Thomas A. Burke
Analyst · Baird. Your line is now open
Thank you Kathy and good morning everyone. On today's call I will discuss our third quarter results and provide an update on the various activities taking place with regard to our strengthen, diversify, and grow strategic transformation that we announced last quarter. After that Mick will provide a more detailed review of our financial results and then I will provide final remarks prior to opening up the call for questions. Sales in the third quarter were down 2% on a constant currency basis. The decrease was in the Americas, Building HVAC and Asia segments more than offsetting increases in the Europe segment. We continue to see significant weakness in the heavy duty construction and agriculture equipment markets and are also beginning to see some softening in the North America commercial vehicle market. In addition the warm winter weather had a negative impact on heating sales on our Building HVAC segment. Brazil remains in the deep recession and the economy in China continues to stagnate. Offsetting some of these headwinds have been strong auto sales in Europe and North America. German premium auto sales which remained one of the true bright spots of our markets helped drive the strong performance in Europe segment this quarter. Despite an overall decrease in sales this quarter I am pleased to report that our adjusted operating income of $17.2 million was up 21% from the prior year. On a constant currency basis adjusted operating income was up 30% from the prior year. This increase was driven by 140 basis point improvement in gross margin which benefited from favorable materials cost, improved plant performance, and savings from the closure of the McHenry, Illinois manufacturing facility. The restructuring initiatives we have taken over the past few years have clearly benefited our margins and provide an excellent foundation for us to execute on the strategies outlined in our strengthen, diversify, and grow plan moving forward. Turning to page 6, sales for the Americas segment decreased 6% year-over-year on a constant currency basis, with sales in Brazil down 14% due to decreases in both vehicular OE and aftermarket customers. Volumes continue to decline in Brazil and we are currently not planning for any depreciable improvement there for the next 12 to 18 months. As reported last quarter we implemented a four day work week in Brazil. This has significantly lowered our cost basis allowing us to continue to generate positive operating income despite the significant reduction in volume levels. In North America sales were down 5% with lower sales to off-highway and commercial vehicle customers. Our off highway sales are under pressure from weak conditions in the heavy duty construction and agricultural sectors. We expect this trend to continue as both oil and overall commodity prices are projected to remain low for the foreseeable future. We also saw a drop in orders from commercial vehicle customers as that market slowed last quarter. However despite this drop in sales, gross margin improved by a 190 basis points from the prior year to 16.5%. This is a continuation of the trend we saw last quarter as the impact from lower sales volumes was more than offset by improved operating performance, lower material cost, and savings from plant consolidation. Adjusted operating income for the Americas segment was up $2.7 million to 9.6 million despite the significant drop in sales. The actions we have taken to reduce cost have been critically important given the continued market weakness in this segment. The closure of McHenry plant and the various cost saving initiatives in Brazil have allowed us not only to remain profitable but to even improve our profitability in this challenging environment. We expect these difficult market conditions to continue in 2016. In North America the truck market has begun to soften and we expect volumes to be down 20% in 2016. We also expect the heavy duty construction and agricultural equipment markets to continue to decline further. Autos continue to be relatively strong and we expect the market to hold flat to possibly up 5%. In Brazil we expect the commercial vehicle and agricultural equipment markets each to be down another 10% and the aftermarket to be flat to possibly up 5%. Please turn to page 7. Sales for our Europe segment increased 5% in the third quarter on a constant currency basis as a result of the higher sales to automotive and commercial vehicle customers. The European automotive and commercial vehicle markets remained strong and we expect low to moderate growth to continue through 2016. Gross margin improved by 340 basis points from the prior year driven by higher sales volume, favorable material cost, and improved operating performance. We’re still experiencing very high volumes at certain European plants that have made significant progress of adding the needed capacity which has improved our efficiency and greatly reduced our order backlog. As mentioned last quarter, we’re adding furnace capacity to our plant in the Netherlands and expect to have this complete by the end of March. And in addition we are moving ahead with capacity expansion in Hungary. This incremental capacity schedule to be completed in 24 months will take additional pressure off our high volume plants, lead to further operational improvements, and enable additional sales growth. Adjusted operating income in Europe was up $4.2 million to $7.5 million including a negative $1.1 million currency impact. The increase was primarily due to volume and gross margin improvements. Please turn to page 8. Sales for our Asia segment were down 3% compared to the prior year on a constant currency basis. Lower sales to off highway customers in China and Korea and lower tooling sales were partially offset by higher sales to automotive customers as volumes continued to grow at a fast pace with many programs we have been awarded. Adjusted operating income increased to $0.5 million to two tenths of a million in the third quarter primarily due to continued cost control efforts. We believe that the off highway market is finally nearing bottom in Asia, but we are not expecting any meaningful near-term recovery. Since the 2011 construction peak in China, our excavator sales have dropped about 50% or $16 million. We are offsetting this loss with market share gains in the China automotive and truck segments and we expect this to accelerate with our recently announced joint venture with Puxin. Overall we expect to see flat to 5% growth in the China automotive market in 2016 and continue to strengthen our primary end markets in India. Turning to page 9, sales for our Building HVAC were down 8% for the quarter on a constant currency basis with decreases in both North America and in the UK. The decrease in North America was largely driven by lower heating sales due to the warmer-than-normal temperatures in December. We remain very confident in our ability to grow this business with new products scheduled for introduction in fiscal 2017. In the UK a softer euro-to-pound exchange rate created pricing pressure as the euro-based competitors were able to reduce prices in the UK impacting our win rate in the precision air conditioning market. However, our order intake for our air-handling and chiller business remained strong. We are currently working through a backlog of orders. Gross margin for this segment decreased 70 basis points on a lower sales volume during the quarter and adjusted operating income was down $2.9 million to $6.9 million. Last year’s results included $2 million of business interruption insurance recoveries. We completed the move back to our new Airedale manufacturing facility in the UK after the building was destroyed by fire in 2013. Although it has been a challenging two and half years for our team in the UK, they have done a great job serving our customers from the temporary facilities used during the rebuild period. The good news is that we are now operating in a state-of-the-art manufacturing and product testing facility, which allow us to continue to improve our competitive position over time. Please turn to page 10. Before turning it over to Mick, I would like to give an update on some of the activities we've been working on as part of our strengthen, diversify and grow transformation. As I mentioned last quarter, we expect this program will enable us to evolve into a more competitive and diversified thermal management company, one that increases long-term shareholder value. As a reminder the program has three major components. First, to strengthen our business by implementing a true global product-based organization; second, to diversify our business by investing in our industrial business, namely the Building HVAC and coils businesses; and third, to grow our business, primarily by aggressively pursuing strategic acquisitions but also by organically growing those parts of Modine’s business that have a right to win in the market. Our plan includes a number of cost discipline initiatives designed to improve our operating margins. This will be accomplished through expansion of our current low-cost manufacturing footprint, savings achieved through our global procurement project, and SG&A and personnel related savings. Overall, we are targeting $40 million to $50 million of annual savings from these initiatives over the next five quarters. And based on all of our activities to date, I remain very confident in this goal. A significant component of our strengthen objective is to optimize our manufacturing footprint. The transfer of production from our Washington, Iowa facility is running ahead of schedule. We plan to have this facility closed in fiscal 2017. The expansion of our Nuevo Laredo facility is nearing completion. And as I previously mentioned we are making progress in the early phases of our plant expansion in Hungary. For our procurement initiative we have finalized a structure of our procurement organization that are currently focused on supplier negotiations. Based upon current activities we believe that we are approximately 25% of the way towards our targeted annual procurement savings. In an effort to accelerate SG&A savings we offered an early retirement program to eligible U.S. employees. We had a large number of employees elect to participate in the program. Based on these and other actions we are targeting annualized salary savings of $7 million. We have implemented the first series of the changes of our new product-based organization structure and in the process of growing these through the organization. These changes will enable a more thorough analysis of our product platforms to further develop and drive our global strategies for each product group. As I mentioned earlier we recently announced the formation of a new joint venture in China. Puxin is a manufacturer of stainless steel heat exchangers located in Guangzhou, China, approximately 200 miles Northwest of Shanghai. Through this joint venture we will primarily produce stainless steel heat exchangers for the China light, medium, and heavy-duty commercial vehicle markets. This is an exciting investment for Modine, that will not only allow us to expand our product offering in China but will also serve to diversify our customer base and expand our low-cost manufacturing footprint. And finally last quarter, we announced a new share repurchase program. During the quarter we repurchased approximately $2.1 million or 230 shares at an average price of $9.04 per share. With that I’d like to turn over to Mick for an overview of our consolidated financial results and to update our fiscal 2016 guidance.