Earnings Labs

L.B. Foster Company (FSTR)

Q4 2017 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 27, 2018

$31.22

-1.85%

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1 Month

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the L.B. Foster’s Fourth Quarter 2017 Earnings Teleconference. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Judy Balog. Thank you. You may begin.

Judy Balog

Analyst

Thank you. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us for L.B. Foster Company’s earnings conference call to review the company’s fourth quarter 2017 operating results. My name is Judy Balog and I’m the Investor Relations Manager of L.B. Foster. Hosting the call today is Mr. Robert Bauer, L.B. Foster’s President and CEO. Also on the call is Mr. James Maloney, L.B. Foster’s CFO and Treasurer. In addition to our press release, we have a fourth quarter presentation on our website under the Investor Relation’s tab for those who have online access. This evening, Jim will review the company’s fourth quarter financial results. Afterwards, Bob will review the Company’s fourth quarter performance and provide an update on significant business issues and market developments. We will then open the session for questions. During today’s call, our commentary and responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements, including items such as the Company’s outlook for our businesses and markets, cash flows, margins, operating costs, capital expenditures and other key business metrics, issues and projections. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from statements we make today. These forward-looking statements reflect our opinions only as of the date of this presentation, and we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revisions to these statements in light of new information, except as required by securities laws. All participants are encouraged to refer to L.B. Foster’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016, as updated by subsequent items filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for additional information regarding risk factors that may affect our results. In addition to the results provided in accordance with United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, our commentary includes non-GAAP EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, and certain other metrics where we have added back the effect of impairment charges. Reconciliations of U.S. GAAP to non-GAAP measures have been included within the Company’s 8-K filing. Statements referring to EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, as well as certain measures, excluding the impairment charges are considered non-GAAP measures, and while they are not intended to replace the presentation of our financial results in accordance with GAAP, the Company believes that the presentation of these measures provides additional meaningful information for investors to facilitate the comparison of past, present, and forecasted operating results. Our accompanying earnings presentation reconciles these non-GAAP measures to the corresponding GAAP measure. With that, we will commence our financial review discussion, and I will turn it over to Jim.

James Maloney

Analyst

Thank you, Judy. Net sales for 2017 fourth quarter were $141.3 million, compared to $106.6 million in the prior year quarter, an increase of $34.8 million or 32.6%. The 32.6% fourth quarter sales increase was due to improvements across all three segments led by an 88.5% increase in our Tubular and Energy Services segment, our Rail Products and Services segment increasing by 35.2% and the Construction Products segment increasing by 3.6%. The Tubular and Energy Services sales increase of $15.6 million or 88.5% was driven by substantial improvements in both our Upstream Test and Inspection division, as well as our Midstream Precision Measurement Systems and Protective Coating divisions. This growth was partially offset by our threaded product sales, which declined in the quarter. The Rail sales improvement of $17.8 million or 35.2% was led by our North American Rail businesses. Our Rail Products businesses saw a 35.2% increase led by distribution and transit products. Our Concrete Ties division saw a 200% increase in sales, compared to the prior year quarter. The rails technology sales increase of 18.8% included a year-over-year increase at both our North American and to a lesser extent European divisions. Our fourth quarter Construction segment sales improved from the prior year by $1.4 million or 3.6%. Both our Fabricated Bridge and Precast Concrete products divisions drove the year-over-year improvement with Fabricated Bridge sales increasing by 43.2% and Precast Concrete Products sales increasing by 22.3%. This growth was partially offset by our piling sales, which declined in the quarter. As a percentage of fourth quarter 2017 sales, Rail accounted for 48.3%, Construction was 28.2% and Tubular and Energy Services was 23.5%. Now looking at gross profit. Our consolidated fourth quarter 2017 gross profit margin was 19.7%, an increase of 210 basis points from the prior year quarter with…

Robert Bauer

Analyst

Thank you, Jim and thank you to everyone on the phone for joining us today. When the year started, our team was determined to make significant progress toward restoring profitability and capitalizing on the opportunities in front of us after taking numerous actions in the prior year to get our costs in line with lower volume. We were very pleased that our fourth quarter and year ended strong. We provided some targets last quarter on full year EBITDA and debt reduction that we were determined to meet close the year and were pleased to report that we met or exceeded those targets. I’ll cover some of the highlights of the results that Jim spoke about and I’ll provide some background as well on full year results and current business conditions. The fourth quarter results reflect a significant improvement over the prior year quarter. Solid order growth throughout the year help drive an increase in backlog that peaked at $190 million at the beginning of the fourth quarter helping lead us to a sequential increase in sales from the third quarter and the 33% increase in sales compared to the prior year quarter. It felt like we had the wind at our back this year, the market recovery, combined with success from organic growth initiatives led to a very nice turnaround. Having sales increase in each of our three reporting segments with solid double-digit sales growth in Rail and Tubular was a sign of market strength and solid execution on our growth initiatives, which capped off a solid year of recovery in the two segments that really suffered in 2016. We maintained our discipline around cost control for the year helping us deliver the operating leverage needed to keep us on a path to improve profitability. The increase in sales volumes…

Operator

Operator

Robert Bauer

Analyst

All right. Well, we won’t have any long closing comments, but thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your interest and we’ll look forward to catching up with you next quarter. Thank you and good night.