Tom Burke
Analyst · Global Hunter Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead
Thank you, Kathy, and good morning, everyone. This morning we reported our first quarter results, largely due to foreign currency, sales were down 12% as compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2015. Excluding this currency impacts sales were only down 2%. On a constant currency basis sales increased in our Europe and building HVAC segments and decreased in the Americas and Asia segments. We expect the foreign currency will negatively affect our sales comparisons for the first three quarters of this fiscal year. Adjusted operating income of $14.2 million was down $10.7 million from the prior year. This was due to unfavorable currency conditions, including the impact of material costs in Europe and Brazil, and business interruption insurance recoveries in the prior year. As a result, we reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.14, compared to $0.30 in the prior year. As we mentioned when providing our initial fiscal 2016 guidance last quarter, from a quarterly run rate perspective, we anticipate that the second half of fiscal 2016 will be significantly stronger than the first half, both in terms of absolute earnings and year-over-year comparable. I am pleased to report that our core activity remained high during the quarter resulting in significant business wins. We continue to make progress in our manufacturing footprint both in North America and Europe, and we also continued to focus on our growth strategy, and I will give you updates on all of these topics as I go through the segment results. Mick will go through the consolidated results in greater detail, but first, now I would like to review the segment performance and update our end-market expectations for fiscal 2016. Turning to page six, as I mentioned last quarter, we combined the management of our North and South America operations, they now function as one operating segment. We are still in the early stages of this change, but the combined team is highly engaged and there are strong alignments among the functional areas. We're exploring opportunities for sharing productive resources that will lead to future efficiencies. Given this change in management structure, we have combined reporting of these segments into one Americas segment. Sales for the Americas segment decreased 7% on a constant currency basis, with lower sales in both North America and Brazil. Sales in Brazil were down 12% on a constant currency basis with decreases to both vehicular OE and aftermarket customers. The Brazilian economy has not improved and actually the markets have continued to decline. We are seeing significantly lower volumes in the off-highway and commercial vehicle market, but are seeing lesser declines in the aftermarket. As a result, we are taking further restructuring actions, as we identified synergies between our North and South America businesses. We're implementing further headcount reductions in Brazil and will transition to a four-day work week schedule in September. We expect to see the savings from these actions, plus reduction efforts in the second half of the year. On the positive side, we continue to quote and be awarded new business in Brazil. We recently rewarded a cooling package on the combined program and believe the new emissions regulations will give us new opportunities in the Brazil construction markets. We have a very strong market position in Brazil and are successfully defending this position, while addressing our cost structure to remain -- to ensure remain we profitable through the recession. In North America, sales were down 6%, as lower sales to off-highway and commercial vehicle customers partially offset by higher sales to automotive customers. Despite the strength in the North America commercial vehicle market, we experienced limited benefit in the quarter due to lower service sales and shifting market shares among the North America truck customer. Our off-highway sales were down due to continued weakness in agriculture equipment and mining sectors. We have strong cooling activity in North American and are seeing the positive effects of our ongoing cost reduction initiatives. As a result, we're winning significant amount of new business, particularly in the off-highway programs. These wins include two backlog of order programs in light construction market and agricultural module program and the new industrial genset program. Our McHenry plant is now closed and we begin to see those savings in the current fiscal year. Additionally, we are negotiating with the Union on the effected portion of the close of the Washington, Iowa facility. As we have previously stated, production of these facilities has been move to other Modine facilities and will result in significant cost savings once completed. As part of this transition, we will be expanding production capacity at our Nuevo Laredo, Mexico location. This is a critical step for Modine as we continue to see focus on lowering our cost structure by leveraging our low cost country footprint. I also wanted to take a minute talk about our coils business, which is reported under the Americas segment. We manufacture coils alongside the heat exchangers used by our vehicle customers, but these products are primarily used in the HVAC applications. In addition to providing a custom designed heat exchangers for the residential, industrial and commercial HVAC markets, we also use these coils not only in HVAC products providing some of the vertical integration advantage. This is a relatively small business for us today, but we believe there are great opportunities for us in this area. Earlier this month we announced a significant business award with a major in North America plants manufacturer. This is an exciting award as it demonstrates the potential growth opportunity and also highlights the role this business can play in our goal to further diversify our business. We plan to expand our presence in this market so it becomes a bigger portion of our business overall. This would be a critical focus area for acquisition strategy. Adjusted operating income for the Americas segment was down $4.4 million, primarily due to lower sales volume and higher material costs in Brazil. As I mentioned last quarter, underlying commodity prices are typically fixed in US dollars and when the US dollar strengthens, we pay higher prices for materials and purchased in local currency. We estimate this impact on a year-over-year results in Americas region to be approximately $1 million in the quarter. Our outlook for fiscal 2016 North America end markets is the same as previously reported. We expect continued strength in the heavy-duty trucks. We offset by significant weakness in agricultural equipment, in certain portions of the construction market, particularly heavy construction and mining where we have a concentration. We believe that the weak Brazilian market conditions will continue in fiscal 2016 and have lowered our market expectations for this year. Our expectation for the commercial vehicle market is to be down 30%, the agricultural equipment market to be down 20% to 25%. Please turn to page seven. Sales for our Europe segment increased 2% in the first quarter, excluding currency impacts. In US dollar terms, sales decreased 17% in the quarter, driven by the impact of a stronger US dollar versus the euro. Sales to automotive customers were up 9% driven by strong oil cooler and condenser sale. Sales to commercial vehicle customers were up 10%, driven by radiators and EGRs. These increases were partially offset by lower off-highway sales, which were down 28% in the prior year. Gross margin decreased 250 basis points from the prior year. The positive impacts from higher volume were more than offset by unfavorable material costs, including the negative currency impact that I just mentioned. We estimate this impact in our year-over-year earnings for Europe to be approximately $3 million in the quarter. Significant market demand for our engine products in Europe is challenging our capacity levels, which is putting pressure on certain of our production facilities. This pressure has driven increased cost for ship premiums and expedited fleet. We're adding additional capacity to address this positive yet challenging opportunity. We made significant progress with the European manufacturing footprint, including the recent closure of the plant in Germany. However, we are not yet satisfied with our performance on our powertrain cooling products for the commercial vehicle market. For these reasons, we have made a decision to expand our low-cost country manufacturing capacity in Eastern Europe. It is very important that we have the ability to quote competitively to grow our market share with the cost structure that we sure we get returns that meet our and our shareholders expectations. I will provide quarterly updates as we define our strategy for the future state of the European manufacturing equipment. Our 2016 market outlook for Europe is improving with continued demand for premium automotive components for Modine Europe has a strong presence. Please turn to page eight. Sales for our Asia segment were down 3%, compared to the prior year on a constant currency basis. Sales to off-highway customers were down more than 30% in the quarter, as the slowing China economy continues to impact infrastructure investment and has had a direct impact on excavator sales in China and Korea. This was partially offset by higher sales to automotive customers, which more than tripled during the quarter, as launch activity for automotive coolers continues to ramp. We expect to produce double the number of automotive coolers this year, as compared to last for a total $1.5 million pieces produced. At maturity, we expect to be producing more than 4 million oil coolers a year. We continue to see year-over-year revenue increases in India with sales increases to automotive, commercial vehicle, and off-highway customers is our strong market presence is benefiting and the strengthening in the economy. Our outlook for the automotive market in China and for the commercial vehicle market in US will continue to strength. However, we expect the overall Asian excavator market to remain weak, down 20%. Turning to page nine. Our Building HVAC segment had a very good quarter. The segment sales increased 6% in the quarter on a constant currency basis. This increase was largely driven by higher sales of cooling products to the school market in North America, along with higher North America heating and ventilation sales. Our UK business was roughly flat on a constant currency basis, but our order intake during the quarter was strong. Gross margin for the segment increased 340 basis points on higher sales volumes during the quarter with improvements in both North America and UK. The increase in SG&A related to the business interruption insurance recoveries in the prior year. Excluding this, SG&A was flat and operating income would have been up $1.5 million over the prior year. Our outlook for the Building HVAC markets showed continued strength in each of our served markets. With that, I would like to turn over to Mick for an overview of our consolidated financial results and guidance.