Andrew G. Lampereur
Analyst · JPMorgan
Thank you, Bob, and good morning, everyone. I'll provide some additional color on our financial results we reported today. Summarizing our results at a high level, we generated first quarter sales of $377 million, down 4% from the prior year, due primarily to weakness in the Electrical and Engineered Solutions segments, as well as modest foreign currency headwinds. Our first quarter operating profit margins declined 100 basis points year-over-year and 70 basis points sequentially to 13.6%, due primarily to the lower manufacturing cost absorption, given the lower sales volume. Our EBITDA margin decline was slightly better at 60 basis points down, the difference due to currency activity in the prior year. Diluted earnings per share was $0.49 in the first quarter, $0.01 below the prior year, which was the combination of lower sales and margins, partially offset by lower income taxes and financing costs. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was about 18.5%, which was lower than we had forecasted. This reflects some tax reduction actions we initiated during the quarter and will help drive our full year tax rate to around 21%. Now I'll provide more color on our results, starting first with the sales line. Our first quarter sales were down 4% on a year-over-year basis, reflecting a 7% core decline, a 1% currency headwind and a 4% benefit from acquisitions, being Jeyco, Turotest and CrossControls. The consolidated core sales reduction was driven by declines in the Electrical and Engineered Solutions segments, which were both down mid teens on a core basis. In contrast, core sales were up in both Industrial and Energy segments. We experienced weak demand early in the quarter in several businesses but most pronounced in businesses that serve OEMs in the vehicle and off-highway equipment markets. These customers started notifying us in October that they were reducing their build rates for the balance of the calendar year in order to reduce inventory. Recently, they've now extended their slowdowns well into the first quarter of calendar 2013. This obviously played havoc with our production, supply chain and sales forecasts, causing a sales miss, inventory build and unabsorbed overhead in the quarter. In addition to the inventory correction, solar sales were down 61%, a combination of a very high comparable last year, driven by feed-in tariff changes; and weak demand this year, the latter reflecting the spread of the recession from southern Europe into Western Europe, government feed-in tariff and regulatory changes, and weak consumer and business confidence throughout Europe. Solar was the main driver to the sequential and year-over-year core sales decline in Electrical. From a sales standpoint, it's important to put the first quarter in context. We started off with a weak September and then saw demand stabilize, albeit at a lower level than what we would like, most notably again in Electrical and the Engineered Solutions segments. We're comfortable that the reduced first quarter demand was not the result of market share losses. Despite Electrical and Engineered Solutions challenges, it's important to note that our first quarter core sales did grow in our 2 most profitable segments, Industrial and Energy. Due to the limited visibility of the production cuts by the OEMs, our ability to quickly rip out manufacturing costs and overhead was limited in the quarter. This hoard -- absorption in our facilities and adversely impacted our operating profit and EBITDA margins. It was most visible in the Engineered Solutions segment's results where margins took a hit -- a large hit sequentially and year-over-year. Overall, our consolidated operating profit margins declined to 13.6%, which unfortunately broke our string of 11 consecutive quarters of year-over-year operating profit margin expansion. Now I'll provide some color on our results by segment, starting first with Industrial. The Industrial segment generated 2% year-over-year core sales growth in the quarter, a continuation of the trend of moderation we've been seeing. During the quarter, as expected, the growth experienced in the Integrated Solutions product line more than offset the slowing economy's impact on the base industrial tool product line. Despite the recession in Europe, the Industrial segment generated modest year-over-year growth there on account of robust Integrated Solutions project business. This same mix, however, hurt margins as the IS projects don't generate as high a margins as the standard industrial tools. Within the Industrial segment, end markets with better-than-average demand in the quarter included bolting, energy and mining, where we continued to capitalize on our vertical market strategy and took market share. Shifting now to the Energy segment. Market conditions there remained steady. Although at first glance, the 4% core sales growth was a noticeable decline from the 14% core growth we reported last quarter, Hydratight core sales growth were again in a healthy double-digit range. Cortland, however, had a lumpy first quarter with a year-over-year sales core decline despite very strong bookings and quote activity. We remain confident about the outlook for Cortland and expect solid growth for the full year. In fact, we've recently won at Cortland a $5 million umbilical order from a new customer that will ship later this fiscal year. On the margin front, the report is good within the Energy segment, where we had a 60-basis-point year-over-year operating profit margin expansion. This was due to in part to favorable segment sales mix, as well as the additional volume. Turning now to the Electrical segment. Year-over-year sales declined 16% on account of the drop in the European solar demand that I discussed earlier. Within North America, we saw positive core sales growth in the retail, business-to-business and utility channels. However, OEM volumes were below last year, especially in transformers, and resulted in an overall mid-single-digit decline in North America for the Electrical segment. Electrical segment operating profit was up sharply over last year's first quarter low-water mark, attributable to the savings from a transformer plant consolidation project that was wrapped up last quarter, as well as the insurance recovery from a fire at Mastervolt's Dutch facility. Now onto the final segment, Engineered Solutions. This segment clearly felt the biggest impact from the inventory corrections, which impacted nearly all of its end markets. Coupled with the Engineered -- the fact that the Engineered Solutions has the heaviest proportion of its sales from Europe of any of our segments, this resulted in a tough quarter and a 17% core sales decline. Bob will elaborate on the contingency actions we took in the segment during the quarter in order to reduce costs, but it wasn't enough to make up for the reduced sales volume in the quarter, resulting in a sizable decline in Engineered Solutions' first quarter operating profit margins. Before turning the line back over to Bob, I'll quickly conclude with a snapshot of our cash flow, liquidity and capitalization. Now as is typical in the first quarter, our free cash flow lagged earnings on account of the payment of annual expenses that we accrue throughout the year, including prior year 401(k) contributions and bonuses, as well as annual insurance premiums. Although not impacting first quarter free cash flow, we also paid our annual dividend in the quarter, and we repurchased an additional 260,000 shares of stock under our buyback authorization. We're still comfortable with our existing $200 million free cash flow forecast for the year. Our net-debt-to-EBITDA leverage is at 1.2x, still below our long-term targeted range of 1.5x to 2.5x. Liquidity and availability both remain in great shape, with our full $600 million revolver available and ready to fund growth investments. With that, I'll turn the call over to Bob.