Frank P. Simpkins
Analyst · JPMorgan
Thank you, Don. As with prior discussions, some of my comments are related to non-GAAP metrics. As Don mentioned, the December quarter was disappointing and more challenging than planned, as certain served end markets further weakened, coupled with an abrupt change in the global energy market. Those of you who follow our monthly published order rates have observed this trend. Some additional comments before I go into further detail. Our industrial segment was in line with our forecast despite some headwinds in the European market. However, our infrastructure segment performance was below expectations due to continued weakness in mining and a slower energy sector. Our adjusted earnings per share for the quarter was $0.52 compared to $0.50 in the prior year. The current year adjusted earnings per share excluded the asset impairment charge of $382 million or $5.28 per share related to our infrastructure segments as well as restructuring and related charges of about $13 million or $0.13 per share. The TMB acquisition that we acquired a year ago is now fully integrated. We are progressing with the Phase 1 restructuring program, which generated benefits of approximately $6 million pretax or $0.07 per share in the quarter. The Phase 1 restructuring pretax benefits are projected to be $50 million to $55 million on an annualized basis, and pretax charges are estimated to be $55 million to $60 million. To further rightsize our cost structure, we also announced another restructuring, as Don pointed out. The new restructuring program, referred to as Phase 2, is expected to deliver pretax annualized benefits of an additional $40 million to $50 million. We will incur $90 million to $100 million of estimated pretax charges, and we expect that to be completed in 12 to 24 months. Total expected restructuring pretax benefits for both Phase 1 and Phase 2 programs range from $90 million to $105 million, with total charges expected to range from $145 million to $160 million. We also continue to employ specific and targeted actions to maximize cash flow and liquidity, and this resulted in strong free operating cash flow of $82 million year-to-date. I also want to point out that we will change our monthly order reporting practice beginning in fiscal 2016. Kennametal will no longer provide orders data during the quarter. However, sales trends by geographic regions and end markets will continue to be presented in our quarterly earnings announcement. This decision to move away from reporting monthly orders for our next fiscal year is consistent with the industry and our business strategy, which is focused on long-term initiatives. Now I'm going to walk through the key items in the income statement. Sales for the quarter were $676 million compared with $690 million in the same quarter last year. Our sales decreased 2%, reflecting a 4% unfavorable impact from currency exchange and a 2% organic decline, partly offset by a 3% increase from the TMB acquisition and a 1% favorable impact due to more business days. And as a reminder, the prior year quarter had 2 months from the TMB acquisition, whereas the current quarter has 3 months of activity. Looking at sales by business segment. The industrial sales were $372 million, and that remained flat compared with $371 million in the prior year due to increases of 2% from organic growth, 1% from net acquisition and divestiture and 1% due to more business days, offset by the unfavorable currency effect of 4%. Sales increased 3% in our general engineering market and 2% in transportation, while aerospace and defense remained relatively flat. General engineering increased due to sales in the indirect channel and to tier suppliers in the Americas and the transportation market increased due to new project tooling packages in the Asia region. Our regional sales increased 14% in Asia, 3% in the Americas, offset by a decrease of 1% in Europe. In the Americas, sales in the indirect channel were up 8%, partly offset by a weaker performance in Latin America. Overall, choppy end market performance in Europe was offset by strong growth versus the prior year in Eastern Europe, which was up about 18%. In Asia, sales growth was driven by strong end market performance, particularly transportation, in both China and India where vehicle production was up 7% and 5%, respectively. Our infrastructure sales came in at $304 million. This was a decrease of 5% from $309 million in the prior year. The decrease was driven by an 8% organic sales decline and a 3% unfavorable currency exchange, offset by a 5% increase from the acquisition and 1% due to more days. Sales decreased 6% in earthworks and 3% in energy. Earthworks sales declined from persistently weak underground and surface mining globally, particularly the U.S. and Asia, combined with reduced demand for road rehabilitation tools and infrastructure development activity in China. Energy sales decreased due to lower activity in power generation projects, while our oil and gas sales were flat year-over-year in the quarter. In addition, the prior year included sales related to surface finishing projects that did not repeat in the current year. And looking at the sales regionally, sales decreased 14% in Europe, 9% in Asia and 2% in the Americas. Now our operating performance recap. Our gross profit margin was 29.5% compared with 30% in the prior year. Our adjusted gross profit margin in the current and prior periods were 29.9% and 31.1%, respectively. The decline in our margin was due to decreased volumes and unfavorable business mix and lower absorption of manufacturing costs due to our inventory reduction efforts. We reduced finished goods and work-in-process inventory by $17 million, which impacted our margin by 50 basis points. This was partly offset by benefits from our restructuring programs. And as some of you know, the prior year included the inventory step-up from the TMB of about $8 million. Operating expense as a percent of sales was 20.3% compared with 21.5% in the prior year. Adjusted operating expense as a percent of sales for the current and prior periods was 19.8%, and 21.3%, respectively. Operating expenses declined $11 million year-over-year due to continued disciplined -- or continued discretionary spending, restructuring benefits as well as lower employment and related costs. Cost reduction actions are in place, and we will continue to align our cost structure with the realities of the current market conditions. As part of our ongoing cost discipline, at minimum, we are committed to keeping our operating expense at or below 20% of sales for fiscal '15. Our operating loss came in at $334 million compared with $50 million in the same quarter last year. Our adjusted operating income was $61 million in both the current and prior periods. Adjusted operating results in the current period were driven by restructuring benefits and lower employment cost, offset by organic decline and an unfavorable mix in our infrastructure segments and an unfavorable currency exchange. Adjusted operating margin was 9.1% in the current period compared with 8.9% in the prior year. Now I'll touch briefly on the impairments. As Don pointed out, because of the recent abrupt change in the global energy market that is currently -- is expected to continue into the foreseeable future, coupled with the severe and persistent decline in the earthworks markets, we made an interim assessment of the possible impairment of the goodwill and other intangible assets attributable to our infrastructure segment. As a result of this assessment, we recorded an estimated noncash pretax goodwill and other intangible asset impairment charge of $377 million or $5.24 a share. Evaluation will be completed in the fiscal third quarter. We also recorded a noncash impairment charge of $5 million or $0.04 per share for a infrastructure technology asset related to our mining business. The goodwill impairment will not have any impact at all on our bank covenants. And approximately $266 million of goodwill remains on the books for our infrastructure segment as of December 31. Given the significant impairments in the infrastructure segment, it will be the initial focus of our portfolio actions. Looking at operating income by business segment. The industrial segment operating income was $42 million compared with $33 million last year. Our adjusted operating income was $48 million compared to $40 million in the prior year quarter, benefiting from organic growth, restructuring benefits and lower employment costs. Also during the quarter, we completed the closure of the TMB's Gland, Switzerland facility. Industrial's adjusted operating margin was up 190 basis points to 12.8% compared with 10.9% in the prior year. The infrastructure segment's operating loss was $372 million compared with operating income of $19 million in the same quarter of the prior year. As previously mentioned, we recorded noncash pretax impairment charges of $382 million. Our adjusted operating income was $15 million compared to $23 million in the prior year quarter. Adjusted operating income decreased due to lower organic sales, coupled with an unfavorable mix and lower fixed cost absorption related to reduced demand in earthworks and our energy product lines, partly offset by the benefits of restructuring and lower employment cost. Infrastructure's adjusted operating margin was 5% compared with 7.3% last year. Our adjusted effective tax rate was 17.7% in the current quarter and 23.8% in the prior year. The decrease was primarily driven by the extension of the credit for increase in our research activities contained in the Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2014 as well as jurisdictional mix. Turning to cash flow. As a result of our cash flow initiatives, we generated strong year-to-date operating cash flow of $135 million and were $51 million above the comparable prior year period in December. Year-to-date, we generated $82 million of free operating cash flow, an increase of 125% compared with $36 million last year. We delivered the strong cash flow after investing $55 million in capital expenditures. We remain confident in our continued robust cash flow generation and committed to our capital structure principles. Our liquidity remains strong, supported by our $600 million revolving credit facility that's due in April of 2018, of which $423 million was available at December 31. We have ample cushion under our financial covenants and attractive debt maturity profile as our nearest debt maturity is not until November 2019 when our $400 million, 2.65% senior unsecured notes come due. Our cash balance was $146 million at December 31, which resides mostly overseas. Through a prudent and balanced debt facility structuring, we are favorably positioned to deploy cash flow from overseas operations for debt reduction. We believe we are uniquely advantaged in this regard, thereby providing additional flexibility if needed. We enjoy investment grade ratings from all 3 agencies and remain committed to maintaining them. Our credit ratings were recently affirmed by all 3 agencies who acknowledge our strong liquidity and favorable debt reduction since the TMB acquisition last year. Our fiscal year-to-date debt reduction is $100 million, and we are targeting a full year debt reduction of $200 million. We will achieve this significant debt reduction in spite of the reduction to the fiscal '15 outlook through enhanced working capital performance and liquidity management. Our debt-to-cap ratio at December 31 was 38.6 compared to 35.1 at June 30, with the increase being driven by the infrastructure impairment charge. We remain vigilant in the management of our pension plans and continue enjoying the benefits of our adoption of a liability-driven investment strategy over 8 years ago. As a result, our U.S. defined benefit plan remains over 100% funded. Now I'm going to turn to the outlook. Due to the current high levels of uncertainty in the global economy, visibility is very limited regarding demand in some of our served end markets and ultimately will affect our sales, earnings and cash flow. For fiscal '15, we revised our outlook to reflect the weaker economic environment for the remainder of our fiscal year. Based on the revised forecast, we're reducing our earnings per share guidance for fiscal '15 to the range of $1.90 to $2.10 compared with $2.80 to $3 previously. Our fiscal '15 revised outlook is based on the following assumptions. We now expect fiscal '15 total sales to decline in the range of 6% to 7% and organic sales to decline in the range of 4% to 5%. Previously, we have projected total sales growth ranging from 2% to 4% with organic sales growth of 1% to 3%. The primary driver for the change in earnings guidance relates to a further reduction to the infrastructure segment sales due to a rapid decline in the oil and gas markets as well as continued weak demand from the mining industry. We are assuming infrastructure sales for fiscal '15 will be down 10% to 15% from the prior forecast. This, combined with an approximate decremental margin of between 35% and 40%, translates to about $0.55 to $0.65 per share. The industrial segment is also expected to be negatively impacted by further weakening in the Eurozone. We are estimating industrial sales for fiscal '15 will be down by 2% to 4% from the prior forecast. When coupled with an approximate decremental margin of 45% to 50%, the estimated EPS impact will be $0.25 to $0.35 per share. In addition, foreign exchange is expected to be a notable headwind, estimated to be $0.10 to $0.15 per share from our prior forecast, and this is related to the recent currency fluctuations, particularly the U.S. dollar to the euro exchange rate. Our goal remains to maintain operating expenses at 20% of sales. Restructuring benefits from Phase 1 are expected to be approximately $25 million pretax in fiscal '15. The restructuring benefits of Phase 2 will begin to show, and approximately $5 million pretax will be realized in fiscal '15. Our effective tax rate, excluding special charges for fiscal '15, is forecasted to be approximately 23% to 24%. And we will continue to look for ways to balance our geographic presence and to minimize our tax. And based on these factors, we expect earnings per share to range from $1.90 to $2.10 for fiscal '15. As discussed on our -- earlier on today's call, we will continue to take aggressive actions to reduce costs, including streamlining our manufacturing footprint. In implementing these actions, we expect to recognize the remaining $20 million in special charges related to Phase 1 restructuring initiatives over the next 6 to 9 months. While near-term conditions are challenging, we are in the process of developing a path forward that will result in improved shareholder returns. We have a renewed focus on managing what we can control, and we'll continue to sharply focus on cash flow. We expect to generate cash from operating activities ranging from $270 million to $295 million in fiscal '15 versus the previous expectation of $280 million to $310 million. We anticipate capital expenditures of $110 million to $115 million, and we expect to generate between $160 million and $180 million of free operating cash flow for the remainder of the fiscal year. In addition, we're evaluating opportunities to repatriate $40 million to $50 million of excess cash from cash overseas. We also believe that we'll be able to generate additional cash flows from our portfolio review process. We'll utilize these proceeds, along with working capital reductions, primarily for the purpose of debt reduction, and we'll also look very strongly at redeploying those proceeds into what we believe is a very attractive opportunity in Kennametal stock. At this time, I'll turn it back to Don for a few closing comments.