Bob Kamphuis
Analyst · R.W. Baird
Thank you, Nathan. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter earnings call. The second quarter presented our organization with both familiar and unique challenges as we continue to appropriately align our business with the current economic environment. Our top line performance was particularly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but I'm pleased to see the agility and adaptability that is ingrained and MEC's action-oriented culture. I'm especially pleased with the improvements that we implemented regarding facility and process optimization to enhance profitability and position our business for long-term success. Overall, during the period, we generated net sales of $62.6 million and adjusted EBITDA of $2.3 million. Despite both MEC and our key customers holding the essential business designation, many of our customers shut down some or all of their manufacturing facilities for nearly half of the second quarter. Based on the customer shutdowns, we likewise adjusted our production schedules, including temporarily halting production at some facilities. These changes required quick coordination, planning, realignment and action. MEC service and delivery to our customers continued at high levels and I was pleased with our nimble reactions. While we initially increased our inventory safety levels to ensure supply in late March and early April, we are now returning to appropriate levels. As a reminder, our supply chain is heavily centered in the U.S. as our customers all began to restart in May, we are generally seeing a gradual volume increase depending on specific market and inventory conditions, albeit at lower than pre-pandemic levels, which we expect to continue in the near term. Throughout the pandemic, the safety and well-being of our workforce remains our top priority. Our teams have spent considerable time and resources to ensure strong personal hygiene, the cleanliness of our facilities and changing procedures as needed to ensure social distancing. We also benefit greatly from the work sales in our manufacturing facilities being naturally spaced out, which limits the amount of interaction our associates have with each other on the shop floor. Those workers who can work from home are continuing to do so. And those who need to come in the facilities on a regular basis are practicing careful social distancing measures. Given that our facilities are located in more rural areas, we have not seen a significant number of cases amongst our employees and have only seen a handful of people test positive for COVID-19. All in all, I believe that we've developed a process to ensure that our most valuable assets, our people have a safe working environment. Similar to many companies throughout our industry our second quarter top line performance reflects the impact of COVID-related shutdowns, material changes to our customer, production schedules and overall demand combined with ongoing inventory destocking in several of our key end markets. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, our organization was performing well. We had essentially integrated DMP, which was translating into new cost savings and revenue opportunities, coupled with emerging benefits from our technology and automation investments made over the past 18 months. In light of the current economic landscape, we continue to adjust our cost structure during the quarter. We have spent countless hours to make our organization more efficient and aligning our structure to enhance our profitability and maximize cash flow for the near and long term. Our largest endeavor undertaken in the second quarter was the consolidation of the capacity from our Greenwood, South Carolina manufacturing facility into other locations. Based on the combination of greater manufacturing capacity and efficiency from our investment in new technology and the resulting smaller footprint requirement, the consolidation of this plant became an action item for us that would deliver both short-term and long term gains. To be perfectly frank with you this move was something being studied before the pandemic and the decision was accelerated as the initial economic impact of the pandemic became apparent. As a result of the capacity consolidation, all components that were manufactured at this facility will now be produced at 5 other manufacturing facilities around the country, allowing us to maintain the same capacity with a smaller, more efficient footprint. While the pandemic has certainly presented us a set of external challenges, our team continues to proactively identify and execute on areas of potential cost savings and continuous improvement opportunities. Throughout the majority of our end markets, we have seen lower demand as a result of the pandemic. Our key commercial vehicles and construction and access equipment markets, in particular, have suffered the most recently. Where many of our customers in these markets shut down production during a large portion of the second quarter. Inventory destocking continues to be a factor. After initially thinking that this issue would start to be resolved by midyear, we now believe it will continue later into the year. While inventory destocking has been an important factor impacting top line performance, I want to reiterate that we have maintained all of our customer relationships and contracts. This means that when our customers' volume returns, our volumes will also return, and we will be ready to deliver on those orders quickly. On a positive note, we've seen build rates for the commercial vehicle markets start to improve in recent weeks, including the July report just received yesterday. As large fleets are continuing to order, and we have reason to believe that we have reached the bottom. We continue to be encouraged by the activity within our military segment, as this served market has stayed relatively stable during the past several months. We believe our military business will continue to trend positively. And are particularly encouraged by the order flow that we are seeing for light vehicle oriented projects. Powersports also continues to be a bright spot as we are seeing lower dealer inventories across the sector as consumer demand outran production. We believe that this end market will continue to be a prosperous one for us as we navigate the current environment where consumers are staying home and engaging in many forms of outdoor recreation closer to their home. In terms of growing into new markets and expanding market share, our team continued to make great progress on new business opportunities during the period. We wrapped up a significant order for PPE related materials during the second quarter. Since we last spoke about this opportunity at our last quarterly call, the annual volume on this order nearly quadrupled. As a result of our success with this contract, we anticipate that there may be follow-up orders of similar magnitude in the coming quarters. We also continue to win takeover business from one of our key customers in the agricultural end market. This initiative is trending positively, and we anticipate that there will be more sizable opportunities to win in the future. Our efforts relating to capturing additional market share in our military end markets are continuing on their upward trajectory. And more substantial activity is on the horizon. We also procured another sizable project with a prominent blue-chip customer in our powersports end market relating to a new product line expansion which is being launched this fall. We continue to make headway regarding the outsourcing, reshoring and takeover projects for both current and prospect customers. These projects will continue to grow share with current customers, in addition to having the potential to add new customers in new markets. We expect to continue to see a growing number of potential new projects in the coming months. We're excited about the potential for the opportunities and look forward to keeping you updated on new developments going forward. On another note, to strengthen MEC's capital structure, we amended our credit agreement during the quarter to provide an extra layer of insurance and the flexibility to navigate the potential impacts of the pandemic. Todd will discuss this topic in more detail in a few minutes. But we believe, this prudent move exemplifies our conservative approach to capital management. We also continue to diligently monitor the competitive landscape for potential acquisition opportunities. That will position the organization to gain market share, offer new products, form new relationships with blue-chip customers and enter new geographic markets. While M&A activity overall has been quite muted due to the pandemic, we believe that there will be more consolidation over the long term. As always, any potential acquisition needs to fulfill a combination of the criteria I just mentioned, and above all else, needs to adhere to our strict return on investment-oriented approach. So while these past several months have not been the easiest to navigate, we continue to be focused on the matters that we can control, notably being ready to deliver best-in-class service to our customers when they need it the most. We have done this for over 75 years, and we continue to do it even in the face of adversity. Speaking to our longevity, I'm proud to say that in June, we were named the nation's largest fabricator, once again by the Fabricator magazine this marks the tenth consecutive year that our organization has led the Fab 40 list. We've been able to stay on the top of this list by always focusing on growth through our commitment to our customers' success. While we and our customers have faced more challenges recently, we have no doubt that this mindset is an important reason why we consistently prosper and will do so over the long term. Before I pass the call to Todd to discuss our financial performance in more detail, I want to take a moment to publicly thank our employee shareholders, for the dedication and resilience that they have displayed during this difficult stretch of time. It takes a team to be successful, and I appreciate your contribution to a safe and efficient workplace. And providing the excellent customer service that makes MEC the best. I know that together, we have come through this experience, a much stronger team and organization. Thank you all. With that, I will now pass on the call to Todd.