Andy Lampereur
Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, your line is open. Please go ahead
Thanks, Randy and good morning everyone. I am going to start my review this morning with the bridge schedule on Slide 4, which removes the Sanlo divestiture and restructuring costs from our results to put them on a basis that’s consistent with our guidance in the prior year. Our GAAP sales and EPS for the quarter were $276 million and $0.29 a share. And after backing out these items, our adjusted EPS was $0.30 a share, which was in the middle of our $0.28 to $0.33 a share guidance range for earnings per share. The Sanlo divestiture resulted in a net gain of $1.5 million or $0.02 a share after taking into account favorable tax attributes. We will deploy the $10 million of proceeds from this divestiture in growth opportunities going forward. On the restructuring front, there were no surprises as we continue to run at $3 million to $4 million of charges per quarter which will continue for the next several quarters. Some of the larger projects currently underway include the consolidation of manufacturing sites at both Weasler and Precision-Hayes in targeted personnel reductions elsewhere. Slide 5 is a comparison of our adjusted fiscal ‘16 fourth quarter results versus the prior year. As you can see, our sales declined 8% year-over-year from $300 million to $276 million primarily reflecting end market weakness that more than offset the benefit of this year’s two tuck-in acquisitions. I will provide more color on sales on the next slide. For the first time this year, our adjusted operating profit margin was in line with the prior year with both just under 10%, reflecting cost savings offsetting the impact of lower sales and production volumes this quarter. At the bottom line, current year fourth quarter EPS was $0.30 a share compared to $0.37 a year ago. About $0.04 of this decline is due to the lower prior year effective income tax rate with the remaining $0.03 due to the revenue decline this year. I will dissect these adjusted results in greater detail starting with sales on Slide 6. Our consolidated sales in the quarter were down 8%, which reflected a 1% currency headwind, 4% benefit from the tuck-in acquisitions and the 11% core sales decline. Each of our three business segments reported a year-over-year core sales decline, which is what we had expected. On a core year-over-year basis, industrial was down 8%, energy segment down 15% and engineered solutions down 9%. I will provide color on my segment reviews, but can summarize overall market demand as weak due to sluggish economic conditions, which is being exacerbated by related OEM destocking impacting our engineered solutions in particular. With the exception of the anticipated step down in energy core sales trends from the third to the fourth quarter, things did not get worse sequentially, but instead appear to be stabilizing at these lower levels. We expect these trends will continue in the first quarter, with the exception of the energy segment, which will decline further on a core basis due to very tough first half comps from a year ago. Slide 7 summarizes our quarterly adjusted operating margin trend. Consolidated fourth quarter OP margin of 9.6% was down a hair sequentially, but even on a year-over-year basis. This reflects the combination of unfavorable sales mix with energy’s fourth quarter sales decline as well as lower production levels and the resulting lower fixed cost under-absorption across all of our segments. Destocking both by ES, or engineered solutions, OEM customers and our own businesses in all segments accelerated in the fourth quarter and was a margin headwind for us. As a reference point, at Actuant, we reduced our inventory levels by 10% in the second half of the fiscal year, which benefited free cash flow at the expense of margins. Now, I will spend a few minutes on each of our three segments starting first with industrial on Slide 8. The industrial segment reported fourth quarter sales that were 6% below the prior year. Core sales were down 8%, while acquisitions provided a 2% benefit and currency was not a meaningful factor. The 8% core sales decline was a modest sequential improvement from the 9% and 14% year-over-year declines that we saw in each of the last two quarters, which we take as stabilization in market demand. All geographic regions within industrial saw weak demand, with the Americas and Asia-Pac weaker than Europe, the Middle East and Africa. We do anticipate improving core sales trend rates from industrial as we move through fiscal ‘17 as comps continue to get easier, new products are introduced and Enerpac’s second-tier branding strategy takes hold. From a profitability standpoint, industrial’s 23.6% operating profit margin in the fourth quarter was down from last year on lower volume, unfavorable mix between integrated solutions and industrial tools within Enerpac as well as second half destocking by us. While it’s down year-over-year, I am not concerned about this segment’s long-term profitability and its ability to post much higher margins when volume and mix improve. Now, on to Slide 9 to discuss energy’s segment results. The results in energy changed the most sequentially. Year-over-year fourth quarter sales declined 15% following a flat comparison in the third quarter. That was expected and communicated in our earnings call from last quarter. The fourth quarter of last year was a start of an outstanding fourth quarter run for Hydratight, with last year benefiting from a catch-up in delayed and deferred maintenance. The unfavorable comp situation will continue over the next couple of quarters for Hydratight as it will be up against the Petro Rabigh job impact in the first half of fiscal ‘16. Despite this air pocket, the reality is that Hydratight is operating very well in a challenging environment, but there simply aren’t many large projects on the horizon that will offset the big ones that we had last year. Elsewhere in this segment, there were no surprises as Viking and Cortland continue to face stiff headwinds on account of low oil and gas capital spending, but they were in line with our forecast. Despite the lower sales volume in the quarter, overall energy segment profit margins were up year-over-year from 9% to 9.8% this year, reflecting the benefit of significant cost reductions. I will wrap up my segment level discussions with engineered solutions on Slide 10. Sales were down 9% year-over-year in the fourth quarter compared to an 8% decline in the third. The second half of fiscal 2016 has been defined by weakening Ag sales, which is the combination of both lower farm income and end market demand as well as excess inventory at our OEM customers and their dealers. This de-stocking and overall weakness was also evident in other off-highway markets and was slightly worse than the pace that we have predicted on our last quarterly earnings call. The bright spot has been on-highway vehicles, such as trucks and autos, which were up and flat for the year, respectively. Not surprisingly, profit margins in the engineered solutions segment were pressured as a result of these lower production levels and the resulting weak overhead absorption. We also had a $2 million warranty provision in the quarter in this segment that reduced its margins by 200 basis points alone. Looking ahead, we expect similar demand trends for the near-term, which should give way to growth when OEMs finally start production on new models that we have already won and OEM production levels match end market demand. Many of the new models that we were supposed to launch in fiscal ‘16 were delayed anywhere from 6 months to 18 months due to slow movement in existing inventories at OEMs and dealers. So that’s it for my segment deep dives. Before moving on to the income statement though and being the end of the fiscal year, I wanted to quickly recap our full year results. On Slide 11, we have summarized and – comparative fiscal ‘15 full year to ‘16 results, excluding restructuring and impairment charges and the Sanlo divestiture. For the full year, sales were down $100 million or 8% year-over-year, reflecting a 6% core sales decline, 3% currency headwind and a net 1% benefit from acquisitions and divestitures. Sales were well below our original fiscal ‘16 guidance due to worse than expected market conditions pretty much everywhere, except for heavy-duty truck. Our adjusted EBITDA declined 20% and EBITDA margins declined 350 basis points, primarily the result of lower volume and energy pricing, unfavorable absorption as well as unfavorable mix. The revenues at our highest margin businesses in each of our three segments the Enerpac, Viking and Weasler declined year-over-year, while lower margin businesses such as auto and truck fared better on the top line. Our fiscal ‘16 adjusted EPS was $1.22 and that was actually within our original guidance range due to the better than planned effective tax rate, but it fell well short of guidance on a pretax basis on account of lower sales and margins. Finally, despite the lower sales and earnings, our free cash flow was in line with the prior year and within guidance on account of strong working capital management and lower cash taxes. In this environment with really depressed end markets, free cash flow was the thing we can most control on this page and we think we did a pretty good job with it. That $112 million of free cash flow represents 155% conversion, as Randy mentioned. This kept our free cash flow conversion track record intact, as you can see on Slide 12. So that’s a good segue to Slide 13, actually which summarizes our year end debt position. Strong fourth quarter free cash flow helped us reduce net debt to EBITDA leverage to 2.5x as we had targeted. Our $600 million revolver was untapped at the end of the fiscal year and coupled with $180 million of cash on the balance sheet, provides us great liquidity to fund growth going forward. So that’s it for my prepared comments and remarks today. I will turn the line back over to Randy.