Scott Robinson
Analyst · William Blair. Your line is open
Thanks, Tod. Good morning, everyone. We had an important anniversary last quarter. Two years ago, we closed our consolidated books for the first time on our global ERP. Since then, we have strengthened our capabilities and deepen our understanding of our data and processes, but we’re still early in this journey. To drive this further, we created a global financial shared services team earlier this year. Their mission is to optimize, standardize and globalize our processes and I’m excited about the opportunity in front of us. Turning to first quarter results, sales growth of 9% drove net earnings up 21% and we made progress in driving incremental margin. Before getting into the details, I want to call out two items. First, please note that last quarter’s net earnings included a pre-tax benefit of $900,000 which we excluded from adjusted earnings. Second, as a reminder, we adopted two new accounting standards this fiscal year, revenue recognition and pension accounting. Prior year periods are restated to conform pension accounting, but that’s not the case with revenue recognition. Adoption of this standard added 0.7% to first quarter sales but no impact on gross profit, effectively diluted the gross margin by 20 basis points and operating margin by 10 basis points. Including dilution from revenue recognition, operating margin grew 30 basis points to 14.1%, the highest first quarter margin in five years. While inflationary pressure still exists, they were offset by benefits from pricing and expense leverage. As a rate of sales, operating expenses improved 110 basis points driven primarily by leverage on higher sales. There is a bit of timing involved as we expect operating expenses to drift up over the year, but we are proud of the performance last quarter. We also had favorability from lower warranty cost which is offset by acquisition-related cost and higher freight expense. As expected, inflation is still a headwind to gross margin. The first quarter rate was down 80 basis points or 60 basis points without dilution from revenue recognition. Pricing added about 140 basis points in the first quarter which offset raw materials inflation, higher supply chain cost including investments to support our customers, combined with an unfavorable mix of sales account for the balance of gross margin change. I also want to touch on segment profitability. As a rate of sales, Engine operating profit declined 90 basis points to 13.3%. Although pricing is positive in Engine, we are still working with our OE customers to recover the raw materials and demand-related costs to be absorbed. Unlike the independent channel, that process takes longer and builds over time. Within the Industrial segment, our profit rate grew 210 basis points to 16.6%. Inflation is less of an issue for the profit base portion of Industrial which has more real time pricing. Additionally, growth in higher margin products like replacement parts, process filters and venting solutions enhance segment profitability. We continue to invest in these businesses, which will help to mix the company’s margin up over time. First quarter corporate and unallocated expense was favorable to last year due to higher variable compensation and additional pension expense in the prior year quarter. First quarter interest expense dropped by $1 million, due in large part to our global cash optimization efforts. Tax reform gives us the flexibility to better match location of our cash and debt with our operational needs. Given our large presence outside the US, we can more efficiently access overseas debt at favorable rates. Tax reform also helped our consolidated tax rate. Excluding discrete benefit of $900,000, our first quarter adjusted tax rate dropped to 24.3%, reflecting a lower corporate rate in the US and benefits from stock option activity. We invested $124 million back into the business last quarter. BOFA was a large portion at $96 million and capital expenditures increased to $28 million. A large portion of our CapEx was capacity expansion. We invested in all regions to support future demand of fast-growing products. These investments are already part of our long-term capital plan. But as previously noted, we accelerated the timing to meet our opportunity. We also spent $105 million on share repurchase and dividend last quarter, underscoring our commitment to invest back into the company and return cash to shareholders. The balance sheet continues to be strong. While we are comfortable with our leverage ratio of about 1.1 times EBITDA, we expect to bring that down a bit by the end of the year. We also plan to reduce our working capital needs as demand normalizes and our global financial shared services teams make progress on receivables. As I transition to our full year forecast, I want to first highlight the partial year benefits from BOFA. The acquisition adds about 1% to sales, 10 basis points to operating margin and $0.02 for EPS. With that in mind, I'll walk through the details of our outlook. Total and segment level sales are planned up between 7% and 11%, including a 2% headwind from currency and pricing benefits of 1% to 2%. The Engine sales forecast also includes about 1% from the revenue recognition change. Sales of Aerospace and Defense are projected to be flat with last year and we see growth in our other Engine businesses. Sales of On-Road are forecast up in the mid-teens, due primarily to the US and then supported by China. While the US truck cycle is likely nearing its peak, we have support from past program wins. Program wins are also driving strength in China, where our business is more dependent on customer ordering patterns than overall truck cycle. We updated our Off-Road forecast to reflect the impact on the hydraulics parts that Tod referenced. We now expect sales up in the mid-single digits versus prior forecast in the high single digits. Although our projection is more modest, we still believe construction and mining are mid-cycle, while agriculture may even be earlier. Given that Off-Road grew more than 50% over the past three years, the moderating growth is predictable and not a concern. Aftermarket sales are now projected up in the low-double digit range, benefiting from hydraulic sales. Equipment utilization is still strong and past wins with innovative air and liquid products will contribute to another year of growth in aftermarket. We also have favorable trends within Industrial and BOFA is adding about 4% to segment sales. Sales from BOFA benefits IFS. So we raised our forecast for this business to grow from the mid-teens, up from the prior forecast for high single-digits. Organic growth is coming from both new equipment and replacement parts and we project above-average growth in process filtration. Sales of Special Applications are forecast in line with last year, reflecting declining sales of disk drives, being offset by growth in venting solutions. Finally, GTS sales are projected down in the high single-digit range, driven entirely by large turbine projects. These projects will represent less than 10% of GTS sales this year, but the market pressure is intense enough to offset strong sales of replacement parts. BOFA also contributed to our increase in our full year operating margin, which is now forecast between 14.2% and 14.6%. The midpoint of this range is up 60 basis points from last year and our incremental margin is in the low 20% range, in line with our historic average. Also, please keep in mind that our forecast includes 10 basis points of dilution from the revenue recognition accounting change. We expect gross margin will be roughly in line with last year, including the optical drag from revenue recognition of 30 basis points. Our forecast reflects a $30 million headwind from higher raw material and freight costs, which we expect to offset with price realization. We also expect to deliver operating expense leverage. We took a very focused approach to expense planning this year, allowing us to budget for strategic investments, while delivering incremental profit on increasing sales. Moving down the P&L. We expect other income between $12 million and $16 million; interest expense of $23 million, including an impact from BOFA; and a tax rate between 24.7% and 26.7%. Fiscal 2019 capital expenditures will land between $130 million and $150 million. Cash conversion is forecast between 60% and 75% and our share repurchase target is 2%. Altogether, our EPS forecast of $2.31 to $2.45, implies an increase of about 16% to 23% from last year's adjusted EPS. Our front-half, back-half sales split is modeled like last year. Within Engine, first quarter was our toughest year-over-year comparison, but we will still expect to see some noise by business unit as we move through the year. We also expect noise in the industrial segment, particularly in GTS. To help with modeling, note that we expect the second quarter sales of GTS to be the lowest of the year with a more stable volume in the back half. In terms of operating margin, we are forecasting typical seasonality, where second half operating margin is higher than the first. I also want to mention that we expect modest increases in operating expense over the course of the year, as we ramp up investments in certain businesses. Overall, our 2019 forecast includes strong top line growth, incremental levels of profit on increasing sales and disciplined capital deployment that reflects investment in the Company and returning cash to shareholders. After first quarter, we are solidly on track to deliver our fiscal 2019 financial plans and our targeted approach to budgeting has given us the ability to invest for future success. Now, I'll turn the call back to Tod. Tod?