Jon Painter
Analyst · Dan Jacome representing Fidelity. Please proceed
Thanks Mike. Hello everyone. It’s my pleasure to brief you on our first quarter results and provide some information on our recent acquisition of the PAALGROUP. Overall, we had a solid quarter with better than expected revenue and earnings per share performance. I will begin today’s business review with the financial highlights for the quarter. We finished the first quarter with revenues of $97 million, which was up 5% compared to the first quarter of 2015. Foreign currency translation once again had a significant impact on revenue and excluding the effect of FX, we are up 9% compared to Q1 of 2015. Gross margin in the first quarter was excellent at 46%. Our adjusted EBITDA was $14 million or 14% of sales, up 2% compared to Q1 of last year. Our adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.72 in the first quarter, was up 14% compared to Q1 of 2015. Our adjusted earnings per share result exclude an expense of $0.12 related to the PAAL acquisition and a gain of $0.02 on the sale of building in Sweden related to our reorganization there. Our GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.62 was the same as reported in Q1 of 2015 and beats the top end of our guidance by $0.04. Our bookings of $97 million were quite good but down 10% compared to Q1 of last year, which was the third highest in our history. And finally after the close of the quarter, we completed the acquisition of the PAALGROUP, the leading European supplier of baling equipment used in recycling and waste management industries. I will provide some detail on this business and the potential synergies with Kadant later in my remarks. The relatively strong dollar and corresponding FX translation continued to have a significant effect on our results. As you can see on slide six, our internal growth excluding FX for Q1 was 9% for revenue and 24% for adjusted earnings per share while bookings on the other hand were down 7% from a very strong Q1 of 2015. Our internal growth excluding FX for parts and consumables revenue was up slightly while bookings were down 5%. Turning to slide seven, despite the headwinds from the strong dollar, we saw a slightly revenue -- sorry, we saw a solid revenue performance in the first quarter of 2016. Our first quarter revenue of $97 million was up 5% year-over-year and beat the top end of our guidance of $89 million to $91 million. This growth was led by our Stock-Prep product line in all regions of the world. Our bookings of $97 million in Q1 were down 10% from a strong first quarter of last year, which is I noted was the third highest in our history. Strong bookings in our Doctoring, Cleaning & filtration and Wood Processing product lines, which were up 15% and 30% respectively were more than offset by reduced bookings in our Stock-Prep and Fluid-Handling product lines compared to a strong Q1 of 2015. Our revenue for parts and consumables in the first quarter decreased 3% to $63 million from a record Q1 of 2015. Parts and consumables revenue represented 65% of our total Q1 revenue. Excluding the impact of FX, parts and consumables revenue was up modestly, driven by our Stock-Prep product line, primarily in Europe and North America. Parts and consumables bookings were down 9% compared to the record bookings of Q1 of last year to $62 million. All regions experienced disports in parts bookings compared to the record results we had in Q1 of 2015. Before I begin our regional review, I would like to take a few moments to talk about our recent acquisition of the PAALGROUP for approximately $58 million, which we completed at the beginning of the second quarter. PAAL is Europe’s largest producer of balers. In 2015, they reported revenue of EUR48 million and adjusted EBITDA of EUR7.3 million. Like most of our existing businesses, PAAL, which was founded in 1854, is a well-established supplier with a large installed base. This contributes to a healthy aftermarket business, representing about 30% of their sales. While PAAL’s aftermarket business is not as high as of other Kadant business is, it’s still quite high for an equipment supplier. One of the things we like about PAAL’s aftermarket business is the high level of service contracts they have with customers. This is something they do well and I hope that we will learn something from them in this area. PAAL is one of the few suppliers in the world, which offers a full line of balers from both large horizontal balers used by regional recycling centers to smaller vertical balers that you might see behind big-box stores. They offer different options for tying the bales such as steel wire used for OCC and polypropylene-twine used for waste that will be burned for power generation. The majority of PAAL’s customers are using their products to build paper and plastic. In this way you can think of it as an upstream product line extension as the bales produced by PAAL balers often end up in our purpose for the production of recycled paper. In addition to balers, PAAL also supplies conveyors, contractors and bale wrapping machine. There are four main drivers of demand of balers. Rising standard of livings and population growth, storage shortage and cost of land fillings, increasing recycling rates and environmental regulations. As you would expect, there is relatively slower demand growth in developed regions where living standards and recycling rates are already high and higher growth rates in the developing world. Those of you who follow us closely will see some familiar characteristics in what we like about PAAL. First and foremost, PAAL has a great product. They are the technology leader in the marketplace and have an excellent reputation for rugged and reliable equipment that performs well in harsh environment. Like their other equipment, PAAL balers need to be reliable. If they break down, the entire waste collection centers can come to a stop yet the truck of waste will keep coming in. If the baler cannot come back online quickly, the truck needs to be diverted to a landfill and when this happens a revenue source for the customers is transformed into enormous costs. As a result, customers demand a rugged and reliable baler. Other things we like about PAAL is a high market share, which is around 45% in Europe, their large installed base, their history of relatively stable revenue and their strong aftermarket business. Also and most important to us since it’s not a core market, PAAL has a first-class management team, which has done an excellent job of growing this business over 5% per year for the last few years. We would have not been able to do this acquisition if PAAL didn’t have a strong team in place. Before moving on to our regional review, I wanted to highlight a few of the potential synergies we believe, which if achieved could increase the return on this acquisition from pretty good to very good. Geographic expansion is one of the biggest but it’s also one of the hardest to accomplish. Although PAAL is the largest baler supplier in Europe and one of the largest in the world, it does not participate in the largest market, which is the U.S. or the fastest-growing, which is China. Although we do not have an existing sales force within Kadant that can sell PAAL products, we do have a global platform and can help them get established in other markets as we did with Carmanah. In addition, we hope to be able to provide some lower cost sourcing and manufacturing opportunities for PAAL, particularly for those parts currently outsourced. And lastly, since the market is quite fragmented, it does appear there are potential follow-on acquisitions in this space. Next, I’d like to take a few minutes to provide an overview of our business activities and performance in each of the geographic regions of the world. I will begin with North America. Out revenue in North America was down 4%, compared to the near record first quarter of 2015 to $55 million. Our Stock-Prep and Wood Processing product lines were up while our other product lines saw revenue declines in Q1 compared to a relatively strong Q1 of 2015. Excluding the impact of FX, revenues were down 2%. Bookings in North America were $54 million, down 5% compared to Q1 of last year. Increases in bookings saw Doctoring, Cleaning, & Filtration product lines as well as our Wood Processing product lines to more than offset the reductions in our Stock-Prep product lines. Although as expected, we have some difficult comparisons with 2015. We did have a reasonable level of activity in the first quarter of 2016, including the larger order for two pulp systems and another for a Forming System for a paper machine web and rebuild project for a combined value of $5 million. Our expertise in forming technology and the ability to retrofit existing machines position us well for project such as this but cost effective technical solutions are required to maximize productivity and uptime of an existing asset. Turning to Europe, our Q1 revenue was $21 million, up 29% from a very weak Q1 of last year. Excluding the impact of FX, our revenue was up a solid 33%. While Q1 bookings of $19 million were essentially flat compared to Q1 of last year but were up 6% sequentially. Excluding the impact of FX, our Q1 bookings were up 3% year-over-year. Despite overall market conditions being constrained, we did book capital orders for continuous de-threshing equipment from containerboard mills in Italy and France and in another for our Wood Processing product equipments to replace competitor strength equipment at a plant in France with combined value for approximately $4 million. Our market-leading stranding equipment has become the preferred choice of our customers due to its unique feature that provides gains and productivity, strength, quality and safety. Next, let’s take a look at Asia. As China makes up the largest single country in Asia, my comments will be primarily focused in China. As many of you know, China continues to work through its slowdown in the industrial sector and capacity surplus, as it transitions to a more consumer-driven economy. Our Q1 bookings in Asia were down 23% compared to the strong first quarter of 2015, when we booked several large capital orders from customers in Taiwan and China. While we did booked several large capital orders for recycled fiber systems as well as our M-clean Fabric Cleaning System, capital activity was somewhat subdued in Q1 and we see weaker market conditions in China for the rest of 2016. That said we do see healthy activity in other parts of Asia. For example, we booked a large capital order for our Wood Processing equipments from an OSB plant in Malaysia during the first quarter and are actively working on other projects in the region. Our Q1 revenues in Asia were $13 million and essentially flat compared to Q1 of last year. Our revenue performance in Q1 was led by our Doctoring, Cleaning, Conditioning product line which achieved 59% increase in revenue due to the shipment of several large orders for Doctoring & Cleaning equipments. We also saw solid performance our Stock-Prep product lines, which was up 11% compared to the same period last year. Finally, I’d like to make a few comments about our rest of the world results. Our revenue in the rest of the world was $8 million in Q1, up 34% compared to the same period last year and 13% sequentially. While this quarterly performance is the best since 2014, the market in South America in particular Brazil continues to suffer from political uncertainty, high inflation and increasing unemployment, all of which created a drag in the economic recovery in the near term. That said over the last few years, we've made a number of restructuring to our business in Brazil and at this point we have a nicely profitable operation even at the reduced revenue levels we are seeing in the current environment. Rest of the world bookings were down 31% to $6 million in Q1 of 2016 due in large part to a $2.5 million Stock-Prep orders received in Q1 of 2015 from a paper producer in South Africa. Similar to other regions, FX has impacted these results. Excluding FX, revenue was up 55% and bookings were down 16%. I’d like to close my remarks with a few comments on our guidance for Q2 in the full-year 2016. The inclusion of PAAL will increase our 2016 revenues and adjusted earnings per share although the acquisition-related costs will have a negative impact on our GAAP diluted earnings per share. For 2016, we expect to achieve GAAP diluted earnings per share of $2.75 to $2.85 on revenues of $412 million to $422 million. Our revised GAAP guidance includes $0.14 of acquisition costs, $0.10 of expense related to acquired inventory and backlog, and a $0.02 gain on the sale of assets. Excluding the acquisition-related costs and gain, our adjusted diluted earnings per share guidance for 2016 is to $2.97 to $3.07. For the second quarter of 2016, we expect to achieve GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.50 to $0.53 on revenue of $103 million to $105 million. Our second quarter 2016 GAAP diluted earnings per share includes $0.02 of acquisition costs and $0.10 of expense related to acquired inventory and backlog. I will now pass the call over to Mike for some additional details on our financial performance. Mike?