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Hubbell Incorporated (HUBB)

Q3 2011 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 20, 2011

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone and welcome to the Hubbell Incorporated Third Quarter Results Conference Call. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. Now for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Jim Farrell. Please go ahead, sir.

Jim Farrell

Management

Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us. I am here today with Tim Powers, our Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; Dave Nord, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Bill Sperry, our Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Development. Hubbell announced the third quarter results for 2011 this morning. The press release and earnings slide materials have been posted to the investor site of our website at www.hubbell.com. Please note that our comments this morning may include statements related to the expected future results of our company and are therefore forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Therefore, please note that the discussion of forward-looking statements in our press release and consider it incorporated by reference into this call. In addition, comments made here also may include some non-GAAP financial measures. Those measures are reconciled to comparable GAAP measures and are included in the press release and the earnings slides materials. Now, let me turn the call over to Tim.

Tim Powers

Management

Thank you. Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us this morning. As we typically do on these calls, I will provide you with some overview commentary on the results we announced this morning and then, Dave will provide you with a more detailed discussion of our financial performance. I will then share some early thoughts 2012 and then we will open up the call for your questions. We will refer to presentation materials that you can find on our website, I will start on page 3. We are very pleased to report that the positive momentum from the first half of the year continued into the third quarter. Our sales increased by 12% with growth being realized and virtually all of our businesses. We reported operating margins of 16.4% which represented an impressive improvement from the second quarter was as expected was below the prior year due to a less favorable product mix and higher commodity costs. I am very proud of our results in the quarter as half of our markets remain at trot levels and working through a challenging pricing and commodity cost environment. Looking at our end markets, we continue to experience strong demand on incoming orders during the quarter. The utility market strength was broad with higher demand in distribution products and increase in spending on larger transmission projects as well as improved international demand. The industrial market continued to improve with most of our businesses including those tied to the energy markets realizing higher sales in the quarter. The new construction spending in the US non-residential market remains quite challenging, but we continue to benefit from higher demand for renovation and relight projects. On the residential side demand remains weak. I will share an early view of our 2012 end markets towards the end of my comments. So, the volume story was quite favorable, but the commodity cost pricing dynamic has been a challenge while price increases added to sales in the quarter, they were somewhat below our expectations. Price realization proved to be more difficult in certain pockets of our business most notably the construction markets. Also materials remain above last year’s levels and did not moderate quite as much as we anticipated. We will continue to adjust pricing to recover commodity cost increases and have raised prices in certain businesses in September. In summary, I’m extremely pleased with the organization’s ability to produce these impressive results in both the third quarter and for the year. Let me hand it over to Dave to provide more details on the results, Dave.

Dave Nord

Management

Okay. Thanks, Tim. Good morning, everybody. Let me jump into the results, I’ll start on page 4, you know, first on the sales side, we’re reporting sales of $764.3 million up 12%. As Tim mentioned really broad based improvement through all of our businesses particularly strong, we’ll talk more about our utility business. In that 12%, there is some price and currency that combined are about 4%, so our core volume grew up 8%. I think price and FX in that 4% are about equally split. So, good results there. On the gross margin side, 33% gross margin in the quarter, now that’s down from last year’s third quarter, for a couple of reasons. One, our commodity cost still in excess of price realization, we had forecasted and we’ve been working toward getting the parity in the third and maybe some improvement in the fourth. But, as Tim mentioned, the pricing environment turned out to be unfortunately a little more challenging than we expected. The other big driver to that decline is this less favorable mix and you recall we talked about that in the third quarter of last year, some very strong project business coming out of our industrial sector, particularly our high voltage in telecom. I think that had a significant, we would estimate that’s close to almost 1.5 of margin impact last year. So, we are very pleased actually with our 33% because when we look at that 33% it wasn’t that long ago when we were talking about 28% gross margin. Good improvement and I think that adjusted for last year’s unusual items, I think that’s probably the highest level gross margin we’ve seen in the last three years on a quarterly basis. So overall very good performance in a trend we continue to work to…

Tim Powers

Management

Thanks Dave. Now, let’s turn to page 18 for discussion of our early view of the 2012 outlook. We usually provide next year’s outlook in our January call. But given recent volatility, we thought it appropriate to provide some early comments. Looking in the 2012, we remain cautious, but optimistic about our end markets. There certainly continuous to be numerous macro concerns going into the comp up coming year. The general health of the global economy is unclear and the remains a high level of political uncertainty in Washington combined with stubbornly high levels of unemployment. As you are aware, our visibility in the future demand is less than two months for most parts of our business. What we continue to like, what we are seeing in our incoming order patterns as well as conversations with our customers. We are expecting modest single digit growth in our markets in 2012. The third party forecast for US non-residential new construction is for a modest decline and put in place spending in 2012 with a more meaningful recovery shifted into 2013. This decline is expected to be primarily due to weakness on the public side as stimulus dollars get exhausted. However, as we experienced in 2011, we believe the demand for renovation, relight and lighting controls will remain strong and more than offset the declines in new construction, allowing for modest growth overall in this end market. Our lighting business has been participating in this growth, as our products helped customers become more energy efficient or providing compelling paybacks and cost savings. The adoption rates for LED product continues at a very strong pace with sales doubling in both the third quarter and year-to-date and now represents just below 10% of our total lighting sales. We expect this strong growth demand to…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instruction) And we will take our first question from the line of Christopher Glynn with Oppenheimer. Christopher Glynn – Oppenheimer: Thanks, good morning.

Tim Powers

Management

Good morning, Chris. Christopher Glynn – Oppenheimer: Couple of questions on the lighting, you commented on the overall growth entered in the quarter and then with LED nearly 10%, if you could talk about what the margin impact on that kind of mixed transition is in, you know, how it’s evolving?

Tim Powers

Management

Okay, let me start with the LED discussion and the margin. For us, our LED sales margin is about the same as or the average product category. So, if we are talking about down light it’s the same as the average down light or we don’t experience a relative premium but we are not experiencing any margin degradation in the sale of a combined unit. And we are doing a extremely well but I think overall in the penetration of LED lighting when you consider that how much of anybody’s business when you have a Conglomerate as fluorescent so to say that the number is approximately 10%, when about a 30 business as fluorescent means that the adoption rate for LED is higher on the rest of the business. So, I think we’re doing extremely well there and we would expect that rate to continue, the rate of increased adoption. And Chris, what was the nature of the first part of the question? Christopher Glynn – Oppenheimer: Just the overall lighting growth in the quarter?

Dave Nord

Management

I think, the question was lighting overall was about 8%, little more on the C&I side, but actually some positive results even on the residential side as you know, we’ve tried to expand our reach beyond home building and I think some of that’s coming out of the DIY side and other channels. Christopher Glynn – Oppenheimer: Okay. And then, if the construction markets don’t look like the traditional serve markets will improve next year at this point which is in your outlook, is there any reason to think the price cost relationship would be any different than it is this year?

Tim Powers

Management

Well, there is all kinds of reason to believe that it would be different by mean with the fluctuating metals and energy cost, it’s quite difficult for us to predict, you know, the overall relationship there. It’s just one that we have to adapt to as we see changes. We don’t even know we believe that or see that metals costs have declined, we don’t foresee any dramatic decline as we saw back in 2008. We think the economy is at some a little bit of a pause. But, as you can see that every time there is any news towards anything positive in Europe, you can watch oil prices jump up several dollars and copper and others are following. So, we think that the prices have come up there high is a little bit, but we would expect if the economy goes forward and gets a little better worldwide that these commodity costs would continue to raise back to levels that we previously seen. Christopher Glynn – Oppenheimer: Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Rich Kwas with Wells Fargo. Rich Kwas – Wells Fargo: Hi, all. How are you?

Tim Powers

Management

Good morning, Rich. Rich Kwas – Wells Fargo: Dave on price cost, if we look at the, I guess, when you look at the 50 basis point target for operating margin that was previously communicated. Now it’s 20 to 30. How much of that is price cost versus mix adverse mix versus expectation?

Dave Nord

Management

It’s almost oil price cost. Rich Kwas – Wells Fargo: Okay, okay. And then, Tim on the (LFL12), the organic growth, does that include assumption for market outgrowth. So, you’re saying the market, you expect your market to grow low single digits, would you expect that you get a couple points on top of that based on just product penetration, new product launches that sort of thing?

Tim Powers

Management

Yes, so we’re just talking, to make it clear. We’re talking about the fact that our markets as we see them will grow in a low single digits modestly. So, we are in a condition, I would say that’s very similar to this year with the exception that I would say, the rate of growth in the industrial market will be somewhat less, but still growing and we can’t predict that we are going to see the kind of growth rate on the power side that we are seeing this year. I mean, everything is going so well this year and every level of the market that we are confident that we are going to see growth in the utility business, but at what rate you know, remains to be discussed or remains to be seen as we get closer to it. Rich Kwas – Wells Fargo: And then, just a follow-up on that too. I think for the revenue guidance ’07 and ’09 assumed something like two to three points of market outgrowth with new products, product penetration etcetera. Is that coming in ahead of expectations with the new 12% revenue growth the two to three points of you know, market outgrowth, is that better?

Tim Powers

Management

I think its pretty comparable. Rich Kwas – Wells Fargo: Okay. And then, so is the way – a good way to think about for next year is that right now low single-digit growth for ’12 and then maybe a couple of points of market outgrowth for the new products?

Tim Powers

Management

Yes. Rich Kwas – Wells Fargo: Okay. And then, just Tim last question on transmission spending you know, it certainly seems like you are more positive on the outlook relative to the March Investor Day, could you just give us more color on what’s really driving it, it seems like a lot of these projects are or some of these projects are getting released and more or so than what you had originally thought then what’s driving and is there any what’s the risk that this growth doesn’t really play out to the degree that you currently think and what’s the major risk there?

Tim Powers

Management

All right. Well, I think what’s different between when we spoke earlier in the year and now is we were – I would say piling up awards, we were notified that we were winning and now these projects are being released with pretty short notice, not the usual kind of get ready, get set. Suddenly, we were getting these several months earlier than we thought, which is all good news. Some of these orders will not be shippable until next year and some of them, we are trying hard to get shipped by the end of this year. So, we have visibility into many, many of these projects and the state at which they are at and right now unless there is a change of pace to the industry there is plenty of projects on the drawing board in an advanced stages of bidding that would lead us to believe that there is going to be a decent growth in the transmission side for 2012. Rich Kwas – Wells Fargo: And then, it sounds like the book of business that’s being quoted is expanding as well, out to the future?

Tim Powers

Management

Yes it is. And you know, so we are working on projects that we don’t believe will come to bid until 2013. So, there is just a lot of activity going on and we are pretty much on top of every single job. So, we are very pleased with the development on this and its been sometime coming what I think, we are at, you know, a wave of increased level of business that should last into at least ’13 perhaps even ’14. Rich Kwas – Wells Fargo: Okay. Great, that’s helpful thanks so much.

Tim Powers

Management

You are welcome.

Operator

Operator

It appears there are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks.

Jim Farrell

Management

Okay. Well, this concludes today’s call and Bill Sperry and I are available if there are any follow-up questions. And once again thank you all for joining us this morning.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen this does conclude today’s conference. We thank you for your participation.