Earnings Labs

Modine Manufacturing Company (MOD)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, May 28, 2015

$237.15

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Modine Manufacturing Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2015 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded.\ I’d now like to introduce your host for today’s conference, Kathy Powers, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations. You may begin.

Kathleen Powers

Analyst

Thank you for joining us today for Modine’s fourth quarter fiscal 2015 earnings call. With me today are Modine’s President and CEO, Tom Burke, and Mick Lucareli, our Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer. We will be using slides with today’s presentation. Those links are available through both the webcast link as well as the PDF file posted on the Investor Relations section of our company Web site modine.com. Also, should you need to exit the call prior to its conclusion; a replay will be available through our Web site beginning approximately two hours after the call concludes. On Slide 2 is an outline for today’s call. Tom and Mick will provide comments on our fourth quarter results and provide revenue and earnings guidance for fiscal ’16. At the end of the call, there will be a question and answer session. On Slide 3 is our notice regarding forward-looking statements. I want to remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements as outlined in today’s earnings release as well as in our Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Tom Burke.

Thomas Burke

Analyst

Thank you, Kathy, and good morning, everyone. I’m pleased to report that we ended our fiscal year with a strong fourth quarter. Our fourth quarter sales of $363 million were up 2% from the prior year on a constant currency basis, with sales growth in each of our segments except South America, where markets remained weak. Adjusted operating income of $17 million was up 27% from the prior year largely driven by improved gross margin on North America in building HVAC segments. Reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.12 compared to $0.15 in the prior year. Despite the significant increase in operating income, EPS declined due to higher income tax expense in the current year, resulting from the reversal of U.S tax valuation allowances in the fourth quarter of last year. I’m pleased to report that for the full fiscal year, sales were up 4%, excluding currency, and reported adjusted operating income of $65 million which is up 6% from the prior year. We are able to grow earnings despite unfavorable currency impacts and weaker than expected conditions in some of our key end market. Our earnings benefited from a 40 basis point improvement in gross margin driven by higher sales volume and lower warranty costs. Adjusted earnings per share of $0.63 was down from the prior year, again due to the expected increase in income tax expense. Mick will go through the consolidated results in greater detail, but first I’ll review the segment performance and provide an initial view on the end market expectations for fiscal 2016. Turning to Page 6, our North America segment finished the year on a strong note. Sales increased 1% with higher sales to commercial vehicle and automotive customers more than offsetting a decrease in sales to off-highway customers, as both the agricultural and…

Michael Lucareli

Analyst

Thanks Tom. Good morning. Please turn to Slide 12. Modine’s fourth quarter sales were down 7% primarily due to strengthening of the U.S dollar. As Tom mentioned, sales increased 2% on a constant currency basis. In the quarter, our gross profit increased $400,000. Excluding an unfavorable exchange rate impact of $4.4 million, gross profit increased $4.8 million or nearly 8%. I’m happy to report a gross margin improvement of 140 basis points to 17.3%. The gross profit was negatively impacted by the cost of raw materials. In total, aluminum increased around 20% year-over-year. This includes an increase in the spot price along with an increase in the transaction premium. Offsetting that was the benefit of lower warranty expenses in the North America and Europe segments. We also experienced good cost control in other manufacturing overhead areas. Moving on to SG&A, I’ve said before that we’re closely managing and reducing our costs wherever possible. In total, SG&A costs decreased slightly from the prior year. The exchange rate impact was favorable at $3.1 million in the quarter. This was offset by a $3.2 million legal reserve relating to our South America segment. We also recorded $1 million of restructuring expenses in the quarter. This was fairly evenly spread among Europe, North America, and South America. In addition, we recorded a $7.8 million goodwill impairment in our South America segment. Each year we perform a global assessment of our goodwill. This year the assessment led us to fully impair the goodwill related to our acquisition in Brazil. The impairment was not primarily due to the weak economic environment and a significant increase in the associated discount rate used to do that analysis. This does not diminish our long-term commitment to the markets in Brazil where we’ve an excellent competitive position. And I’m pleased…

Thomas Burke

Analyst

Thanks, Mick. Our focus in Modine this past year continues to be on positioning the company for meaningful growth. The balance sheet is strong and we approve that we can generate positive operating income and free cash flow at our current business -- level of business. We delivered on the earnings guidance provided at the beginning of the fiscal year despite significant currency impacts and an economic downturn in Brazil that was significantly worse than anticipated. Although it’s good to be able to weather these storms, we’re focused on putting our cash to work in significant ways and assessing investment opportunities that will allow us to grow profitably and sustainably while further diversifying our business. We’re equally focused on operational efficiency as we continue to work to improve our cost structure to remain competitive in a market place. Our employees are working very hard to ensure we have a market leading product portfolio and a world class manufacturing base, both in terms of location and scale. Given this combination we’re in excellent competitive position. The significant amount of new business quoting activity and new business wins at Modine confirms that we’re heading in the right direction and have a very bright future. With that we’ll take your questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Mike Shlisky of Global Hunter. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Michael Shlisky

Analyst

Good morning, guys.

Michael Lucareli

Analyst

Good morning.

Thomas Burke

Analyst

Hi, Mike.

Michael Shlisky

Analyst

A bunch of questions, but I’ll just keep it brief here. Anyway, first touching on the mid-west transaction premium, it sounds like that probably was a headwind here in the most recent quarter, but it did kind of fall off pretty dramatically at the end of March. I was wondering, when you might start to see that kind of improvement picture of P&L, will it be this current quarter or possibly we’ll have to wait into the back half of the year there?

Michael Lucareli

Analyst

Mike, good question. It’s Mick. Yes, good news is we’ve seen that come back quite a bit from the spike that we saw last year. It will take probably about, we factored that into our projections in our guidance, but we’ll start to see the benefit of that later in our Q1 and then continue through. So we should capture most of our fiscal year the benefit of that.

Michael Shlisky

Analyst

Okay, great. And then moving on to South America, perhaps I missed this. But can you just explain about your, is you reserve in the quarter for legalities. Give us little more color as to what was going on there? I might have missed it, sorry.

Thomas Burke

Analyst

Yes, Mike I’ll take that one. We received notice from Brazil’s administrative authority on some of the alleged anti-trust violations by Modine Brazil and a few of its employees many years ago. Based upon our investigation we made a decision to establish a $3.2 million reserve at yearend to represent the amount that we may incur to resolve the matter. I appreciate that you have the question, and you may have follow-up questions on this. But I hope you understand that given the current status of the investigation I can't provide additional details at this time. However, I will note that the allegations are limited in nature, unrelated to any other Modine segment, and that I’m very comfortable with the effect of this, our internal controls of trading and focus on our behavior around the world.

Michael Shlisky

Analyst

Got it. And then touching on Europe quickly, you had -- [indiscernible] that you’re actively looking to sell the old facility in Germany. Could you remind us or just update us, is there -- is your guidance currently showing a gain or a loss there in the coming fiscal year or did that exclude any kind of one time items on the sale of your facility?

Michael Lucareli

Analyst

Yes, Mike, it’s Mick. We haven’t included in our outlook any, the sale of both in our cash projections also; we wouldn’t include the gain or any gain on the sale in there. So, in fact we would hopefully we’ll sell at a gain, we would adjust our earnings frankly for that anyway. So it’s not in the numbers we provided to you.

Michael Shlisky

Analyst

All right. I’d just kind of squeeze in one last one here, about North America trucks. Obviously I had mentioned here in your comments here that you said that, that your growth rate may not mirror exactly the market growth rate in fiscal 2016. That’s a little bit surprising because I’ve always heard of basically you’re [indiscernible] truck out there. So, kind of what would be behind the reasons why you might lag the overall market here going forward?

Thomas Burke

Analyst

Yes, it could have been our particular mix Mike that, the customer base we have, the share changes that may happen, that are occurring we don’t think we’ll be at maximum end of that growth projection. We’re going to grow, but we just don’t think we’ll see maybe the full growth potential because of the customer particular mix of business.

Michael Shlisky

Analyst

Okay, great. I’ll leave it there guys. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of David Leiker of Robert W. Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Joe Vruwink

Analyst

Hi, good morning. This is Joe Vruwink for David.

Thomas Burke

Analyst

Hi, Joe.

Michael Lucareli

Analyst

Hi, Joe.

Joe Vruwink

Analyst

Two questions on profitability in Europe this quarter. Is it possible to quantify the tooling impact? And then given it wasn’t called out as impacting gross margin, can we think about the plant consolidation and the related inefficiencies those kind of being neutral lets say the profitability in the quarter?

Michael Lucareli

Analyst

Yes. Joe, its Mick. Tooling, I’ll see if I can grab the number while we’re on. But tooling is -- wasn’t the major driver in the gross margin line in the quarter. The largest driver frankly was the material cost that we had a double hit between the transaction premium that we talked about and it really peaked there in this fourth quarter combined with the exchange rate impact and the fact that Modine Europe metals have indexed and priced off the U.S. dollar. So there’s about a $2 million to $3 million materials impact in the quarter in Europe that was the biggest impact. I’ll let Tom; add any thoughts on the consolidation. Clearly the complexity of that the move from [indiscernible] and managing through that with the Origami line and the dual workforces, it was very complicated in the quarter as well.

Thomas Burke

Analyst

Yes, now clearly as Mick said, this kind of ended our quarter, our major restructuring movement actions and relocation of workforce and equipment. So with that behind us, we feel that we’re going to be moving forward in a much stronger position, and so there was some impact for that. But clearly not as much as a materials impact that Mick mentioned.

Joe Vruwink

Analyst

So it sounds like on a sequential basis, maybe additional improvement as we work into next year, obviously on a year-over-year basis just given the indexing that’s still going to be a headwind, at least from a transactional standpoint. Does that sound fair?

Michael Lucareli

Analyst

Yes, we would expect improvements ongoing in our operations Joe with -- the materials piece is going to take a while to work through including the FX is frankly out of our control. We don’t have commercial agreements that will allow us to adjust for changes in exchange on material.

Joe Vruwink

Analyst

Okay. Given it’s the end of the fiscal year, can you maybe provide an update on your bookings during this past fiscal year and obviously given the end market forecast that most of the organic growth or really all of the organic growth was coming from kind of new awards or the backlog. So maybe if you look over the three year horizon, what type of growth you would expect to come from your new business backlog?

Michael Lucareli

Analyst

So as we do each year, we go through our long range planning cycle Joe. I’m happy to report we still have a really solid three year backlog, about $200 million consistent with prior years. And as you know that frankly the challenge we had each year is just trying to analyze the impact of economic changes whether that’s Brazil or in Asia or in the off-highway markets with anything getting delayed or pushed out. But the actual order intake and the solid book of new business and launches is intact and we feel really good about that over the next few years.

Thomas Burke

Analyst

Yes, I’ll add to that Joe. I mean at the macro level the mega trends on things that are driving fuel efficiency, CO2 emissions and we’re very well positioned for, very pleased as I mentioned with the product portfolio, the work your teams have done to get the products right and we’re seeing just a lot of activity with engagement and coding and again the win rates is Mick said, we’re very pleased with and really expanding some of these opportunities that are developing on next level of efficiency requirements and vehicles and also in our stationary business with building HVAC in our coils business.

Joe Vruwink

Analyst

Okay. Yes, that’s certainly a very good number. My last question, when you see thermal assets in the space, there is a big transaction earlier this year going for close to 10 times EBITDA. How does that influence strategically, how you view your business and does it make things much more difficult from a standpoint for you? Are you still considering assets that are out there or maybe any update there?

Michael Lucareli

Analyst

Yes, Joe its Mick. Well we said before and we’re continuing to say that we are actively out in the market looking for strategic ways for us to expand our market and our product portfolio. We know and frankly we’ve known this for a while as you do that multiples can be very high. I think the good news for Modine is, anything we’ve looked at and we are looking at is going to be highly strategic. So, the way we’ll be able to generate a high ROI and that type of investment will only be in a case where we see it as highly core to us and highly synergistic. I think its really good news that the world of thermal is really in demand and everybody is seeing the trends and the needs for Modine type products. So on the positive side despite that driving multiples up, I think that’s good for our future business.

Thomas Burke

Analyst

Yes, I’ll add to that Joe. We’ve added some significant resource to our business development focus with dedicated individuals that are not just looking for direct acquisition opportunities but relationships and business partners, we maybe expanding to add success and sport-utility business, [indiscernible] vehicle business and also through some Tier 1s on supporting some of the needs on these new engine developments that are coming. So, we’re looking at all levels of business, not just the straight up acquisition by itself. So it’s pretty exciting for us right now and I think we have the right focus on it.

Joe Vruwink

Analyst

Okay, great. Just need all thermal assets for trade [indiscernible] you guys will be in good shape.

Michael Lucareli

Analyst

We agree.

Thomas Burke

Analyst

We like this. Yes.

Joe Vruwink

Analyst

Yes. All right. I’ll leave it there. Thank you. End of Q&A

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time, I’m showing no further questions. I’d like to turn the call back over to Kathy Powers for any closing remarks.

Kathleen Powers

Analyst

Thank you. This concludes today’s call. Thank you for joining us this morning and thank you for your interest in Modine. Goodbye.