Christina Kmetko
Analyst · Sidoti & Company. Your line is open
Thank you. Good morning, everyone and welcome to our 2019 first 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 first quarter 2019 results and filed our 10-Q. Copies of the earnings release and 10-Q 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 For anyone who is not able to listen to today’s entire call, an archived version of this webcast will be on our website later this afternoon and available for approximately 12 months.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-Q. 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. Before we talk about the quarter results, let me quickly discuss a change we made to our segment as of the 1st of this year. If you recall, in late 2018, we announced the company’s North America attachment manufacturing will be moved out of its location in Illinois into the lift truck businesses in Alabama manufacturing facility, as part of a plan to expand Bolzoni’s capabilities in the United States. Effective January 1, 2019, the Sulligent facility became a Bolzoni facility. And as a result of this, the 2019 financial information and comparative 2018 financial information have been reclassified to reflect the Sulligent facility financial results within our Bolzoni segment. Our earnings release provides the revised 2019 and 2018 first quarter information only. However, the historical financial data schedule that we filed last night as an 8-K and put on our website provide the revised 2018 information for all quarters and the 2018 full year. Now let me discuss our first quarter results and activities. I will discuss the highlights first and then get into the details. On a consolidated basis, our revenues increased almost 6% to $834.8 million, up from $788.5 million in last year’s first quarter. Each of our 3 businesses contributed to this increase. The lift truck revenues included $16.4 million of revenues from shipments of 1,300 units at our Hyster-Yale Maximal subsidiary, which was acquired in June 2018 and therefore did not have any comparable revenues in the prior year first quarter. Despite this revenue growth, we reported a decrease in both our consolidated operating profit and net income to $3.4 million or $0.20 per share compared with operating profit of $19.2 million and net income of $14.9 million or $0.90 per share in the first quarter of 2018. Our core lift truck business, Hyster-Yale Group, drove the first quarter consolidated revenue increase with revenues of $788 million, up from $743.3 million last year. The revenue increase was generated primarily from the favorable effect of price increases implemented to offset last year’s significant material cost inflation and non-comparable revenues from Hyster-Yale Maximal. However, this segment, primarily the Americas and JAPIC divisions, also drove the decrease in our consolidated operating profit and net income. Hyster-Yale Group operating profit decreased to $10.8 million in the first quarter, down from $26.6 million last year. There are a number of factors contributing to this decline. In the first quarter, the global lift truck market softened, particularly in the Americas. I will talk more about that later. The 2019 first quarter unit backlog decreased from the 2018 fourth quarter, mainly because of a 2,900-unit decline in the Americas, as the rate of bookings in North America decreased due to the softer market. That said, the average sales price per unit in backlog actually increased over both the prior year first and fourth quarters because of the mix of products within backlog. Consolidated unit shipments, excluding non-comparable Hyster-Yale Maximal shipments, decreased from both the prior year first and fourth quarters, mainly because of a decline in North America. Overall shipments of lower-priced, lower margin units increased during the first quarter, while shipments of higher-priced units, including big trucks, were lower, primarily because of ongoing, although abating, supplier part shortages. These supplier part shortages also caused inefficiencies that created higher manufacturing costs and reduced profit. Finally also contributing to the decrease in operating profit were higher operating expenses, unfavorable currency movements of $3.7 million and operating losses of $2 million at Hyster-Yale Maximal. Price increases, net of material cost and freight inflation, including import tariff and higher parts volume and margin, partly offset the decrease in operating profit. Moving to our Bolzoni segment, Bolzoni reported net income of $300,000 and revenues of $91.8 million for the first quarter of 2019 compared with net income of $1.9 million and revenues of $89.5 million in last year’s first quarter. As mentioned earlier, these revenues have been restated to include the sales of traditional products out of Sulligent. Bolzoni’s operating profit decreased to $1.2 million, down from $2.7 million last year. The decrease in Bolzoni’s operating profit was primarily due to $1.4 million of costs for severance, plant rearrangement and moving expenses related to the transfer of Bolzoni’s North America attachment manufacturing from Homewood, Illinois to Sulligent, Alabama, which commenced in the first quarter. The impact of U.S. tariffs on imported Chinese components also had an unfavorable effect on Bolzoni’s results. Finally, in our Nuvera segment. Nuvera reported revenues of $4.5 million in the first quarter compared with $600,000 in the prior year. Revenues increased because of development funding received associated with Nuvera’s third-party development agreements and increased recognized sales of fuel cell battery box replacements, which we refer to as BBRs. Nuvera’s first quarter operating loss decreased to $8.4 million from $10 million last year. The reduction was mainly because of the product development funding received from third-parties. Looking forward, we continue to focus on our six strategic initiatives and the many projects we are undertaking to execute these initiatives, which we believe will help us attain a much higher level of competitiveness, market position and economic performance over the next 3 years to 5 years. Our longer term outlook did not change from what we said at year end, but I have a few updates to our thoughts on 2019. In total, the projects we discussed last quarter have required and continue to require significant upfront expense and capital expenditure investments. We expect further increased investments to continue to be made in the remainder of 2019 and then generally remain at the 2019 levels for the next several years. But we believe the return from these investments has started to be realized and is expected to increase over the next 5 years. Before I provide an update on our full year outlook, let me provide some updates on specific, more immediate projects and how those are expected to affect 2019. We launched a new end rider and a new automated Reach Truck for the North America market in the first quarter of 2019 and new lower cost Class 3 walkie and stacker global products are expected to be introduced later in the year. Consolidation of our China production activities into the Hyster-Yale Maximal facility will be ongoing and is expected to be completed by the end of the year. As I already mentioned, in the first quarter, Bolzoni begin to phase out production at its current Homewood, Illinois facility, and we expect the shift of manufacturing to Sulligent to be mostly completed by the end of the 2019 second quarter. Bolzoni recorded a restructuring charge associated with these plans as of March 31. Payments related to this plan, or this restructuring plan, are expected to be made throughout 2019. In addition to the restructuring charge, we are anticipating that Bolzoni will incur subsequent charges during the remainder of the year of approximately $1.5 million to $3 million for additional costs related to restructuring. Finally, the transfer of the responsibility for the development of non-fuel cell engine components and the overall assembly of BBRs to Hyster-Yale Group is expected to be completed by the end of 2019. Turning now to the overall outlook, in summary, while the second quarter is expected to reflect continued investment in all of our programs, similar to what you saw in our first quarter results, the second half of the year is expected to be significantly improved in comparison to the second half of 2018. Efforts we have taken to abate the most critical supplier issues, which include working with existing suppliers and in some cases finding additional suppliers, are succeeding, and improvement has been made in many areas since the end of last year, but there are still some issues that are not expected to be resolved until midyear. In addition, plans established in 2018 to find offsets to the tariff driven unprecedented material cost inflation witnessed last year will mature during 2019. To augment the plans we have put in place, on April 18, the U.S. Trade Representative posted a notice announcing its determination to grant additional exclusion requests for certain duties on Chinese goods. The exclusions will apply retroactively to the July 6, 2018, effective date and will extend for 1 year after the notice of exclusions or April of 2020. Certain components of forklift trucks, including counterweights and forks, were listed in the notice as exclusions for the duties, while other components that we and our suppliers import from China are still subjected to certain tariffs. We are currently in the process of determining duties recoverable from the government and suppliers. 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. We expect these agreements to reduce profitability in the second quarter and, to a lesser degree, in the third quarter of this year. However, margins are expected to recover fully from the 2018 material cost inflation and the heavily-discounted deals by late third quarter or the fourth quarter of 2019. Margins will also be enhanced over the remainder of this year by the exemption of tariffs on certain Chinese components. In this context, we expect 2019 operating profit at Hyster-Yale Group 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 the target of 7% operating profit margin being reached in the short term. Nuvera’s results are expected to improve moderately over the course of 2019, with Nuvera’s objective being to reduce its loss significantly in the fourth quarter of this year and to reach breakeven in 2020. At each of these three businesses, we expect that the investments being undertaken will 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 over 2018, with the improvement coming in the second half of the year. Of course, the absolute level of profitability will reflect actual market demand levels, which showed substantial softening, particularly in the Americas in the first quarter. While markets are still at historically high levels, we are uncertain about whether this market decline is the beginning of a downturn or a reduction from abnormal prior year first quarter market growth, resulting from customers placing orders early in anticipation of increasing prices from material cost inflation and new tariff. Therefore, in 2019, we are currently forecasting strong but moderating lift truck market levels, with the U.S. market expected to be down by single-digits for the 2019 full year, and we expect a resolution to Brexit in a way that does not significantly harm our business prospects. Before I open up the call for your questions, I wanted to make a comment about our cash position. Our cash position at March 31 was $55.7 million compared with $83.7 million at the end of 2018. Our debt balance was $309.4 million, up modestly from $301.5 million at December 31. That concludes my prepared remarks. I will now open up the call for your questions.