Andrew G. Lampereur
Analyst · Wells Fargo
Thank you, Bob, and good morning, everyone. I'll provide some additional color on our financial results we reported this morning. Summarizing the results at a high level, we generated second quarter sales of $370 million, which were down 2% from the prior year due primarily to lower shipments in the Engineered Solutions and Electrical segments. Our operating profit margins declined in the second quarter, which is our seasonally weakest of the year. Half of the decline was due to an acquisition earn-out accrual reversal in the prior year and the balance due to lower current year volume. Our diluted earnings per share was $0.38 a share, which was 12% below the prior year due to lower sales and margins, which were partially offset by lower tax rate and financing costs. Now we'll dig in and provide a little bit more color on results, starting first at the sales line. Our second quarter sales were down 2% on a year-over-year basis, reflecting a 6% core decline and the 4% benefit from last year's 3 acquisitions. Currency did not have a meaningful impact on the second quarter on a year-over-year comparison. The 6% core sales decline compares to last quarter's 7% year-over-year decline. This was driven by headwinds in the Engineered Solutions and Electrical segments, but both of these segments reported less worse declines than in the first quarter. We took this as a sign that we are moving off the bottom. Sales in the other 2 segments weakened sequentially on a year-over-year basis. I'll provide more color on sales by each of the segments in a few minutes. Geographically, it feels like demand in our industrial-oriented end markets is holding up best in the Americas, although the OEM customer inventory correction seems like it'll be a headwind at some accounts in North America for another quarter. Europe is clearly facing challenges right now, but we expect to see some easier comps coming our way. While demand in China and India continues to be weak, our energy quotation activity around the globe remains strong. Our second quarter profit margins are typically the weakest of the year due to lower production levels during the holidays and the short month of February. We also normally see the impact of a seasonal slowdown in oil and gas maintenance in the North Sea due to inclement winter weather. The combination of these factors hurt absorption in our facilities and adversely impacted second quarter profit margins. Overall, our consolidated operating profit margins declined to 11.3%, down 180 basis points from a year ago. Approximately half the decline was due to the prior year earn-out adjustment in the Energy segment that I mentioned earlier. From a segment standpoint, margins were down year-over-year in all 4 segments but are expected to rebound nicely in the second half. Now let's step down one layer of detail and provide some color for each of our segments, starting first with the Industrial segment. Industrial generated a 1% year-over-year core sales growth in the second quarter, a continuation of the moderating trend that we've been seeing. As a reference point, core sales were up year-over-year by 2% in the first quarter. Similar to last quarter, the sales growth experienced in the Integrated Solutions product line more than offset the slowing economy's impact on the base industrial tool hydraulic product line. This same mix diluted margins year-over-year, however, as IS projects do not generate margins as high as the standard industrial tools. The pockets of strength in the Industrial segment continue to be bolting, energy and mining maintenance, where we're capitalizing on our vertical market strategy and taking share. Energy segment core sales growth in the quarter was lower than we expected, largely the result of a high hurdle we created in the prior year when we had 27% core growth in the second quarter. Similar to the first quarter, we saw sales growth at Hydratight and a decline at Cortland. Cortland again had a lumpy quarter with weaker demand in its nonenergy markets such as defense. It has a healthy backlog and a lot of outstanding quotes and is forecasting a stronger second half. The strongest demand at Cortland has been for the subsea oil and gas umbilical product line, while diving and seismic slowed a bit during the quarter. While Hydratight did report year-over-year growth, it was weaker than we saw in the first quarter. Beyond a difficult prior year comp sales -- core sales comp, we saw some service customers delay the start of our service work until other contractors completed their part on the project, and we saw lower nuclear maintenance activity than in the prior year. The Americas was the weakest region for Hydratight in the quarter, while Asia Pac continued to grow very well on the strength of Gorgon project activities. Our Energy segment operating profit in the quarter was down year-over-year, but if you exclude last year's acquisition earn-out reserve adjustment, both profits and margins were up year-over-year. Moving on to the Electrical segment. Year-over-year core sales declined 9% compared to a 16% decline in the first quarter. Most of the year-over-year decline in sequential core sales change was again due to the solar product line within Mastervolt. Low-voltage transformer sales also hurt the top line comparison. Areas of strength in the Electrical segment included the global marine channel for both the Mastervolt and Marinco brands, as well as Del City's business-to-business Internet channel. Electrical segment profitability was impacted by the lower sales volume in the quarter. We realized cost savings in the second quarter from last year's plant consolidation, but we also booked an additional $1 million of solar restructuring costs in this quarter to reduce future operating costs in Europe. Now on to our final segment, Engineered Solutions. This segment continued to feel the brunt of customer inventory destocking at Actuant, most notably from construction equipment, off-highway and heavy-duty truck OEMs. Segment core sales were down 12%, an improvement from the 17% year-over-year decline that we saw in the first quarter. Although highly unusual from a seasonal standpoint, segment sales actually increased sequentially from the first to second quarters due to the significant impact of destocking in our first quarter. We expect this to continue to get less worse as customer destocking comes to an end and we see easier prior year comps. Thanks to some aggressive cost reduction actions in the first quarter and the last 90 days, the decremental margins on the lower Engineered Solutions sales have improved. EBITDA margins in this segment in the second quarter were up sequentially 10 basis point as a result of these actions. We expect to see margin improvement in Engineered Solutions over the next several quarters, the combined benefit of cost reduction efforts from the past as well as higher production levels in the second half. Before wrapping up my prepared comments today, I'll quickly cover cash flow, liquidity and our financial position. We generated approximately $30 million of free cash flow in the quarter, which was used to reduce our net debt. We expect that the $30 million working capital build that we had in the first half of this year will reverse in the second half and be a source of cash. We used approximately $2 million of cash in the quarter to buy back 61,000 shares of our own stock. Our quarter end net debt of $304 million was the lowest we've had in the last 5 years, and our net debt-to-EBITDA leverage of 1.1x is the lowest in Actuant's history. Liquidity and availability remains strong with our full $600 million revolver and $90 million of cash on the books available and ready to fund growth. With that, I will turn the call over to Mark.