Earnings Labs

DXP Enterprises, Inc. (DXPE)

Q3 2012 Earnings Call· Fri, Nov 2, 2012

$171.27

+1.96%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+0.24%

1 Week

-10.43%

1 Month

-10.41%

vs S&P

-10.37%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the DXP Enterprise's Incorporated 2012 third quarter conference call. (Operator Instructions). This conference is being recorded today, Thursday, November 1, 2012. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Mr. Mac McConnell. Please go ahead, sir. Mac McConnell – SVP, Finance and CFO: Thank you. This is Mac McConnell, CFO of DXP. Good evening, and thank you for joining us. Welcome to DXP's third quarter conference call. David Little, our CEO, will also speak to you and answer your questions. Before I begin, I want to remind you that today's discussion will include forward-looking statements. I want to caution you that such statements are predictions and actual events or results can differ materially. A detailed discussion of the many factors that we believe may have a material effect on our business on an ongoing basis is contained in our SEC filing, but DXP assumes no obligation to update that information. I will begin with a summary of DXP's third quarter 2012 results. David Little will share his thoughts regarding the quarter, then we will be happy to answer questions. Payables for the third quarter increased 39.5%, $289.9 million from the third quarter of 2011. After excluding third quarter 2012's sales of $66.7 billion for businesses acquired in 2011 and 2012, sales for the third quarter increased 7.4% on a same-store sales basis. Sales for supply chain services increased 11.2% to $38.6 million compared to $34.7 million for the 2011 third quarter. Excluding third quarter 2012 SCS segment sales of $4.5 million from acquired businesses, SCS segment sales for the third quarter 2012 decreased 1.7% from 2011 on a same-store sales basis. The decline is a result of reduced sales to military and truck-related customers.…

David Little

Management

Thanks, Mac and thanks all our participants on our conference call today. Our first thoughts go to our DXP people, our customers, and their families that were affected by Hurricane Sandy. Our prayers are with them to have a safe and speedy recovery. Our third quarter results were excellent in both top line and bottom line growth. Our external growth strategy of new acquisitions is working very well. Our focus is to support and help our new family members to exceed by being a part of a bigger ship with more tools and resources to help their customers to be more successful resulting in growth for both us, the customer, and our new acquisition. Our goal is to acquire a successful company and help them grow creating a win/win situation by better serving their customers with a larger breadth of technical products and services. This strategy is working and will continue to be a big part of our future success together. I would like to personally congratulate all our DXP people for their accomplishment of reaching our $1 billion sales goal. If you look at our last 12 months, we did $1 billion, $22 million, $465,000 in sales and a 9.5% EBITDA margin. In the third quarter, our EBITDA margins were actually 10.6%. We achieved this goal much earlier than expected since it was actually our 2013 goal. Okay, take a minute. Congratulate yourself on a job well done, but now we're going to get this planning to our next milestone of $2 billion by the end of 2016. And of course, EBITDA margins of 10% plus. I believe in monetary goals, but I also believe in the pursuit of happiness. In business, money is just a measurement. Happiness is defined as being successful. DXP wants to provide each of…

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions). Our first question is from the line of Matt Duncan – Stephens, Inc. Please go ahead. Matt Duncan – Stephens, Inc.: Good afternoon guys. Congrats on another great quarter. David Little – Chairman, President and CEO: Thank you. Matt Duncan – Stephens, Inc.: First question I’ve go, David if you could talk a little bit about the sales trends that you’re seeing in the business. How did it do month to month throughout the quarter, and how did October look. You said you’re seeing a little bit of a slowdown, if you could maybe talk a little bit more about what you’re seeing out there? David Little – Chairman, President and CEO: Well, really month to month was from a base sales basis was probably a relatively flat one. You know, the gas market continues to contract, oil is still relatively strong. We see our oil and gas customers talking and putting together their next year budgets, which are at least the same as this last year if not larger in some cases. So, we feel that 2013 should be a really good year. We likewise see some slowdown in the fourth quarter with some of the oil and gas customers. As you know they get their budgets, they spend them as fast as they can so that they produce more oil and get more volume of product on the books. When they get towards the end of the year their budget tend to be gone or are depleted significantly. And so we’re not seeing a lot of extra money coming in in oil and gas play to continue to keep drilling going. That said, remember also though that DXP is besides [inaudible] service business is on the production side, and there as you heard on the IPS,…

Operator

Operator

As a reminder ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question please press the star followed by the one. If you are using a speaker phone, please remember to lift the handset before making your selection. One moment please for the next question. Our next question comes from Joe Mondello – Sidoti. Please go ahead. Joe Mondello – Sidoti: Hey guys. I missed the part where you were talking about the segment margins. I was wondering if you could just give me the margins on all three segments again? David Little – Chairman, President and CEO: Our organic growth? Mac McConnell – SVP, Finance and CFO: No, no, no, the gross [inaudible] operating income margin. Joe Mondello – Sidoti: Yes, operating. Mac McConnell – SVP, Finance and CFO: Of those three segments. David Little – Chairman, President and CEO: For service centers in the third quarter it was 12.4%. In IPS it was 18.6%. And Supply Chain Services it’s 7.2%. Mac McConnell – SVP, Finance and CFO: And you have to look at that mix that – real rough, very rough [inaudible] 70% of the business service centers Joe Mondello – Sidoti: In terms of the IPS, how is either backlog and the orders, how is the backlog looking compared to the second quarter? How did the orders trend throughout the quarter? And in addition to that, sort of – how was sort of the pricing that you’re seeing within that backlog trending? Mac McConnell – SVP, Finance and CFO: Okay, so our quota activity is more than doubled where we were in the second quarter looking at the third quarter. Our backlogs are up. Our manpower the working two shifts 10 hours a day, that’s 20 hours of a 24 hour day. And so – and then as far…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Holden Lewis – BB&T Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Holden Lewis – BB&T Capital Markets: Thank. Good afternoon guys. David Little – Chairman, President and CEO: Hi Holden. Holden Lewis – BB&T Capital Markets: I also [inaudible] prior caller talked about the [$654 million] charge for [inaudible] of past debt. I also thought you saying that there was a half a million dollar collection in SG&A that was an offset SG&A, can you give a little collar on that, what was the number for that? David Little – Chairman, President and CEO: That one was $500,000. Holden Lewis – BB&T Capital Markets: Okay, what was their net worth? David Little – Chairman, President and CEO: I can’t tell you. [inaudible] we were suing somebody and we won. We have a non-disclosure agreement, so we can’t. Holden Lewis – BB&T Capital Markets: So the way we should be looking at this, I guess from an [inaudible] point, is that collection largely offset that (ammonizing) charge, and so the impact across the line is [inaudible] or is there some different treatment from a tax standpoint that negates the net impact of those two things, irrelevant from an early standpoint? David Little – Chairman, President and CEO: They are both treated the same for tax purposes. So, you’re right, we wrote off 654,000, that’s an interest expense by (ammonizing) the bad issuance cost, than we’d also in NSD&A picked up $500,000 on [inaudible] Holden Lewis – BB&T Capital Markets: Got you, okay. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the SCS business? You kind of alluded to a new account here, a new account there and in this fourth quarter, it sounds like you have eight accounts that are going to begin recognizing revenue. That…

Operator

Operator

Our next question is a follow-up from Matt Duncan. Please go ahead. Matt Duncan – Stephens Inc.: Hi David. You talked a little bit about the pricing software earlier in the call, can you give us an update on how many of your regions have that now, and sort of what impact it’s been having on gross margin? David Little – Chairman, President and CEO: I don’t have an update on the individual regions in terms of what kind of improvement they’re seeing. I do know that they’ve – they’re all on the system and capable of using the system. And so they’re in that process of how believability is, so I don’t know the utilization of the rate we track how many times they use the price are higher versus how many times they lower the price, and I haven’t seen a report on that either. So I assume that we probably are going through a month or two here where our results are not helping at all quite frankly. And so that’s why I’m not seeing it. So, if somebody has good news, they normally bring it to me. But they’re all up and running and we should get – we know we’ll get positive results as soon as we can buy-in, and so we’re working on the buy-in part. Matt Duncan – Stephens Inc.: Okay, that’s helpful. And then, can you give us a little bit of an update on the M&A pipeline. You know, one small build it sounds like at the beginning of this quarter. How does that M&A funnel look, and how is it going with trying to find some branches to buy up in Canada you’ve got the ability to sell more product up there? David Little – Chairman, President and CEO: I…