Matthew Trerotola
Analyst · KeyBanc Capital. Please go ahead
Thanks, Mike, and good morning. We're pleased to report strong financial performance in the second quarter. Results were at or ahead of expectations in each of our businesses and we made great progress on transforming our company for a very exciting future. We remain on track to achieve our 2019 guidance adjusted for the Air & Gas Handling sale. Chris will walk you through the before and after numbers later. In our first full quarter, with the Medical Technology business, we accelerated growth through commercial execution, product innovation, and improving customer service levels. We're leaning in hard to complete transformation projects this year to position the business for a healthy growth and margin improvement next year. Our Fabrication Technology business delivered strong margin improvement and the team had a tenth straight quarter of organic growth in modestly softer than expected, but stable end markets. The Air & Gas Handling business posted its fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit order growth and very strong margin improvements, demonstrating the success of our diversification strategy and our operational execution. We continue to expect to complete the divestiture later this year. Turning to Slide 4, you can see that we're making good progress on the DJO integration. The business achieved organic growth of 3.4% up nicely from the first quarter growth rate and moving toward our medium term goal of 4% to 5%. The reconstructive product lines again delivered double-digit growth this quarter with high teens growth in shoulders. We also had well above market growth in our knee and hip product line driven in part by positive surgeon response to our EMPOWR knee as we continue to fill out the product line. Prevention and Rehabilitation product line made healthy sequential growth improvement in the second quarter and finished flat on a year-over-year basis. In addition to the higher number of new product launches this year we made substantial progress addressing customer service issues. We expect cost improvements and seasonally higher Q4 volume to support the second half step-up in margins consistent with original guidance. Slide 5 provides more details on our progress integrating DJO and creating a CBS fueled continuous improvement path. Our work streams are on track and I've been really pleased with the level of engagement and energy across the DJO team. We continue to have strong momentum in our Reconstructive product lines. DJO has a track record of implant innovation and have developed great relationships with key opinion leaders in the orthopedic space. We also have a leading position in the higher growth shoulder implant segment and these strong franchise attributes are adding up to consistent double-digit growth this year and we see long run way to continue well above market growth in surgical. Our focus on supply chain and operations improvement resulted in a more than 60% reduction in paths to revenue in the second quarter. Our sales teams, channel partners and customers are feeling the difference and we now expect Prevention and Rehabilitation product lines to return to organic growth in the second half of the year. Reimbursement is an area where we see a big opportunity for CBS impact. The processes which are critical to revenue growth and cash flows cycle time are a classic application for lean value stream mapping and transactional process improvement. In recent months, the team, has made process and organizational improvements that reduce commercial waste and accelerate collections. We're gaining traction in this area and see multiyear improvement path that will help both the top and bottom lines. We continue to be excited about the opportunities for innovation driven growth in DJO. The parts of the business with fresh product lines have strong growth and share gain. In other products, the new products are flowing again and we see healthy pipelines that we can accelerate with CBS and with little bit of targeted investment. Moving to Slide 6, fabrication technology continues to drive higher margins and above market growth. Margins were up 90 basis points from the prior year period from price, productivity, and cost reductions. The ESAB team is executing well, both commercially and operationally. With steel prices easing, the benefits of the tedious [ph] important in cost reduction projects are reading through. The second quarter is seasonally the highest margin quarter of the year and we continue to expect meaningful year-over-year margin improvements in the second half. We had second quarter organic growth in most global regions, including the U.S. Volume was flat with global growth offset by softening in the U.S. We expect low single digit organic growth in the second half from price with a soft, but stable global market picture continuing to point to roughly flat volume. GCE, Sandvik, and our other recent bolt-on acquisitions are on track and on Slide 7, you can see the benefits from this important part of our value creation strategy. Our disciplined acquisition and integration process is enabling us to quickly generate attractive returns from these complementary acquisitions. Starting in 2016 we paid an average multiple of about 9.5. We focus on strategic acquisitions that make the businesses better and our M&A playbook focuses our teams on key value drivers and support rapid but thoughtful integration. With this approach, we are on track to reduce the overall acquisition multiple on these deals by more than a third in the first two full years of ownership. An outstanding example of the value created with bolt-on M&A is the GCE acquisition that we completed last year in our Fabrication Technology business. We expect GCE to grow high single digits this year due to a combination of exposure to faster growing markets and applications such as healthcare and science research, and leveraging ESAB's global channels to grow faster outside of its traditional geographic markets. It is also accretive to gross margin. We're also delivering on cost synergies by consolidating existing ESAB and GCE facilities, functions and product lines. Looking forward, GCE opens up new growth opportunities organically and through additional M&A in the higher growth, higher margin applications, like specialty gas control and related adjacencies. Slide 8, shows another strong quarter in Air & Gas Handling. We've had four consecutive quarters of double-digit order growth, a reflection of improve long cycle market conditions and the strategic repositioning of the business into faster growth markets. The substantial margin improvement reflects improvements in commercial processes, a shift to more profitable projects and cost reductions as we improve the business for long term success. This successful trajectory enabled us to divest the business for an attractive value and we expect to complete the sale later this year. Before handing off to Chris, I'll wrap up on Slide 9 as we look ahead to the strength of our newly reshaped portfolio. Colfax will head into 2020 with a stronger reshaped portfolio. We've improved our growth potential. DJO and ESAB have strong brands and market leading positions on which to build and grow. You can see on the pie charts that we will be nicely balanced globally with China well under 10% of our total revenues, and we'll also have nice balance across industries with a significant amount of MedTech through our Orthopedic Solutions business. Innovation matters in these businesses. With plenty of opportunity to drive differentiation and extend or even redefine the solution set for customers. Acquisitions can improve our scale and reach and accelerate technology development. DJO gives us a number of exciting new directions in which to pursue M&A. We've also created a higher margin, less cyclical company with better cash flow. Over 90% of our revenue is now from tens of thousands of recurring customers across the world buying hundreds of run rate product and services with average purchase prices measured in hundreds or in thousands of dollars. This diversification, along with the non cyclical MedTech demand and CBS driven margin improvements position us to generate higher and much more stable free cash flow. Stronger cash flow lets us invest faster in innovation and acquisitions to compound returns for our shareholders. Before I hand of to Chris to take you through our results and outlook, let me finish by saying that we're on track for which I expect will be a very successful transformative year for Colfax in 2019 and we're positioned for strong performance in 2020.