Jon Painter
Analyst · Barrington, please proceed
Thanks Mike. Hello everyone. It's my pleasure to brief you on our fourth quarter and full year 2015 results as well as our outlook for 2016. Although while we had a fantastic finish to the year and achieved new quarterly records for revenue and adjusted earnings per share despite the economic headwinds and a strong dollar. Our full year performance resulted in record gross margins, record operating income, record adjusted EBITDA and most importantly record earnings per share. I’ll begin today’s business review with Q4 financial highlights. We finished the fourth quarter with record revenue of $108 million which was up 2% compared to the previous record in the fourth quarter of 2014. Foreign currency translation once again had a large impact on our revenue and when excluding the impact of FX our revenue was up 10%. Gross margins in the fourth quarter remained strong at 43%. Our adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.95 was also a new record and up 17% compared to Q4 of 2014. Our Q4 bookings of $76 million included new orders of $92 million and a booking reversal of $16 million due to uncertainty regarding financing for a project in China which was originally booked in 2014. Excluding the booking reversal and the impact of FX our Q4 bookings were a solid $99 million, although down 4% compared to a strong Q4 of last year which included several large projects from North America and China. Our adjusted EBITDA increased 16% to a record $17 million and with 16% of revenue. And finally our cash flow was $12 million and we ended the year with net cash of $36 million. During the quarter we repurchased 25,000 shares of our common stock for approximately $1 million at an average price of 39.45. Looking at the full year, as I mentioned, we set new records in gross margin, operating income, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted earnings per share. Revenues decreased 3% to $390 million compared to our record revenue performance in 2014. Excluding the impact of FX, revenue was up 5%. Our gross margin for the full year at 46% was a new record. Operating income at $50 million was also a record, up 19% compared to last year, excluding the impact of FX it was up 31%. Adjusted EBITDA for 2015 increased 9% to a record $62 million or 16% of revenue. Excluding the impact of FX it was up 20%. Our adjusted diluted earnings per share was also a record up 13% to 3.13 excluding the $0.34 negative impact from FX adjusted diluted earnings per share was up 25%. Bookings in 2015 were $376 million down 13% from the record set in 2014. Excluding the impact of FX, bookings were $410 million, down 5% compared to 2014. If we also exclude the booking reversal 2015 bookings would have been $426 million down 2% from 2014. Cash flow from continuing operations was $38 million, down 22% from 2014’s record performance, but still quite strong. During 2015 we repurchased just under 230,000 shares of our common stock for approximately $10 million and an average price of 43.12. Finally, our adjusted return on invested capital was 15% for the year which was excellent. In Slide 7 we present the details of our internal growth excluding the impact of FX as well as acquisitions. As you can see FX continues to have a significant effect on our results both for the fourth quarter and the full year. Our internal growth for Q4 was 10% for revenue and 30% for adjusted earnings per share. Bookings were down 20% due largely to the booking reversal I mentioned earlier. Our internal growth for Q4 and parts of consumables was essentially flat while bookings were down a modest 1%. Taking a look at the full year our internal growth was 3% for revenue and 23% for adjusted earnings per share. Bookings were down 7% due largely to the booking reversal. For the full year 2015, our internal growth for parts and consumables revenue and bookings was 7% and 3% respectively. The booking revenue trend chart on Slide 8 shows our quarterly revenue, which is the red line and our bookings which are the blue bars. Our record revenue in the fourth quarter was largely due to strong capital shipments in China. We achieved this record despite the strengthening of the U.S. dollar which had a negative of $8 million on Q4 revenue. Excluding the impact from FX, our fourth quarter revenue was up 10% compared to the same period last year and 19% sequentially. New orders were $92 million in Q4 down 11% compared to Q4 of 2014 however the booking reversal of $16 million reduced the reported bookings to $76 million in Q4 as shown in the Slide. I’ll mention additional comments in this booking reversal later in my remarks. At the end of 2015 our backlog was a solid $103 million. Looking at parts of consumables, our revenue in Q4 was down 7% to $58 million and made up 54% of our revenue. Excluding the impact of FX, Q4 parts and consumables revenue was essentially flat. For the full year 2015 parts and consumables revenue made up 65% of our revenue. Our parts and consumable bookings were down 9% to $61 million compared to Q4 of last year. Excluding the impact of FX, our Q4 parts and consumable bookings were down 1%. As you can see in this slide the last few quarters have seen a modest decline in revenue which is largely due to the FX and relatively stable bookings. We believe this stability is reinforced by our large installed base that tends to be less volatile than our capital business. Being the end of the year I thought I'd update you on our breakdown of our sales by market. We made a few changes on which categories we put certain industries in, but I think this gives a pretty good representation of our end markets for the full year 2015. We added a new category called Other Paper which we use to classifying revenues from specialty and industrial paper grades which were previously included in the other category. These include grades such as gypsum paper used in wallboard and housing, dissolving pulp used in clothing and electronics and specialty grades such as filter paper, currency and writing paper. As you can see from this slide the troubled grades of printing, writing and newsprint continue to shrink as a percentage of our overall business and collectively represented only 12% of our revenue in 2015. The healthier packaging segment in which production has increased 10% in the U.S. since 2009, represented about 45% of our 2015 revenue. For 2015 24% of our revenue is outside the paper industry. I'd like to show you a longer term perspective of our revenue and adjusted earnings per share performance but before I do so I need to show you the reconciliation for adjusted earnings per share which is on Slide 11. As you can see on Slide 12 despite the significant FX headwinds which slowed top line growth, we continued to make clear progress in growing our adjusted earnings per share over the last few years. I'd like to take the next few minutes to provide a brief review of our investment activities in each of the major geographic regions of the world. I'll begin with North America. North America's our largest and continues to be our most important region. Our two fold revenue in North America was down 3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2014 to 53 million. Revenues were down in all major product lines except for stock prep which was up 9% compared to the same period last year led by strong demand for our stock prep parts. Surprisingly FX had a significant impact in Q4 and in particular was impacted by the weakness of the Canadian dollar versus the U.S. dollar. In total FX had a 2 million or 4% negative impact on our Q4 revenues in North America. Q4 bookings in North America were 51 million, down 19% compared to a very strong fourth quarter of last year. All of our major product lines were down except for our wood processing product lines. The majority of the bookings decline came from our capital business which does tend to be more volatile. That said we did book several large orders in Q4 for combined value of approximately 7 million as was noted in our press release issued in January. One of those orders was recycled fiber processing system for a mill modernization project to convert the production of a newsprint machine to liner board. We've been very active in these types of machine conversion projects over the past few years and we continue to see a strong customer preference for our products and technologies in these projects. As we look to 2016 we continue to see a healthy business environment although we expect less revenue from project activity in face of the record levels we had in 2015. Turning to Europe, we see a fairly stable situation. According to published reports domestic demand and in particular private consumption was relatively strong in 2015 and continues to be the primary factor expected to drive the Eurozone economy in 2016. Our Q4 revenue in Europe was 21 million, down 16% from a strong Q4 last year, but up 13% sequentially and the third consecutive quarterly increase. Q4 bookings was 18 million were down 3% compared to Q4 of 2014 and down 20% sequentially as a result of fewer large capital projects. As a reminder Q3 of 2015 included a $70 million recycled liner board project in Southern Europe. As I noted earlier the strength of the US dollar had a significant impact on the reported revenues and bookings from Europe. The unfavorable FX impact reduced both bookings and revenue by $3 million in Q4. Excluding the U.S. currency impact revenue in Q4 was down 5% and bookings were up 11%. During the quarter we booked several smaller capital orders for stock prep systems and a dryer section rebuild for a machine conversion from magazine paper to food packaging with a combined value of 2 million. As we look ahead to 2016 we expect measured but stable growth in Europe with the weaker Europe helping to stimulate exports which could result in increased demand for packaging. Next let's take a look at Asia. The economy in China has decelerated for most of 2015, large capital investments in prior years has led to a capacity surplus in paper and other process industries in China. November and December continued to see declines in industrial production growth relative to prior years with December up only 5.9% compared to the previous year and this was evident in our new order intake of $10 million in Q4. In addition as I mentioned earlier during the fourth quarter of 2015 we removed an order from our backlog from a customer in China with a value of $16 million based on our concerns that the necessary financing would not be secured. Including the $16 million reversal we have negative net bookings of $6 million in Asia. I should mention that our team in China did a good job managing progress payments and matching those payments with our investments in inventory. In addition, we’ve not recorded any revenue associated with this project. Our Q4 revenue in Asia was up nearly 60% compared to Q4 of last year to a record $27 million due primarily to shipments from a large backlog of capital projects we built up over the last several quarters. Although we had a significant drop in our backlog in China during the fourth quarter, it was still a healthy $24 million at the end of 2015. The performance of our stock prep business in China was a strong contributor to our earnings fees in Q4. On the other hand lead capital bookings in Q4 as well as the booking reversal reflects a weaker marketplace. As we look ahead to 2016 containerboard growth in China is forecasted to be around 2% which suggest new capital activity will remain at reduced levels this year. Correspondingly we assume reduced project activity on all of our product lines. In this environment we’re focusing on offering our customers solutions to help them increase productivity and reduce input costs. This includes both smaller capital investments and cadence OEM parts and consumables. Finally, I’d like to make a few comments on our rest of the world results. Our rest of the world revenue was $7 million in Q4, down 23% compared to the same period last year and up 2% sequentially. Nearly all the year-over-year decline was due to the weakness of the real. Excluding the impact of FX revenue was down 1% compared to Q4 of 2014. As you can see in the chart in Slide 17, Q4 bookings nearly doubled to $12 million. This increase is primarily due to capital orders for turnkey fiber processing system from a tissue producer in Peru and a fabric cleaning system to one of the largest pulp and paper produces in Brazil. Combined these two orders represented nearly one third of Q4 bookings in this region. Although the region and in particular Brazil is relatively weak, our healthy backlog and stable parts and consumable business should position us well to weather this soft patch. I’d like to close my remarks with a few comments on our guidance for 2016 and the first quarter. We expect another strong year in 2016 although our performance in 2015 will make for some tough comparisons. We also expect 2016 will be more challenging than 2015 due to a softer market for capital in North America and China and continued FX headwinds. Assuming exchange rates remain stable, FX will reduce our expected revenue and earnings per share in 2016 by $10 million and $0.11 respectively. For the full year 2016, we expect to generate 280 to 290 of GAAP diluted earnings per share on revenues of $370 million to $380 million. Similar to 2015, we expect Q1 to be our weakest quarter and each of the remaining quarters to strengthen as the year progresses. For the first quarter we expect to generate $0.55 to $0.58 of GAAP diluted earnings per share on revenue of $89 million to $91 million. I’ll now pass the call over to Mike for additional details on both our financial requirements in 2015 and the outlook for 2016. Mike?