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Enerpac Tool Group Corp. (EPAC)

Q1 2008 Earnings Call· Wed, Dec 19, 2007

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Actuant Corporation first quarter fiscal 2008 earnings conference call. Today’s speakers are Bob Arzbaecher, President and CEO, and Andy Lampereur, Executive Vice President and CFO. As a reminder, this call contains forward looking statements that are subject to the Safe Harbor language in accordance to the press release issued today, and in regard with filings with the SEC. (Operator instructions). As a reminder, this conference is being recorded on Wednesday, December 19, 2007. It is my pleasure to turn the conference over to Mr. Arzbauecher. Please go ahead sir.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Thank you, Operator, and good morning everyone. As you’ve hopefully read in today’s first quarter earnings announcement, we’re off to a fast start for fiscal 2008. A combination of factors allowed us to beat our sales and earnings guidance for the first quarter and to raise our guidance for the full year. First, we had 3% core growth, stronger than the 1% for the quarter we were expecting. Next, we had very good margin conversion, with EBITDA margins up 130 basis points excluding our Europe electrical restructuring. Importantly, all four business segments contributed to this margin increase. And finally we benefited from strong currency translation created by the weakening US dollar. While we view this largely as a translational benefit, our strong presence outside of the US, which comprises about half of Actuant’s total sales bodes well for the months and quarters head. All of these factors led to record first quarter sales and earnings, with EPS up 27%, excluding the Europe Electrical restructuring. Andy will go through the numbers in detail with you, and then I will come back and discuss our guidance and a few other topics with you, Andy.

Andy Lampereur

Management

Thanks Bob. I’ll be covering our consolidated results first this morning, and then I’ll provide some comments on the performance of each of our four segments. My first slide is a simple comparison of our first quarter results between this year and last year. As a reminder, it reflects the first quarter’s two for one stock split. Overall, the comparison of results looks great. 21% top line growth to $415 million, 32% EBITDA growth to $68 million, and 27% EPS growth to $0.52 a share. All of these are records. The $0.52 a share of EPS for the first quarter excludes a European Electrical restructuring cost. We booked a $5.5 million or $0.09 a share charge for cost this quarter. Including this restructuring prevision, our first quarter EPS was about $0.43 a share. During the first quarter, we reached workers counsel agreement on reducing headcount by another 20 people in Germany; we exited certain product lines, as well as a German assembly building. We anticipate booking the final European Electrical restructuring provision in our second quarter, which will wrap up this project. Now I’ll provide a little bit more color on our record first quarter results. Our first quarter sales growth was 21%, consisting of 3% core growth, 5% from the impact of currency rate changes, and 13% from acquisitions. Sequentially, our core sales growth slowed as we had expected from 6% last quarter to 3% this quarter. However, as Bob mentioned, we had forecasted about only 1% core sales growth during the quarter, which we viewed going into the quarter as our lowest growth quarter of the year due to tough comps in both North American truck and our automotive convertible top business, the base to our internal forecast came from our industrial segment and stronger than anticipated truck…

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Thanks Andy. To augment Andy’s comments I also wanted to provide a few updates on each of our operating segments before discussing guidance. Starting with industrial, we’re really off to a great start in the industrial segment for fiscal 2008 with strong future prospects as well. A good example that happened this quarter, Hydratight landed its first multi-year frame agreement in the Gulf of Mexico. A frame agreement is essentially a blanket maintenance contract for, to work on the integrity a joints for the customers installed assets. We have numerous frame agreements in Europe, and hope this is the first of many in North America as we put more focus on our service revenue in this region. Moving to the electrical segment, we’re seeing a number of changes from the, some of our North American home center customers as they go through their normal product line reviews. We won some new business and we lost some business as part of these reviews. While not getting into specifics due to customer and competitive reasons, we’re going to being seeing an increase in our Gardener Bender sales with Home Depot and a decrease in our business with Lowe’s, with the net effect being a modest revenue loss. While these changes are not material to Actuant, we’re providing them to you for transparency. These changes have been included in our guidance that I will discuss shortly. Moving now to actuation systems segment, I wanted to emphasize the progress that we’ve made on improving margins and then the strength of the truck business outside of North America. As Andy mentioned, we are experiencing very strong sales growth in both Europe and China for our cab tilt product line, and this has been increased in our forecast for the rest of the year. On the…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions.) I’m pleased to state that our first question comes from the line of Deane Dray of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead sir, your line is open. Mark Zepf – Goldman Sachs: Hi, this is Mark Zepf calling on behalf of Deane.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Well, we’re pleased to have you Mark too. Mark Zepf – Goldman Sachs: Thanks a lot Bob. Quick question on electrical. I guess, first on top line and then on margins. Looking for the negative 3% core sales to improve sequentially through the year. What are the key drivers there? Is it just the inventory draw down at Professional going away, or is there something at the margin that we should be looking for on the DIY side?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Mark Zepf – Goldman Sachs: Okay, and have you seen on the DIY side, have you seen any of your customers draw down inventories there either?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

No, nothing that appears to be a trend or any kind of a movement there. Mark Zepf – Goldman Sachs: Okay, great, and then Andy, on the margin side in electrical, comparisons got better, even as the core was a bit weaker. Are we reaching an inflection point where, farther along in the restructuring, the inefficiencies aren’t as much of a headwind, or, what’s, if you were to rank order the drivers on the margin improvement there, what were the most significant?

Andy Lampereur

Management

I think we do expect our margins to improve as we sequentially move out. I do warn you, however, the second quarter can be pretty lumpy, because it is a low volume period overall within our businesses. But we do believe we’ve come off the bottom. Mark Zepf – Goldman Sachs: Great, thank you very much.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Thanks Mark.

Operator

Operator

Thank you sir. Continuing on, our next question comes from the line of Wendy Caplan of Wachovia. Please go ahead, ma’am, your line is open. Wendy Caplan – Wachovia Securities: Thank you. Can you hear me?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Yeah, Wendy, good morning. Wendy Caplan – Wachovia Securities: Good morning. A couple things. Is there some way for you to quantify, have you quantified, Andy, the impact of acquisitions. You mentioned in several cases that acquisitions penalized results in the quarter. Do we have an EPS or EBITDA number for that?

Andy Lampereur

Management

Wendy, my comments about acquisitions hurting were more within some of the individual businesses from a margins standpoint, from a mix standpoint. Overall, the acquisitions, the five acquisitions we did last year, and the one we did this year, collectively definitely added, they were accretive to earnings overall. But, we don’t provide that on a quarterly basis, in terms of the exact number. But they definitely were accretive. Wendy Caplan – Wachovia Securities: No, I wasn’t referring to the accretion, I was referring to, they would have, if margin, if we had not included those margin, or if we include the margin was impacted in a negative way by x percent? Or is there a…?

Andy Lampereur

Management

Margin? I’m not sure I’m understanding your question Wendy, if you can just try and rephrase it one more time? Wendy Caplan – Wachovia Securities: If we had not had the penalties from the acquisitions in the sense of, not the accretion, but the charges related to the acquisitions, the initial charges, what would the margin have been? Is there a way of quantifying that?

Andy Lampereur

Management

Wendy, are you referring, sorry, I’m not sure if you’re referring to the initial, when you say the initial charges, are you talking about the one-time amortization of inventory, that sort of thing? Wendy Caplan – Wachovia Securities: Right, that’s what I’m referring to.

Andy Lampereur

Management

Overall, for all the acquisitions, that piece of it was about a half million dollar drag overall, but that piece of it wasn’t a significant one-time item in the quarter. Wendy Caplan – Wachovia Securities: Okay. Thanks Andy, that was what I was referring to. Historically, you’ve spoken a lot, recently, you’ve kind of talked with us about some acceleration in terms of efforts in seeking a larger acquisition that could, I think you’ve talked about it, referring to it as adding another leg to the stool. When you’ve talked about acquisitions for ’08, you mentioned tuck-ins. Can you talk about whether your strategy to seek out larger acquisitions is intact, and are some of those in the acquisition backlog? What should we be thinking about that?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

It’s a great question. And I think, we absolutely at our investor meeting in New York talked about new platforms. But let me put this in context. When we communicated that to you, we said, in likelihood is that sometime over the next three years we would add a new platform to the four platforms, segments that we have today. And we have just begun, when I’m saying begun, in the last 90 to 120 days, have begun to have some platform meetings. We have people internally who are working on that with Ted Wozniak, myself, Andy, all at the top of that group. We also have been using some outside resources, meeting with investment bankers and hearing what they think about new platforms. My goal is to try to have that list of ideas for platforms narrowed down to five by December of ’08. That’s when we do a strategic plan with the Board, and that’s when I plan to do it. So this is not something that you should expect seeing something happen immediately. Now, there are always assets for sale, and there was a recent asset this quarter in safety, that moved to another party. I’m not saying we won’t do one before the December period, I’m saying we’re going through a very deliberate process to identify and find those new platforms that we think have above average growth, and try to get those done by December. So, in our funnel, there are some of those ideas, nothing that applies to the 150-200 million of tuck-ins that we talked about, that would be outside of that. And nothing, to my point, that’s imminent at all.

Andy Lampereur

Management

I think the other point I would just add to that, Wendy, consistent with what we’ve said in the past, at least 80% of our M&A efforts are focused on tuck-ins, so that part of it.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Yeah, that’s true. Wendy Caplan – Wachovia Securities: Thank you, thank you. And one last question. Your European Electrical business, you’ve stated before, and you stated again today, that you expect the charges to be completed by second quarter of this year. Can you comment on the profitability in European Electrical at this point, and what you expect for that in ’08?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

You know, we’re not going to get into specific sub-business segment thing, that’s just, we’ve been consistent on that. I think our original targets for this restructuring in the $7-$8 million zip code are still intact. You won’t get the full benefit of that in ’08, because we’re doing it halfway through the year, but those kind of targets are still intact. So that’s probably about all the guidance I’m going to give you. Wendy Caplan – Wachovia Securities: Okay, thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Continuing on, our next question comes from the line of Curt Woodworth of J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead sir, your line is open. Curt Woodworth – J.P. Morgan: Yeah, hi, good morning. Can you guys talk about any differences in growth rates you’re seeing globally for the Enerpac business right now?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Well, as we’ve been pretty consistent in telling you, really for the last six quarters, that the growth rate is moderating in North America, and is somewhere in the middle of the single-digit area for this area. Europe, much stronger than that, still in double-digit zip code, Asia even stronger than that, depending on when you look at it. Some of our Asian sales are a little lumpy, because we do a little more of these bigger infrastructure projects. But that would be the context. Now, against the backdrop of what we were forecasting, that’s a little bit ahead, as Andy talked about. Industrial was a little stronger than we expected for the quarter. Curt Woodworth – J.P. Morgan: And are you seeing any implications in terms of more of the project business for Enerpac from the tighter credit conditions that we’re seeing?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

No, most of those projects are funded by governments, federal or state governments. They really don’t get influenced in a short-term period of time by that credit market. So I have not seen any issues there at all. Curt Woodworth – J.P. Morgan: Great, and in terms of the joint integrity business you’ve seen, there are pretty significant increases in MRO and upgrade spending on oil and gas. What’s the outlook there, what are your customers saying about incremental growth going forward and what’s really going to drive that?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Well what you’re describing, MRO and an oil and gas power gen environment, is precisely our business. I mean, we do do new installation, but the lion’s share of our hydro-type business is driven by the MRO nature of existing assets that are installed. And, obviously, with oil in the 80s and 90s, most of our customers are really running at capacity, trying to improve capacity, using a lot of new technologies to get every last minute, every last gallon of oil out of existing facilities. A lot of new technology going into that, and all of that is helping the MRO nature of our business. Higher pressures impact that, deeper drilling helps our business; so really, it’s a very favorable environment for the MRO nature of our business.

Curt Woodworth-JPMorgan

Analyst

Okay and in terms of incremental growth? Is it pretty much the song remains the same it’s just going to be continued incremental spending there to maintain capacity?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Yes I mean I think when we look at the growth of the industrial the we believe going forward that the oil and gas will be a little stronger than the industrial tool side of it and it's just what you described. It's our own nature of it. In fact we're in an area right now in the winter where you really can't do a lot of maintenance and repair in the North Sea. It's just too dangerous to be trying to do stuff on a rig or a platform. So this is actually our little of our slower season from a seasonal point of view.

Curt Woodworth-JPMorgan

Analyst

Okay and what are your expectations for the RV market this year?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Well we got a good data point at the national RV show in Louisville the first week in December. It's a tough market for RVs. We play in the motor home side versus the travel trailer side, a number of accounts talked about that orders were down at the show; a few said they were up. We see a lot of activity where people are extending their Christmas production shutdowns a little bit longer. This is not a big season for RVs right now anyways. You'll really get the real [litnis – ph] test as you get in to the spring season. If you boil all that together we were pleased with our first quarter. We, when I talked about adjusting forecast going forward this is one that’s probably a little on the minus side, being very conservative there. And we'll just have to see. Again it's, and I want to remind people and it seems like I have to do this often. You know, is RV is 5% of our total business. It used to be much bigger than that but now it's not that meaningful in terms of overall actual performance.

Curt Woodworth-JPMorgan

Analyst

Thank you

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. Continuing on our next question comes from line of Scott Graham of Bear Stearns. Please go ahead sir your line is now open Scott Graham –Bear Stearns: Hey good morning. Several questions related to the top line. What happened in European DIY this quarter?

Andy Lampereur

Management

Scott what we, it hit pretty hard because had the change, we were up about 4% or 5% in the fourth quarter and then all of the sudden we were down in the 7%, 8% range this quarter. We were down essentially at all of the customers, we went digging in and looking at their volume through their stores came off quite a bit. Their reorders to us came off so it kind of surprised us how strong the fourth quarter was and how quickly it turned as one we’re watching pretty closely as we go forward. For the full year we assumed this thing was going to be flat out there so we're pretty confident that we will not see the same thing repeat for four quarters here. But it was a little bit of a surprise as we mentioned.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Now two things to comment on that Scott. Don't be surprised if you do see some negatives. I think we're trying to balance this here but we are getting rid of SKUs, unprofitable SKUs and you know the first way you try to improve an unprofitable SKU is to go get a price increase and if it's due to copper or freight or any of the costs that we have we're fairly aggressive at doing that. The second way in cop we are willing to walk away from unprofitable SKUs. We think that's the right thing to do and there's a major piece of work getting done as we speak on that. I don't think that was the major influence of the reduction Andy talked about but it probably had some effect and it probably will going forward. But again, the Europe Electrical losing sales there at our current profitability level before the restructuring is completed is not a bad thing. Scott Graham –Bear Stearns: Understood. Alternatively US DIY, even though the gross there was only moderate. It looks like you've been kind of outperforming that market for a while and even if it's just modest outperformance, some of your new products with some traction. What would you say that's attributable to?

Andy Lampereur

Management

I would put a couple of things on it. The first would be to say that you know if you look at the same store sales comps for Lowe’s and Depot as a proxy these guys are down in the 5% to 10% zip code. The electrical aisle is not as bad as the full store. The reason for that is the white goods, the lumber, much bigger ticket items tend to drive those same store sales. The electrical aisle tends to be an area that performs better than that because it's more of a recurring revenue if you will. People need to replace a light switch or something along those lines. So I start with the fact that the electrical aisle is not down as much as the same storm. And then our performance within that aisle has been favorable. This quarter we launched a major cable tie, a piece of business with Home Depot and we are probably a third of the way through that launch and that certainly helped our revenue with Depot. Lowe’s was reasonably flat, not a huge amount of change year over year. So again some of those wins and losses I refer to in my comments started from a positive point of view this quarter with people. Scott Graham –Bear Stearns: Sort of a question on the two businesses added (inaudible) to more program oriented obviously the convertibles and the US truck business. I know that both of those businesses you guys have been looking at trying to win some new platforms and have in fact won some and what have you and most of that I suspect as a 2009 oriented. Did we see maybe the bottom of the truck business this quarter or will it be next quarter and kind of the same question for the convertibles business in terms of bottoming.

Andy Lampereur

Management

Well I think the truck we probably have one more quarter Scott just because of the pre buy that happened in December. It will obviously depend on how strong January and February come along but I would say we're treading along the bottom maybe one more month. From the auto side I think you're getting into a period now where it really is year over year volumes that drive the unit volumes of existing platforms that drive our sales volume more than new platforms. Scott Graham –Bear Stearns: Right, could those businesses though be double digit growers in 2009?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Yeah, I think that the trucks probably got a better chance of doing that then auto but I would say both have that potential.

Andy Lampereur

Management

I wouldn't say for the full year in auto but you could have some quarters on the ramp I guess. Scott Graham –Bear Stearns: That's fine. Thanks

Operator

Operator

Thank you sir. Continuing on our next question which comes from the line of Chris Weltzer of Robert Baird. Please go ahead sir your line is now open. Chris Weltzer – Robert Baird: Good morning guys.

Andy Lampereur and Bob Arzbaecher

Analyst

Good morning Chris. Chris Weltzer – Robert Baird: Most of my questions have been answered in the press release we talked about higher intangible amortizations affecting industrial margins. Is that solely acquisition related or is there something else going on there?

Andy Lampereur

Management

Solely acquisition. Chris Weltzer – Robert Baird: Solely acquisition, okay. And then on the new frame contract in the Gulf for Hydro tight is that a new business win for you or is that just converting an existing customer to a new contract tie?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

A little of both. Chris Weltzer – Robert Baird: A little of both

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

A little of both

Andy Lampereur

Management

There was a customer we had a lot of frame agreements with in Europe and but they have assets here in the Gulf and we won it here. And a frame room, go head.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

What I wanted to do was maybe just spend a second and talk about what, how frame agreements work but basically what a lot of asset owners are trying to do is just outsource the joint integrity away. You guys keep track of the joints you know wherever our assets are, we want you to try to service them, keep track of them, do it safely, adhere to our safety requirements do all the training you need, and there's a lot of service providers that work on an oil rig or oil platform and what some of these customers are trying to do is, hey we want to have more of a consistent safety approach where a single provider is responsible for the assets. So it's almost an outsourced maintenance if you will, would probably be a good way to describe it. It's been going on in the Gulf, for us in the North Sea for a long time. People like stat oil and other, this is the first one here in the US and we do to plan to market this as a trend and try to convince other asset owners that this a good way to kind of outsource a major concern you might have about joint integrity. Chris Weltzer – Robert Baird: Okay and if I'm understanding correctly, you're saying that you pick up some revenue because you're doing some other things that maybe you weren't doing before but is it also this sort of agreement positive for margin mix as well?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

It's not much a margin issue as it is it allows us to start planning, I guess it affects margins where you start having the service crews, you have a more reliable predictable stream knowing what you have to do because you're responsible for a bigger group of assets. It allows you to time out that work a little bit better and have a little more visibility kind of like a backlog driven business if you will and so it probably helps the efficiency of our service group. s Chris Weltzer – Robert Baird: Yeah, no that's very helpful. Thank you guys

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much. Continuing on our next question comes from the line of a Scott Blumenthal of Emerald Advisors. Please go ahead sir. Scott Blumenthal – Emerald Advisors: Good morning Bob and Andy.

Andy Lampereur and Bob Arzbaecher

Analyst

Good morning Scott Scott Blumenthal – Emerald Advisors: I'm going to try and fill in some of the weight space from some of the previous questions. Can you talk about the kind of the evolution of products in the auto business? For example I know that a large portion of the minivans that are being sold nowadays have gate actuators and sliding door actuators. Just the evolution and characterize how that is going to kind of help you both here in North America in your European business.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Sure. I mean if you look at the evolution of convertible tops the whole world was basically either manual or electric actuation in the 80's and early 90's. By about mid 90's ourselves and (inaudible), I'm not sure exactly who came up with the first hydraulic system but we started moving into hydraulics from electric actuation. And what hydraulics did is they really did a better job of keeping the roof consistently going up and down, from side to side not having jammed things, not having electric motors that get a little out of sync. And the market very aggressively went to hydraulics. We went from there to the retractable hardtop roofs which needed more hydraulic cylinders, a more complete sophisticated system where you had to sense where various parts of the roof are. And we started getting into latching. So latching was an extension of that product line and we bought a business called CPF and started getting into latching as part of the system. What's happened more recently now is people are looking at hydraulics to do the lift gate and again electric actuation dominates that market today. Most of the minivans and SUVS that you have lift gate actuation are doing that in an electric fashion. Two problems with that though and the first is the same as convertible, the weight of these roofs is a big issue. The second is a unique technology we've brought in that helps the NI pinch point. If the lift gate is sensing that there's something in the way we reverse the motor and the fluid and like a garage door reverse the thing. In electric actuation, that's more problematic to deal with. They deal with it with sensors along the strips and sensors in cold weather freeze up and you never know that until somebody's hand is in the way. So this is a kind of a unique technology. It probably isn't going to be accepted by every customer, I think it will take a while for that to happen but a number of high end safety conscious people are going this way. Volvo, for example has gone this way. A number of things going on with Daimler Chrysler in this way. So that's the evolution that you're describing. We have not done any sliding doors yet, not a lot of weight to a door sliding, I don't know if that technology would move that way.

Andy Lampereur

Management

The lift gates, that when you look forward on this, and I talked about earlier the question are growth and automotive. Some of the growth that we expect to see later this year and next couple of years definitely is increases in these lift gate actuation and a lot of it is beyond the vans, is also, some is cars and some of it is SUV type vehicles.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Right and obviously a big convertible top model is 50,000 units. You start getting into lift gate; you’re talking about much, much higher volumes. And that clearly is something that will drive; a few programs can drive quite higher incremental growths than a convertible. Scott Blumenthal – Emerald Advisors: Yeah, it would appear to me that that’s becoming more and more standard in many vehicles, so that could be an opportunity here, over the next few years.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Scott Blumenthal – Emerald Advisors: And, sticking with the auto theme, or I guess the truck theme, can you talk about how some of your truck customers are trying to get ahead of the next, I guess 2010 we’re going to have a new emissions standard for truck engines.

Andy Lampereur

Management

A lot of what we’ve been working on within our Gits business, for last year and certainly this year, is focused on the development of those new platforms. We’ve picked up a couple of small wins, that we haven’t really publicly announced, because they’re not big ones yet, but some of the larger opportunities we’re working on, we hope to talk more about in the next year or so. But that clearly is part of the growth opportunity that we’ve been talking about with our Gits business, which, even though we’re in a trailing 12-month period here, where our sales are down 30% from a year ago, this is a business we’re saying we’re going to see a doubling, going from 40 million or so up to 100 million by 2010, 2011, for the very same thing. So we are working with a number of customers, potential customers, both here and in Europe on that. We remain very bullish on that market and of our prospects as well.

Operator

Operator

Thank you sir. Continuing on, our next question comes from the line of Tom Brinkmann of BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead sir, your line is now open. Tom Brinkmann – BMO Capital Markets: Good morning, most of my questions have been answered, but I do have a few more things for you. First of all, good quarter. Just wanted to ask if you break down the core sales growth in the industrial segment into Enerpac and then Hydratight.

Andy Lampereur

Management

Yeah, it was about 11% core in each of them, it was even between the two segments. 11 and 11. Or between the two product lines in the segment. Tom Brinkmann – BMO Capital Markets: Okay. And also, I was just curious about this quarter’s sales for the Gardner Bender, at the big batch retailers. You talked about the outlook going forward, but can you just comment on how they were historically here this quarter?

Andy Lampereur

Management

That would be within our North American electrical business that we said was up 3 or 4% this quarter, so that essentially is Gardner Bender. Tom Brinkmann – BMO Capital Markets: Okay.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Tom Brinkmann – BMO Capital Markets: Okay, that’s definitely good news. And then, as far as the actuation systems segment goes, how much was the Gits business down in this quarter, and then how does that compare to your expectations for the quarter?

Andy Lampereur

Management

It was in line with our expectations that I just mentioned on the prior question. We’ve been down 30-35% for the last year or so, since, the last full-length three, four quarters here it was pretty much in line with that. I would say it was in line with our expectations.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

But again, the reason for that big decline, or a big chunk of that reason for the decline, was the pre-buy last year. You know you had that change-out those engines by December, so our first quarter and our second quarter will feel the worst of that comparison. Tom Brinkmann – BMO Capital Markets: Okay, then I have additional questions. I’ll just get back in queue for that though.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Alright, thanks Tom.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Steven Fisher from UBS. Please go ahead, sir, your line is open. Steven Fisher – UBS: Hi, good morning. It sounds like Hydratight’s got to have one of the best outlooks in your portfolio. Do you think there’s still M&A opportunities in that business?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Yeah, the answer to both questions is yes. The out look is quite strong, for the reasons we’ve talked about already. From a M&A point of view, we also have, of the funnel of activity I talked about, I would say probably Hydratight has the most opportunities in the total funnel. That doesn’t mean things are going to close next quarter, but there’s just a lot of ideas there. Part of that is the guy who’s in charge of that segment, Brian Kobylinski, used to be our M&A leader. So he’s very equipped at working on the internal grassroots efforts of trying to find acquisitions that tuck in there. But there’s a lot to do there, and it’s just how broad you want to define joint integrity.

Andy Lampereur

Management

It’s really two different prongs. One is just building up geographically what our opportunities are where, building out our platform, our capabilities, and secondly, what other type of services or product can we add to, right alongside of our current product offering.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

There’s a lot of areas we haven’t touched. As Andy said, geographically, we’ve got more of an internal growth going on in China, but there’s other parts of the world we would probably do acquisitions to get our growth. Nuclear is an area we’re very excited about, there’s more we could do there. We got a taste of that with the Ricci acquisition, who does quite a bit of machining in there, and that’s exciting. Deepsea, subsea, offshore, lots of different technologies going in, the business you saw last year where we had Inject-A-Seal, and Morgrip, which is one that came with Hydratight, both focus on things that emergency repairs and lots to do in emergency areas. Billing out the service crews is an area where you can buy some companies that focus on that service. We’ve done that with a couple of acquisitions, and that’s a fast way to get, you just then have a heavy douse of training, and boom, you can start selling additional services. So there’s tons to work on in that segment. And obviously, the markets are pretty robust right now. Steven Fisher – UBS: Would you say that’s higher on your priority list, relative to other areas of M&A?

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

We love all our areas, but probably industrial would be the one we love the most. Steven Fisher – UBS: Got it. And then just to clarify on the Professional Electrical, have you already started to see the reversal on some of those OEM ordering patterns, or would you expect it to improve later in the quarter, I know we’re still early here.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

That’s probably too granular of a question for us to answer. Steven Fisher – UBS: Okay. I’m just thinking to get back to the strong double digit growth that you had in Professional Electrical within the last few quarters.

Andy Lampereur

Management

We’re not anticipating that for the year. Part of that growth, as we mentioned last year, was pricing, and I think we’ve anniversaried that, and part of that transformer business does get [resy ph] in some form or fashion, and that growth rate will not be in double digits, it will be single digit growth going forward. Steven Fisher – UBS: Okay, great, thanks a lot. Thank you sir. At this time, Mr. Arzbaecher, I’ll turn the presentation back to you once again for your concluding remarks. Thank you sir.

Bob Arzbaecher

Management

Great. Well, thank you operator, and thank all you participants for observing our call today. We’re obviously excited about our first quarter and the prospects for a record 2008. Andy, Karen and myself are here for the balance of the week to answer any follow-up questions you have. If we don’t talk to you, please have a safe and a happy holiday season. Look forward to the continued prosperity in 2008 for our investors. Thank you, and good bye.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you all for your participation, and ask that you please disconnect. Thank you once again, have a great day, and a wonderful holiday.