David Russo
Analyst · GAMCO Investors. You may proceed
Thanks Bob. As disclosed in our earnings press release L.B. Foster's third quarter operating results include the following items, the first is $0.7 million adjustment to our warranty reserve related to concrete ties. We review this reserve ever quarter, we look at historical results as well as our expectations in the future and actively manage and adjust this reserve as we see -- as we conduct estimate and forecast. The second was an impairment charge that Bob discussed we recorded an $80.3 million charge related to acquisitions. L.B. Foster's typically performs annual impairment testing in the fourth quarter of every year. This year number of factors indicating a possible impairment might exist during the third quarter led us to accelerate such testing into the third quarter. Our internal accounting team along with a valuation consulting firm went through an involved process to determine that two businesses were impaired. Chemtec Energy Services was purchased at the end of 2014 for little less than $67 million creating goodwill of around $22 million, $10.4 million of that goodwill was deemed impaired. Inspection Oilfield Services or IOS purchased in March of this year for approximately $167 million, created goodwill of $69.9 million, all $69.9 million was deemed impaired for that business. So these two totaled $80.3 million, there was a lot book tax benefit on this charge as not all the goodwill is deductible for tax purposes. The after tax impact was $69.3 million or $6.23 per diluted share. We also tested other intangible and tangible assets and found no issue regarding those assets. We do remind everyone that this charge is considered a non-cash charge that does not impact our operations, bank covenants or cash flows. Bob spoke to the future strategy regarding these businesses and the continued expectation that they will be solid contributors in the future. Most of my discussion will exclude these costs to facilitate a more meaningful comparison of operating results. With that, net sales for the third quarter of ’15 were $176.1 million compared to $167.8 million in the prior year a 4.9% increase. The sales increase was due to 115.4% increase in tubular and energy services segment sales and an 8.4% improvement in construction segment sales partially offset by 13.8% decline in rail products and services segment sales. The tubular and energy services segment sales increase was due to the sales contributions made by the acquisitions December 2014 Chemtec Energy Services and the inspection Oilfield Services acquisition partially offset by decline in coated and threaded product sales. Excluding the acquisitions, tubular sales declined by $1.6 million or 10.4%. The construction product segment sales increase was due to increased sales across all divisions in this segment, most notably our precast concrete products division and Piling product sales. The decrease in rail products segment sales was due to reduced sales in concrete ties, Rail Distribution, Allegheny Rail Products, and Rail Technologies businesses, partially offset by an increase in transit products as well as the contribution from our January 2015 TEW Engineering acquisition. So the reductions in rail were due to a number of factors including the largest being $12.2 million reduction in Union Pacific sales in Q3 of ’15 compared to the prior year quarter. We also had a $1.3 million reduction in sales due to fluctuation in currency rates as compared to the prior year and overall sales reductions to the freight rail customers occurred this quarter due to lower volumes as evidenced by Class I commodity car loadings reporting a 6.2% decline for Q3 and 4.4% decline on a year-to-date basis. As a percentage of the third quarter of 2015 sales tubular accounted for 19%, construction was 31% and rail totaled 50% of sales. As mentioned in our earnings release, third quarter bookings were $145.5 million, an increase of 2.2% compared to last year’s third quarter due to a significant contribution from acquisitions completed since the third quarter of 2014. Tubular bookings increased 231% excluding recent acquisitions tubular bookings would have increased still by 73.7%. Rail products, bookings declined by 31.4% in the current year quarter. On a year-to-date basis, rail bookings were down by 19.8%. Construction product bookings increased by 10.3% principally due order improvements in the bridge products business partially offset by reductions in the concrete products business. Order backlogs stood at 174.3 million at the third quarter, down 21.9% from the third quarter of last year. The decrease was principally due to reductions in our piling products, rail distribution and concrete ties businesses partially offset by the increased backlog of our coated products and concrete products businesses as well as the businesses acquired after the third quarter of 2014. Gross profit margin was 20.5% in Q3 after excluding warrantee related charges of $0.7 million, in the third quarter adjusted gross margin was 20.9%, 10 basis points lower than the prior year. Rail margins were up by 10 basis points over the prior year and construction segment expansion had -- margins were up principally due to increased bridge products and Piling products results. Moving onto expenses, selling and administrative expenses increased by $1 million to $21.6 million or 4.7% in the third quarter of 2015 due to the inclusion of cost of our acquired businesses, excluding the S&A of companies acquired after the third quarter of 2014. Cost declined by $2.4 million or 11.7%. Third quarter selling and administrative expense represented 12.3% of sales in the third quarter of 15, flat with the prior year quarter. Third quarter adjusted pretax income was $10.8 million or 6.1% of sales compared to $13.9 million or 8.3% of sales in the prior year. As Bob discussed at length, we have many concurrent cost reduction activities occurring as we speak. As mentioned in our earnings press release, the effective tax rate for the third quarter of 15 was 18.2% compared to 34.2% in the third quarter of 2014. The Company’s effective income tax rate was significantly impacted by the goodwill impairment charge which related to both the tax-deductible and nondeductible goodwill, excluding impairment charge the Company's effective tax rate for the quarter would have been 36.2% which is higher than the prior year quarter primarily due to a less favorable global mix of income. Adjusted third quarter net income was $6.9 million or $0.67 per diluted share in 2015 compared to $9.1 million or $0.88 per share in the prior year. The $2.2 million reduction in net income was due principally to the dilutive impact of the IOS acquisition as well as the reduction in rail segment revenues and related profitability. Adjusted EBITDA was $19.2 million for the third quarter of 2015 compared to $17.1 million in the prior quarter, an increase of 12.1%. On a year-to-date basis, adjusted EBITDA was $47.9 million compared to with $42.9 million, an increase of $5 million or 11.6%. Turning to the balance sheet, working capital net of cash was essentially flat compared to the second quarter of this year. Accounts receivable increased by 7.6 million during the quarter. Our core business DSO increased to 50 days from 49 days at June, but our consolidated DSO was up 53 days as compared with 51 days at June 30. Inventory was reduced by $7.1 million as compared June and accounts payable and deferred revenue declined by $2.1 million, while these results are fairly typical of our seasonal third quarter results, they are also unacceptable. We are redoubling our focus on working capital efficiency going into Q4 and for all of 2016. Our cash provided by operating activities in third quarter was $15.6 million compared $18.1 million in the prior year quarter. On a year-to-date basis, cash provided by operating activities was 13.7 million compared to $49.7 million in the prior year as we have discussed on previous calls that prior year numbers was favorably impacted by a significant reduction in accounts receivable which was anticipated as we resolved slow collection issues on various projects and customers that built up in the second half of 2013. Our capital expenditures were $3.4 million compared to $3.9 million in the prior year quarter and year-to-date we've spent 11.6 million compared to 11.6 million last year, so flat with prior year. We anticipate spending approximately $13 million to $15 million in capital for all 2015 which includes our ERP program. The 2015 anticipated capital programs have been in all three business segments and focused at providing new and expanded manufacturing capabilities, improve service and product availability to the customer and increase manufacturing efficiencies in future periods that we do believe will improve shareholder value on a longer term basis. Based upon our recent results however we have scaled back numerous 2015 capital programs and we intend to cut deeper into the 2016 programs by an additional 30% to 35%. While our capital allocation protocols have been solid potential returns on projects in softer markets become less attractive and much easier to cancel or defer. Except for a couple of capital programs that we expect will have swift paybacks due to their tie in to business we’ve already one or another driven by longer term strategic growth in addition or as well as our EPR implementation project. We look to keep capital in check save from minimal necessary maintenance items. We did repurchase 80,500 shares of L.B. Foster stock during the third quarter for a little under $1.6 million. We anticipate that full year cash generated from operating activities will exceed capital expenditures, debt service payments, dividends, and share purchases in 2015. Our debt at the end of September was $207.5 million compared to $218.5 million at the end of June a reduction of $11 million. Maximizing our free cash flow for the remainder of this year and for all of 2016, will be a primary focus of this management team. All excess cash flow generated will be used to pay down debt and de-lever the Company. That concludes my comments on the third quarter I will now send it back to Chris to open up the session for questions.