James F. Shaw
Analyst · Longbow Securities
Thanks, Bill. Good morning, everyone. Our gross margin for the quarter was 35.8%, an increase of 210 basis points from the 33.7% we reported in last year's first quarter. As we noted in our press release, one of the drivers of this gross margin increase was favorable product mix due to an uptick in the percentage of our sales coming from replacement filters. Replacement filter sales were 54% in the current quarter compared to 51% last year. In many of our end markets, the utilization of the existing equipment in the field is good, which helps our replacement filter sales. Our product mix was also favorably impacted by the decrease in large Gas Turbine shipments in the quarter, which were a margin headwind in fiscal '13. Overall, mix had a positive 60-basis-point impact on gross margin. In addition, our ongoing Continuous Improvement initiatives also benefited our gross margin by approximately 90 basis points compared to last year. Last year, we took many cost-containment actions to aggressively control our manufacturing costs. This work we did to align our cost structure with our current level of sales is continuing to pay off, and as a result, we saw fixed-cost absorption deliver approximately 7 basis points of benefit compared to the first quarter of last year. We're continuing to make incremental adjustments to our cost structure in certain regions and incurred $600,000 of restructuring costs in gross margin in support of these efforts. Our operating expenses declined by $2 million compared to last year's first quarter. As a percentage of sales, operating expenses decreased 70 basis points. The impact from our ongoing expense control initiatives, slightly lower pension expense and leveraging our fixed cost base reduced our operating expenses of the percentage of sales by 130 basis points. These items more than offset the increases resulting from higher incentive compensation expense, the incremental expenses related to our Strategic Business Systems project, higher U.S. medical insurance expenses and $200,000 of restructuring expenses in operating expense. As a result of our strong gross margin and expense controls, our operating margin was a first quarter record, 15.3%. This is up 280 basis points from last year's first quarter. Looking forward, we expect our full year fiscal year '14 operating margin to be between 14.2% and 15%. We begin accruing incentive compensation at normal levels again at the beginning of fiscal year '14, and our investment spending on our Strategic Business Systems project will start increasing in the second quarter as we start bringing our first 3 facilities live on the new system. As a reminder, as you update your models, our second quarter operating margin is normally our lowest of the year due to seasonal holidays causing the fewest shipping days of any quarter for us. In addition, we have almost half of our annual stock option expense occur in our second quarter, so about $4 million. We are also planning to increase our operating expense investments in the second quarter to pursue organic growth opportunities. And finally, the first go-lives on our Strategic Business Systems project will increase our operating expense in our second quarter compared to the first quarter by approximately $2 million. So in total, we're anticipating our second quarter operating margin to be between 12% and 12.5%. We do expect our operating margin to be more in line with our first quarter run rate beginning again in our third quarter. And again, we expect our full year operating margin to be between 14.2% and 15%. We did have one other restructuring item on the P&L in the quarter, and that's for the sale of our Ultratroc dryer business in Flensburg, Germany. We recorded a $900,000 loss, which is recorded in other income this quarter. Our effective tax rate was 32.2% in the quarter versus 29.4% last year. The increase was mainly attributable to $2.1 million of tax expense related to an intercompany dividend. Based on our projected mix of earnings in fiscal year '14, we forecast our full year tax rate to be between 29% and 31%. We are no longer anticipating the renewal of the U.S. Research and Experimentation Credit prior to the end of our fiscal year, which is the reason we increased the bottom of our full year range from 28%. Our first quarter capital expenditure was $21 million. Looking at our fiscal year '14 forecast, we continue to expect to spend approximately $90 million on CapEx for the full year. The breakdown of the $90 million spend is projected to be approximately 20% related to capacity expansion; 30% for our technology initiatives, which includes our Strategic Business Systems project and our R&D lab expansion project; another 30% as tooling for new products; and 20% will be related to cost reduction activities through our Continuous Improvement initiatives. We expect depreciation and amortization will be between $65 million and $70 million in fiscal '14. Free cash flow was a record $78 million this quarter. For fiscal '14, we expect full year cash flow from operating activities to be $320 million to $350 million. And with our forecast $90 million of CapEx, we expect to generate $230 million to $260 million of free cash flow this year. Regarding capital deployment, we repurchased 339,000 shares in the first quarter for $12 million. As previously announced in May, we increased our dividend payout policy from paying 25% to 30% of the prior 3 years' average EPS to paying 30% to 40% of the prior 3 years' average EPS, which resulted in a 30% increase in our dividend declaration in May. Looking to capital deployment for fiscal '14, we plan to maintain our new dividend payout policy and repurchase between 2% and 4% of our outstanding shares. We expect interest expense in fiscal '14 to be between $8 million and $10 million, and our balance sheet remains very strong, with $383 million of cash and short-term investments. We did use some of that cash last week to retire an $80 million senior secured note that matured. So with that, I'll pass it back to Bill, who will provide additional details on our updated outlook for fiscal '14. Bill?