Earnings Labs

Leggett & Platt, Incorporated (LEG)

Q4 2019 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 4, 2020

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Leggett & Platt Fourth Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Ms. Wendy Watson, Vice President of Investor Relations for Leggett & Platt. Thank you. You may begin.

Wendy Watson

Analyst

Good morning and thank you for taking part in Leggett & Platt fourth quarter 2019 conference call. I am Wendy Watson. With me today are Karl Glassman, Chairman and CEO; Mitch Dolloff, President and COO; Jeff Tate, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Susan McCoy, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations.The agenda for our call this morning is as follows: Karl will start with a summary of the major statements we made in yesterday's press release; Jeff will discuss financial details and address our outlook for 2020, and finally, the group will answer any questions that you may have.This conference call is being recorded for Leggett & Platt and is copyrighted material. This call may not be transcribed, recorded or broadcast, without our expressed permission. A replay is available from the IR portion of Leggett's Web site. We posted to the Investor Relations portion of the Web site yesterday's press release and a set of PowerPoint slides that contain summary financial information along with segment details. Those documents supplement the information we discuss on this call, including non-GAAP reconciliations.I need to remind you that remarks today concerning future expectations, events, objectives, strategies, trends or results, constitute forward-looking statements. Actual results or events may differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, and the company undertakes no obligation to update or revise these statements. For a summary of these risk factors and additional information, please refer to yesterday's press release in the section in our 10-K and 10-Qs entitled Forward-Looking Statements and Risk Factors.I'll now turn the call over to Karl.

Karl Glassman

Analyst

Good morning and thank you for participating in our fourth quarter call. First, I want to thank our dedicated fellow employees around the world for your efforts during this past year.In 2019, our employees accomplished the acquisition and integration of ECS, the largest acquisition in our history, the very successful restructuring of our home furniture business, where we are already seeing an EBIT margin benefit, the orderly closure of our Fashion Bed business, and successful liquidation of that inventory, all while keeping a sharp focus on de-leveraging, generating record cash from operations, and delivering our 48th consecutive annual dividend increase. This represents tremendous work by our employees across the company, and these efforts are very much appreciated. Thank you all.As a reminder, in November, we filed an 8-K that discussed changes to our segments structure. These changes align with how we manage our businesses, effective January 1, 2020, all of our bedding-related businesses including our innerspring and specialty foam businesses, our steel rod and wire, and machinery businesses, and our adjustable bed business will be one bedding product segment. This optimizes efficiency, and allows us to holistically manage our bedding value chain of rod, wire, spring specialty foam. The newly-formed furniture flooring and textile product segment will contain our home and work furniture businesses, our flooring products business, and our fabric converting and geo-components businesses. Our specialized product segment is not changing, and includes our automotive, aerospace, and hydraulic cylinder businesses.The segment commentary in yesterday's press release is based on the historical reporting format as we continue to report under the prior segment structure through 2019. Before we report first quarter 2020 earnings, we will furnish an 8-K providing five years of historical segment data based upon the new segment reporting structure.We have several items to highlight in our 2019…

Jeff Tate

Analyst

Thank you, Karl, and good morning everyone. In 2019, we generated record cash flow from operations of $668 million, a $228 million increase over 2018. This improvement was driven by significant reduction and working capital across the company, and strong operating cash generation in many of our businesses, including ECS. We ended the year with adjusted working capital as a percentage of annualized sales of 9.9%, an improvement versus 10.6% at the end of 2018. In addition, we brought back $96 million of offshore cash in the fourth quarter, bringing our full-year total to $279 million.In November, we declared a $0.40 per share quarterly dividend, a 5% increase versus the fourth quarter of 2018. At yesterday's closing price of $46.96, the current yield is 3.4%, which is one of the higher yields among the S&P 500 dividend aristocrats. Consistent with our de-leveraging plan, share repurchases were limited in 2019. For the full-year, we repurchased only 700,000 shares of our stock, primarily surrounded for employee benefit plans at an average price of $44.20. We issued $2 million shares, primarily for employee benefit plans and stock option exercises.From an acquisition perspective, during the year, we acquired ECS in one small geo component operation. We also continue to invest in capital to support organic growth opportunities. Total capital expenditures in 2019 were $143 million 10% lower than the prior year, reflecting a balance of investing for the future while controlling our spending. Our financial base remains strong. We ended 2019 with debt at 2.9 times our trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA.We remain committed to maintaining a strong investment credit rating, and continue to expect to deliver to a ratio of debt to trailing 12-months adjusted EBITDA of approximately 2.5 times by the end of 2020. We expect to accomplish this by limiting share…

Wendy Watson

Analyst

That concludes our prepared remarks. We thank you for your attention, and we will be glad to answer your questions. To allow everyone an opportunity to participate, we request that you ask only one question and then yield to the next participant. If you have additional questions, you are welcome to re-enter the queue and we will answer those questions as well.Melissa, we're ready to begin the Q&A session.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Susan Maklari with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

Good morning, everybody.

Karl Glassman

Analyst

Good morning.

Susan McCoy

Analyst

Good morning, Susan.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

I guess my first question is just - can you talk a little bit to ComfortCore maybe in the quarter overall bedding how that did, and anything that we should be aware of in the channel as we head into the President's Day weekend and kind of the sales events around that?

Mitch Dolloff

Analyst

Sure. This is Mitch, Susan. So, for ComfortCore units continue to be very strong on the U.S. Spring side. They were running at about 62% of the units for the quarter, and about 48% of those included are quantum edge as well. So, I think that you know, the bedding outlook continues to be strong, I'll let Karl comment on any trends going forward into the holiday period.

Karl Glassman

Analyst

Good morning, Susan. That as Mitch said, continued adoption of ComfortCore driven somewhat by the growth of hybrid mattresses, both compressed and uncompressed, is at a level -- the rate of 62% for the quarter, 56% for the year that we didn't anticipate. So, we are pleased with the launch of new product lines at the Las Vegas market, which was last weekend that there was a greater introduction of ComfortCore. The bedding industry feels pretty optimistic in terms of that there's relative stability in that industry, which is kind of a change, compared to last five years, and advertising investments seem to be in place new product launches, so there's excitement around there. We feel pretty good, Presidents Day is a tough one to call, I know there'll be heavy advertising going into it, but it's always one of those holidays that is performance is subject to weather, just because of being in February, but there is a build up to it. We're exciting. Bedding was a great story in 2019, and we expect the same in 2020.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

Okay, great. That's very helpful. And then, you gave a lot of color around the impacts that you've seen over the last year and then into the beginning of this year from steel prices, and understanding that it's kind of hard for you to project going forward, but can you just kind of give us some sense of maybe what's going on in that market? You talked to the weakness of trade demand in your rod and wire segment in there. So, can just talk a little bit to, how we should think about that as we move through 2020? What's driving that weakness and demand, and any other color there?

Karl Glassman

Analyst

Yes. Let's talk first pricing and then we'll go through weakness and trade demand, which is very different than our internal demand, but what happened is a continual deflation of input costs as 2019 progressed until November, where we saw the first move up in scrap. So, we saw steel scrap inflate in November at a rate of $20 a ton, followed by $25 a ton in December, and then $30 a ton in January. So, we're dealing now with kind of the reverse lag effect from the standpoint that is prices deflated in 2019. We kept that benefit for 90 days. We are flipping that situation in 2020, but because of the kind of oddities of year-end, we actually decreased our customer prices in January of 2020, because we adjust every quarter. So, where those contracts actually in the phase of our increase in input costs, we lower prices, because of lag effect. We will be increasing our customer's prices starting in April. So, with that, there is a LIFO swing. There is zero impact of LIFO expense in our forecast for 2020 as we laid out guidance, but who the heck knows to your point. So, that's what's happening from a pricing standpoint.From a trade market perspective, again, this is trade, so think of us for about the 25% of the total tons that we produced from the perspective as you would a large public steel company. In that case, we are like them from the standpoint that our metal margins are okay. Margins aren't so bad, because of the deflationary cycle, but the demand is incredibly soft. It's not specific to any particular sector. It's just macro U.S. economic and export demand for steel products in virtually every channel of distribution. So, people may question, "Well, wait a second. The U.S. steel industry was protected by Trump tariffs last year, while the products weren't." So, there was a continued inflow of products in an environment, where export demand was very, very soft. So, from a trade perspective, that's really what happened in 2019, and we don't see a change in that in 2020. So, I apologize for the longwinded answer, but steel moves are really, really complex.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

Yes, I know. That's very helpful, and it sounds like it's having quite an impact on the 2020 and how we think about the guidance. So that's really helpful for us. And in a…

Karl Glassman

Analyst

That really does from a quarter perspective, Susan. So, expect Q1 is going to be negatively impacted by that pricing decrease, while costs are rising. So yes, it is impacting the kind of the quarterly sequencing.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

Okay. And then, as we go through the year though, your comps also in that segment, I know the segments are going to change, so it's going to make it a little -- that's going to change things as well for us, but the comps get a little easier, and then as we move through the year, from a revenue…

Karl Glassman

Analyst

Said differently, we will become more fully recovered from a margin perspective, but the revenues, you are right, because we have the business that we appropriately walked away from that still impacts us in the first-half of the year that we anniversary. So, Fashion Bed, that kind of headwind of Fashion Bed really goes away in the back half of the year, but we still deal with that legacy exposure in the first-half, and Home Furniture has little of that same situation, but we'll move to an inflationary environment, which will help offset some of that from a top line perspective.

Susan McCoy

Analyst

Susan, I am going to go ahead and take an opportunity here really quick. You didn't specifically ask the question about kind of progression of sales guidance and margin, sort of progression through the year, but Karl has introduced that idea already. So, I'll complete that discussion by saying just to be clear, as we look at quarters throughout 2020, we expect sales in the first-half of the year to be down slightly, and then in the second-half of the year to be up slightly, and so the stuff he was talking about, you guys have alluded to, there's more impact from the excess volume in the first-half of the year, we've got the flip from deflation to inflation, but the second-half of the year, we expect to have anniversary most of the excess volume. So, that's on the sales side.On the earning side, we would expect to see our quarterly margins, the margin trend to be very similar to what we experienced in 2019, including the first quarter being lower than our expectations for the rest of the year, and that gets to the steel lag that Karl was talking about flip on the steel side, and then for the full-year, we would pattern the margin progression basically to be flat to down slightly, versus each quarter in 2019, and then for the full-year 2019.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

Okay, all right. That's very helpful. And then, I assume like as we get closer to you restating the information according to the new segments to -- we'll get some of that historical, so we'll have a sense of how to model it going forward?

Susan McCoy

Analyst

Absolutely.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

Yes, okay.

Karl Glassman

Analyst

It actually will help things having that historic industrial and residential pulled together in this bedding segment, I think it should help, because there's been this kind of offset. You had to read through to try to figure out where the impacts and when the event in industrial was rolling through residential. So, I think it will help you from an analytic standpoint, and more importantly that's how we manage the business.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

Yes, I know, I think it's going to be very helpful, and especially as we get ECS in there, and a lot of those pieces of that supply chain. So, I think it is going to be helpful. So, yes, I will let somebody else talk now.

Karl Glassman

Analyst

We have a lot of time on that, so…

Susan Maklari

Analyst

I know. I am going to let someone else talk now.

Karl Glassman

Analyst

Thanks, Susan.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

All right, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from line of Daniel Moore with CJS Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Daniel Moore

Analyst · CJS Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Thanks. Good morning.

Karl Glassman

Analyst · CJS Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Good morning, Dan.

Daniel Moore

Analyst · CJS Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

I guess, wanted to start with just one or two real quick, number one, can you quantify the dollar amount or EPS impact of increased costs for some of the investments you described network cyber security etcetera as well as the increased employee benefit related costs in '20 versus '19?

Jeff Tate

Analyst · CJS Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Hi, Daniel, this is Jeff. Good morning. That number is approximately $10 million in total.

Daniel Moore

Analyst · CJS Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Between the two?

Jeff Tate

Analyst · CJS Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Between the two, correct.

Daniel Moore

Analyst · CJS Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Perfect. And second is more philosophical, but obviously remain committed to de-leveraging, which I know a lot of investors appreciate, given the guidance little light relative to expectations as well as just the incredible powerful cash generation. Why be quite that rigid the shares were to come under pressure for any reason disappointment, whatever, why not being perhaps a little bit more opportunistic and flexible regarding potential buybacks?

Jeff Tate

Analyst · CJS Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Hi, Dan, this is Jeff again. Thank you for the question. I think that's a very appropriate one, but I think if you will go back and look at what we discussed that Investor Day, I think we're going to stay very disciplined, very methodical and very intentional with our uses of cash. I mean, for us, we're going to continue to invest for growth from a prioritization standpoint, we're going to continue to protect the dividend and we're going to continue on the path to reaching our de-leveraging commitment that we've made to all of our stakeholders, and after that with comp share repurchases as a potential opportunity as well as acquisitions that may come down to path as well. So, the point is well taken, but for us, we're going to continue down that sequential path in terms of our prioritization of uses of cash.

Daniel Moore

Analyst · CJS Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Okay, understood. I'll pass it over. Thank you.

Karl Glassman

Analyst · CJS Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Thank you, Dan.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from line of John Baugh with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

John Baugh

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you and good morning. I guess we'll start with ECS, could you clarify -- I wasn't clear, I guess I'm interested in volumes in Q4 than the year. I think you said the year was up 11%, and then of course, you talked about non-bedding being weak. I'm curious for 2020 in terms of the guide, if we're looking at -- I think mid-single digits of volume up for ECS, how does that sort of break out between non-bedding and bedding?

Mitch Dolloff

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, John, this is Mitch. Yes, so far I think we see that the same trend that we saw in '19 in terms of decline in some of the non-bedding markets, but continued strong opportunities in 2020 in the bedding markets both with pure foam mattresses and hybrid mattresses.

John Baugh

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Yes.

Wendy Watson

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Sorry. We are going to see some continuing deflation in 2020, and it's -- and some of that's due to just the softness in the furniture market and the furniture bands at ECS though.

John Baugh

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Okay, so it's the mid-single digit guide for volumes for ECS for 2020 comprised of high single or almost double in bedding and declines in non-bedding or any help?

Karl Glassman

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, John, I think that's accurate, and that melt-off of non-bedding and move to bedding from a margin perspective is good for us. Remember the non-bedding tends to be blocks of commodity foam to the most part replaced by higher value bedding related products that may be either specialty foam components or finished mattresses. So, the answer to your question is yes, we would expect that the bedding related side of it would be in the double-digit range. The net 5% is a continuation to Wendy's point of deflation, which continues through the year, even into the fourth quarter, and the softness of the non-bedding business.

John Baugh

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Great, thank you. And then in the 2020 guide again on it looks like I guess excluding the exiting of the Fashion Bed on the Home Furnishings, but is the guide for volume exclusive of the exits also down, and if so, sort of how much and why?

Karl Glassman

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

At the midpoint, it's up about 2%, and there's an expectation we rattle off all these businesses that are growing mid-single digits, and you heard that list, so some thing is down, and that's a continued expectation of soft demand in the trade steel industries is the primary driver of that.

John Baugh

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. And then, incredible job on working capital in the year, and a huge source of cash, particularly in Q4 in accounts receivable, Jeff, was there something timing-related there, or how do we think about either working capital as a percentage of revenue for 2020, or what are some of the big moving pieces on that, obviously it's a tough compare?

Jeff Tate

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

All right, thanks for the question, John. I mean, first of all the team you're right did a tremendous job on working capital during the course of 2019, and you saw that reflected in the 9.9% ratio there. I mean there were quite a few efforts that were contributors in 2019 especially the combination of liquidating the inventory of the exit businesses that we've highlighted during the call and increased overall and the focus of inventory level reductions. You saw the deflation of raw material costs throughout the course of 2019, it also contributed to that. As we think about 2020 John for us, the rigor and the focus will not change or not let up at all, as it relates to our working capital efforts and improvements, but we don't see where we will have as many of those significant huge wins that we saw in 2019 and 2020. However, again the focus will continue to be there and will continue to drive that result as best we can across the organization.

John Baugh

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Great. And my last question is just sort of this high level focus that's taking hold on the investment side of the world on ESG, I'm wondering kind of where you are internally thinking about that, whether you hired a consultant or sort of measuring yourself, what early inning gleanings you may have on that, and what we might expect going forward? Thank you.

Wendy Watson

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Yes. Hi, John. This is Wendy. Yes, we are working on ESG. We hope to finalize our first sustainability report sometime in 2020. We're working with some external consultants to help us as you know, we feel like we've long been doing the right thing and have a really strong story to tell from an ESG perspective, but gathering all that information from our different businesses around the world has had been a challenge. And so, we have some help to do that. So we're thanks for the question. And we're looking forward to being able to issue that for sustainability report. But there is a lot of work going on across the company on those factors every day, not in order to report great ESG but because it's the right thing to do in our businesses, but we are going to be pleased to be able to report them later this year.

John Baugh

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Great, thank you and good luck.

Jeff Tate

Analyst · Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you, John.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bobby Griffin with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Bobby Griffin

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions and hope everybody is doing well. But just quickly, Susan I want to go back to your comments about the regression for the year just to make sure I'm grasping it correctly, but for 1Q based on the steel, sequential kind of inflation that you're seeing from steel on the input side, we would want to model or the expectations for 1Q EBIT margins to be down year-over-year in the low point of 2020?

Susan McCoy

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

We would -- year-over-year in the first quarter expect each of the quarters not just the first quarter, but each of the quarters to be maybe in line with or slightly below what the prior year's quarter was. That means sequentially, it goes down from fourth quarter to first quarter because of the steel issues that Carl was talking about and just normal seasonality, frankly with our fourth quarter to first quarter in that business, very aggressive businesses.

Bobby Griffin

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. And that would mark…

Jeff Tate

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

In case the low point to your question, the low point being the first quarter.

Susan McCoy

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

That's right.

Bobby Griffin

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Okay, okay, that's helpful. And I realized you guys are still doing some of the initial work on what the potential impact could be from the virus but can you maybe just remind us of what products are produced in China that are consumed backed by the U.S. consumer because I know typically you set up your production as produced in the local country consumed by the local country. So any color on that would be helpful.

Mitch Dolloff

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning, Bobby. This is Mitch. We are happy to comment on that. So we have 16 plants, as we mentioned in China, probably the biggest China to U.S. shipment comes in our home furniture business. There's some of that that's consumed by our customers in China converted to finish goods and then comes to the U.S. as well as best direction for us from China to the U.S. And then, we have 10 automotive plants in China. And as you mentioned, primarily those are local production for the local market, but there is some portion of our -- of those goods, particularly motors and actuators that are consumed all around the world, including Europe and the U.S. So those are probably the two largest impacts. There's a small operation on the work furniture side that has shipments to the U.S. but home furniture, automotive are probably the biggest exposures.

Bobby Griffin

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. That's very helpful. And I guess lastly for me, Mitch, I think this would probably be back towards you again, but can you made a comment a little bit of detail on hydraulic cylinders? We had another decline in the fourth quarter, maybe what would happen over the last two quarters in that business, and then, maybe the outlook going into 2020 for that growth area?

Mitch Dolloff

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Okay, Bobby. Sure. Yes, it's been a bit tough. Sales were really strong in hydraulic cylinders from the second quarter of '18 through the second quarter of '19. And then, really began to fall off rapidly. Our customers, who are really the leading forklift producers, started forecasting significant demand drops at 15% to 20%, and that's really what we started to see in Q3 and again saw that accelerate in Q4, we don't have a lot of great data but the industry data we do see shows that shipments were down over 20% in the fourth quarter, so, pretty much in line with where we were and down 13% for the full-year, again, with that same kind of accelerating decline trend in the fourth quarter. We expect some of this impact to continue as we look into 2020 probably, at this point we would see sales year-over-year down in the low double-digits.

Bobby Griffin

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

I appreciate all the detail, best of luck in 1Q and in 2020.

Karl Glassman

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks, Bob.

Bobby Griffin

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you.

Mitch Dolloff

Analyst · Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks, Bobby.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Keith Hughes with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

Keith Hughes

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. Just a question on pricing, you talked about the raw material relationship throughout this call, with pricing you're going to be putting on your customers coming in April. I think you're talking about spring related products there. Can you talk about your foam products, what pricing it's looking like going into the New Year on that product?

Karl Glassman

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

Steel it's hard to forecast, but we think that the foam chemical inputs have stabilized. There was a little bit of a continued deflation in the fourth quarter but at a much lesser rate. So we think it's near bottom. Keith, there's frankly not a lot of room to go. Coronavirus may have some impact on it that, but we think we're at bottom, but we have not seen any signs of recovery. So in steel, we certainly are seeing inflationary cycle. We do not have that call on foam chemical inputs.

Keith Hughes

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. Second question, excuse me, on the shape of the year, is the LIFO impact going to be spread out evenly over the year, or is it a quarter-by-quarter sort of determination based on where inputs have moved?

Susan McCoy

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

Keith, we're starting the year with zero LIFO in 2020.

Keith Hughes

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

All right.

Susan McCoy

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

So, if nothing else changes, LIFO purely as a standalone element would basically unwind from last year. So, in quarter-to-quarter I think increased a little bit first quarter, second quarter, the third quarter and fourth quarter. We can provide these amounts to you, if you need the extra details.

Keith Hughes

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, I'll probably get those from you. I'll probably get those from Wendy offline.

Wendy Watson

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, I have that report. We don't -- I mean, it's also we don't know, Keith, we will update our LIFO estimates as the quarters progress, but it's way too early to make a call.

Keith Hughes

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, I didn't know if you either accrued something, and then make adjustments to the accrual as time went along, or just as that somewhat later?

Wendy Watson

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

That's how it works Keith, but again - because it's so early in the year, it's too early to make a call on where we think steel, the cost of our steel inventory will be at December 31, and that's - so those are the quarterly adjustments we make, and then we threw it up at the end of the year.

Keith Hughes

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. Final question, on the Home Furniture products, you've been moving LIFO businesses there, where are you in this process, you would call that out it's kind of a negative for the year, I thought that was mostly done as something else might come up on the radar that you just don't want to do anymore?

Mitch Dolloff

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

This is Mitch, Keith. No, you're right; it is essentially complete on the restructuring. We're looking at the year-over-year comparisons, we will continue to show some decline from revenue standpoint, and as Karl mentioned, we will face that in particularly in the first-half of next year as well, but from the point of the restructuring around improving margins and earnings that's been very successful, teams have done a great job there.

Karl Glassman

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

Keith, when you think about steel moving from a deflation to an inflationary environment, you remember the last time we went through this cycle, we had a hard time passing through steel inflation in a portion of our Home Furniture business, that we no longer participate in the side of the business and in Fashion Bed, which we no longer participate in. So we feel that as we move into this steel inflationary cycle, our company is better positioned and the pricing power that we had years ago, we now have again, and with a lot of good work and Home Furniture.

Keith Hughes

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

Yes.

Mitch Dolloff

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

And from again, going forward just to add-on in your Fashion Bed that exit, it will be particularly as we go into next year, those are significant dollars just don't repeat as we exited Fashion Bed.

Keith Hughes

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from line of Peter Keith with Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

Peter Keith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, thanks a lot. Good morning everyone. I didn't want to dig into the auto business because you guys have actually done quite well there the last two quarters. I think with global market down five, you guys rebate? So, now you're back to outperforming the industry by over 1,000 basis points. Could you help us understand what's going on with some of that performance and if there's any ongoing continuation of that?

Mitch Dolloff

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, sure Peter. This is Mitch. Yes, and all it took was taking the basis point that 1000 basis points targeted were killing each other.

Peter Keith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

So we're…

Mitch Dolloff

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

Great, great timing, but no, I think we're glad that we did that. I mean - as we said before, it really is a long-term target. But we think it's fair to look at ourselves against you how the overall markets performing. But again, that's a longer term kind of basis. We did have stronger Q3 and Q4, as we expected, right, as we know it early in the year was tough to have confidence in us, but we I think we came through with what we expected, and I think we continue to see that same kind of optimism in 2020. Right now, I think we'd see somewhere in the mid-single digits improvement year-over-year for 2020 with the market right now, flat to down half of 1% who knows I think that'll continue to move around a bit, but we continue to have strong gains, content and new products. So, I think we remain very positive on that business.

Peter Keith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

Okay, thank you. Then I wanted to ask a question around spring and also the adjustable basis. So the U.S. spring business accelerated sequentially, but the raw material headwind also picked up notably, if I'm remember correctly, I think you did cut prices at the beginning of Q4. So, the two part question would be, does that imply the units of spring, which I know you don't report anymore, but did that accelerate it with the fourth quarter and then on a related note, why did the adjustable beds business pick up so strongly in Q4?

Karl Glassman

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

I'll take the mattress units. It's really a content story. For us to run 62% ComfortCore, as Mitch said, and then connectivity to an increasing adoption of Quantum Edge, so it's dollars are significantly outpacing units, but on adjustable…

Jeff Tate

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, on adjustable, yes, very strong quarter, up over 20%, but it's also you have to look - it was strong, it's been strong for the last few quarters I think that outsized year-over-year comparison is in part because of a very weak Q4 in '18. So the run rate was good, but pretty consistent with what we've been seeing for the last few quarters.

Peter Keith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. And lastly from me just on which is trying to understand the timing of processes and price increases, so are we corrected it was the beginning of Q4 there was a price cut. Now there's another one at the beginning of Q1, and that would be followed by a price increase in April. I guess I'm trying to get at is that raw material headwind looks like it could have a -- worse in Q1 and then start to stabilize and in Q2 to Q4?

Karl Glassman

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

You're exactly right based on what we know today. You're absolutely accurate.

Peter Keith

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

Okay, thank you very much, guys.

Karl Glassman

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you, Peter.

Wendy Watson

Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks, Peter.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is a follow-up from the line of Bobby Griffin with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.

Bobby Griffin

Analyst

Yes, thank you. Let me ask one more, I just want to quickly touch on the fabric and flooring product segment. How did that perform during the quarter, and is we haven't talked about in a while, but is that business still kind of the same strong cash flow generation business that we used to talk about it before?

Karl Glassman

Analyst

The answer is yes. It's a really good business that consumes very little capital. Mitch and the team have done a really good job of winning those businesses out from working capital perspective. So, a greater focus there, but in floorings case, it's slow growth. Matter of fact, we would call it probably over time. Carpet adoption is probably negative 2% to 3% a year, but its returns on capital employed are very, very high as it's the proverbial cash cow, it's a good business. The fabric business is somewhat similar to that with the exception of geo components, which we continue to invest in and is performing very, very well.

Bobby Griffin

Analyst

Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you for the update.

Karl Glassman

Analyst

Thanks, Bobby.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is another follow-up from Susan Maklari with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

Hello again.

Karl Glassman

Analyst

Hello, Susan.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

Karl, in your remarks you said that your arrows space volumes were up 11% in the quarter. Can you just give us any color there? Has there been any disruption as it relates to obviously some of the issues that the OEMs have been having this year with some of their models and, how are you seeing the health of that supply chain and how we should be thinking about that for 2020?

Karl Glassman

Analyst

Susan, I just read numbers, Mitch is going to answer the question.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

Okay, all right, we will let Mitch talk.

Mitch Dolloff

Analyst

Okay, I will give it a shot. Yes. So, we actually haven't seen disruption so far. Of course, the Boeing 737 max production halt is big news in the industry, but the supply chain deep the supply chain had been struggling to catch up for a long time. And so while they have stopped production, it really hasn't impacted us at this point. We're also seeing really strong production on some of the engine platform that we are on and remember we service not only Boeing, but the Airbus planes as well. And so that's really what has been driving our strong growth in the last couple of quarters, particularly in on our fabrication facilities in the U.S. and in Europe, and we see that continuing into 2020. I think that right now our outlook is for low double-digit growth there, and aerospace continuing.

Susan Maklari

Analyst

All right. All right, very good. Thank you.

Karl Glassman

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question-and-answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Ms. Watson for any final comments.

Wendy Watson

Analyst

Thank you everybody for your attention and questions this morning, and we will talk to you again next quarter.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.