Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Modine Manufacturing Company’s First Quarter Fiscal 2020 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 conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Ms. Kathy Powers, Vice President, Treasurer, Investor Relations and Tax.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our conference call to discuss Modine’s first quarter fiscal 2020 results. I’m here with Modine’s President and CEO, Tom Burke; and Michael Lucareli, our Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer. We will be using slides for today’s presentation, which can be accessed either through the webcast link or by accessing the PDF file posted on the Investor Relations section of our website modine.com. This morning, Tom and Mick will present our first quarter results for fiscal 2020 and will provide an update to our outlook for the rest of the year. At the end of the call, there will be a question-and-answer session. On Slide 2 is our notice regarding forward-looking statements. This call may contain forward-looking statements as outlined in our 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.

Thank you, Kathy, and good morning, everyone. Overall, first quarter sales decreased 7% or 3% on a constant-currency basis. Our Building HVAC segment had another strong quarter with sales up 11% on a constant-currency basis versus the prior year. However, both our VTS and CIS businesses had year-over-year sales declines, primarily due to currency impacts and softening end markets. Our first quarter adjusted operating income was $28.4 million, down $7.6 million, or 21% from the prior year. Operating margins in our VTS and CIS segments were negatively impacted by lower sales volumes. While our performance this quarter wasn’t too far off our internal expectations, we did see some recent softening that caused us to adjust our expectations for the rest of fiscal 2020. This has been driven by a number of trends in macroeconomic factors. First, the stronger U.S. dollar is having a significant impact in our year-over-year revenue comparisons. Second, in recent weeks, we’ve experienced a significant slowdown in some of our key vehicular end markets, including the global automotive in off-highway highway markets. In addition, we’re now expecting slower growth in our served data center markets, particularly related to the timing of sales to our large data center customer in the CIS segment. Finally, we are benefiting from lower commodity prices. They continue to be somewhat offset by the negative impact of tariffs on our earnings. As a result, we’re taking a number of actions to reduce this negative impact in the fiscal 2020, and I’ll highlight those in a few minutes. We’re focused on improving what we can’t control and I’m pleased with the improvements within our operations group and the procurement team is currently exceeding our cost savings targets. Before reviewing the segment results, I would like to provide a brief update on a potential sale…

Good morning, everyone. Please turn to Slide 9. As Tom previously mentioned, we anticipated a difficult first quarter comparisons based on year-over-year volume and cost variances. First quarter sales decreased $37 million, or 7%. As covered in previous slides, this is mostly due to weakness across our vehicular markets, a difficult year-over-year data center comparison and negative foreign currency impact. On a constant-currency basis, sales were down 3%. Gross profit of $83 million was lowered by 12%, resulting in a gross margin of 15.8%. The downside conversion was generally in line with our expectations based on typical fixed cost absorption. In addition, foreign exchange had a negative impact on our gross profit compared to the prior year. Within VTS and CIS, gross margins were down due primarily to lower volumes, combined with the doubling of our Mexican labor rate and negative tariff impacts. Building HVAC had strong gross margin improvement, up 200 basis points on higher sales and volume and favorable pricing. I want to take a moment to review our reported SG&A costs of $63.5 million. Please note, this includes $8.4 million of consulting and advisory fees related to the potential automotive business sale. In order to help offset the volume and tariff challenges, we are reducing other SG&A costs. As an example, excluding the unique costs related to our automotive business sale, SG&A would be down significantly from the prior year. Last, please note these items have been excluded from our adjusted operating income and you can see the detail in our appendix. Adjusted operating income was $28.4 million, which is down $7.6 million from the prior year. As Tom reviewed the earnings growth in Building HVAC was offset by the decline in VTS and CIS. In addition to the volume decline and tariffs, operating income was negatively…

Thanks, Mick. With that, we will take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from David Leiker from Baird. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning, David.

Hey, good morning.

A couple of things on the data center business. We’re hearing mixed things, some people talk about it being really strong, other people talking about it being a little bit weaker. Can you talk a little bit about what you’re seeing in particular? And is this something that’s just a soft spot we’re going through, or is there something more structural there?

Yes. I think it’s – as we’ve said all along, David, we kind of used the word lumpy to describe data center sales. If you look at it, when we close the deal with the acquisition of Nevada, the sales have increased significantly from a lower point in initial year to the record high of last year, which capacity build out with one customer and others that we supply through components, growing significantly, that the drop is really kind of focus on the capacity needs. So, there’s no – as we have communication with – through the customer and we had a team out there just the last couple weeks, so that everything appears to be normal just as they look at their capacity, their capacity needs, they drop projects or add projects. And right now they – and there was this thing that they’re going to drop their capacity needs a little bit in the near-term. That could change, but we don’t see anything from a general market standpoint describing, let’s say, a macroeconomic change there. It just happens to be timing right now based on all the feedback we received.

We – I mean, we have some other companies with exposure into that segment and they seem – they don’t seem to be experiencing the same thing. So is this a customer mix issue or is more of a concentration as opposed to the whole space?

No doubt, it’s where we’re concentrated. We have a high mix with a certain customer and that’s kind of driving with the changes near-term right now. There is some – a little bit of on the other side with the general components we supply into engineering firms and contractors who supply there, but that’s not a significant. Mick, do you want to add anything to that?

Okay. And then on the guidance in the end markets, what are you – you directionally gave some comments in terms of those end markets. But the big swing factor, as we’ve been gone through things right now has been China. So what are your assumptions there as you look at the vehicular markets there in China in terms of…?

Yes. So we – for the balance of the year, we see China Automotive, Asia Automotive, but let’s just talk about China specifically right now, it’s about 7% down for the balance of the year. I think that pretty much ties in with your estimate. I think you’re at 8% down.

Yes.

We’re also seeing a pretty significant drop in India, okay, which isn’t as big as a China market, obviously. But we have a pretty good concentration there with a large customer that we actually export from India with and they’re seeing a significant drop in India, but 9%, which is really kind of tied to some of the banking changes we’re making on financing availability that type of things what we think so. But overall, a pretty high single-digit number across Asia on the automotive side.

And then some of the regular – regulatory things going on in China that’s disrupting some of the end markets. Is that having any ripple effect on terms of your product and launches and new technologies you bring to market for China six?

Well, not new technologies. You’re talking regulatory changes in China you are talking about or in India? I didn’t…

Yes. China has gone from the [indiscernible] emission standards right now and there’s some – it looks like a little bit of a stutter step in terms of how that’s going to get implemented.

Yes. So we’re seeing some push out on launches because of that. So with Europe, with that China six being delayed a little bit, we had some planned launches, specifically on commercial vehicle programs that are being delayed. So yes, we’re – there’s an impact there. On technology, no, just a delay.

And then the last item here and this gets at a strategic review process that you’re going through. So sometimes when companies announce a strategic review for a certain part of their business, customers become reluctant of bidding new contracts or learning new business. Is any of that happening that – with you in that business right now?

That’s a great question. It was, of course, one of the concerns we had after publicly announcing that. We’ve actually one business, okay, since the announcement. And you can’t give more specifics, but a significant global supplier customer, excuse me, that sources with a significant program and even a second opportunity. So right now I think – what I’d like to think is because of our transparency and getting it out there and really forming a strong automotive team, that’s clear to the marketplace and they’ve been engaged with our current customers and current pursuits, I think, there’s kind of a confidence that is being built that this transaction will be successful. So knock on wood right now, we’re not seeing any negative impact.

Okay. I was on another call, so I missed the very beginning part of it. But did you give any update on the process, timing or anything along those lines?

No. Just generally that we’re in process, can’t give any updates. We’re moving along as planned and soon as we can get something, we will. So – but nothing new to report.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] I’m showing no further questions at this time. I’d now like to turn the conference back to Kathy Powers.

Thank you, and thank you for joining us this morning. A replay of the call will be available through our website in about two hours. We hope you have a great day. Goodbye.