Operator
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Generac Holdings, Inc. Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, York Ragen, Chief Financial Officer. Sir, you may begin. York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer & Head-Investor Relations: Thank you. Good morning and welcome to our second quarter earnings call. I'd like to thank everyone for joining us this morning. With me today is Aaron Jagdfeld, our President and Chief Executive Officer. We will begin our call today by commenting on forward-looking statements. Certain statements made during this presentation as well as other information provided from time to time by Generac or its employees may contain forward-looking statements and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in these forward-looking statements. Please see our earnings release or our SEC filings for a list of words or expressions that identify such statements and the associated risk factors. In addition, we will make reference to certain non-GAAP measures during today's call. Additional information regarding these measures, including reconciliation to comparable U.S. GAAP measures, is available in our earnings release and SEC filings. I will now turn the call over to Aaron. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, York. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Net sales in the second quarter of 2015 were $288 million as compared to $363 million in the prior year, primarily due to a decline in shipments of both residential and commercial and industrial products. Residential products were impacted primarily due to a power outage severity environment that year-to-date, is well below normalized levels and significantly below the prior year, resulting in a decline in shipments of home standby generators and to a lesser extent, portable generators. C&I product sales were impacted by lower shipments to oil and gas markets as well as reduced shipments to telecom national account customers. These declines were partially offset by gains in the industrial distribution channel, improvements in Latin America and contributions from recent acquisitions. Specifically addressing the lower residential sales, residential products historically experience a sequential sales improvement from the first quarter to the second quarter due to pre-season buying ahead of the summer storm season. However, that was not the case during the second quarter of 2015, as demand for home standby generators was impacted by an extremely low power outage environment in the first half of the year that led to excess field inventory levels entering the second quarter. As a result, our normal pre-season sales, marketing and promotional programs were not as effective in the current quarter. The first half of 2015 outage severity was the lowest we have seen since we began tracking this data, as outages were over 40% below the prior-year period and were 20% lower than the last ten-quarter below normal trend that we have witnessed. In addition to reduced home standby generator demand, the extended low period of outages has also significantly reduced demand for portable generators and slowed the expansion of our residential dealer base during the current year. All of these factors negatively impacted the year-over-year comparisons for residential products during the second quarter. As we've commented in recent quarters, over the course of our long history in this business, we have observed that power outage activity runs in cycles. We believe the current down cycle is temporary in nature and we remain optimistic on the long-term growth opportunities for residential standby and portable generators. In the meantime, we will continue to focus on a variety of strategic initiatives to increase the awareness, availability and affordability of home standby generators. We have discussed several of these initiatives at length over the past several quarters, including specific projects and activities targeted towards generating more sales leads, improving close rates and reducing the total cost of home standby products. From a longer-term perspective, we continue to expect the trend of an increasing level of power outages to remain in place, driven by an aging and under-invested electrical grid and the frequency of severe weather, which we believe will continue well into the future. With only approximately 3.5% of U.S. households owning a stationary backup generator, we believe there remains a substantial opportunity to grow this market over the longer term. Turning to the C&I portion of our business, the significant decline in oil and gas prices that began in the second half of 2014 continued to have a notable impact on capital spending for mobile equipment that is primarily used in upstream oil and gas applications. We are also seeing the negative effect that the weak oil and gas markets are having on the broader general rental markets, as our key national rental customers are repositioning the under-utilized equipment from oil and gas related activities to other applications. This is resulting in a deferral of new equipment spending and magnifying the decline in overall demand for mobile equipment. We continue to believe in the long-term opportunity related to domestic energy production and the need for our mobile products that are essential at oil and gas drilling and production sites. However, the adverse impacts from the drop in oil and gas prices is having a greater negative impact on industry fleeting than we'd anticipated. Accordingly, we are taking an even more conservative approach to our outlook for this end market for the remainder of 2015, as we gain further evidence of the impact of the recent move lower in energy prices on the demand for capital equipment. We commented during recent calls that we expect the telecom capital spending environment to remain soft throughout 2015, particularly during the first half of the year, with an assumption for a modest improvement in the second half. As we moved through 2015, however, capital spending by certain of these customers has remained weak and as a result, we have become more cautious on the outlook for the remainder of the year relative to our previous guidance. However, we believe the longer term secular penetration opportunity for backup generators at cell tower sites remains firmly in place due to the need for wireless providers to protect their revenue streams as well as the increasing competitive and regulatory pressures they face to harden their networks. With backup generators only installed on one-third of all cell tower sites today, we believe there is significant runway as the leader in this end market vertical to continue to grow penetration in this market. Shipments within our industrial distribution channel grew during the second quarter 2015 as compared to the prior-year quarter, and we are anticipating solid year-over-year growth of products sold through this channel during the second half of the year. As we have commented over the past several quarters, we continue to make progress in building out and expanding our capabilities for larger industrial generators. This includes significantly expanding our product line to include larger output systems as well as improving our distribution capabilities by increasing distributor product knowledge and sales bandwidth to better enable them to sell these larger, more complex products. We also continue to pursue a number of initiatives during 2015 to improve our specification and closure rates that we believe will provide greater opportunities for future growth in this market. Our latest outlook for C&I products continues to include the expectation of a favorable nonresidential construction environment, which should provide more sales opportunities for our distribution partners to increase their interaction with the engineering firms and the electrical contractors responsible for specifying and selecting our products. Our Ottomotores business, which serves the Latin American market through operations in Mexico and Brazil, once again experienced solid growth in shipments during the second quarter of 2015, which follows a similar level of year-over-year growth experienced during the last two quarters. We believe the improved results at Ottomotores are primarily due to the progress we are making on a number of initiatives targeted at improving the performance of this business. These included a change in leadership during the past year, the realignment of our Latin American commercial sales team, operational improvements and the realization of certain cross-selling opportunities. Despite projections for modest overall economic growth in the Latin American region in 2015, we believe Ottomotores will continue to outperform the broader market as we further execute on these initiatives. The Ottomotores acquisition remains an essential platform for our international expansion efforts by providing a local manufacturing presence and access to the important Latin American market for power generation and other engine-powered products. As announced earlier this week, we acquired Country Home Products, which was founded in 1985 and employs over 200 people at its facilities located in Vermont. Country Home Products is a leading manufacturer of high quality, professional-grade engine-powered equipment used in a wide variety of property maintenance tasks for larger acreage residences, light commercial properties, municipalities and farms. The company's broad product line of chore-related engine-powered tools are largely sold in North America through catalogs, outdoor power equipment dealers, and select regional retailers, primarily under the DR brand name, and include field and brush mowers, chippers and shredders, trimmers, leaf vacuums, stump grinders and log splitters. The acquisition of Country Home Products provides additional scale to our existing platform of engine-powered products, which we have been building since our reentry into the portable generator market in 2008 and our subsequent move back into the power-washer market in 2011. Additionally, this year we have launched several new engine-powered products including a line of clean water and semi-trash pumps. And in the third quarter, we expect to begin shipping our ultra-quiet IQ inverter generator, targeting the recreational market. We anticipate the acquisition of Country Home Products should create meaningful cross-selling opportunities with our existing distribution, most notably with our existing national retail customers. And we believe that we can also generate significant cost synergies as we leverage our global sourcing and manufacturing capabilities. And lastly, as announced this morning, the board of directors has authorized the repurchase of up to $200 million in common stock over the next two years. Given our strong free cash flow generation and the current valuation of Generac shares, we believe initiating our first ever repurchase program at this time represents an attractive use of capital. The authorization of this program does not signal a change to our prior uses of cash. We still intend to use our free cash flow to invest organically, pay down debt to achieve our leverage target of two to three times debt to EBITDA, accelerate our strategy through M&A, and finally, return excess capital to shareholders. That being said, having a share repurchase program in place will allow us to ensure that as we step through these priority uses of cash, we are deploying capital in the most beneficial way on behalf of our shareholders. We remain committed to our Powering Ahead strategy and we're confident we will continue to have the financial flexibility to pursue future growth opportunities, both organically and through acquisitions. I'll now turn the call back over to York to discuss second quarter results in more detail. York? York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer & Head-Investor Relations: Thanks, Aaron. Net sales for the second quarter of 2015 were $288.4 million as compared to $362.6 million in the second quarter of 2014. Looking at net sales by product class, residential product sales during the second quarter of 2015 were $133.5 million as compared to $179.6 million in the prior-year quarter. As Aaron previously mentioned, this decline was primarily driven by a power outage severity environment that year-to-date, continues to remain well below normalized levels and significantly below the prior year. This challenging environment resulted in the slower than expected draw-down of home standby generator field inventories and as a result, reduced the impact of our normal pre-season sales promotions, as our distribution partners were reluctant to invest in additional inventory levels. These factors had a significant impact on home standby generator shipments when comparing to prior-year second quarter. In addition, to a lesser extent, the low level of power outages also resulted in reduced sales of portable generators compared to prior year. Partially offsetting the overall decline in residential products was a modest contribution from the Powermate acquisition. Looking at our commercial-industrial products, net sales were $134.6 million in the second quarter of 2015 as compared to $163.5 million in the prior-year second quarter. The decline was primarily the result of reduced sales of mobile equipment going into oil and gas markets, given the significant decline in energy prices experienced thus far in 2015. Again, as Aaron discussed, the sharp decline in energy prices has caused certain of our customers in the rental channel to reduce capital spending for this type of equipment more than originally expected. Additionally, recall that starting in the second quarter of 2014, we experienced a notable increase in demand for mobile equipment used in oil and gas applications, and this strength carried through the end of the prior year. The contrast of heavy oil and gas demand in the prior year and the significant pull-back in the current year has created a very challenging year-over-year comparison for our C&I products. In addition, but to a lesser extent, the year-over-year decline in C&I product shipments was also a result of ongoing weakness in capital spending by certain of our telecom national account customers. Partially offsetting these declines were gains in the industrial distribution channel, improvements in Latin America and contributions from recent acquisitions. Net sales for the other products category were $20.3 million in the second quarter of 2015 as compared to $19.6 million in the prior year. This modest increase was primarily driven by additional service part sales resulting from our growing base of stationary and mobile products in the market and to a lesser extent, the addition of after-market sales from recent acquisitions. Gross margin for the second quarter was 33.3% compared to 35.3% in the prior-year second quarter. The decline was driven by a combination of unfavorable absorption of manufacturing overhead related costs, a lower mix of residential products and the impact from recent acquisitions. Lower production levels compared to prior year and certain transitory overhead costs that carried over from the first quarter were the drivers of the unfavorable absorption, while reduced sales of higher-margin residential products and the additional sales from recent acquisitions caused the unfavorable mix impact versus prior year. These declines were partially offset by more favorable pricing along with the favorable impact from lower commodity costs and benefits from overseas component sourcing due to a stronger U.S. dollar. Operating expenses for the second quarter of 2015 increased $6.6 million or 13.2% as compared to the second quarter of 2014. The prior-year quarter included a $4.9 million gain relating to a remeasurement of a contingent earn-out obligation from a previous acquisition. Excluding this gain, operating expenses increased $1.7 million or 3.1% as compared to the prior year, which was primarily driven by the addition of recurring operating expenses associated with recent acquisitions. Adjusted EBITDA was $52.4 million or 18.2% of net sales for the second quarter of 2015 as compared to $84.5 million or 23.3% of net sales in the same period last year. This decline in adjusted EBITDA margins compared to prior year was attributable to the 200 basis point decline in gross margins along with the increase in operating expenses as a percent of net sales, given the reduced leverage on a lower net sales base. GAAP net income for the second quarter of 2015 was $14.8 million as compared to $54 million for the second quarter of 2014. Included in the current year other expense income section is a $3.4 million loss on extinguishment of debt, which resulted from the pay-down of term loan debt during the current year quarter. Included in the prior-year other expense income section is a $16 million gain on change in contractual interest rate as a result of a reduction in our term loan interest rate spread of 25 basis points in the second quarter of 2014. GAAP income taxes during the second quarter were $8.6 million, reflective of a 36.8% effective tax rate, as compared to $28.4 million or a 34.5% rate for the prior year. This increase in GAAP effective tax rate is driven by a higher contribution from the R&D tax credit in the prior year versus the current year. Adjusted net income, as defined in our earnings release, was $35.3 million in the current year quarter versus $57.1 million in the prior year. This decline over the prior year is the result of the overall decline in operating earnings as previously discussed, partially offset by $10.8 million in lower cash income taxes and $665,000 in lower interest expense. Diluted net income per share on a GAAP basis was $0.21 in the second quarter of 2015 compared to $0.77 per share in the second quarter of 2014. Adjusted diluted net income per share, as reconciled in our earnings release, was $0.50 for the current year quarter compared to $0.82 per share in the prior year. With regards to cash income taxes, the second quarter of 2015 includes the impact of a cash income tax expense of $900,000 as compared to $11.7 million in the prior-year quarter. This year-over-year decline in cash income taxes for the quarter was primarily the result of lower pre-tax earnings along with a notable reduction in the expected cash income tax rate relative to the prior year. Relative to our previous guidance, our cash income tax rate for full year 2015 is now expected to be approximately 6% versus a previous expectation of approximately 17%, primarily due to the reduced full year outlook that we're reporting this morning. As a reminder, our favorable tax shield through annual intangible amortization in our tax return results in our expected cash income tax rate being significantly lower than our currently projected GAAP income tax rate of approximately 36% for 2015. As we drive profitability over time, cash income taxes can be estimated by applying a projected longer-term GAAP income tax rate of 36% on pre-tax profits going forward and then deducting the approximately $49 million of annual cash tax savings from the tax shield each year through 2021. Free cash flow, defined as net cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures, was $8.6 million in the second quarter of 2015 as compared to $40.5 million in the same period last year. The year-over-year decline was a result of lower operating earnings along with higher working capital investment, driven primarily by an increase in finished goods inventory due to softer than expected demand during the quarter. During the second quarter of 2015, we amended our term loan and ABL revolving credit facilities to reduce our overall borrowing cost and give us more financial flexibility in executing our strategic plan going forward. As part of these amendments, we increased the borrowing capacity on the ABL revolving facility from $150 million to $250 million and reduced the interest rate spread applicable to the ABL facility by 50 basis points across all tiers. And currently with these amendments, we borrowed $100 million from the ABL facility and used these funds to make a voluntary prepayment on the term loan facility of the like amount. Given the lower interest rate on the ABL facility relative to the term loan, the transferring of $100 million of debt between facilities will result in annualized interest cost savings of $1.5 million based on current interest rates. As of June 30, 2015, we had a total of $1.04 billion of outstanding debt, net of unamortized original issue discount, and $155.6 million of consolidated cash and cash equivalents on hand, resulting in consolidated net debt of $883.1 million. Additionally, at the end of the second quarter 2015, there was approximately $133 million available on the ABL revolving credit facility. Our consolidated net debt-to-LTM-adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio at the end of the second quarter 2015 was 3.1 times. Our term loan credit agreement includes a pricing grid whereby we pay LIBOR plus 250 basis points when our credit agreement leverage ratio is below 3.0 times, and we pay LIBOR plus 275 basis points when the credit agreement leverage ratio is above 3.0 times. As a result of our increased leverage ratio as of June 30, 2015, our term loan interest rate will increase by 25 basis points during the third quarter of 2015. Updating our interest expense guidance for 2015 as a result of the credit facility amendments and the pricing grid spread change, we now expect total interest expense to be in the range of $44.5 million to $45 million, which includes $38 million to $38.5 million of cash outflow for debt service costs, plus approximately $6.5 million of deferred financing cost and original issue discount amortization for our credit facility. This interest expense guidance assumes no additional debt prepayments during 2015, our existing interest rate swap contracts remain in place, and that LIBOR rates do not increase beyond our current LIBOR floor of 75 basis points. With that, I'd now like to turn the call back to Aaron to provide additional comments on our revised outlook for 2015. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, York. As a result of current end market conditions, we are revising our prior guidance this morning for full year 2015 revenue growth and adjusted EBITDA margins. Assuming the record low power outage environment we experienced during the first half of 2015 continues into the second half of the year, net sales for 2015 would be expected to decline approximately 10% for the full year, as compared to the previous downside case expectation for net sales to decline between 2% to 4%. This reduced outage assumption is expected to significantly impact year-over-year comparisons for residential products and is the primary driver for the overall lower guidance. To a lesser extent, our revised sales guidance also reflects a reduced outlook for shipments to oil and gas markets and telecom national account customers during the second half of 2015. Partially offsetting this reduced sales guidance is a modest contribution from the Country Home Products acquisition that closed on August 1. Should the baseline level of localized outage activity return to more normalized levels during the second half relative to the record low levels assumed in our guidance, this could add upwards of $30 million to $50 million of residential product sales with an incremental contribution margin of between 35% to 40%. In addition, when considering our current elevated levels of home standby and portable generators, we believe we would be in an ideal position to quickly meet an increase in customer demand driven by a major power outage event, which historically is more likely to occur in the second half of the year. Looking at our guidance by product class, for residential products, we now expect net sales for 2015 to decline approximately 11% as compared to the prior year as a result of the challenging outage environment. This sales guidance for residential products includes the contribution from the Country Home Products acquisition. With regards to C&I products for 2015, we now expect net sales to decline approximately 10% as compared to the prior year on an as-reported basis. Strong and incremental headwinds in the oil and gas and telecom markets, together with a modest foreign currency impact are expected to be partially offset by gains in our industrial distribution channel, improvements in Latin America and contributions from the MAC acquisition. With regards to the seasonality of net sales in the second half, we anticipate fourth quarter shipments to be marginally higher than the third quarter. Specifically by product class, we are projecting residential product sales to improve sequentially in the fourth quarter due to expected seasonality and a full three-month contribution from the Country Home Products acquisition. We expect a sequential decline for C&I products in the fourth quarter, primarily due to seasonally strong shipments of mobile heating products during the third quarter. Gross margins for 2015 are now expected to be approximately 35%, which is relatively flat as compared to the prior year. This compares to the previous expectation for gross margins to improve approximately 75 to 100 basis points over 2014. The revision from prior guidance is primarily the result of a lower mix of residential products due to the change in power outage assumptions previously discussed and to a lesser degree, more unfavorable manufacturing overhead absorption due to the reduced sales outlook. Operating expenses as a percentage of net sales, excluding amortization of intangibles, are now expected to increase between 200 to 225 basis points over the prior year as compared to our previous expectation of an increase of approximately 75 to 100 basis points. The increase from prior guidance is primarily the result of the reduced leverage of fixed operating expenses on a lower expected sales base, along with the addition of recurring operating expenses associated with the Country Home Products acquisition. These increases are expected to be partially offset by the planned consolidation of the Powermate operating footprint together with certain cost control measures related to SG&A expenses. With the assumption that power outages during the second half of 2015 not improving from the very low levels experienced during the first half, we are revising our adjusted EBITDA margin guidance for full year 2015 to approximately 21%. This compares to our previous margin expectation of approximately 23%. With regards to the seasonality of adjusted EBITDA margins in the second half, we anticipate fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA margins will be slightly higher relative to the third quarter. This expectation is primarily the result of a higher mix of residential products and lower mix of C&I products anticipated during the fourth quarter, along with a modest improvement in fixed operating expense leverage. Free cash flow generation during the first half of 2015 was impacted by higher than expected inventory levels as a result of lower demand in some key areas of the business, along with the impact of the West Coast port congestion issues earlier in the year. However, we expect to monetize a portion of this inventory investment during the second half of the year and anticipate that we will generate over $100 million of free cash flow during the period. It's important to note that looking at the seasonality of our cash flow generation over the past several years, it's very common for the company to generate a significant amount of the year's total free cash flow during the second half of any given year. In closing this morning, although market conditions were below our expectations in the second quarter of 2015, we view the current down cycles being experienced in certain of our end markets to be temporary in nature and we remain optimistic on the long-term growth prospects for our business. With our strong free cash flow, we have the flexibility to continue to drive our Powering Ahead strategic plan forward, including the continued execution of our diversification and international expansion strategies. The announcement of our share repurchase program this morning further demonstrates our confidence in the long-term growth opportunities for Generac and better aligns our capital priorities to maximize shareholder value. This concludes our prepared remarks and at this time, we'd like to open up the call for questions. Operator?