Sandy Cutler
Analyst · Nigel Coe with Morgan Stanley
Great, thanks Don. And thanks everyone for joining us this morning. I’m going to work off of the earnings presentation which was posted earlier, and hopefully you’ve all got that in front of you, I’m going to start on page 3 that’s titled highlights of the Q3 results. Just a couple of comments here, we had a – we think a very strong and balanced quarter in the third quarter as you’ve already read our operating EPS it was above the midpoint of our guidance it came under the $1.29 versus the $1.25 that had been the midpoint. Significantly that operating EPS is up 15% from a year ago in markets that are I would describe as in overall as a less than robust. Our sales were up some 2%; core revenue was up 3% and then obviously reflects the impact of ForEx of the negative about 1 point. As you’ll hear us talk as we go through each of our businesses and the total corporate results, revenues really as for the tail of two cities strong conditions here in the U.S. as the U.S. continues to strengthen and then weaker conditions as we get outside the U.S. and just as one indication of that when you look within our core revenue being up 3%. The U.S. was up almost 7%, so we’re doing quite well in our businesses here in the U.S. Our record segment profits which were really pleased to see here we call the first quarter segment profits were 14.5%, second quarter they were 14.6%, but I think you remember that we had taken some restructuring expenses on our industrial businesses during that quarter, without those restructuring expense the margins would have been about 15.2%, now obviously the all-time record 16%. All of that drove a record operating cash flow of $943 million that excludes the legal settlements that were settled in the second quarter and we paid out as we’ve mentioned to you in numerous forms paid out that cash early in July. On the free cash flow was that a very robust 14% of sales, really pleased with that performance. Strong bookings in electrical again 4% overall, aerospace some 12% and we’re really pleased that all the work we’re doing to integrate the Cooper acquisition remains very much on track. If we turn to page 4, just a very quick and pretty simple reconciliation to our guidance you recall as I mentioned our guidance the midpoint was $1.25. Our record margins which came in about $0.04 stronger than we thought that was really in the electrical systems and services segment. I’ll speak more about that. But very pleased with the very full recovery we made in the third quarter frankly a little faster, we had said that we thought we would get an average of about 14% margins in the third and fourth quarter. We obviously came in above that in the third quarter, then aerospace came in slightly higher powered by some of the strength of our aftermarket shipments sales. I’ll speak more about that in a moment. With volumes coming in just a tad lighter than we had indicated, when we were looking for about a $150 million of incremental revenue when we gave our guidance for the third quarter. We worked very hard on productivity and expense control across the company. Our corporate expense came in as you saw it about $64 million versus the mid 80s guidance that we had provided. Taxes were about 2 points lower and that offset the lower than expected volume compared to our guidance and that was just about a $120 million lower expected physical volume and then a negative 65 impact, $65 million impact from ForEx. Again compared to consensus our volume was about $14 million difference in consensus out there. So, overall up some from $0.04, we think a very solid quarter of execution. If we move to page 5, just the corporate numbers that you’ve already seen with the overall sales 2%, 3% core growth that adds back to 1.4 for ForEx. I think the recent number speak very much for the prelim itself no impact of acquisitions or divestitures at the total corporate level. So, topic right into the business segment, if we turn to page 6, another very strong quarter performance in electrical product segment, our biggest segment in the company. As you can see sales up some 3% from last year, core growth up 4%. We think really solid when we look, whether we look against peers or look against market here. Margins expanded to 18%, bookings raised significantly up 5%. And when you look within those bookings, once again the story is very much the same as I’ve already mentioned twice about strength in the U.S. bookings over 8% in the U.S, really strong numbers here again. And Asia-Pacific was stronger, as you might expect Europe being the area of still looking for stabilization in those markets and that’s the area of weakness. As we look within those bookings lighting continues to be an area of continued strength, volume up from 19% our LED participation or percentage of – percent of our total lighting revenue at 45% really leading the industry. I’m very pleased with that. If we look around the world, we’re pleased on the U.S. our demand for industrial products, our industrial control products up some 15% in the quarter as well. Strength in the Middle East, and we’re pleased that they were seeing some pretty strong activity, compounded activity in Asia now well not as true on the system and services side, but I’ll come to that in just a moment. So, we think a really solid quarter, very much hitting our targets for performance here in terms of volume and margins. If we move to electrical systems and services segment, perhaps I think the highlights of the quarter in terms of really converting upon our improvement plans here, come back and talk about those three areas that work particularly on here in the quarter. But obviously volumes up 1%, 2% of course, so again a negative 1 point from ForEx, up 2% from the second quarter as well. Probably the big highlight is the margin of 14.6% up from the 12.7% disappointing performance in the second quarter. Bookings up 3% again over 5% here in the Americas region, so very much that same outlook and a number of you would recall when we talked about volume increases in the second half of 2014 that one of the portions of the systems and services businesses where we are counting on with strong services increase. Our bookings were up over 20% in the quarter, and services it was very much converting and we had thought, we’re seeing a little better tone on utilities where we actually we’re up about plus 6 in that particular area and doing well on the power distribution gear side. The weakness continues in the large UPS markets, whether it’s here or in Asia, and as we spoke to you we thought that it would be the condition that we continue for this year. Just a quick comment, following the second quarter and during our second quarter call we talked about initiatives to get our margins back in line with our own expectations that were around freight and logistics that are around capacity rightsizing and prior quality business and about continuing strong bookings momentum and getting a better price tone. If you recall the time I told you that, there we needed improvement in all three of those areas that they were about equally weighted, frankly we had hopefully we would get to as I mentioned second half margins of 14%, which would have had us a slower in the third quarter than 14%, a little above 14% in the fourth quarter clearly. We got back to 14.6% for one quarter really good progress on all three of these, there was not a significant change in material cost. So that’s not what drove these increased margins, increased margins came for getting the progress we targeted in those three areas. And we expect that to continue in the fourth quarter as well. If we move to hydraulics, another challenging quarter in hydraulics and I think we gave you some indication of what our thoughts were in terms of what was happening in the market, at the end of the second quarter, we’ve talked about it all through the third quarter that, while we’ve talked about China construction equipment weakness over the last year or two, the big change in this market has been what’s been happening in the global ag market and particularly in the U.S. and in Europe. You’ve all seen the announcements from the major OEMs, a very significant turn in their outlook in terms of what they are doing with anticipated sales and production announced the production as an impact on us. Let me turn first to the issue of bookings which are down 6%, very significantly our distributor orders were flat; they are actually up in the U.S. But the real story to understand what’s happening in the bookings level here is that, our OEM bookings were down 19% and if you took the ag market out of that total of OEM bookings. All our other OEMs are up some 6% and that includes the global construction market. The real weakness is in ag due to significant cancellations in the Americas, in EMEA, I don’t think that’s probably a surprise and if you are following the ag market just going through preparation for quite a down cycle. We’ve tried to be quite transparent that we think that next year will be a down year in ag equipment as well. And so, this quarter where our sales were down from last year 1% and again when you get under the 1% down in volume of shipments, and now switching shipments. Distributor settlement is quite good up 7% OEM down 6% really driven by the ag side again. So our large exposure to ag is obviously showing up in this quarter, the 11.7% margins are influenced by the lower margin and the fact that we’ve taken our inventories down in responses as well. We think that this is a condition that’s likely to carry into the fourth quarter; we’ll see some small improvement in margins, but this kind of level in volume in the typical fourth quarter being slightly less than the third quarter in terms of volume as I think how this will play out in the fourth quarter as well. I’m going to switch to aerospace, really a terrific quarter in aerospace. If you move this is page 9, if you move to the slightly green colored box in the left hand lower side of this chart, you’ll see the core growth was 6%, you see right the divestiture is 6%. These are the two smaller units that we divested in the second quarter that we now have a full quarter of the lack of those sales. So, the actual organic growth in the business was really quite good, in fact very good, 6% we’re very pleased with the bookings up some 12% and had both positive bookings on both the commercial and the military side of the business. Significantly, we call out on the yellow box that aftermarket shipments accelerated during the third quarter that obviously is a help on the margins and I think you saw the very strong margins of 15.9%, you recall we’ve had a number of quarters now, these past several quarters, we’ve had significant acceleration on the aftermarket spares and repairs activity. And we’re starting to see that come through in the shipments here as well. We move to the Vehicle business, another strong quarter of performance, volume up 5% again core growth up 6% margins up 17.4%. We obviously raised our guidance for the NAFTA heavy-duty Class 8 build to 295,000 units for the year. We can see that finish line pretty clearly here as we said at the end of the third quarter really fourth quarter in terms of what this year looks like. And I think in addition, to the strong September NAFTA heavy-duty orders of almost 25,000 units that we’ve seen in the marketplace. We’re hearing pretty good news about what October is going to look like as well. So, I think continued good news. The weakness in this particular market is the same as we spoken to you about and it has not turned around from production point of view, South America, Brazil in particular continues to be very weak in its vehicle markets. And so we’ve got again a little bit of a story of two different worlds here, the very strong North American activity, the very weak Brazilian operation and remember that Brazil is a pretty big percentage of our business that’s outside – of the U.S. in this particular segment. So, if we turn to 11 sort of wrapping up 2014. Full year segment margins, we still think to be above 15.2%, I’m sure there will be individual differences by decimal point in these five different segments as we get to the close of the year and wait all the quarters. But overall we’re pretty comfortable with 15.2% that’s we shared in the – in our earnings announcement. We think the full year market growth is, likely to be around 2% where the U.S. market is growing at an attractive 3% level and the rest of the world growing at more like 1%. ForEx obviously has been a big change vis-à-vis what we first saw at the middle of the year, and you saw we had about $65 million year-to-year of negative ForEx in the third quarter. We think the full year is now likely to be on the order of some $220 million, for those of you who are doing the quick detection of that means more in the fourth quarter that was in the third quarter that is correct, because most of that currency change occurred in September. So, if they stay at these levels, we would get three months so that impact in the fourth quarter instead of largely one month of impact in the third quarter. And we’re really pleased that with all the complexity of all the different programs that our teams are working, they are doing a great job and the Cooper synergies remain on track for this $210 million in 2014, which to remind is about $95 million of incremental synergies and profits in 2014 compared to 2013. We turn to page 12, operating earnings per share same numbers that we showed you full year at the end of last quarter, so we’re holding that guidance that’s up 11% from the previous year. The fourth quarter midpoint in terms of operating earnings per share were $1.20 that’s also up 11% from last year. So, in markets that, we think are growing on the order of roughly 2%, we think very attractive leverage in terms of the profits dropping through. If we move to chart 13, its titled comparison of Q3 to Q4 for 2014, that was the starts for the $29 which we reported for the third quarter. We will again get about another penny I think from Cooper synergies. Margins in our fourth quarter for those of you who following our company for sometime, normally are about half a point lower in the fourth and they are in the third quarter, a portion that has to do with their regions of the world of our large parts of December are not business days. And that would account for about $0.06 drop from the third quarter to the fourth quarter that is inline well with our expectations were for the fourth quarter when we put our second half guidance together at the middle of the year as well. ForEx we think, as I mentioned it will be on the order of about negative $100 million comparing the third quarter to the fourth quarter that can drive about $0.02 and then the normal lower core volume that we see with the fourth quarter being slightly less than the seasonal peaks in the second and third quarter. That will be in the order of about $50 million, and so that’s how we get to our $1.20 obviously putting that together with our first three quarters, puts us at our full year midpoint that I covered on the previous stage. Chart 14, is provided just for quick summary of the key elements that we try to provide in our guidance and discussion about results. A couple of changes that I have already mentioned, but I would just highlight them for your record keeping ease on this chart. Market growth it was at 3%, we’ve lowered at the 2% as I mentioned before that changes all the occurring outside of the U.S. ForEx you may recall, we started the year thinking it would be about a negative 200, we got to the middle of the year and it didn’t look like it was going to be at that level 1 to 0. We now think it’s a negative 220, I think further confirmation that we know-how particular does a great job of forecasting ForEx. And then if you drop down to free cash flow, it’s up $50 million, so it was $1.8 billion to $2.0 billion, as we’ve gotten through the year this year and I’ve looked kind of the pace of all of the programs and the programs we prioritize, we think we’ll be spending about $50 million less than we thought when we enter the year. I would call that tuning, it’s not a reflection of any programs being behind, it’s really just our ability to get it spent this year. If we turn to page 15, a summary of the quarter and the year, as I mentioned, we think it’s a very solid quarter of performance clearly ForEx surprises a little bit, but I think it probably surprised almost everyone. Record margins really reflect all the work on productivity and effective cost control. Record free cash flow, we think really good look into 2015, I’ll talk a little bit more about that in the next chart, running at 14% of sales. We think the market conditions in the fourth quarter likely to be similar to Q3, the only modification of that I would say is just as a seasonal difference in the first quarter. And that we think a very solid attractive year this year with 11% operating EPS growth coming off the year with relatively modest worldwide market growth in terms of our markets. I know very much on your mind at this point is, what is 2015 start to look like, its – we’re in the midst of our operating planning. So, we can provide you only with a couple of kind of broad-based indications and obviously we’ll address this in far more detail in January in our call at that time. But maybe a couple of comments to reflect, we think market growth is likely to be similar to 2014, I think the big trends there are continuing growth in the U.S. and lower growth outside of the U.S. As you break that down kind of into our individual businesses, I think this our general feeling is that aerospace is likely to be a little higher growth than the average, hydraulics is going to be a little lower growth than the average. And the other franchises are going fall sort of somewhere in between. As we’ve mentioned in our last call and I would reemphasize again today, we’ve got two very big drivers and sort of self-help here in terms of another incremental $50 million of Cooper synergies, another incremental $35 million of benefits that come from the restructuring we did in the second quarter of this year in our industrial sector. And then the negatives that we spoke to you about earlier that we do expect that our tax rate will move from this roughly 6% this year to something and that 9% to 11% range next year. And then finally an issue that many of you have asked us about and we’ve discussed in quite some detail over the last year and a half. It has been our expectation ever since we announced the acquisition of Cooper by the middle of 2015; we would have the vast majority of our acquisition integration activities completed. We would have been paying off the major portion of the debt that we had indicated, we will repay back that we took on this part of the acquisition. And that the company will have the opportunity at that point to really be thinking through what is as around the very significant cash flow that we are driving at this point. And that’s likely to include either getting back into the M&A markets and/or share repurchases. We’ve not taken our finger off that chest piece at this point, you saw that we did purchase about $225 million of stock that was roughly 3.4 million shares in the third quarter. We’ve had the capacity we believe that, if we decide it makes sense to continue us purchases in the fourth quarter, but that’s frankly a decision we’ve not reached yet. And as we get into 2015, I think it’s just to open without some very attractive alternatives for us as we get back to the point where our balance sheet is considerably strengthened and we would have completed most of this integration, which really gives us the confidence than to think about new initiatives, as I said that either around the M&A side or on the side of purchasing back shares. So once again, we think a very strong quarter one that we really hit on upon the key elements that we felt that we need to improve upon it, if we came on a second quarter I think it sets up the fourth quarter entering next year on a strong basis. So with that, Don, I’ll turn things back to you and look forward to people’s questions.