Mark J. Rittenbaum
Analyst · Wells Fargo
Thank you, Lorie. I'd now like to take a few minutes to summarize our financial performance at a high level, as well as to elaborate on how we are thinking about the fiscal year 2013 that is now in front of us from a financial perspective. Here are the highlights for the past quarter and the year. In fiscal 2012, we delivered record revenue in net earnings, and cash provided by operating activities for the fiscal year were a record of $160 million. Our Manufacturing segment delivered a record 15,000 units this year compared to 9,400 units in fiscal '11 and our owned or managed fleet of 230,000 rail cars grew by 6,000 cars during the year. Despite our record-setting year, however, our fourth quarter performance was below our expectations, and a number of factors contributed to this. We delivered 3,500 rail cars for the quarter compared to our expectations and the guidance that we gave of 4,000 units. This was principally due to the timing of delivery of 560 railcars with an aggregate value of nearly $50 million. We expected it to occur by year end but were postponed due to delays in lease indication transaction and one customer's acceptance of certain railcars. The margins on these cars exceeded our manufacturing gross margin for the quarter of 11.8%, so they were profitable, very profitable transactions. And all these deliveries occurred subsequent to quarter end. Additionally, our actual tax rate for the quarter of 51% was significantly higher than our expected rate of around 34%. This difference was primarily due to a change in geographic mix of our earnings, and the difference or the delta as a result of this was about $0.10 a share. Also, we incurred certain severance costs of nearly $1 million after-tax during the quarter. And finally, you'll note that our gains on disposition of leased equipment was only $100,000 pretax for the quarter, whereas, on the average, the gain for the prior 3 quarters was nearly $3 million per quarter. On a more positive note, for the fifth consecutive quarter, the per unit sales price in backlog increased. Our wheels, refurbishment and parts segment continues to benefit from steadily improving business trends in repair and parts. However, the wheels portion of our business continues to be somewhat sluggish and with headwinds. And overall, we continue to seek to enhance margins through efficiencies and look forward to better mix of our repair business. In our leasing and services segment, fleet utilization was 93.5%, down 2% from the prior quarter. This was primarily due to the timing of some lease commencement dates on equipment built during the quarter and added to our fleet that were put on lease in September. Excluding coal cars, we continue to see favorable trends in lease rates. We've identified 4 key focus areas or objectives for fiscal '13. I'm going to touch on these and Bill will elaborate on them. In response to market demand, we will continue to expand capacity for existing higher margin tank cars and ramp up production rates. This requires to also ramp up production rates on existing lines. We are -- we expect that we will roughly triple our tank car deliveries in 2013 as compared to 2012. We continue to assess and be flexible with capacity and protection as we monitor market demand. Secondly, we'll expand our product offerings related to high growth areas such as oil, gas and the chemical industries and the automotive industry. For example, we'll look to expand our capabilities in tank car area with repair and service offerings. And as Bill will touch on, we'll also be entering some markets in the hopper marketplace related to the chemicals industry. We will continue to improve our working capital position, increase cash flow and pay down debt, and Lorie will touch on the successes we've had here, and then Bill will also touch on other opportunities that will -- overall. So now looking forward to 2013. As we have said many times before, we expect our order flow to be nonlinear throughout the year. Given global economic and geopolitical uncertainty, we currently have less business visibility and more variability than in fiscal '12. Based on current business trends and industry forecast, we anticipate our new railcar deliveries in 2013 will be between 11,500 and 13,000 units. Approximately 7,300 of these units are in our firm backlog as of August 31, and we expect the balance of deliveries to come from orders that we receive throughout the year. While this range of deliveries is below the 15,000 units delivered in fiscal '12, we anticipate the mix of deliveries will have higher average selling prices than 2012. At the upper end of the delivery range, we expect that our fiscal 2013 revenue adjusted EBITDA and earnings per share will be similar to fiscal '12, with the second half of the year being significantly stronger than the first half of the year and it will build momentum throughout the year. Deliveries will be skewed to the second half. This is principally due to the timing of ramp up of tank car production during the year and the anticipated timing of demand for double-stack intermodal railcars. While the range of deliveries is below the 15,000, we do expect the mix will be -- of last year -- we do expect that, in manufacturing, the mix will be better and that we'll have higher marine revenues. And this will be a little bit offset by a less robust European marketplace. In wheels, refurbishment and parts, we expect incrementally high margins, closer to what we realized for the year as a whole, in 2013 as we improve our labor efficiencies and have a better mix of business. The headwind in this segment continues to be softened wheel volumes, and this would be true particularly if we did not see improvement in coal loadings as a lot of wheel demand is driven by coal loadings. In leasing and services, our margin -- our revenues and margin should grow as a result of fleet additions, rising lease rates and growth in our managed fleet. Looking at SG&A, we expect we'll step down below that of the last 2 quarters for the first half of the year and then step up again modestly in the second half of the year. We also expected the -- what we -- formerly known as the minority interest line item on our P&L, will be higher in 2013 than 2012 as a result of continued ramping up of tank car production principally, which takes place in our joint venture facility. We expect our CapEx, our net CapEx, to be about $90 million to $95 million in 2013, our depreciation to be around $45 million and our tax rate to be around 35%. I'm now going to turn it back over to Lorie, and then we'll turn it over to Bill.