Tom Burke
Analyst · Baird. Your line is now open
Thank you, Kathy and good morning everyone. On today's call I will discuss our second quarter results and provide an update on our Strengthen, Diversify & Grow strategic transformation including the pending acquisition of Luvata HTS announced in early September. After that Mick will provide a more detailed review of our consolidated financial results and review our revenue and earnings guidance for fiscal 2017. I will then provide a few closing remarks prior to opening the call for questions. Like many other global industrial companies, we experienced a continuation of weak market conditions last quarter especially in North and South America. Global off-highway markets continue to pose significant year-over-year declines except in China where recent infrastructure investments are driving meaningful improvements in construction equipment volumes. Commercial vehicle markets are mixed with Asia and Europe seeing solid growth while North America continues to be weak and forcing run expectancy improvements in the North America heavy-duty truck market until the second half of calendar 2017. On a positive side, global automotive markets continue to be strong particularly in Europe and China. Building HVAC markets have remained flat from the prior year with weaker than expected pre-season stocking sales of heating products in North America. Overall, our sales in the second quarter were down 4% from the prior year on a constant currency basis while largest decline was in our Americas segment driven by two things; market weakness and heavy-duty trucks and then the off-highway market and slower than expected new program launches. Our adjusted operating income was $3.6 million, down $4.5 million from the prior year. Adjusted loss per share was $0.01 for the quarter, down $0.05 from the prior year. Let me be clear upfront. I am disappointed with the performance of this quarter. In addition to the volume decline, we also experienced temporary operational inefficiencies I’ll describe in more detail during my segment review. Despite these challenges, I have high confidence in our ability to deliver a much improved second half and I am pleased we will be able to maintain our full year guidance. We are addressing these challenges head-on and in more circumstances have already corrected the issues. We are able to improve even in the phase of continued market weakness due to our focus on delivering the benefits outlined in our Strengthen, Diversify & Grow strategy. We have achieved significant and sustainable savings today from this program and expect this to be evident in our second-half results. Now, I would like to briefly review the segment results. Turning to page 6, as I mentioned, sales for the Americas segment were lower than expected and our gross margins were also impacted by temporary operating inefficiencies. This was a very complex quarter for the North America team doing mostly the challenging credit transfers, multiple program launches and wind downs. We are actively addressing these issues with majority of these inefficiencies now corrected. This will contribute to second half earnings improvement. Sales decreased 13% year-over-year on a constant currency basis primarily due to continued weakness in the commercial vehicle and off-highway markets, partially offset by higher sales to automotive customers. Sales to commercial vehicle customers in North America were down 38% from the prior year and off-highway sales were down 20%. Brazil continues to be in a recession with declines in the commercial vehicle and automotive markets. Our largest year-over-year decline in Brazil was in our aftermarket business which was down 26% versus the prior year. Markets were down slightly with the largest driver relating to the aftermarket decline was our SAP conversion in Brazil which necessitated an extended shut down for cut over and implementation of a new warehouse management system. We think Brazil is our last business unit to convert to SAP and we expect aftermarket sales to return to normal volumes in the second half of the year. Gross margin declined by 370 basis points to 12.6% due to the drop in sales volume and temporary operating inefficiencies in the quarter. As I mentioned, we had higher manufacturing costs related to the transfer of production from Washington, Iowa along with hire scrap and labor inefficiencies in both launches and planned reductions in sales. These concerns are now well in hand. In addition, we are ahead of schedule in transferring production from Washington, Iowa and expect to seize production in the plant this quarter. SG&A was up $900,000 or 6% primarily due to $1.6 million increase in legal reserve in Brazil for a previously disclosed matter. This was partially offset by savings from our SDG initiatives. Adjusted operating income in the Americas segment was $1.8 million, down $6.9 million from the prior year. As previously discussed, this is due to lower gross profit resulting from the lower sales volume and operating inefficiencies in the quarter. Although we are not planning for significant market improvements in the second half of the year, we are already seeing significant improvements in our operating performance based on the actions addressing the issues I described earlier. We expect to see an improvement in volume from the product launches and in sales mix along with continued benefits from the closure of the Washington, Iowa plant and transfer production to our expanded facilities in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. I just returned from Nuevo Laredo and was very pleased with the progress the team is making in launching our new facility. Finally, we remain diligent in our cost reduction efforts and will continue to benefit from lower compensation related expense due to headcount reduction. Please turn to page 7, sales for our Europe segment second was down 3% in the second quarter on a constant currency basis as a result of planned program wind downs and lower sales to off-highway customers. Automotive sales were flat during the quarter as market related volume increases were offset by $4 million decrease in BMW modules as this wind-down of production nears completion. Gross margin improved by 160 basis points from the prior year despite the decrease in sales. This improvement was due to both favorable sales mix and operating performance. The positive sales mix was due in part to the planned reduction of a low-margin commercial vehicle radiator program and higher volumes of automotive oil coolers. The performance improvement was largely due to procurement savings and lower exponential freight as compared to the prior year. We continue to be pleased with the operating performance of the European segment. Adjusted operating income was up $400,000 to $5.5 million due primary to the higher gross profit. We are seeing ongoing growth in our automotive engine business and we see further opportunities in the market as Europe’s automotive OEs intensify their development of electric vehicles promoting is well positioned with our proven technology for this growing market. In addition, I am pleased to announce that we were awarded our first business win in Europe with our new global commercial vehicle radiator platform. As I previously mentioned, our focus is on expanding our low cost country footprint in Hungary in order to offer the best possible products to our commercial vehicle customers at a competitive price. This win along with other rewards in India, China and North America validates our commercial vehicle radiator strategy. Please turn to page 8, sales for our Asia segment were up 41% compared to the prior year on a constant currency basis. This improvement was primarily related to higher sales to automotive and off-highway customers in China, and incremental sales related to our new joint venture. We continue to see strong volumes for our automotive products from both market improvements and launch activities particularly for automotive oil coolers. We are pleased with the growth of our Asia segment and expect this high growth rate to continue. In addition, we are finally starting to see improvements in the construction market in China with substantial increases in the sale of excavator. We have a strong position in this market which has been depressed for several years and I’m encouraged that we're finally seeing market and volume improvement. The higher sales volume led to $1.6 million improvement in gross profit or 76% increase from the prior year. Gross margin improved by 310 basis points to 14.9%. Operating income for the Asia segment increased $2 million for the second quarter compared to the prior year primarily due to higher sales volumes and lower SG&A expenses, and we are pleased with the progress that our Asia team is making across the region in growing our business. Turning to page 9, sales for our building HVAC segment were up approximately 1% on a constant currency basis. In North America, there were lower sales of heating products during the pre-season stocking season versus the prior year and lower sales of ventilation products which market as our Canadian competitors benefited from the weaker Canadian dollar. This was offset by higher sales of both cooling and ventilation products in the UK. Our team is focused on correcting the decline in gross margin which fell to 25.8% in the quarter. This decrease was due mainly to product mix as cooling products in UK generally have lower margins than North America heating products. UK margins continued to be pressured by labor inefficiencies which we are actively addressing. Also, we have higher year-over-year depreciation expense related to the replacement assets associated with the Airedale fire. Similar to the Americas segment, we expect to see significant sales and margin improvement in the second half of the year, particularly when we customarily have stronger heating sales. We have put some additional resources and expertise in the segment, and are focused on making improvements to our UK business. This includes implementing aggressive pricing practices, reducing headcount significantly in both of our UK locations and implementing aggressive overhead reduction in spending limits. We expect that these actions will quickly result in improved profitability for the segment starting in the third quarter with the full effect in the fourth quarter. Please turn to page 10, before turning over to Mick, let me give you an update on our Strengthen, Diversify & Grow objectives including our pending Luvata HTS acquisition. As announced on September 06, we have entered into an agreement to acquire Luvata HTS, a leading manufacturer of commercial and industrial coils, coolers and related products primarily for the HVAC&R markets. This acquisition brings together all of the key attributes of our strength in diversifying growth strategy and is a key component in the transformation of our business into a more diversified thermal management company. After the acquisition is completed, approximately 40% of our revenue will be from sales to industrial end markets, which is directly in line with the goals laid out in conjunction with our SDG framework. Luvata HTS will diversify our customer base, which is currently relatively concentrated in vehicular segments will also reduce our exposure to these cyclical markets. Subject to customary closing conditions, we expect this acquisition and related financing to close by the end of this calendar year. We are also on target to achieve gross cost reductions of $40 million to $50 million designed to help move us toward a higher operating margin of 7% to 8%. In fact we will benefit yet this fiscal year from a large portion of the cost reductions, which will support our strong second half earnings forecast. As a reminder, our operating margin target is ultimately dependent upon revenue growth since the metric is net of other economic factors. Today, we have identified or implemented actions that will lead to $40 million of total gross savings on a annual run rate basis. To achieve these savings, we have focused on SG&A reductions, manufacturing footprint savings and our global procurement initiative. Our team in North America has accelerated the timetable for the closure of the Washington, Iowa plant as production being transferred to other Modine facilities and the plant will be closed during the third fiscal quarter, as I mentioned earlier. We are also making changes to our European region, transferring production of certain product lines from our plant in Pontevico, Italy to one of our two facilities at Hungary. We continue to work on our plant expansions at Hungary and Mexico and are actively quoting from these cost competitive facilities. We have achieved significant savings from our global procurement initiative and we’re still identifying and negotiating additional savings as we work through a wide range of product and commodity value streams. The procurement teams have done an excellent job in driving these savings even in markets where volumes were down year-over-year. We announced our Strengthen, Diversify and Grow strategic framework one year ago, we remain fully confident we will be able to achieve these objectives outlined in that program within the specified timeframe. With that I’d like to turn over to Mick for an overview of our consolidated financial results and review of our fiscal 2017 guidance.