Greg Lewis
Analyst · Vertical Research Partners. Please go ahead
Thanks Darius, and good morning, everyone. I'm going to begin on Slide 4. As Darius mentioned, we delivered another strong quarter consistent with the first-half organic growth was broad across the portfolio with about 65% of our portfolio growing 5% or more in the quarter, and over three quarters of the organic growth coming from increased volumes. A few highlights, commercial aviation OE grew 19% organically led by business aviation, defense and space grew 14% organically with double-digit growth in both the U.S. and international businesses, and safety and productivity solutions grew 12% organically led by Intelligrated warehouse automation business. The markets we serve continue to be strong and we continue to leverage our leading market positions, new product launches and investments in commercial excellent to drive profitable growth. We generated 70 basis points of margin expansion in the quarter while continuing our investments for growth and effectively managing the impact of inflation. A big part of our performance was driven by productivity enabled by our ongoing restructuring activities. This quarter we funded approximately $70 million in new restructuring projects aimed at improving our cost structure and optimizing our footprint and supply chain. The majority of our earnings growth $0.20 this quarter came from segment profit improvement driven by enhanced sales volumes and sales excellence across the company. We also realized the $0.05 benefit from share repurchases which resulted in lower weighted average share count of 752 million shares. This year through the third quarter, we've reduced the outstanding share count by more than 2% and have deployed more than 2 billion in share repurchases. Below the line items, we’re roughly flat for the quarter with higher pension income offsetting higher repositioning and other funding. Finally our effective tax rate of 21.9% was lower year-over-year which generated a $0.04 benefit consistent with the outlook we provided at the beginning the quarter. Also we delivered adjusted EPS of $2.03. This figure excludes the net impact of an approximate $1 billion favorable adjustment to the 4Q '17 tax charge and approximately 233 million in spin related separation cost in the quarter. Those include 117 million of tax costs incurred in the restructuring of our various legal entities in preparation for the spin-off. You'll find a bridge to 3Q '18 adjusted earnings per share in the appendix of the presentation posted on our website. Finally, we generated adjusted free cash flow in the third quarter of $1.8 billion up 51% versus prior year. We continue to see marked improvements in this area with stronger cash flows and better conversion enabled by a 0.6 churn improvement in working capital versus the prior year. This strong cash generation was most prominent in performance materials and technologies and safety and productivity solutions. So overall, another strong performance across the board consistent with our prior quarters. I'm now on Slide 5 to review our segment results. The growth we saw in aerospace last quarter continued as we benefited our strong positions on winning platforms in a robust demand environment. We delivered sales growth of 10% in an organic basis, commercial OE sales were up 19% organically led by engines, avionics and auxiliary power unit demand in business and general aviation, air transport deliveries on the Boeing 737 and Airbus A350, and lower customer incentives which added roughly one point of organic growth to aerospace in total for the quarter. Defense and space grew 14% organically driven by US DoD spares volume, robust centers and guidance systems demand and higher volumes on key programs including the F-35 and CH-47 Chinook. The aerospace aftermarket grew 6% organically primarily driven by strong airlines demand and maintenance service program activity and business aviation. As a reminder, this was the last quarter that transportation system is now publicly traded company called Garrett Motion contributed to aerospace business and TS sales were up 7% organically in the quarter, our continued growth in light vehicle gas turbos in North America and Europe driven primarily by new launches. Aerospace segment margins expanded 80 points - 80 basis points driven by higher defense and aftermarket volumes, commercial excellence, and lower year-over-year customer incentives. In home and building technologies, organic sales growth was 3% for the quarters. Homes grew 5% driven by continued strength in ADI global distribution and residential thermal solutions growth in the Americas and Europe. Buildings grew organically 1% driven by continued commercial fire products strength globally, demand for our Tridium building management platform in the connected buildings business offset by declines in our air and water business due to low demand for air purifying solutions in China. HBT segment margins expanded 10 basis points driven by commercial excellence and material and labor productivity including benefits from previously funded and executed restructuring. This was largely offset by the impact of inflation and unfavorable mix. HBT did experience some short-term supply chain challenges and transition impacts related to the Resideo spin-off in the quarter. As you know the home business was not a separate entity within HBT before the spins and the separation as expected was complex with some significant changes in our organization, our systems and our manufacturing footprint. With the Resideo spin-off slated for October 29, we anticipate that we will be able to address most of these challenges within the fourth quarter and get off to a good start in 2019. In performance materials and technologies, sales were 4% on an organic basis driven primarily by growth in advanced materials and process solutions. Organic sales growth in advance materials of 6% was driven by a significant demand for solstice more global warming products. Process solutions sales were up 4% organically driven by continued demand in our short cycle businesses principally in software, field devices and maintenance and migration services. UOP sales were up 3% organically driven primarily by growth in engineering and new catalysts units in China. PMT segment margins contracted as we've previewed driven by unfavorable mix in UOP and we continue to expect that to turnaround in 4Q as we had previously communicated. Finally, safety and productivity solutions delivered another outstanding quarter with organic sales up 12% driven by broad-based growth across all lines of business. Intelligrated continues to outperform rolling consistently at double digits driven by strong orders growth and major systems and a robust backlog of new wins fueled by growth in e-commerce. We saw continued demand for new Android-based mobility product offerings, as well as for service and scanning applications in the quarter. We also saw double-digit growth in our legacy sensing business. All in all, organic sales growth was 16% in our productivity solutions businesses. Within the safety business, organic growth was 6% with strong demand for new gas and general safety products. Additionally, the SPS China and India business delivered another quarter of more than 20% growth in sales. Strong segment margin expansion of 150 basis points was enabled by commercial excellence, higher sales volumes and productivity and repositioning benefits. Now let's move on to Slide 6 to discuss our outlook for the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter preview reflects the absence of transportation systems for the entire quarter and the anticipated completion of the home spin by the end of October. So only one month of operating results for homes is included in our guide. You will see this reflected in the updated full year outlook as well. Throughout the year we have seen strong long cycle order rates, and a growing backlog which in combination with our shortcycle momentum we expect to generate 5% to 6% organic sales growth in the quarter. We expect that segment margins will expand between 60 to 80 basis points reflecting a quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year margin improvement in PMT and SPS, as well as margin accretion from the absence of our two spun businesses. We anticipate adjusted earnings per share of a $1.85 to a $1.90 which excludes the segment profit contribution net of tax from Garrett for the full quarter and Resideo for two months as I mentioned and it includes the benefit of the indemnification agreements we have with both companies. We’re moving the after-tax segment profit contribution from the spins in both periods. Fourth quarter EPS adjusted is expected to be 17% to 20% up. Expected EPS growth will primarily be driven by strong segment profit growth. Other key elements include lower share count due to the more than 2 billion in share repurchases we have done through the third quarter, and higher pension income offset partially by a higher effective tax rate for the quarter at approximately 22%. This outlook incorporates our estimate of the tariff impact for what is enacted and known as of today. We continue to work those plans to address the impact of any from other potential tariffs that have been discussed but not enacted. Turning to the segments, we expect continued strength in arrow aero commercial OE and both air transport and business aviation and in the aftermarket driven by flight hours growth. We continue to expect mid-single-digit aftermarket growth in the fourth quarter and we expect that the momentum we have seen in defense will continue driven by demand for sensing and guidance systems and spares volumes into U.S. Department of Defense programs. This is supported by orders growth of more than 40% in the third quarter and backlog growth of more than 30% as well. Our outlook for home and building technologies for the fourth quarter reflects only one month of operations from homes and a full quarter of the remaining buildings businesses. We expect continued strength in homes from ADI global distribution and home products in the month of October and flattish growth in buildings for the quarter. For buildings we anticipate continued strength in the fire business where we have been growing mid to high single digits offset by slower energy conversions and building solutions as we have discussed previously, as well as the clients in China air and water. The team is launching new buildings products and we do expect growth to accelerate into 2019. In performance materials and technologies we're anticipating healthy growth in each of our businesses with UOP likely the strongest driver of demand across equipment, engineering and catalysts. UOP's long cycle backlog is up more than 10%. We expect continued short-cycle demand in process solutions, software and service offerings, a trend we have seen throughout 2018 supported by 11% orders growth in the third quarter. In advanced materials we expect continued strength from customer adoption of our solstice low global warming products and flooring products. Given the anticipated strength and refining catalyst reloads coupled with continued strong margin expansion, and process solutions and advanced materials, margins in PMT will be up sequentially and year-over-year in the fourth quarter as we had mentioned previously. Finally in safety and productivity solutions, the story remains robust in the fourth quarter. We anticipate broad-based strength across all of the businesses led by Intelligrated safety and China and India. We are really pleased with SPS's performance this year and expect this to continue into 2019. Now let's turn to Slide 7 to walk to the bridge to our full-year EPS guidance. Slide 7 presents a walk to the moving pieces in our earnings bridge for the full-year. In August we raised our guidance to 8.10 to 8.20. This primarily had a stronger outlook for the second half of the year with a small contribution from our change in asbestos accounting. With the performance in the third quarter approximately $0.03 above our expectation and anticipated strength in the fourth quarter we are raising the low and high end of the full year guidance before consideration of this spins to an updated range of $8.22 to $8.27 which is a raise of about $0.10 at the midpoint. The expected dilution for three months of Garrett's earnings and expected two months of Resideo earnings will be approximately $0.31. There is an approximately $0.04 contribution from the spin-off indemnification agreements related to Honeywell's legacy liabilities which nets the spin impact to about $0.27. As a reminder on a go forward basis beginning in the fourth quarter, 90% of the expenses net of recoveries related to the covered liabilities will be reimbursed by Garrett and Resideo. When we take into account the estimated dilution from the spins, net of indemnification agreement reimbursement our new range for adjusted EPS is $7.95 to $8 per share. That equates the growth of 16% to 17% for the full-year removing the second profit contribution from the spins in both periods. Our guidance continues to reflect a weighted average share count of 754 million shares and an effective tax rate between 22% and 23%. Now let's turn to Slide 8 to summarize the details of our full-year guidance. We've seen significant momentum throughout the year. On the left side of the Page, you see the original guidance on our key measures which we provided back in December. In the middle of pages are our latest guidance reflective of the strength in our end markets, three quarters of outperformance and a dilutive impact from the fourth quarter spin-off. We now project organic growth of about 6% for the year which is two points higher than the high-end of our original guidance. Our segment margin range of 50 to 60 basis points which starts at the high-end of our original range, adjusted EPS of $7.95 to $8 per share which is $0.40 higher at the low-end and $0.20 higher at the high-end of our original range and adjusted free cash flow of $5.8 billion to $6.2 billion which is substantially above our original projections and represents conversion between 97% and 103% for the year, all representing very robust performance. The difference between our reported and organic sales growth is three points in our guidance. We anticipate an approximate one point impact from foreign currency translation offset by an approximate four point impact from our two spin-offs. On the segment guide, aerospace and home and building technologies reported sales figures have been revised to reflect the lost sales and second profit from the spins. In aerospace, we also narrowed our organic sales outlook to the high-end of the range based on the strong performance to-date and our strong backlog. We have narrowed the PMT sales guidance to the midpoint of the previous range. PMTs margin guidance remains the same. In SPS we raised our organic sales guidance by two points on the high-end to 10% and raised its segment margin guidance to a new range of 122 to up 130 basis points or 20 basis points improvement on the high-end. This business has performed well all year long and we expect a strong finish based on the oil rates, the backlog and the momentum in our short cycle products businesses. As you can see our current guidance is significantly higher than our original guidance and accounts for the 2018 dilution from our two spin-offs in the fourth quarter. As Darius mentioned in his opening, we have delivered substantial operating results while executing a major portfolio change. Now let's turn to Slide 9. We wanted to provide a little bit of preliminary framework for 2019 giving all the moving parts with the spins, the liability indemnity and the other below the line items. First, starting with the macro environment we feel very confident in the strength of our end markets. We see continued demand in growing industries including e-commerce which we address with our warehouse automation offerings from Intelligrated and soon to be Transnorm. Commercial aviation where we had a strong position on the right platforms that will lead to healthy aftermarket growth, defense where we see robust budgets and clarity on defense spending for the year ahead, and process automation where we expect to see an eventual pick up and large projects coupled with continued demand for software and services. As we said last quarter, we’re proactively managing both the direct and indirect impacts from the Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs. And are making necessary changes now for the additional tariffs enacted under List 3, as well as not retaliatory impacts if any. While we are hopeful there is ultimately a resolution for the situation, we're planning for the worst and making structural changes including modify some sources of supply, seeking alternative sources, and taking other commercial actions as necessary to position us for 2019 and beyond. Given that, we continue to expect inflation to accelerate within the business and we are working to minimize those impacts with the help of our procurement, marketing and commercial excellence teams. We expect the impact to be minimal and manageable in 2018 as we previously discussed but now anticipate that the impact of 2019 prior mitigation actions will be significant. We have established a robust MOS across the company to ensure that we stay ahead of the situation though and will continue with a rigorously address any cost increases throughout our supply chain and adjust prices as necessary. It is our expectation that we will be able to effectively manage the situation and still deliver strong results as we have done through 2018 as you will know this will put some pressure on margin rate expansion. Moving on to our spin-offs, we estimated the total associated strata cost to be approximately 340 million across the business with more than 50% of these cost eliminated by the end of this year and the balance eliminated in 2019 and we feel very good about where we are in that regard. We have made very good progress and we are managing this smartly and it’s a big focus now that the spins are done. We expect that the full-year dilution on a go forward basis from the two spins net of the indemnity reimbursement and excluding those remain strata cost will be approximately $0.90. In terms of other preliminary figures for 2019 at our current level of buybacks we are anticipating at least a 1% reduction in share count. Due to the measures we took earlier this year to derisk our pension plan investments, pension income will be approximately $300 million lower year-over-year and our funded status is expected to remain well above 100%. Repositioning funding, we expect to be approximately $325 million next year. Based on our planning for the fourth quarter and the repositioning we have funded to-date in 2018, this represents approximately $150 million decline year-over-year. We will continue to take the opportunity to deploy repositioning funding to improve our supply chain, optimize our fixed cost and manage in our remaining strata cost reduction plans. Finally with the impact of the legacy liability indemnity reimbursements from our two spin-off, we expect that asbestos and environmental will be lower by approximately $425 million. As a reminder, this reduction represents the 90% of expense that is covered by the indemnification agreement and is included in the $0.90 of dilution we mentioned earlier. We will provide you with more details about our expected 2019 performance during our fourth quarter earnings report and 2019 outlook in January. Now with that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Darius who will wrap up on Slide 10.