management

Good morning, Scott.

Scott Graham

Analyst · Bear Stearns.

Well, I’m trying to do the math here of the operating income growth of up about 10% versus the range of EPS that you’ve given for 2008. I guess I’m maybe in need of your connecting the dots a little bit for me, because it would suggest that at about 10% operating income growth, you’d be at the low-end of the range that you've given, given further that you've talked about the interest expense increase and the taxes, the tax rate for the year. Could you … is about 10% supposed to be more than 10%... I mean, maybe you can just give us a little bit more clarity on that, because my math isn’t working on that?

Thomas R. VerHage

Management

Yes, Scott, this is Tom. We broadened out various numbers with various operating margin percents, tax rates and the like and came up with that 10% guidance. So it does assume the minimum operating income percent of 11%. And as we work through the various gross margin percentages and operating expenses, we really did come out sort of in the middle of that range, as we ran through a number of different scenarios.

Scott Graham

Analyst · Bear Stearns.

Okay. Could you talk about the potential for increasing your operating margin target, once we get through these the rougher waters of this high margin business in obviously OEM transport, once we get through that the first couple of quarters of the year, and things may be stabilized in the third quarter? Is it possible that you guys would retarget to another level of operating margin given some of the cost reductions that you guys constantly talk about, that you strive for? Is that a possibility as we go through 2008?

Thomas R. VerHage

Management

Scott, this is Tom once again. Certainly that is a possibility, and we’re always striving for that. Our guidance is annual guidance. If you look at … actually if you go back to F’06 when our operating income was 11.4%, that was I think our best year in history. We would like to achieve that again, and that’s one of the reasons that we have provided the minimum of 11% guidance. So I’d say Scott, stay tuned, and we'll update the guidance throughout the year, if it’s appropriate.

Scott Graham

Analyst · Bear Stearns.

Sounds good. Last question. As far as your US businesses are concerned, given the tumultuous nature of the credit markets which began I guess, I guess you could say earlier this summer but probably hit more forcefully in July, would you say that, have you seen a change in the pattern of your order rates really among any of your businesses since that time?

William M. Cook

Management

This is Bill. I think that the one segment that we talked about, or the one sector is really around the residential construction and where that affects us is in the small construction equipment market. But again, the heavy equipment that’s related to non-residential construction and mining is very, very strong. So our guidance includes the impact of what happened in the residential market.

Scott Graham

Analyst · Bear Stearns.

Very good. Thank you.

William M. Cook

Management

Sure.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions].

Richard Sheffer

Management

While we are waiting to see if there’s any more questions, just follow up with Linc Gordon's question regarding the geographic split of our sales. In Q4, Europe was 33%, Asia was 21%, South Africa was 2% and NAFTA was 44%. And those numbers are fairly consistent for the full year results as well.

William M. Cook

Management

Okay. Amanda, there’s another question.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Jeff Hammond with Key Banc Capital Markets.

Jeff Hammond

Analyst · Key Banc Capital Markets.

Hi, good morning gentlemen.

William M. Cook

Management

'Morning Jeff.

Jeff Hammond

Analyst · Key Banc Capital Markets.

What I wanted to try to get to is, if you try to add up the inefficiencies, the added investments, that kind of hit your P&L in ’07, how should we think about that for all of fiscal ’07? And then given that you're going to have some added investments, maybe some additional inefficiencies. How should we think about that number for fiscal ’08?

Thomas R. VerHage

Management

Yes, Jeff, this is Tom. I think what you are referring to are the three items that diluted our results in the third quarter, and I touched on those briefly in my prepared remarks. I think the key issue sequentially, Q3 to Q4 is, if you go back to the webcast notes for Q3, we mentioned that there were about $6 million of mix and low margin orders. And those items for the most part did not repeat in the fourth quarter. So that gave us some sequential improvement. In addition, we had approximately $2 million less plant startup and restructuring costs. So that total of $8 million pretty much constituted our quarter-over-quarter gross margin improvement. As we go into F'08, as Bill I think touched on too, we are not anticipating at this point low margin orders in GTS, in IFS. Plant startup and restructuring costs for the year should be down a bit from the $5.3 million that we experienced in F’07. But we are going to continue invest in the distribution systems that I mentioned, process improvements and those investments are going to be going on for another couple of quarters.

Jeff Hammond

Analyst · Key Banc Capital Markets.

Would you say that those process improvements and distribution costs or inefficiencies are comparable in fiscal ’08 versus fiscal ’07? Or is there a downtick there as well?

Thomas R. VerHage

Management

There is going to be… in the first half of fiscal ’08 we are going to be making investments that we did not make in fiscal ’07. So that should impact first half results. And then we will look for improvements hopefully in the second half of fiscal ’08.

Jeff Hammond

Analyst · Key Banc Capital Markets.

Okay. And then as you look at the engine after market business, very good growth in fiscal ’07 versus maybe just a historical run rate of 8% to 10% growth, I think you are at low teens in fiscal ’07. I mean, do you attribute that to just strong global economic conditions. Or how much is driven by kind of the capture of PowerCore starting to take hold?

William M. Cook

Management

Jeff, this is Bill. It's a combination of factors. Certainly there's some help from the global… improvement in the economic conditions. But a lot of it is around some of the initiatives that we have, and I used an example in my remarks about new and more distribution around the world, more salespeople, and a lot of it's around product. And PowerCore is part of that, where we can install a proprietary product on the first fit, and then protect the aftermarket. And PowerCore continues to grow, as I mentioned. I think right now it represents about 5% of our aftermarket sales. But it's growing, you heard the percentages earlier. So, over time… and that’s not the only one like that. But that’s one example of how we're going to grow independent of any economic cycle in the replacements parts by hopefully locking up the replacement part business to balance it [ph].

Jeff Hammond

Analyst · Key Banc Capital Markets.

Okay, and then final question. On the tax rate, 29% to 32%, is that inclusive of the 1Q tax items?

Thomas R. VerHage

Management

That is, Jeff, this is Tom. Our range, 29% to 32% does contemplate those two items that I've mentioned that we already know about for the first quarter.

Jeff Hammond

Analyst · Key Banc Capital Markets.

Okay, perfect, thanks, guys.

William M. Cook

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Mario Gabelli of Gabelli and Company.

Mario Gabelli

Analyst

Hey, Bill, hi.

William M. Cook

Management

Hi, Mario. Good morning.

Mario Gabelli

Analyst

Yes. Just going to 30,000 feet for a second, have you allocated any R&D money towards wet filtration? Like, have you started looking at that? I know you've always been in the dry world.

William M. Cook

Management

Mario, Bill here. It is one of our initiatives. We have a pretty significant position already in hydraulic fluid filtration. So what we want to do is expand out into, on both the engine side, into other engine liquids, like fuel and lube, and also on the industrial side, into process liquids. So we are making investments to accomplish that, yes.

Mario Gabelli

Analyst

And how much has it stepped up?

William M. Cook

Management

I don't think we've given that number publicly, Mario. But our R&D is growing at a lot higher… expenditures are growing at a lot higher rate than our revenue growth, and have, for the last couple of years.

Mario Gabelli

Analyst

And the percentage increasing for liquids?

William M. Cook

Management

They are higher than air, yes. We're trying to catch up.

Mario Gabelli

Analyst

Okay, thanks.

William M. Cook

Management

Sure, thanks.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. At this time there are no further questions, and I would like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Bill Cook for closing remarks.

William M. Cook

Management

Thanks, Amanda. For all of you participating and listening, I'd like to thank you for your time and interest. To my fellow employees, every one of you played a critical role in our success. I want to thank you for delivering another record quarter and year. I'm very proud of what we’ve accomplished together, and I hope you are, too. You should be. So thank you all, and goodbye.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.