Ivo Jurek
Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is open
Thank you, Bill. Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for joining us today. The results for the third quarter came in aligned with our expectations. In Q3, we remain focused on reducing our variable cost structure, driving down the levels of our inventory, and last month, we announced the first impacted facility that is part of our fixed cost restructuring program.We are quite pleased with the progress we've made in Q3, and while a significant amount of work is ahead of us, we believe that we will be better positioned heading into 2020. That being said, our business-based industrial end markets did remained under pressure and decelerated as quarter progressed in line with what we had anticipated. Our automotive end market however saw signs of stabilization in Q3. Our automotive first-fit business improved sequentially from Q2 as did our automotive replacement business, which saw a normalization of the destocking we experienced in the first-half of the year, and overall improved business conditions.Jumping right into slide three of our presentation material, our revenue in the quarter declined 8.5% on a core basis, compared to the prior year period. Our industrial end market continues to be impacted by additional channel inventory destocking and reduced demand, particularly in the mobile hydraulics market. This is consistent with a trajectory of the business environment that we've noted on our last earnings call. Sales into agriculture, construction, and general industrial end markets, all experienced low double-digit declines, while sales into the energy and heavy-duty truck end markets were down mid to high single-digits. In response to the industrial end market conditions, and in combination with trade uncertainty, we experienced an accelerated level of destocking at key replacement channel partners, particularly in North America.Sales into the automotive replacement channel were mixed in the quarter. In North America, our automotive replacement business decelerated modestly from the second quarter primarily due to some unique compare items, but the underlying business environment improved relative to Q2 and the first-half. We are seeing signs that the recent destocking in the auto replacement channel appears to have normalized. In Europe, where we also faced a difficult prior year Q3 compare, our business improved from the second quarter helped by more typical weather patterns and reduced destocking pressure. These year-over-year decline offset the mid-teens automotive replacement growth in China, which remains a resilient high-growth market for Gates, and we anticipate continuing to deliver a similar level of performance for the foreseeable future.In total, our automotive first-fit business was down mid to high single-digits in the quarter, also an improvement from what we experienced in the most recent quarters. Although, our largest market of Europe and China were down mid-teens in the quarter, we are beginning to roundtrip the sharp declines that began last year, and we believe we will see business stabilization as we head into 2020.Looking at our results by region, in North America, our overall revenue performance in the quarter was down high single-digits on a core basis. Nearly all of our industrial end markets were down mid-teens, led by the agriculture and general industrial. The declining industrial end market conditions impacted us across channels with first-fit customers reducing production, and replacement channel partners reducing inventory levels in response to the environment.In Europe, we experienced a high single-digit core revenue decline in line with what we saw in the second quarter. The decline continued to be led by the challenges in automotive first-fit, although this decline was sequentially much better than Q2, and was offset by the decelerating industrial market. Furthermore, sales into our industrial end markets, most notably agriculture and general industrial experienced deceleration in the quarter.In China, we experienced the high single-digit core revenue decline in the quarter, primarily driven by first-fit sales. The decline in automotive first-fit production continued, and we also experienced a significant decline in industrial first-fit sales, led by construction equipment. These declines were partially offset by the continued strong growth in our automotive replacement business. I would note that based on the recent activities, we believe we will start seeing a return to growth in the near-term in China.The collateral effects of the challenging China macro environment remain noticeable in our East Asia and India region. The high single-digit core revenue decline in the quarter was a slight deceleration from the second quarter driven primarily by weakness in the construction end market in Korea as well as the general industrial end market in Japan, while India saw a deceleration driven by reduced activity in the auto and commercial construction first-fit market.As a result of the lower revenues -- revenue volumes our adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was $145 million representing a margin of 19.4% a decline of 250 basis points from the prior year period. Our adjusted EBITDA margin decline was a function of lower gross margin which was impacted by not only the lower revenue volumes but also by a reduction in our inventory levels which further impacted production output and the associated absorption. We are making solid progress in adjusting compressible costs across our manufacturing footprint, and our global teams are executing well on our previously announced plans to reduce our fixed cost structure which we expect will begin benefiting us meaningfully in 2020.Our third quarter adjusted earnings per share of $0.22 was a decline from $0.30 in the prior year period driven primarily by the lower adjusted EBITDA somewhat offset by lower tax and interest expense. Our free cash flow in Q3 was $65 million which represented a solid 100% conversion of our adjusted net income. The environment in our mostly short-cycle end markets remained very dynamic. However based on our recent view we believe our full-year guidance contemplates the challenging conditions that we expect to persist through the fourth quarter. Therefore, we are maintaining the guidance that we communicated in the previous quarter. With the continued impact of external factors creating uncertainty in our end markets managing what is our under control is essential.We have made solid progress adjusting our variable costs and manufacturing output and have reduced our inventory levels by over $50 million since the end of Q1 on top of the inventory we have seen coming out of the channel. Although this has been challenging we believe it will set us up well for 2020. While we have implemented appropriate cost control actions we are continuing to fund our major organic growth initiatives and related new product development across both of our segments particularly as our end markets recover. We believe these investments will position us well for long-term growth. As we discussed on our last call the recent investments made in our footprint are enabling us the execution of our expanded restructuring program. Last month we announced the first manufacturing plant action under this program kicking off the consolidation of certain fluid power production within our North American footprint. We are working to accelerate these initiatives where possible and expect to announce additional actions in the future.Moving now to our segments beginning on slide four, our Power Transmission segment core revenue declined 6% in the quarter a small deceleration sequentially from the second quarter. Sales into our industrial end markets remained challenged led by anticipated declines in general industrial construction and energy while we experienced a modest sequential improvement in our automotive end market. From a regional perspective our Power Transmission business in South America was a bright spot as it grew solidly in the quarter but was offset by declines in the rest of the regions. Emerging markets slightly outperformed our developed markets but both were down mid-single digit in total. Our Power Transmission adjusted EBITDA declined by approximately $19 million in the third quarter compared to the prior year period driven primarily by lower volumes and to some degree mix. The resulting adjusted EBITDA margin of 21% contracted 220 basis points compared to the prior year period.Regarding our growth initiatives Q3 saw incremental wins in South America the Middle East and North Africa with the Micro-V belt platform we launched late last year targeted at emerging markets. This comes on top of the wins we have already seen with this platform in places like Mexico and India earlier in the year. We also continue to make progress on our industrial and mobility chain-to-belt initiatives with solid wins in food and beverage material handling e-bikes and e-motorcycle applications just to name a few.Moving on to slide five, our Fluid Power segment had core revenue decline of 12.7% compared to the prior year period representing a deceleration from what we saw in the second quarter. The largest year-over-year decline was in mobile equipment primarily in the agriculture and construction end market but the weakness we experienced was broad-based across the majority of industrial applications. On a regional basis China was down the highest percentage at greater than 20% driven most notably by the decline in first-fit construction equipment. North America was down mid-teens with softness in all industrial end markets but particularly sharp declines in agriculture and general industrial where we saw our customers reduce production output and channel partners continue to right-size their inventories.Our Fluid Power adjusted EBITDA declined by approximately $17 million compared to Q3 2018. The decline in adjusted EBITDA and resulting margin contraction of 310 basis points were attributable to the lower volumes and resulting production inefficiencies as we continue the reduction of variable production costs which we believe we have already mostly right-sized as we head toward 2020. Our Fluid Power organic growth initiatives also continue to progress well. As part of these efforts we have market-launched our smart connected crimper that allows customers to quickly and reliably make safe fleet-free hydraulics hose assemblies in the field. This IoT-enabled crimper platform not only improves the crimping process itself but also provides us with a valuable insight into product consumption to enable replenishment at a customer level and provide other valuable services to our customers. Beyond the introduction of our smart crimper we have made additional progress on our next-generation hydraulics introducing new sizes of innovative MXT hoses to OEs and distribution customers.I'll now turn it over to David for some additional detail on the financials before I wrap up our prepared remarks. David?