Thomas Burke
Analyst · Baird
Thank you, Kathy and good morning everyone. On today's call I will discuss our fourth quarter and full year results and provide an update on the various activities taking place with regard to our Strengthen, Diversify & Grow strategic transformation. After that Mick will provide a more detailed review of our consolidated financial results and will also provide our revenue and earnings guidance for fiscal 2017. I will then provide remarks prior to opening the call for questions. From a big picture perspective, our top line saw similar trends as we witnessed during the fiscal third quarter that our strategic initiatives designed to strengthen our business help us drive excellent operating performance. Specifically sales in the fourth quarter were down little less than 3% on a constant currency basis, primarily due to continued weakness in certain markets. We had sales increases in Europe & Asia segments being offset by decreases in the Americas in Building HVAC segments. Gross margin improved by 80 basis points to 18.1%, benefiting from favorable material cost and planned operating performance savings related to procurement initiatives. Our adjusted operating income was $23.7 million, up 38% from the prior year, adjusted earnings per share were $0.36 for the quarter representing an improvement of $0.24 or three times that of the prior year. For the full year, our adjusted operating income was $63.2 million, and our adjusted earnings per share were $0.76, up 21% from the prior year. This is clear that continued cost control efforts have allowed us to deliver year-over-year earnings improvement despite lower sales for the second straight quarter. Although our topline continue to be challenged by weak conditions in several of our end markets, I am pleased that we continue to deliver on our commitments. We took several actions during the quarter to further lower our cost structures so that we can continue working towards or achieving our procuring targets. Now I'd like to review our segment results. Turning to Page 6, sales for the Americas segment decreased 10% year-over-year on a constant currency basis, primarily due to continued weakness in the off highway markets, lower commercial vehicle sales and a decline in all vehicular end markets in Brazil. We saw a significant decrease in the sales to both heavy duty and medium duty commercial vehicle customers. This decline was partially offset by higher sales to North American automotive and coils customers due primarily to launch activity for two major automotive OE oil cooler programs. Gross margin improved by 40 basis points from the prior year to 18.8%, despite the drop in sales for the quarter. Our margin benefited from lower material cost, various cost reduction efforts including the closure of the McHenry, Illinois facility and savings from our ongoing procurement savings initiatives. SG&A was down $6.2 million due to cost control efforts, higher income from contract testing at our North American Tech Centre and a $3.2 million charge for legal matter in Brazil in the prior year. Adjusted operating income for the Americas segment was up 6% to $16.3 million despite the significant drop in sales. This resulted from gross margin improvement and a lower SG&A expenses. As I mentioned last quarter, we expect difficult end markets conditions to continue into fiscal 2017. In North America, the truck market has continued to soften and we expect heavy duty volumes to be down about 25% in fiscal 2017. We've also not seen any improvement in the heavy construction and agricultural equipment markets for the market outlook showing further declines of 15% to 20%. Offsetting some of that expected decline is the automotive market which continues to be relatively strong and we expect the market to be up 2% to 4%, however, some of our recent automotive launches have been delayed at our customers' request. In Brazil, expected commercial vehicle and agricultural equipment markets to be down further into 20% from the currently depressed levels and expected after-market to remain flat. We are hopeful that economic conditions will improve once the political situation stabilizes. Although these market conditions are challenging, our foot activity in the Americas segment is high and increasing, particularly for engine, oil cooling and related products. The need to achieve the updated fuel economy or CAFE standards in the U.S. is accelerating the adoption of our layered core products with added thermal unit content per vehicle, which is driving both increased launch volumes of our automotive products and higher quote activity. I'm very pleased with resulting rate of our business wins. You may have seen the announcement early this month that we won a significant business award from Oshkosh Defense to supply cooling models for the joint light tactical vehicles which we'll begin to launch later this fiscal year. In addition, we won significant new trends of plus program during the quarter and several new off-highway programs. We continue to launch products for electric vehicles and are quoting on additional programs with existing customers and with new customers on hybrid and liquid power cooling opportunities. We won a program during the quarter to provide cooling modules for new electric vehicle customers that we'll launch next year. And I'm very excited about the work that's being done in this area and for the growth opportunities that springs to Modine. Please turn to Page 7. Sales for our Europe segment increased 4% in the fourth quarter on a constant currency basis as a result of higher sales to commercial vehicle customers. We also add higher sales to automotive customers but this was offset by a significant drop in sales of BMW modules as the wind out of that business is nearing completion. Gross margin improved by 370 basis points from the prior year to 15.2% driven by favorable material cost and improved operating performance. We've eliminated the backlog that had created operational inefficiencies over the past several quarters resulting in improved operating performance. We also continue to make progress with our plant expansion in Hungary which is a very cost competitive operation, and we'll provide crucially needed incremental capacity for the region. In fact, we are already seeing an increasing quote activity in several key programs. In addition, we are using our latest building block technology to enable us to quote global designs for commercial vehicle radiator products. These products will be quoted from Hungary and other low cost country facilities. Adjusted operating income in Europe was up $6.1 million to $11.2 million, primarily due to gross margin improvements. Europe is also experiencing a high level quote activity on both automotive powered cooling and engine products including request for quotes on hybrid and electric vehicles. Again, I'm pleased with the win rate we are achieving and our improved cost -- with our improved cost structure. The commercial vehicle market in Europe remains strong and the automotive market continues to see modest and predictable growth of about 2%. We expect the off-highway markets to remain weak but this represents a smaller percentage of the Europe segment sales mix. Please turn to Page 8. Sales for our Asia segment were up 15% compared to the prior year on accounts of currency basis. Although our off-highway clients are trying to continue to decline, this was more than offset by a significant increase in automotive sales driven by launches of growing oil coolers in China. Adjusted operating income increased $1.5 million to $1.9 million in the fourth quarter, primarily due to higher volumes and continued cost control efforts. I'm pleased that we're able to report an operating profit in Asia for the second straight year. I just returned from a trip to our Asia facilities, I'm pleased with the sales growth the teams are projecting. I was also happy to witness the integration of our new joint venture in China. Modine and Puxin will produce stainless steel products, including EGR coolers and oil coolers; it will expedite our introduction of stainless steel products for the commercial vehicle and automotive markets in China. We are actively quoting and winning new business for the joint venture. We are targeting local Chinese customers, plenty of which place value on our ability to meet global standards, quality and design. In addition, the higher emission standards in China would require that all engine manufacturers implement emission strategies closer to the global standard seen in developed countries. This will create further opportunities for us to grow our business in this segment with products such as EGR and oil coolers. As I mentioned last quarter, we think we are near the bottom of the market for excavators in China that are not expecting a meaningful recovery anytime soon. However, the China automotive market continues to be relatively strong and we believe growth will be about 5%. We anticipate that our sales will exceed market growth due to continued launches of automotive oil coolers and related products. India continues to be a bright spot for both commercial vehicles and autos. We are capitalized on this with continued business wins out of our Modine India operations in Chennai. Turning to Page 9, sales for our Building HVAC segment were down 5% for the quarter on a constant currency basis driven primarily by lower sales of heating products in North America. As we mentioned last quarter, the warmer winter weather resulted in lower demand for our unit heaters for -- after two record setting years. We remain very confident in our ability to continue to grow this business. With new products scheduled for introduction fiscal 2017, we will expand our heating line, continue to grow our packaged ventilation line into larger tonnage sizes and introduce inverter-based cooling products in our precision cooling line targeted to improve heater center efficiencies at less than full load conditions. Gross margin for the segment decreased 330 basis points to 26.9%, primarily related to the UK business. In the UK, gross margin was down due to operating inefficiencies including those related to the move into our new manufacturing facility, along with pricing pressure from the impact of the euro exchange rate on air-conditioning market. Adjusted operating income was down $800,000 to $2.1 million, primarily due to lower gross profits partially offset by decreases in SG&A expenses. Although we saw a weaker commercial heating market in North America and software demand in air-conditioning at commercial ventilation markets in the UK, we believe these markets will recover later this calendar year with growth returning to the flat to up 6% range. Also the recent weakening of the British pound versus euro should help the competitive pricing situation with our mainline European competitors. Please turn to Page 10. Before turning over to Mick, I would like to give an update on our progress towards our Strengthen, Diversify & Grow financial objectives. Our first objective is to achieve gross cost reductions of $40 million to $50 million resulting in improved operating margin of 7% to 8%. The cost reduction is a cumulative target and will more than offset general economic inflations and contractual price downs to our customers. Second, we plan to acquire at least a $100 million of incremental non-vehicular revenue and expand our leverage ratio to between 1.5 and 2.5 times. We are specifically targeting transactions that are immediately accretive to our shareholders and that would generate sufficient cash and synergies to allow us to quickly pay down debt so that our leverage remains in our targeted range. Each of the elements that our Strengthen, Diversify & Grow transformation depends and is supported by the others; for example, growing our existing revenue base and adding diversification is important to achieve and maintain the 7% to 8% operating margin we are pursuing. And by strengthening our base with a more competitive cost structure, we position ourselves to take full advantage of growth whether organic or inorganic and deliver acceptable returns even in times when our end-markets are challenged. We are making significant progress towards our cost savings goal. Of the targeted savings, we expect 25% to come from SG&A and other personnel related savings, 25% from manufacturing footprint changes, and 50% from procurement savings. First, I'd like to discuss our targeted savings from SG&A and other personnel related deductions. This target represents a total annual savings to be in effect by April 2017 and exclusively impacted wage and benefit inflation. Following the October announcement of our SDG initiative, we initiated a number of actions targeted to reduce our SG&A and personnel cost. These actions included a limited number of employee reductions as decision not to fill a number of vacant salary positions and a variety of smaller SG&A reduction activities. Also as I mentioned last quarter, we approved 65 retirements under early retirement program in the U.S. which will result in the permanent elimination of a majority of these positions. We will backfill the remaining at a lower cost. In total, these actions will result in an annual run rate savings of $5 million which will be realized in fiscal 2017. In order to reach our target we will continue to implement cost reductions for fiscal 2017 and provide line of sight to our $10 million to $50 million goal by fiscal 2018. Next, I would like to report on our progress on our manufacturing footprint. We realized $1.8 million of savings in fiscal 2016 and are planning an additional $5 million to $10 million in savings in fiscal 2017. The Washington-Iowa transfer and associated closure continues to run ahead of schedule and will be completed in fiscal 2017. The expansion of our Nuevo Laredo, Mexico facility is complete and equipment from Washington is being installed in the finished building. In Hungary, we have finalized negotiations and procured the last remaining piece of the adjacent land required to expand the plant in [indiscernible]. We are also working on phased workforce reductions at our pleat house in Germany facility in conjunction with the expected wind down programs at that plant. For the procurement initiative, we have identified and negotiated approximately $15 million of annualized savings to-date and realized $1.9 million of gross savings in fiscal 2016. We will continue to work towards our targeted goal of $20 million to $25 million in savings by fiscal 2018. With that I'd like to turn it over to Mick for an overview of our consolidated financial results and to provide our fiscal 2017 guidance.