Scott Robinson
Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open
Thanks, Tod. Good morning, everyone. This quarter reflects a continuation of the themes we've seen since the beginning of the fiscal year, strong demand, pricing, and operating expense leverage, to mitigating inflationary pressures, and dry runs. Second quarter sales grew 18%. Operating income was up 26% or 5% adjusted for last year's restructuring charges, and EPS up $0.57 was 30% above the prior year, or up 10% on an adjusted basis. Second quarter operating margin increased 70 basis points to 11.9%, but was down 150 basis points on an adjusted basis reflecting continued gross margin pressure in the quarter. Similar to last quarter for gross margin pressure was significant due to increased costs around materials, freight and labor. This impact was compounded by the fact that we're experiencing a deflationary environment one year ago. As a reminder, we expect our second quarter gross margin to be the [Indiscernible] for this fiscal year. Within the second quarter, January was the strongest gross margin month, which is the month we instituted significant pricing actions. As pricing continues to get layered in, we should see gross margin improve sequentially each quarter in the second half of the year. In terms of operating expense, we remain disciplined and thoughtful in our spend, balancing near term challenges on the gross margin line with our commitment to investing for the future. Strategically, we are following our portfolio approach by continuing to allocate spend to our advanced accelerate portfolio. Second quarter operating expense as a percentage of sales was 19.2% favorable like 280 basis points on a GAAP basis, and favorable by 150 basis points on an adjusted basis. Driven primarily by volume leverage. Before turning to the balance sheet and cash flow statement, I want to touch on segment profitability. This quarter was a tale of 2 segments. Second quarter Engine pretax profit margin was 11.7% down 200 basis points year over year on an adjusted basis. While industrial margin was 15.1% up 30 basis points on an adjusted basis. The dichotomy between the performance of the 2 segments is largely due to the time it takes to implement price increases in certain areas of the business. Through much of our industrial segment and in Engine Aftermarket, we are able to institute and realize the benefits of pricing actions more quickly. While the process and OEM portion of our Engine business takes longer due to certain contracts in place. Therefore, while we have made progress with our overall pricing, we still have work to do. Now turning to the balance sheet and cash flow statements. We ended the quarter with inventories up 36 million sequentially and 133 million year-over-year, mainly due to the impact of inflation. Taking a proactive approach to build inventories to meet customer demand, supply chain challenges we've had internally and with our customers on order deliveries. Second quarter capital expenditures were $15 million as we invested in various projects, including PowerCore capacity expansion. As always, we remain committed to returning capital to shareholders this quarter which amount to $40 million in the form of dividends and share repurchases. Year-to-date, we've repurchased 1.4% of our shares outstanding and are on track to reach our 2% target by the end of the fiscal year. Also in line with our disciplined adherence to capital deployment priorities, we invested $49 million on our two acquisitions. Our balance sheet continues to be an important asset, allowing us to navigate this challenging environment and providing us with financial flexibility. We ended the quarter with a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 0.8 times. Now I'll walk through our fiscal 2022 outlook. First on sales. We are increasing our fiscal 2022 sales guidance to a range between 11% and 15%, including a negative impact of currency translation of about 2%. This increase, from our previous guidance of 8% to 12%, is driven by first-half results, ongoing pricing actions, as well as increased momentum in certain businesses. From a segment perspective, we've raised our full-year sales guidance for both Engine and Industrial. For the Engine segment, we expect a revenue increase of between 12% and 16% up from our previous expectation of between 8% and 12%. We have increased our outlook for Engine Aftermarket and Aerospace and Defense, while reiterating our guidance for our first-fit businesses. Engine Aftermarket sales are now expected to grow in the mid-teens up from a previous estimate of high-single-digit increase. Incremental pricing combined with high levels of equipment utilization globally are driving the higher sales forecast and our proprietary products allow us to continue to gain share. In Aerospace and Defense, we are now forecasting growth in the low 20% range up from the low double-digits previously as the commercial Aerospace market continues to improve, and as we benefit from share gains in the Aftermarket. In terms of our first fit businesses, we continue to expect Off-Road sales to grow in the high teens versus last year as overall end market demand remains high due to elevated levels of equipment production. We also anticipate ongoing Exhaust and Emissions sales strength as backlog levels remain high. In On-Road, we continue to forecast a low single digit decrease year over year. The ongoing impact from a discontinued product line Tod mentioned earlier, as well as broad base, customers supply chain issues, including chip shortages are driving the weakness versus prior year. Now on the industrial segment, we expect sales to be up between 9 and 13% versus our previous expectation of 7% to 11%. We have increased our outlook for special applications, we are maintaining our guidance for Industrial Filtration Solutions and GTS. Special applications are now forecast to be up mid single digits versus our prior guidance of low single digit increase, as we expect continued strength, particularly within our disk drive business. Sales of IFS our plant up in the low double digit range, sales of new equipment and replacement parts, particularly for dust collection, along with strength in process filtration will drive the growth. Our two recent acquisitions fall into this category as well, and while we are pleased with the integration process and sales outlook, the numbers are not yet material. Moving to GTS, we continue to expect fiscal '22 sales to be up high-single digits with large turbine sales driving the year-over-year increase. Now I'll touch on the growth margin dynamics, we do expect our gross margins to be on of positive trajectory as we move through the second half of the year. However, recent results this quarter were below expectations and as price increases in the second half are only expected partially offset cost inflation, we are reducing our gross margin outlook to be down 100 to 150 basis points versus the 50 to 100 basis points decline previously anticipated. We expect to pay between 12% to 14% more year-over-year for our raw materials, or about 400 basis points. Importantly, this excludes freight, labor, and energy inflation, which are also providing a notable headwind this year. Although there is some indicators that P-7 inflation could be leveling off as a whole. We have not yet found this to be the case. Also through our advanced buying terms, our cost basis often trails the indices. Given the gross margin dynamics combined with our discipline on the operating expense line, we are now forecasting an operating margin range between 14.0% and 14.4% which is slightly for a slightly lower than our previous 14.1% to 14.7% range. Last year's adjusted operating margin was 14%. Expense leverage is expected to be the driver of the year over year benefit. Based on our updated forecast, we are raising our EPS outlook to a new record with a range of between $2.66 and $2.76 versus the previous range of $2.57 and $2.73. An increase from last year's adjusted EPS of 15% to 19%. Moving to our balance sheet and cash flow outlook, capital expenditures are forecasted to be between $90 million to $110 million. And we anticipate free cash flow conversion to be about 70% to 80% for the year. In summary, as we think about the financial results for this fiscal year, the profit margins in the first half have been challenging. But we are taking the right steps to protect our margins and deliver record levels of sales and earnings for this fiscal year. Further, we remain committed to managing the business for the long term and have made investments in that regard. Before turning the call back to Tod, I want to provide some well-deserved recognition to the team for an important project we completed this quarter. As part of our ongoing efforts to cement our technological infrastructure, we completed an upgrade for our global ERP system. We capitalized on the opportunity to solidify our business system and put the process and procedures in place to achieve our growth plans. This work involved shutting down our systems for five days over the last week of December, despite it requiring a significant amount of planning, commitment, execution, and effort, which would not have been impossible without the incredible team we have in place. I want to thank our employees for their tremendous efforts in making the upgrade a success. Now, I will turn the call back to Tod.