Christina Kmetko
Analyst · Sidoti & Company. Your line is open
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2018 fourth quarter earnings call. I am Christina Kmetko, and I am responsible for Investor Relations at Hyster-Yale. Joining me on today's call are Al Rankin, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Hyster-Yale Materials Handling; Colin Wilson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Hyster-Yale Group; and Ken Schilling, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Yesterday evening, we published our fourth quarter 2018 results and filed our 10-K. Copies of the earnings release and 10-K are available on our website. For anyone who is not able to listen to today's entire call, an archived version of this webcast will be on our website later this afternoon and available for approximately 12 months. I would also like to remind participants that this conference call may contain certain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements made here today in either our prepared remarks or during the following question-and-answer session. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, which may not be updated until our next quarterly conference call, if at all. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties was set forth in our earnings release and in our 10-K. Also, certain amounts discussed during this call are considered non-GAAP. The non-GAAP reconciliations of these amounts are included in our earnings release and available on our website. Now let me discuss our fourth quarter results and activities. I will discuss the highlights first, and then get into the details. In the fourth quarter, the global lift truck market continued to grow strong, albeit at a slower pace. The strong market combined with increasing momentum from our strategic initiatives helped us generate a solid increase in our fourth quarter lift truck shipments and 18.7% increase in bookings and a 30% increase in our ending backlog over the respective 2017 periods. Our average sales price per unit in backlog increased over both the 2017 fourth quarter and the 2018 third quarter. This is because we shipped more lower-priced units during the quarter, while shipments of higher-priced units including big trucks were lower primarily because of continuing supplier shortages. We are addressing this issue and expected to be broadly resolved by mid-year. On a consolidated basis, our revenues increased to $837.7 million, up from $795.5 million last year, driven by increases in revenues at all three of our businesses. The lift truck revenues included $22.7 million of revenues on shipments of 1,600 units from our Maximal subsidiary, which was acquired in June 2018. Despite this revenue growth and improved operating results at Nuvera and Bolzoni, we reported a consolidated operating loss of $3.4 million and a net loss of $1.2 million, or loss of $0.07 per share. Last year we had operating profit of $15.9 million and a net loss of $2.4 million, or $0.15 per share. But last year's net loss included $18.4 million of unfavorable tax adjustments related to the 2017 tax reform legislation. Our core lift truck business Hyster-Yale Group drove the fourth quarter consolidated revenue increase, with revenues of $794.2 million, up from $751.6 million last year. However, this segment primarily our Americas division, also drove the decrease in our consolidated results. Our lift truck business, operating profit decreased to $4.2 million in the fourth quarter, down from $23.7 million last year. The decline occurred because of material and freight cost inflation, including import tariffs, net of price increases we have implemented, as well as manufacturing inefficiencies caused by supplier parts shortages and an increase in warranty expense. We also had higher operating expenses due to an increase in incentive compensation, resulting from an adjustment for the net impact of tariffs on our full year 2018 results, as well as an additional -- as additional investments in the expansion of our industry focused sales and marketing team and increased product development costs to support a planned major upgrade to one of our core product platforms. I would like to point out that we are still experiencing a lag between when we implemented price increases and when we actually realize those price increases in our unit revenues. The Americas, which is our largest segment implemented price increases during the first half of the year and a tariff surcharge in November 2018 to offset material cost inflation in tariff, but the fourth quarter operating results continue to reflect a $5.7 million shortfall resulting from this lag. Impact of this lag on our full year results was $25.7 million. While the fourth quarter results were not what we expected for the full year, our Lift Truck business still generated $67.5 million of operating profit and $56.7 million of net income, despite many external challenges and conscious decisions made to incur additional cost to accelerate the execution of our strategic initiatives. Moving to our Bolzoni segment, Bolzoni reported net income of $400,000 and revenues of $50.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2018, compared with net income of $600,000 and revenues of $49.4 million in last year's fourth quarter. Bolzoni's operating profit improved to $1.9 million in 2018, up from $1.4 million last year. Bolzoni's revenue increase was primarily the result of higher volumes in the EMEA market and operating profit increased mainly because of improved margins on products sold, partly offset by higher operating expenses, resulting from the continued implementation of Bolzoni's strategic programs, specifically to increase its presence in North America. Finally, at our Nuvera segment, Nuvera reported revenues of $10.6 million in the fourth quarter, compared with $400,000 in the prior year. During the fourth quarter Nuvera recognized revenues that have previously been deferred on fuel cell battery box replacements sold to Hyster-Yale Group our lift truck business. These revenues were eliminated in consolidation, but Hyster-Yale Group also recognized revenues on the battery box replacements previously sold to the third-parties. Nuvera's fourth quarter operating loss decreased to $9.8 million from a loss of $13.9 million last year. This reduction was mainly because of the absence of a $4.9 million asset impairment charge taken in 2017 and product development funding received from third-party customers. This improvement was partially offset by the recognition of higher warranty expense, higher employee-related costs and an increase in product development and production start-up costs related to Nuvera's third-party development agreements that we discussed in previous quarters. As I'm sure you noted, we provided a new investor perspective in our fourth quarter earnings release rather than a detailed 2019 outlook. We trust you will find this of greater value as it lays out the path we expect to follow over the medium to long-term period, as well as give any perspective on 2019. As we said in our earnings release, we are undertaking the largest set of transformational programs in our company's history, and we believe these will help us attain a much higher level of competitiveness, market position and economic performance over the next three to five years. We have spent a lot of time over the past few years communicating our six strategic initiatives, and many of the projects we are undertaking to execute these initiatives. We believe many of these programs are moving toward completion, in total, these projects have acquired significant upfront expense and capital expenditure investment and cover a very broad range of activities for each of our three businesses. Over the course of 2017 and 2018, these investments both expense and capital, increased significantly. We expect to continue to make investments in 2019, but we believe the return from these investments have started to be realized and is expected to increase over the next three to five years. While the early part of 2019 is expected to reflect the investment in all of these programs. The second half of the year is expected to be significantly improved in comparison to the second half of this past year. Efforts in our Lift Truck business to find offsets to the tariff driven unprecedented material cost inflation witnessed in 2018 are expected to mature during 2019, and efforts to abate the most critical supplier issues, which are still having an impact on our production lines are under way with most expected to be resolved by the middle of the year. In addition, our current lift truck backlog contains certain deal-specific pricing agreements at less than target margins to gain targeted accounts and for which margin improvement efforts will take some time to mature. These deals will also have an impact on profitability, mainly in the first half of the year. However, we do expect margins to recover from the 2018 material cost inflation and the strategically priced deals by the third and fourth quarters of 2019. In this context, we expect 2019 operating profit at Hyster-Yale Group, the Lift Truck business to improve over 2018, but results in the first half of the year are expected to be lower than the first half of last year, and then improve in the second half. Beginning in 2020, further improved results are expected with significant continuing increases through 2023. Bolzoni's results are expected to improve in 2019 and in the following years with a target of 7% operating profit margins being reached in the shorter-term. Nuvera's results are expected to improve moderately in the first three quarters of 2019 with a break even target for both the fourth quarter and for the 2020 full year. At each of these three businesses, the investments being undertaken are expected to lead to increased operating profit through higher volume, decreased product costs and improved pricing, partially offset by a higher level of operating expense. As a result, overall we expect 2019 consolidated operating profit to increase significantly with the improvement coming in the second half of the year. Of course, the absolute level of profitability will reflect actual market demand levels. Our company is currently forecasting strong but moderating market levels in 2019 and a resolution to Brexit in a way that does not significantly harm our company's business prospects. Before I open up the call for questions, I wanted to make a comment about our cash position. At December 31st, our cash was $83.7 million compared with $220.1 million at the end of 2017. Our debt balance was $301.5 million, up from $290.7 million at year end. The decrease in cash and increase in debt were primarily driven by the acquisition of Maximal and an increased investment in working capital. That concludes my prepared remarks. I will now open up the call for your questions.