Bill Grogan
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question
Thanks, Andy. I'll start with our first quarter financial results on slide 4. Q1 orders of $655 million was an all-time record, and was up 4% overall and 6% organically. All three segments were up with FMT leading the way. Q1 revenue was $622 million, up 2% overall and 4% organically. We expanded gross margins by 40 basis points to 45.6%, primarily due to price, production efficiencies, and volume leverage, partially offset by investments in engineering related to new product development. Our Q1 operating margin was 23.8%, up 120 basis points compared with the adjusted prior year period, mainly driven by our gross margin expansion, lower intangible amortization, and lower variable compensation costs. Q1 net income was $110 million resulting in record-high EPS of $1.44, up $0.15 or 12% over prior period -- prior year adjusted EPS. Our Q1 effective tax rate was 19.5%, which was lower than the 24% in the prior year period, mainly due to an increase in foreign tax credits, discrete tax expense in the prior year period, and the mix of global pre-tax income. The first quarter ETR of 19.5% was also 300 basis points, lower than our previously guided amount, mainly due to a higher excess tax benefit from greater than expected stock option exercises in the quarter. This lower tax rate accounted for five out of the seven EPS favorability compared to the midpoint of our previous guidance. The remaining $0.02 of EPS favorability was operationally driven. Free cash flow was solid at $76 million, up 12% over the last year, and 69% of net income. This was our highest Q1 free cash flow of all time. In regards to the balance sheet no change here. Gross and net leverage remain very healthy. The combination of our strong balance sheet capacity on our revolver and free cash flow provides us with an ability to deploy $2 billion in the next 12 months for the right opportunities. I'll now turn to the segment discussion. I'm on slide 5, starting with Fluid & Metering. FMT continues to deliver strong numbers, from both an order and revenue perspective. Q1 orders were up 8% overall and 10% organically. Q1 sales were up 4% overall and 6% organically. Op margin was strong at 29.6%, up 110 basis points over the adjusted prior year quarter, mainly due to price, volume leverage and productivity initiatives. As Andy mentioned earlier, we are seeing some day rate fluctuation in pockets of the business, but overall the fundamental strength within the industrial sector continues to drive solid results. Our Viking and Richter businesses posted record order and sales in Q1 with continued project wins in the processing and chemical markets across the globe. The municipal water business remains steady, and the oil and gas market conditions have improved due to oil price increases and stabilization. The only business in this segment that contracted year-over-year was Banjo. The concerns we highlighted with the ag market in Q4 materialized in Q1, and we continue to be cautious on the balance of the outlook for Banjo. Overall, the targeted growth efforts across our businesses in this segment continue to gain wins and market share. Let's move on to Health & Science turning to slide 6. Q1 orders were flat overall, but up 1% organically. We highlighted on our last call, we expected a tougher comp for HST orders due to an OEM blanket we received early in Q4 of last year. Along with the last time buy we offered customers in Q1 of 2018, as we eliminated the product line as part of the Rochester COE project. Normalizing for the items, orders would have been up 5% organically for the segment. From a sales perspective, Q1 sales were up 2% overall and 3% organically. I'll give you a bit more color on this in a minute. Operating margin increased 10 basis points to 24%. This was primarily due to lower amortization. Core margin performance was negatively impacted by lower project volume in FX and MPT. Overall, HST's performance was primarily driven by continued success in Scientific Fluidics and Optics. Underlying AI and IVD/BIO markets remain positive and we continue to grow through targeted NPD efforts in collaboration with our key customers. Gast saw strong underlying industrial OEM demand and solid execution on our growth initiatives in the food and beverage market. On the negative side, organic growth was impacted by contraction in our sealing business, which was affected by both a downturn in semicon and lower auto sales. Finally, MPT backlog remains strong and has grown sequentially versus last quarter, but timing of project shipments is skewed towards later quarters in the year due to longer lead times. I'm now moving on to our final segment, Diversified. I'm on Slide 7. Q1 orders were up 5% overall and 9% organically. Revenues were down 2% overall, but up 1% organically. Operating margin of 25.8% increased 90 basis points in the quarter. This was mainly attributable to price, productivity initiatives, more than offsetting our volume decreases. FST's performance was driven by our Fire & Rescue business continuing to see growth across most of the product categories and geographies with several project wins resulting from new product launches. Band-IT saw growth in several of its verticals with aerospace leading the way. They also had some nice project wins in cable management. Our dispensing business was down around 15% organically for the quarter as they had a tough comp against some larger projects last year. We expect them to recover some as we progress through the year but will be down overall for the full year based upon timing of customer replenishment cycles. I'll now pass it back to Andy to provide an update on our 2019 guidance.