Sotirios J. Vahaviolos
Analyst · the growth decline this quarter was attributed to those actions
I want to start out by commenting in our financial results. For the second quarter, by saying that while I am very pleased with these record results, our focus on improving margins and profitability led to lower organic growth. I think it's important to stress that the Mistras model delivered strong results in the quarter where much of the national debate focus on economic uncertainties surrounding the fiscal cliff, contributing to lower product sales, especially to military, and much of the international debate focus on the prospects of nominal growth at best with the possibility of recession looming in the background. As you know, the Mistras business model has consistently delivered superior revenue growth by relying on a combination of organic and acquisition revenue growth. Our fiscal second quarter was a good example of this. And in the quarter, revenues grew by more than 20%. And all the key financial metrics, such as operating income, net income, EPS and EBITDA, all grew in the mid-teens. We believe that our fiscal second quarter results demonstrate the consistency of the Mistras model. However, we believe that the broad economic concerns that outlined above tend to impact customer spending levels in the short term. In the second quarter, our organic growth rate in revenues dropped to 2%, which is much lower than we anticipated, but in concert with our serious effort of margin improvement in the services sector. Turnaround spending. The number of our large clients declined sharply in the quarter for the period -- from the prior year. These clients were a number of industries including refinery, chemical and some of the other process industries, so these declines were not isolated to just one sector. These declines are customer-specific and may not be related to a particular industry. Looking forward, I can say that those large customers where we saw reductions in turnaround spending during the second quarter, we don't believe these reductions are permanent. And when we step back and look more broadly at our turnaround activity, both the independent industry statistics that we review such as Industrial Info Resources, IIR, along with feedback we receive from our customers seem to suggest that calendar 2013 turnaround activity will be very strong. And now I would like to give you some highlights from the company's operations during the fiscal second quarter. Our services division experienced normal activity this quarter with the chemical and downstream and midstream segments of oil and gas. Power generation and aerospace markets also had a good results in the quarter, and we planned outage work in alloy and advanced composite materials inspection, our 5 in-house lab facilities across the country. As a result of our complete asset protection offering, our outstanding safety and quality record and commercial performance during this quarter, we were awarded the upcoming pre-turnaround and turnaround work at several new customer sites, which had not yet been committed to. Our experience has shown that excellent performance for new turnaround service opportunities often results in customers awarding this trust and evergreen contract for the facility. During the second quarter, a global energy company renewed 2 evergreen contracts with Mistras for an additional 3 years of this premier refineries. We're also excited that another major energy firm awarded Mistras a contract to perform turnaround work at all of its major refineries across the U.S.A. as a result of outstanding performance in our first turnaround with the firm. We expect to average 8 turnarounds per year for this new customer. Our midstream pipeline business continues to expand within the Marcellus, Eagle Ford, Barnett and Bakken shale plays while north and in-site. In the quarter, we were awarded a significant contract for a new 190-mile pipeline construction project in Texas from one of the largest energy firms in the region. During the quarter, our Asset Integrity Management Services, AIMS organization, again continued its heavy market penetration, receiving close to $1 million in licensing, training and the implementation of our PCMS enterprise software and risk-based inspection, RBI services, from a mix of oil and gas companies. And now, a few words for our products systems division. Due to the uncertainty in contracted capital spending were off-the-sale products to military, has been delayed in the end of calendar year 2012. We're optimistic that the situation will change in the first half of calendar year 2013 and growth in this product area will resume to typical annual spending. Overall, we continue to see a steady increase in quotation activity. However, conversion of the defense-related quotations are being cut [ph] through by the outcome of the fiscal cliff negotiations at this time. One system of note that has been deliberate was an ultrasonic base system for a division of General Electric. Receiving General Electric certification allows us to build additional systems for GE, GE sub-suppliers and extends to our own services divisions, in-house inspection facilities while performing outsourced inspection of GE components. We're awarded a large contract for a major electric utility in the Midwest to outfit their fleet of 12 gas-fuel boilers with an online AMS boiler acoustic leak detection system. We also received additional orders from 2 other electric utilities for our new AMS 3 [ph] systems that adopts the proven AMS boiler monitoring systems to new gas turbine driven plants using heat recovery steam generation units. These applications, the AMS systems, are being used to maximize utilities in market availability by reducing unplanned outages that impact profit due to high maintenance, cost and lost revenue generation. Our acoustic emission proprietary, 24/7, 365, online monitoring systems continue to expand with new orders internationally for permanent installations in chemical processing vessels offshore, wind turbines and gas turbines. The division will be introducing some new products this quarter, which will both generate third-party sales and support our services division in the areas of active corrosion detection using acoustic emission and integrated proprietary software, and the introduction of a UT tablet capable of supporting both traditional and advanced inspection methods. I will now turn to the international segment of our business. With several strategic acquisitions made, the international segment has now grown to become 25% of our total revenues. The integration of GMA, our recent acquisition in Germany, has proceeded smoothly and is on track to meet and exceed our expectations. GMA is an established company and has already adopted their financial reporting to our existing group financial platform. In France and Brazil, we are leveraged in our model and are focusing on integration with our existing operations, as well as improving margins and profitability with the right management in place. As a result of the restart of the business for oil and gas in Brazil in the first calendar quarter of 2013, we see our business there returning to normal margins and profitability. In reference to France, we see a natural partnership with our new German operations in the aerospace industry especially for both Airbus and Snecma. Due to our expanded workforce of technicians in France, for the first time, a large oil company invite us to the final list to compete for evergreen work in 8 refineries there and another 2 in the rest of Europe. We're also excited for our French company, Ascot, being a finalist for the Areva nuclear work. During the quarter, in the U.K., we received multiple unit orders for offshore online monitoring systems of structural integrity of wind turbines as a result of the successful performance of our initial 5 unit installations. Similarly, a Middle East power-generating company is considering purchasing multiple gas turbine online monitors for successful predictive maintenance of their units. The successful multimillion dollar online monitoring installation of key units of Turbos [ph] chemical plant in Russia [ph] last year has just led to another multimillion-dollar order for monitoring additional key vessels of the plant. Due to weather conditions, most of the online systems' permanent installations will probably fall in the first quarter of fiscal 2014. And now I would like to spend a minute on the company's outlook for fiscal 2013. Based on our current activity level and increasing confidence in our near-term outlook, the company is raising the lower end of its guidance range slightly and now expects fiscal year '13 revenue to be in the range of $525 million to $535 million and adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $78 million to $85 million. Consistent with prior years, we do not give guidance for individual quarters, but will update annual guidance each quarter. In closing, the Mistras model has demonstrated its consistency with record revenues and profits during the second quarter, and I'm confident that it will continue to deliver consistent growth in revenue and earnings going forward. That concludes my remarks and I would like to open up the floor for questions. Chandra?