Earnings Labs

Illinois Tool Works Inc. (ITW)

Q2 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Jul 22, 2015

$265.88

-0.94%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome and thank you all for standing by. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session of today's conference call. This call is also being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this point. Now, I will turn the meeting over to your host, Mr. Aaron Hoffman, Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Aaron H. Hoffman - Vice President, Investor Relations

Management

Great. Thanks, Madison. And good morning. Welcome to ITW's second quarter 2015 conference call. Joining me this morning are our CEO, Scott Santi; and our CFO, Michael Larsen. During today's call, we will discuss our second quarter financial results and update you on our earnings forecast. Before we get to the results, let me remind you that this presentation contains our financial forecast for the 2015 third quarter and full-year as well as other forward-looking statements identified on the slide. We refer you to the company's 2014 Form 10-K and first quarter 2015 Form 10-Q for more detail about important risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. Also, this presentation uses certain non-GAAP measures. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures is contained in the press release. So with that, I'll turn the call over to Scott. Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. In the face of a fairly unprecedented combination of currency translation headwinds and contracting demand in two of the company's highest growth core businesses, ITW delivered another solid quarter of execution with earnings per share of $1.30, an increase of 7% over the last year. Excluding the $0.12 negative impact of currency translation, our earnings per share would have been up 17%. Operating margin in the quarter was up 80 basis points year-on-year, and operating margin of 21.3% was a new all-time record for the company. In addition, after-tax return on invested capital reached our Enterprise Strategy target of 20% plus. Despite the current challenges associated with the external environment, we continue to focus on and invest in our strategy to accelerate organic revenue growth across the company. In the first half of 2015, we invested roughly…

Aaron H. Hoffman - Vice President, Investor Relations

Management

Thanks, Michael. We'll now open up the call to your questions. Please be brief so as to allow more people the opportunity to ask a question. And remember one question, one follow-up question.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from the line of Mr. John Inch with Deutsche Bank. Sir, your lines are open.

John G. Inch - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Sir, your lines are open

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning.

John G. Inch - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Sir, your lines are open

Good morning. Can I start with PLS? How, Scott and Michael, do you have confidence that PLS is working and that there is going to – this is basically going to incite underlying growth, call it starting – or improved underlying growth starting in 2016? I mean, plus it's a bit of a black box, so could you just tell us, because obviously growth is probably investors' number one concern with you right now, not Enterprise Initiatives that are clearly working. So how does the PLS – how do you have the confidence PLS as it dissipates will incite better underlying growth? Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, absolutely the elimination of the negative is the obvious first part of that, right. So the whole point of PLS is really around the idea of simplification, and embedded in 80/20 is a real strong discipline around focusing on the relative handful of product lines and customers that really can drive growth. So the PLS that we're doing now is a collection of 15 years of aggressive acquisition. So we're going through now – 50 to 60 deals a year, we're going through now and really simplifying our businesses, consolidating our focus on our best growth opportunities from a product line in an end market and customer standpoint. It's not something that's new to the company but certainly it's something that's new in terms of being done at this level across the company all at once. The end result is that we eliminate the distractions both from the standpoint of operational distraction from the standpoint of distraction to the focus of our sales teams, marketing teams. So the growth agenda and the growth focus becomes very clear. PLS by itself doesn't create growth, but what it does is create a high degree of focus on the best growth opportunities we have, and we still then have to execute on that. But the elimination of that complexity, we have a lot of conviction about the fact that that's a really important step in this process.

John G. Inch - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Sir, your lines are open

Would you expect, Scott, some sort of a multiplier effect? So in other words, if it's dragging by one, you don't simply add one to future growth. The focus allows you to get a little bit better? I'm not trying to be leading, I am just... Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No, no. Absolutely. We expect to accelerate organic. We expect to be an above-market grower by 200 basis points across the company. And that's because we are focusing the company on highly differentiated positions in end markets that fundamentally have reasonable growth prospects, but we expect to be able to outperform market level growth because we are focused on driving highly differentiated solutions to end customers that have complex and sophisticated business problems.

John G. Inch - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Sir, your lines are open

Is PLS – yeah, I was going to ask, is PLS dragging cash flow? Because you mentioned you expect cash to accelerate, I guess, based on it driving toward 100%, if not higher, for the back half. Is it dragging cash, I think, at 80% net income conversion this quarter? Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, no. No, PLS doesn't create a drag on cash flow. I'd say actually quite the opposite over time. The 80% conversion is in line with our typical run rate for the first half. Same as we did last year in the first half of the year. And so we would expect it to accelerate here in the back half and we're confident that we'll be at or above our 100% target for the year.

John G. Inch - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Sir, your lines are open

Just last, China auto, 8% is probably a relief for a lot of folks, but the question is with production rates expected in that country to come down, how are you thinking about your trends juxtaposed against your performance penetration, but then obviously slowing production rates in that market? Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You're talking about just auto, John, or the whole company?

John G. Inch - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Sir, your lines are open

Yeah, just auto in China. Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I think the auto China business, it's largely a penetration story. I think we are at the early stages of sort of moving from the global OEMs – not moving from but supplementing a very strong position with global OEMs in China with an accelerating level of penetration for the sort of major domestic players over there. So I think there's plenty of runway for us. The build rates or the production rates are certainly going to have some impact overall, but we're still running high-single digits there in a market that last quarter, I think, was – the build rate was up a couple of percent. So I don't think – the macro in China is going to have some relative effect, but I don't think it's going to make it impact our overall ability to grow there over the next multiple years.

John G. Inch - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Sir, your lines are open

Well, then second half, is this going to be one for one? So for instance, if builds in China go from plus two to minus five, would that subtract seven points from your trend or do you think you do a little better or is it too granular? Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: I think it's a little granular. I would say we're running 6 percentage points ahead of market, so figure five to six, I think, would be a good target.

John G. Inch - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Sir, your lines are open

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mr. Joe Ritchie with Goldman Sachs. Sir, your line is now open. Joseph A. Ritchie - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning. Joseph A. Ritchie - Goldman Sachs & Co.: So I know the focus is shifting to growth, but let's talk about the margins for a second because they were still really good in basically a no-growth environment. The Enterprise Initiatives are coming through. I'm just curious, as the year progresses, how are you guys thinking about price/cost? And then secondly, can you talk a little bit about that negative 40 basis point impact you saw in the other line item? Is that mostly driven by mix this quarter? Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: So let's start with the 40 basis points of other negative impact on margins. And it's very simply – it was a project that we completed in Specialty Products last year that didn't repeat in this quarter. So that is a... Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: This is a high margin project. Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: That didn't repeat on a year-over-year basis, and so you'd expect that drag to go away for the balance of the year. For the balance of the year, you would also expect it align with our guidance that our Enterprise Initiatives continue to generate 100 basis points of margin expansion. We have a lot of confidence around that number just given the projects underlying that in terms of our sourcing efforts and our business structure simplification projects. Price/cost was favorable again this quarter at 20 basis…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mr. Andy Casey from Wells Fargo. Sir, your line is now open.

Andrew M. Casey - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Mr. Andy Casey from Wells Fargo. Sir, your line is now open

Thanks a lot. Good morning, everybody. Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning.

Andrew M. Casey - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Mr. Andy Casey from Wells Fargo. Sir, your line is now open

Question on the $0.05 increase to the 2015 guidance, could you help us a little bit more with the components that drove that? The organic growth went down a little bit, but everything else on slide 11 stayed reasonably constant with the equivalent slide in the Q1 presentation. Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, so Andy – so you're right. I mean the revenue assumption is a little bit lower for the back half of the year, but that's offset by the stronger margin performance in the back half. The $0.05 really is the $0.04 of beat in the quarter here, which is a combination of primarily currency favorability relative to our guidance and slightly better margins and so we're carrying that forward. And then as we sit here today, relative to the currency planning assumption we had in April, we have a little bit of favorability. So those things together make up the $0.05 that we raised the guidance for the year.

Andrew M. Casey - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Mr. Andy Casey from Wells Fargo. Sir, your line is now open

Okay. Thank you, Michael. And then if I look at – and I'm going to get a little picky here, but if I look at Auto OEM and Food Equipment, the operating margin was still really strong, but it softened a little bit in Q2 versus Q1. Is that a function of the shift to the organic growth acceleration or were there other impacts that caused around a 50 basis point, 60 basis point compression in the quarter? Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: No, Andy (30:24). There's really nothing unusual in terms of the margins. I mean, it can fluctuate a little bit quarter-by-quarter, but I just... Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Based on mix shifts. Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, I just look at the year-over-year performance. I mean, Food 250 basis points. And if you look at the schedule in the appendix, you'll see that was on higher restructuring, so it's actually over 300 basis points excluding that. And then Automotive at 24.5% is still very strong performance. I think if you look at our peers in that space, that's approximately 3x what everybody else does in that space. So I appreciate you being a little picky here, but I really don't – I don't want to be defensive, but I think we feel very good about the progress on margins.

Andrew M. Casey - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Mr. Andy Casey from Wells Fargo. Sir, your line is now open

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mr. David Raso with Evercore ISI. Sir, your line is now open.

David Michael Raso - Evercore ISI Institutional Equities

Analyst · Mr. David Raso with Evercore ISI. Sir, your line is now open

Hi. Good morning. A pretty straightforward question. I'm just curious how July has started organically versus your third quarter guidance and, for that matter, even sort of the implied fourth quarter? The base growth a year ago accelerated a little bit 3Q, 4Q from what you had in 2Q? Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, that's right. The comps are little tougher here, David, in the back half, so third quarter of last year, I think, was up 3.5% organically. As an aside, EPS was up 40% last year. So in July, it's in line with the guidance for the quarter. We said up in that 0% to 1% range, and that's kind of what we're seeing so far. Typically, sequentially the business in total is flat from Q2 to Q3. Auto typically is down a little bit, offset by some of the other businesses. But really nothing unusual as we go into the back half of the year. I'd say the things we just talked about, Scott talked about Welding and Test & Measurement certainly not improving and some tough comps particularly on the equipment side in those businesses. We talked about automotive China. We'll see how that plays out in terms of auto builds, but we'll outperform that market substantially, and everything else is kind of in line with what we've seen so far. And I think, David, just to add on, if you look at our guidance for the year, and the EPS of the first half of the year represents 49% of the total year and the second half is 51%, and so we're exactly in line with where we performed historically and we're not counting on an acceleration or things getting a lot better here in the second half of the year.

David Michael Raso - Evercore ISI Institutional Equities

Analyst · Mr. David Raso with Evercore ISI. Sir, your line is now open

Yeah, I'm not trying to nickel and dime it, but as you said, usually 2Q, 3Q are roughly similar. Things don't seem to be accelerating. But you were willing to put a nickel to actually $0.06 on the midpoint increase into your guidance 2Q to 3Q, which – I mean, I'll take it, but I was a little surprised that you were willing to guide 3Q where you did, given the trends. There must be some underlying confidence on the margins... Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yes.

David Michael Raso - Evercore ISI Institutional Equities

Analyst · Mr. David Raso with Evercore ISI. Sir, your line is now open

...maybe July was stronger than we thought, but now it sounds like you're going to have to get that nickel sequentially $0.06 to the midpoint of the guidance really from margins. And maybe if you can help us maybe the share count at the end of the quarter, anything to...? Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: The share count is 368 million. And you're right. The improvement from Q2 to Q3 is all operating margin performance. So like I said, Q3 should be another record for the company at approximately 22%, and we just did 21.3%. And so on the same revenues, I think if you do the math, you'll see that it's a very reasonable assumption.

David Michael Raso - Evercore ISI Institutional Equities

Analyst · Mr. David Raso with Evercore ISI. Sir, your line is now open

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mr. Joel Tiss with BMO. Sir, your line is now open.

Joel G. Tiss - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Mr. Joel Tiss with BMO. Sir, your line is now open

All right. How's it going, guys? Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning. Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Good, Joel.

Joel G. Tiss - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Mr. Joel Tiss with BMO. Sir, your line is now open

Is there a less upward margin pressure as the PLS starts to slow down a little bit in 2016? Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Less upward margin pressure? Can you clarify that, Joel?

Joel G. Tiss - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Mr. Joel Tiss with BMO. Sir, your line is now open

You're eliminating fewer and fewer negatives, so there's – it seems logical that there would be a little bit less buoyancy in the margin improvement. Or is that getting so small that it doesn't matter anymore? Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You're talking about a relatively immaterial amount of revenue, so I don't – the addition by subtraction is not a significant driver of the margin improvement. There're certainly some underlying costs that comes out from an operating perspective as we take the complexity out of a lot of relatively small volume SKUs. That's a normal part of our 80/20 process. So I don't think there's a whole lot of delta in terms of margin momentum around the sort of revenue impact the PLS starting to dissipate here.

Joel G. Tiss - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Mr. Joel Tiss with BMO. Sir, your line is now open

Okay. And I just wondered, Scott, if you could give us a little bit more color on a couple of the drivers of the organic growth. Some new product introductions and some of the capacity that you added, just some kind of real live examples to give us a little bit better flavor. Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I think you're seeing it in places like Food Equipment from an innovation perspective, Automotive OEM. I mean we've talked about it before as these businesses as we have gone through this repositioning around our strategy, our seven businesses were all in a different starting point. The Auto OEM business was the most ready, sort of move through the process of streamlining their structure, developing a sourcing capability, simplifying their product offerings, and you're seeing coming out the other side in their performance. An example of what we think – to certainly higher or lower percentages overall, the way that we're ultimately positioning the entire company to operate. So in terms of the investments there, we're investing heavily in R&D, we're investing heavily in capacity. This is a business growing high-single digits, so we are investing ahead. It's also a business where we have a three-year out time horizon, so we have a pretty good runway there. So we are investing and supporting that growth rate in terms of capital equipment and what are the next innovation programs beyond the current three-year horizon. Food Equipment is another one that's now starting to come out the other side, 9% equipment growth in North America in the quarter. Service business up mid-single digits worldwide and that's being driven by both focus – the ability to focus on their best, most competitive positions, most compelling growth opportunities and the amount of investing they're now positioned to support and execute on those growth opportunities. Construction started to come out the other side at least as it relates to North America, so there's no secret in terms of what we're doing here other than we've got some – we're in some really good industries. We're in product offerings in those industries that are highly differentiated that solve real meaningful problems for customers and we expect the acceleration to come from an ability to really focus on fully leveraging those opportunities, and that focus increases as we're having to spend less time inside those businesses doing things like PLS, developing sourcing, divesting businesses, et cetera. So that's really the glide path we're on.

Joel G. Tiss - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Mr. Joel Tiss with BMO. Sir, your line is now open

Okay. And then just, Mike, real fast, I don't know if you answered why the free cash flow was down $100 million in the quarter, and if you could just give us an update on the timing of reducing debt as the share repurchase starts to get toward the end? Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, I think if you look at Q1, Q2 last year cash flow and this year, there were some movements between Q1 and Q2 related to the IPG divestiture and some of the tax payments associated with that. If you normalize for that, like I said, for the first half of the year, this year we converted 80% of the income to cash, exactly the same number as what we did last year. And so it's really... Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: As we have done for the last (38:58) Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, that's kind of our historical run rate. And then we ramp up from here. And so like I said, we all expect and you should expect us to meet or exceed the 100% target for the year. So nothing unusual really there. In terms of – so you asked reducing the overall debt, I mean we don't have any plans to change our current target leverage ratio. We're in that 2.2 times, 2.3 times range. That's, for us, the optimal structure at this point given how much cash this business model generates, how much cash we have on hand, net leverage is about 1.5 times. That is what really supports the overall Enterprise Strategy here from a capital allocation standpoint. So there are no plans to materially change our overall debt or leverage ratio target in the near term.

Joel G. Tiss - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Mr. Joel Tiss with BMO. Sir, your line is now open

Okay. Thanks guys. Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Just one more comment on the free cash flow. Our second and third quarters going back for a long, long time are higher overall revenue quarters than Qs one and four. So from the standpoint of the seasonal free cash flow, in the second quarter, we're funding additional working capital around those higher elevated seasonal sales to support Q2 and Q3. And then in Q1 and Q4, those numbers come back down. So we always are sort of negative to net income from a free cash flow standpoint in the first half of the year and positive in the second half of the year. And it's just the incremental delta on receivable and inventories to support the seasonal fluctuations in sales.

Joel G. Tiss - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · Mr. Joel Tiss with BMO. Sir, your line is now open

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mr. Nigel Coe with Morgan Stanley. Sir, your line is now open. Nigel Coe - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Yeah, thanks. Good morning, everyone. Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning. Nigel Coe - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: I think, Michael, you mentioned 3Q, the pickup in the midpoint is driven by the margin. And we don't have a huge amount of seasonal history with this new portfolio, so I'm wondering is that pickup driven by base cost reduction, i.e., initiatives? So is there some mix factor at play here? Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: No. There's probably a little bit of mix. We'll see how it plays out in the quarter. The bulk of the improvement here is driven again by the Enterprise Initiatives. So we will get 100 basis points from Enterprise Initiatives and then sequentially, like I said, revenues are about the same. Year-over-year, we expect revenues to be flat to 1%. And so again, the key driver here is really operating margins in the 22% range. And you know this, Nigel. If you go back historically, same as last year and the years before, the third quarter is usually our highest quarter in terms of operating margin. Nigel Coe - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Yeah, it's a bit of a different mix too to a lot of (42:02) companies because of the shutdowns in the summer period tend to cause a little bit of operating deleverage. But I noticed last year we had the same dynamic. So I'm wondering with the new portfolio whether there's mix play. But it sounds like there's a bit of mix and a bit of operating cost reduction. And then the second is just what struck me was the geographic trends in international markets, Europe up 2% and Asia-Pac down 3%. And what really struck me was the Welding performance in EMEA, up 5%. So I'm wondering can you maybe just give a little bit of color in terms of what you're seeing in Welding Europe and how sustainable you think that is? Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, so I think Europe, we've talked about before, really for us as a company stabilized back in 2013, and we're quite encouraged by what we've seen and the 2% growth in the region. I think on the Welding side, this was a good quarter in Europe, which was really driven by a one-time order. We hope it's not one-time, but that's what we're hearing. So I wouldn't read too much into that in Europe. It wasn't a specific customer or specific country, so. Nigel Coe - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Great. Well, thanks for the color. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mr. Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Sir, your line is now open.

Deane Dray - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · Mr. Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Sir, your line is now open

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning.

Deane Dray - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · Mr. Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Sir, your line is now open

So halfway through the Enterprise Strategy and, Scott, I recall that the big emphasis was there's going to be this pivot from two-thirds M&A and one-third organic to reverse that to two-thirds organic, one-third M&A. And my question is you really haven't seen M&A getting restarted, and Michael's comments on capital allocation, not one mention of M&A. And so at what point do you start to restart that M&A engine? Or do you want to recast a different percent of organic versus M&A? Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No, I don't think – I think our intentions around this are pretty clear. We talked about it at the Investor Meeting in December in terms of first of all strategically where do we see M&A fitting in terms of the overall company's strategy. The simplified version of that is we would love to bolt great assets onto these seven great businesses that we have. The way I would describe it is we would be delighted to add a great company right now, and that's not new news. That's been true throughout. What I would say the difference is, is we're probably not as actively out in the prospecting mode around the opportunities to do that as we will be, as we get further down the Enterprise Strategy. But from the standpoint of, would we have appetite for a really good bolt-on acquisition tomorrow if we had one become available to us, absolutely we would. But the criteria is pretty strict, and it's pretty clear internally, what fits and what doesn't. Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: And I would just add, Deane, if you look at the transactions that have taken place in our space over the last couple of years, we've got a chance to see them all, and we don't feel like we've missed anything. And as Scott said, given the right set of circumstances, we'd love to bolt something on to one of our seven segments.

Deane Dray - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · Mr. Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Sir, your line is now open

So that two-thirds, one-third is still a healthy target? Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah.

Deane Dray - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · Mr. Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Sir, your line is now open

All right. Good. And then second question would be maybe if you could provide some comments and specifics around that North American Construction number of 15%. A lot of people have been hoping, wishing that the non-res would start gaining traction. So how much of that is on the non-res side, how much is renovation, housing, and so forth? And what's the outlook? Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, so the big improvement, Deane, in the quarter was really on the renovation/remodeling side up – that drove the bulk of the increase, up 25%, that's what led to North America being up 15%. We did see some slight improvement in residential, up mid-single-digits. Last quarter, we talked about that part of the business being flat. And commercial was about the same, so up low-single-digits in commercial construction. Really the main driver renovation and remodeling, and we feel good about the current trends in the business.

Deane Dray - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · Mr. Deane Dray with RBC Capital Markets. Sir, your line is now open

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mr. Steven Fisher with UBS. Sir, your line is now open.

Steven Michael Fisher - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · Mr. Steven Fisher with UBS. Sir, your line is now open

Thanks. Good morning. Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning.

Steven Michael Fisher - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · Mr. Steven Fisher with UBS. Sir, your line is now open

This may just be rounding small numbers, but if I assume the midpoint of organic growth for Q3, it looks like you're anticipating a bit of acceleration in growth in Q4. Is that the way you're thinking about it? And if so, where might that acceleration come from? Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: It's really back, Steve, to the comps. And so Q3 last year was up 3.5%. Q4 was up a little less than 2.5%. And so it's really the way we model the guidance here is based on current run rates, adjusted for typical seasonality. And so that's really what's driving. It's not an acceleration in the fourth quarter relative to the third quarter. It's really the comps year-over-year.

Steven Michael Fisher - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · Mr. Steven Fisher with UBS. Sir, your line is now open

Okay. That's fine. And then just a follow up on Deane's question on Construction. I know you've been fairly cautious on Construction. Obviously this was your best quarter of growth in a long time. You talked about the North American trends. Is there anything in the business that's making you think just a little more optimistically about the business broadly? And then related to the European construction, you called out some softness in Continental Europe. Was that any particular market, France or Germany or anything else? Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, so on the latter point in Europe, the U.K. and Scandinavia continue to be very good, and then with some challenges in France and Southern Europe as you would expect. I think we feel very good, not just about the current kind of daily order rates in the business but just look at the margin performance and the improvements since we embarked on the Enterprise Strategy. So think about how much more is flowing through the bottom line, given all the work that's been done on the Enterprise Initiatives. And so I think the team has done a really nice job positioning this business for growth, and right now we're taking advantage of some lift seen (49:05) on the end markets and we feel good about the current trends and we'll see how it plays out. Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: It's feeling a little more like it has some legs than it has in the past, but I say that with a whole bunch of caution. I'm talking about, first of all, just North America, but we've been down this road before a number of times. So I think we'll want to see another quarter or two before we really see it, feel comfortable with the trajectory in terms of underlying end market demand. But it does seem to be a little bit more consistent at least over the next two months or three months than what we've seen historically. So we're hopeful but certainly not ready to call it yet.

Steven Michael Fisher - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · Mr. Steven Fisher with UBS. Sir, your line is now open

Okay. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jamie Cook with Credit Suisse. Your line is now open. Jamie L. Cook - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hi. Sorry to harp on the Construction again, but just another follow up question because some other companies cited some weakness in the second quarter on the construction equipment side, in particular May, and it could have been energy, it could have been weather. But I guess within your North American Construction, was the strength that you saw in North America consistent throughout the quarter or was it more, I guess, June weighted? And then I guess my second question is back to sort of capital allocation. I know you've guided for share repurchase for $2 billion in the year, but you bought back $180 million of stock back in the quarter, which is the lowest number we've seen. Given the positive or improving free cash flow generation in the back half of the year and given that there doesn't seem to be a lot on the M&A side, is there upside to the $2 billion in share repurchase if the cash flow generation is there? And if not, what will the cash go towards? Thanks. Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, so let's start with the first question first. So in the second quarter, same as – and this is true for the enterprise – very consistent throughout the quarter by month. June was our best month, but it typically is in the quarter. And so I wouldn't read too much into an acceleration in the quarter because we certainly did not see that. This was out of the gate really good growth on the Construction side as we talked about. On capital allocation, as you know, we did $1.6 billion in the first quarter. We did $180 million here in the quarter, so we have a commitment to do approximately $2 billion for the year. Feel very good about that, and if the company continues to perform as well as it is and nothing is going to change in terms of our view longer term of what this Enterprise Strategy will do in terms of the overall financial performance of the company. And so given that and given the alternative of letting the cash sit on the balance sheet, we will repurchase shares as an alternative to that. Jamie L. Cook - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): All righty. Thanks. I'll get back in queue.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ms. Ann Duignan with JPMorgan. Ma'am, your line is now open.

Ann P. Duignan - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Ms. Ann Duignan with JPMorgan. Ma'am, your line is now open

Hi. Good morning, everyone. Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning.

Ann P. Duignan - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Ms. Ann Duignan with JPMorgan. Ma'am, your line is now open

Most of my questions have been answered, but maybe you could give us some insight into your forecast for automotive builds by region for the back half? Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, so we're still in the same kind of low-single-digit type global auto builds. I think there's some seasonality here in the third quarter and some discussion around whether there will be shutdowns or not, but I wouldn't really expect much of a change in the second half versus what we have seen in the first half. So overall kind of in that low-single-digit range, which is good enough for us to grow the business in the high-single digits and in some regions like Europe, if you look at flat auto builds, we are growing the business double digits. So that's kind of what – more of the same in the back half of the year.

Ann P. Duignan - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Ms. Ann Duignan with JPMorgan. Ma'am, your line is now open

Okay. Thank you. And then on the Food Equipment side, maybe some color on the segments, institutional versus fast casual versus other sectors. What are you seeing in the segment? Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, I think institutional, fast casual, which is – institutional is about 40% of our business. It's still very good. The growth here is not really – the end markets are not growing at 4%. I mean the outperformance here, I just want to be clear, is really the focus by the team on driving organic growth and it's the new products that are being launched and the Service business side that is performing at a higher level than what we have seen historically. So that's how I would describe it. So that's kind of the landscape there.

Ann P. Duignan - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Ms. Ann Duignan with JPMorgan. Ma'am, your line is now open

Okay. And just one philosophical question. One of your competitors is very proud of the fact that they have hired a few ITW folks and that they're now going to become an 80/20 company. Could you just talk a little bit about the barriers to implementing 80/20? I mean, you are unique and you have been doing this for a long time. How easy or how difficult is it going to be for somebody to replicate 80/20? Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I don't know what they're going to do. All I can talk about is our company and we have been applying 80/20 for going back to the mid 1980s. It is something that continually evolves. I'm not sure who you're referring to, but in general, the way we practice it today is pretty unique, and it's very different than we practiced it two years ago even in terms of the way it continues to evolve inside our company. So I guess that's all I can say.

Ann P. Duignan - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · Ms. Ann Duignan with JPMorgan. Ma'am, your line is now open

Okay. I'll leave it there. Offline, I'll tell you who it is. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mr. Stephen Volkmann with Jefferies. Sir, your line is now open.

Stephen Edward Volkmann - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Mr. Stephen Volkmann with Jefferies. Sir, your line is now open

Hi. Good morning. Just one quick one. I thought the Welding margin was pretty impressive given the organic growth there, and I guess it sounds like, Scott, you're telling us that Welding isn't showing any signs of recovery. So can we assume that these margins can hold in Welding or was that one sort of special item, I think, Michael might have mentioned, did that have a margin impact? Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No. I think one of the things embedded in the 80/20 process and the way we run the company is we have a very flexible cost structure, and I think – I appreciate you actually pointing that out, because I think our Welding team has done a terrific job of certainly continuing to invest in their long-term growth potential while at the same time on a tactical basis doing some really nice work, minimizing the overall earnings and margin impact on this contraction in sales that they've been seeing over the last couple of quarters. So nothing special about it other than it is core to how we run the railroad here.

Stephen Edward Volkmann - Jefferies LLC

Analyst · Mr. Stephen Volkmann with Jefferies. Sir, your line is now open

Great. Appreciate it. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mr. Eli Lustgarten with Longbow Securities. Sir, your line is now open.

Eli S. Lustgarten - Longbow Research LLC

Analyst · Mr. Eli Lustgarten with Longbow Securities. Sir, your line is now open

Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning.

Eli S. Lustgarten - Longbow Research LLC

Analyst · Mr. Eli Lustgarten with Longbow Securities. Sir, your line is now open

Most of the questions obviously have been asked at this point. Can we just step back a moment and see whether you have seen any noticeable change either in segments or regionally that you could identify for the second half of the year lookout (56:56)? I mean, you're pretty much saying everything will continue second half, first half, but is there anything noticeable? Second part to that, I'm sure this is probably because you're not big in Latin America, can you talk about your exposure there and what's going on down in that part of the world, which is (57:11)? Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Yeah, we didn't call out Latin America specifically this time. It's less than 3% of our sales. It's down about high-single digits, 9%. And then most of that is driven by as you might imagine the Welding in the oil and gas business in that area. In terms of the second half of the year, anything unusual by segment or geography, I can't really think of anything to be honest with you. I think the second half will look to some extent similar to the first half in terms of top-line growth and then continued progression on the margin front and strong cash flows. And I can't really think of anything that we're different. Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I was just going to add to that, just to reinforce what you said earlier and what we've talked about along is, we're not in the business of trying to forecast economically. So our forecast is basically taking the current run rate. It doesn't mean we're being pessimistic or optimistic. We'd love for things to get better. And when they do, we're in a position to react, but ultimately we have no crystal ball out there embedded in any of our numbers expecting things to go one way or the other. That doesn't mean that we have a particular view on that. It just means that the way we operate the company that there's really no advantage for us doing that.

Eli S. Lustgarten - Longbow Research LLC

Analyst · Mr. Eli Lustgarten with Longbow Securities. Sir, your line is now open

And as far as this whole chaos in Greece and what's happening on, you haven't seen any real dramatic effect on business conditions across the enterprise for you guys? Ernest Scott Santi - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No. Michael M. Larsen - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: No. I think we continue – look at the performance of the company in Europe, and I think that answers the question. Still very good, so.

Eli S. Lustgarten - Longbow Research LLC

Analyst · Mr. Eli Lustgarten with Longbow Securities. Sir, your line is now open

Okay. Thank you very much.

Aaron H. Hoffman - Vice President, Investor Relations

Management

And I think that takes us basically to the top of the hour. So that concludes our call. We appreciate everybody's time this morning, and we look forward to talking to you again in about three months. Great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. And that concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.