Robert Arzbaecher
Analyst · Janney Capital Markets
Thanks, Andy. Now that we've completed the Mastervolt transaction and the sale of the Europe Electrical business, we wanted to highlight the profile of the Electrical segment going forward, as the attached slide shows. We've come from roughly 50% DIY retail electrical products to now 25%. Our exposure is in the more profitable Marine market with increased -- that has increased due to the Mastervolt acquisition and solar that now makes up 20% of the segment sales. A key benefit of adding Mastervolt's solar product line is the diversity it provides to our served energy markets. We're big believers that the global energy needs will grow in excess of GDP as emerging markets continue to mature. The demand will be satisfied by a variety of energy sources: oil, natural gas, coal, wind, nuclear, solar, geothermal, you get the picture. Looking across Actuant, we have products and services that go into nearly all of these energy or power generation markets. In addition to our Energy segment, we sell energy end markets via solar and electrical utilities in the Electrical segment, wind, oil and -- wind and oil and gas markets within Enerpac products and through remote valve actuation product line for nuclear within our Engineered Solutions business. In total, approximately 25% of Actuant's total sales are now tied to the broad energy market. Now I want to spend a few minutes providing you an update on the Mastervolt integration. As we discussed in our first quarter conference call, about a third of this acquisition represents a tuck-in to our Marine platform. Our integration teams are busy pulling together the best of both Marinco, our legacy Marine business, and Mastervolt. We see both sales and cost synergies associated with creating a single Marine platform and are actively developing a global marine strategy to realize these synergies. The marine market is slowly recovering from the recession, and we're seeing sales growth, most notably in the aftermarket. The other 2/3 of the Mastervolt acquisition is focused on inverters for the solar PV systems and represents about 5% of Actuant's pro forma sales. If you follow the solar market, you've undoubtedly heard and read about a number of recent headwinds. This includes a rough winter in Europe, reductions in feed-in tariffs in numerous countries and inventory build at solar distributors. Our geographic exposure in solar is virtually all in Europe, more specifically in five countries, with Germany being the largest. Our solar inverter product line is targeted almost exclusively at the 20-kilowatt and below solar range, which you would see in a residential or a light commercial application. This is important because a lot of the recent downward trend in feed-in tariffs in Europe are generally not on the low kilowatt part of the market. The tariff cuts are more heavily weighted towards the large utility scale projects. Feed-in tariffs are an important part of the PV industry. They generate demand when opening new markets, and then as markets mature, feed-in tariffs decline, leading to solar price reductions. Over time, the results get to good parity, and tariffs are no longer a factor. With these recent feed-in tariff cuts don't change our view that long-term prospects of Mastervolt -- excuse me, let me try that one again. These most recent feed-in tariffs don't change our view on the long-term prospects of Mastervolt, but they do create short-term headwinds and some of the lumpiness we've talked about on our last call. As with Mastervolt's Marine business, the integration teams are heavily focused on developing and prioritizing the solar market growth strategy in order to capitalize on long-term growth. That's the long-term outlook plus the ability to reposition our Electrical segment towards higher technology growth and margins. That's what attracted us to Mastervolt in the first place. Now shifting gears. As I noted in my opening remarks, we're pleased with what we've accomplished in the first half of 2011. Sales are up 20%, with core increasing 13%. Year-to-date margins are up 160 basis points. Trailing 12-month EPS has grown $0.24 from the beginning of the year, and first half EPS is up 57%. Leveraging the economic recovery, expanding in emerging markets, focusing in our growth and innovation initiatives and finally acquisitions, these are all contributing to our first half success. Speaking of acquisitions, on the M&A front, our pipeline is pretty robust, with quite a bit of activity, including a few potential larger transactions in the $100 million to $200 million range. We are seeing more auction processes as private equity groups turn over some of their 2006 and 2007 investments, which creates acquisition opportunities for all of our segments. We remain disciplined to our return on invested capital hurdles and are finding potential transactions that are solid fits with our existing business strategies. We have ample capacity with our newly-amended credit agreement, and when economics and strategic fit make sense, we're going to complete transactions. Now let's move on to guidance. As we noted in the release, we are moving up our full year guidance towards the top end of our previous range. Our current expectation is for sales of $1.4 billion to $1.425 billion, and the EPS from continuing operations of $1.50 to $1.60 a share for fiscal 2011. Our consolidated full year core growth estimate is now been moved up to 9% to 11% range, up from the 8% to 10% estimate we have on last call, with Industrial and Engineered Solutions core growth more than offsetting Electrical. We are still targeting cash flow $140 million to $150 million for the year, well in excess of net earnings. For the third quarter, we're endorsing sales guidance of $375 million to $385 million and EPS of $0.42 to $0.47 a share. At the midpoint, this represents a 30% increase in EPS, excluding prior year restructuring. Obviously, anniversarying the economic recovery for Actuant's results in a moderating growth compared to the robust year-over-year numbers we've reported to date. The recovering economy has also brought about material and other cost input inflation which must be managed on a price in quasi. This is most acutely noticed for us in the Electrical segment where copper, resin and freight are creating some headwinds. But Actuant's had a long history of managing both the price and cost elements of this equation, and we are presently comfortable that we have the net effect incorporated into our earnings guidance. In summary, the fiscal year is half over. We're in great shape to meet our financial targets. We continue to execute our business model, which is investing in growth initiatives, pursuing acquisition opportunities to strengthen our portfolio and using our lead lean enterprise to continuously improve our business processes. We believe these activities will enable us to continue to create long-term shareholder value. That's it for my prepared remarks. Operator, open it up to the phone lines for the question-and-answer session.