Daniel Rinkenberger
Analyst · Jeremy Kliewer with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open
Thanks Jack. Value added revenue for the third quarter of 2018 was $205 million, an increase of $19 million or 10% compared to the prior year quarter, reflecting improving demand for our service based applications and full realization of price increases that we implemented in the second quarter. Aerospace value-added revenue increased 14% on a 17% increase in shipments, compared to the prior year third quarter, reflecting solid underlying end used demand across all product categories continued moderation of aerospace supply chain destocking and the benefit of incremental capacity from recent investments that are currently rolling though. Automotive value-added revenue declined 5% compared to the prior year third quarter and 11% compared to the pace of the first half of this year. The year-over-year decline reflected to 2% lower shipments and a lower value-added product mix. While mobile seasonality drove the decline from the first half pace of 2018, we expect a relatively strong fourth quarter consistent with our full year automotive outlook. General engineering value-added revenue increased 11% on a 2% decline in shipments compared to the prior year third quarter, reflecting a higher value-added mix and improved year-over-year pricing. Sequentially, general engineering shipments declined 13% compared to the second quarter due to normal seasonality. For the first nine months of 2018, total value-added revenue increased $25 million compared to the prior year period driven by solid demand across all end markets. Aerospace value added revenue improved $12 million compared to the first nine months of 2017, both shipments and value-added revenue improved 4% year-over-year with virtually all aerospace product categories, benefiting from improving underlying demand and moderating supply chain destocking. Automotive value added revenue increased 1% compared to the prior year nine-month period while shipments increased 5% reflecting a lower value-added product mix weighted more towards crash management systems. General engineering value-added revenue improved 8% compared to the prior year on a 3% increase in shipments. EBITDA for the third quarter of 2018 was $47 million compared to $43 million in the prior year quarter. The increase of $4 million reflects a $10 million favorable sales impact driven by higher shipments and improved pricing partially offset by $2 million of temporary tariff expense on our internal cross-border shipments and higher major maintenance and other manufacturing and overhead costs. The third quarter EBITDA margin of 23.1% was comparable to the prior year quarter, despite the adverse margin impact related to the temporary tariff expense. For the first nine months of 2018, EBITDA was $150 million and EBITDA margin was 24.3% down $1 million and 1.2% respectively from the prior year period. The decline was largely due to a decline in our total sales margin. Turning to Slide 8, operating income as reported for the third quarter of 2018 was $35 million, adjusting for non run rate losses operating income for the third quarter of 2018 was $36 million compared to $33 million in the prior year quarter. The $3 million improvement reflected the year-over-year EBITDA improvement of $4 million partially offset by a $1 million increase in depreciation expense. Reported net income in the third quarter was $22 million or $1.29 per diluted share reflecting in effected tax rate of 27.3%. Adjusting for non-run rate items third quarter net income was $24 million compared to $16 million in the prior year quarter. The $8 million improvement reflected improved underwriting -- improved operating income and a lower corporate tax rate. Adjusted earnings per diluted share improved to $1.43 from $0.90 in the prior year third quarter. For the first nine months of 2018, operating income as reported was $107 million, adjusting for $11 million in net non run rate losses; however, the first nine months of 2018 operating income was $118 million down from $122 million in the prior year period. The $4 million decline reflected a $1 million reduction in EBITDA and a $3 million increase in depreciation expense. Reported net income for the first nine months was $68 million or $4.03 per diluted share. Adjusting for non run rate items, however, first nine months net income was $80 million compared to $68 million in the prior year period. The improvement primarily reflected the lower effective tax rate of 24.3%. Adjusted earnings per diluted share for the first nine months, was $4.72 compared to $3.89 for the first nine months of 2017. Our cash tax rate for the three quarter and nine month periods continues to be in the low single-digit, as we continue to apply net operating loss carry forwards to our pre-tax earnings. At September 30, cash in short-term investments totaled approximately $183 million and borrowing availability on our revolving credit facility was approximately $292 million. With strong liquidity and cash flow generation, we continue to adhere to our long held capital deployment priorities, which are organic investment to maintain and support our business, acquisition investment to enhance sustainable long-term growth, regular and increasing quarterly cash dividends and returning excess cash to shareholders. And keeping with those priorities during the first nine months of 2018, we invested approximately $53 million in our business and our facilities, and we expect the capital spending for the full year will total approximately $80 million. As Jack mentioned previously, we also acquired Imperial Machine and Tool company during the third quarter for $43 million of cash. Earlier this year, our Board of Directors approved a 10% increase in our regularly quarterly dividend resulting in $29 million of dividends being paid during the first three quarters of this year. And additionally, earlier this month we announced that our board authorized an incremental of $100 million for our ongoing discipline share repurchase program. Under this program we purchased 304,000 shares for $32 million during the first nine months of this year and at quarter end $178 million remains available for further share repurchases. And now, I’ll ask Jack to discuss our outlook. Jack?