Good day and welcome to the MSA Q1 2020 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Elyse Lorenzato. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Brandon. Good morning everyone and welcome to MSA's first quarter earnings conference call for 2020. Joining me on the call today are Nish Vartanian, President and CEO; and Ken Krause, Senior Vice President, CFO, and Treasurer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that the matters discussed on this call excluding historical information are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, all projections and anticipated levels of future performance. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those discussed here. These risks, uncertainties and other factors are detailed in our filings with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10-K filed in February of this year. MSA undertakes no duty to publicly update any forward-looking statements made on this call, except as required by law. We've included certain non-GAAP financial measures as part of our discussion this morning and the non-GAAP reconciliations, as well as our Q1 press release, are available on our Investor Relations website at investors.msasafety.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to our President and CEO, Nish Vartanian.

Thanks, Elyse and good morning, everyone. Since our last earnings call in February, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted our families, our communities, our workplaces, our economy and our world. Like you, we all hope we're beginning to move toward the downside of this crisis. As we navigate through this environment, I want to start off by expressing my deep appreciation to the associates of MSA. As I've said many times before, our mission is the foundation of our success. The importance of our mission and our employees' dedication to it is today more relevant and more clear than it's ever been. The reaction by our people, working with speed and agility across the enterprise has been a reflection of a highly engaged workforce, ensuring operations continued through the crisis, with minimal disruptions to providing essential product, service and support for our customers. As a leader in safety, MSA is an essential business. Each and every day that our associates come to work in our plants around the world, with great pride they're making equipment that is helping to protect the world's first responders, energy and utility workers and so many others who are on the frontlines of this COVID-19 outbreak. During our investors' conference last year, I highlighted with the world's increasing focus on environmental and social issues, including safety, protecting workers will become an even greater priority for our businesses. The situation with COVID-19 sharply underscores that living and working safely has a profound impact on business conditions and that there is a very basic human desire to protect the world's workers. That is MSA's mission, and it's never been more important. To say I'm proud of our entire MSA team would be an understatement. I would also like to thank our supply chain partners who are also essential…

Thanks, Nish and good morning, everyone. Before I begin the P&L review and discuss the cost structure and liquidity aspects of our COVID-19 response plans, I want to step back and provide a few performance highlights. First, we started the year very strong with 7% revenue growth in constant currency. We had a good growth across a substantial portion of the portfolio, driven by a very strong finish in March. While we have seen a shift in product mix within the order book late in the quarter and into April, orders in April were healthy in total and we have a sizable backlog of business to start the second quarter. We remained favorable on the price cost equation and saw healthy product margins in the quarter. Coupled with diligent cost control, we realized incremental margins of 37%. Adjusted operating income was up 10% on a reported basis or two times the revenue growth rate. We continue to execute around the balanced capital allocation strategy. During the first quarter, we funded $16 million of dividends to shareholders and deployed $20 million to repurchase 175,000 shares to offset dilution. Leverage remains very manageable at 1.3 times EBITDA or less than one times on a net debt basis. Our efforts and responsible approach to leverage as we finish 2019 and started 2020 has positioned us well to maintain a very balanced approach to capital allocation. Now, I'd like to walk you through our first quarter results and provide more insight into how we are managing our cost structure and balance sheet through these uncertain times. Total revenue increased 7% on a constant currency basis on growth across much of the core product portfolio, as well as strong growth in air-purifying respirators or APR, which are complementary to our core offering and include --…

Thanks, Ken. The strong revenue growth and incremental margin profile in the first quarter provide a solid foundation to start the year. Our portfolio is diversified. We're well-positioned from a cost structure and balance sheet perspective to manage through these times. We'll continue to focus on protecting the health and safety of our workforce, enabling business continuity in our plants and throughout our supply chain and ramping up our manufacturing of our existing respiratory portfolio to do our part in supplying much needed PPE. Over our long history, MSA has faced many periods of turmoil and economic challenge, but we've always emerged a stronger organization and I'm confident that we're going to do that again. At this time, Ken and I will be glad to take any questions you may have. Please remember that MSA does not give guidance. Having said that, we'll now open up the call for your questions.

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Stanley Elliott with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everybody. Nice to hear your voices. Thank you for taking the question.

Thank you, Stanley.

Hey, question for you guys. Could you all -- you're kind of talking about -- let me switch gears, so, on the municipal customers, have you heard anything -- concerns around funding at that level as it relates to the fire service piece, given kind of what you have seen with sales tax receipts? I know you mentioned good visibility through third quarter. And then also kind of as a corollary, is there anything within the CARES Act that could either help that segment of the market or benefit MSA as a whole?

Sure. Yeah, Stanley. There's -- actually in the CARES Act, there's $100 million addition to the assistance to firefighter grant and that's for COVID related products. And we're well-positioned for that to pick up some business, with APR adapters for our G1 facepiece and M7 facepieces also has an APR adapter. So, we're well-positioned for that and some other opportunities within the fire service. So, there's that $100 million that was added. We haven't seen any pullback at all from the fire service. As mentioned, our bookings for fire service was quite strong in the month of April. We picked up some real nice business, some good conversions with the G1 and the backlog really built there. And that's across all three product lines. The bookings for, not only breathing apparatus, but also our turnout gear and fire helmets were quite strong in the month of April. There's always that concern with tax receipts and tax receipts pinching those municipal budgets a bit. But let's not lose sight of the fact. And we've said this in the past. And we've seen it in 2009, 2015 and other periods. When you're protecting firefighters, our product protect the lives of firefighters. And in this new day so to speak of awareness around safety, that's a top priority for municipalities, is making sure that they're protecting those frontline first responders. So, we've always seen fire departments find the money, so to speak, to replace breathing apparatus and make those purchases. Are we concerned? Sure. We look at that closely. What we may see is municipalities can't have meetings to approve something. So, they -- unless they start doing that from a remote standpoint, you might see some things delayed or we might see some evaluations delayed a bit. But the overall health of the fire service is really strong. And we're really optimistic with obviously our position in the marketplace and the products we have going in. So, we have a pretty positive outlook for that -- for the balance of the year.

Perfect. And I appreciate the April commentary. Is there anyway to give a little more color about kind of what down substantially would mean for either the head protection or some of the employment driven? And then kind of as a second shoot -- offshoot with more of -- kind of the respirators taking a bigger chunk of the revenues in the back part of the year, how do we think about incrementals -- or I guess decrementals as it were for that with the additional product coming in?

Well, let me just characterize the business, Stanley, and maybe that will help you a bit. It might be worth if you go back and you look at 2015, and see what happened with our business in 2015 and 2016. And I wouldn't be surprised if on those short cycle PPE products that we see something similar to that in declines in business, and that's for head protection -- industrial head protection. That's for obviously portable gas detection and fall protection. So, those are the three areas that will be impacted by what we've seen in the slowdown. Now not only have we seen in the month of April the slowdown with oil and gas, construction sites across the country and world have shutdown. And so that really impacted obviously hard hats and fall protection. And I don't think that will be the case for the balance of the year. So, what we saw in April might be the low point, right? So, as construction sites open up here in the spring, we could see head protection, fall protection bounce back, probably not the portable gas detection. So, maybe take a look at 2015/2016 and that might give you some -- an idea as to what happened with those short cycle products that we book and bill in the same quarter. The orders we saw in April and in the back half of March and where we built the majority of our backlog, those are really across fixed gas and flame detection, self-contained breathing apparatus, the fire service products across the board and air-purifying respirators. In the first two categories, fixed gas and flame and fire service products, those typically ship out over multiple quarters. Two, three quarters we'll see those products ship. And then, of course, we're building our capacity with air-purifying respirators. So hopefully, that gives you a little better insight into what we're seeing and where we are.

It’s great. Thank you guys very much. Best of luck.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Richard Eastman with Robert Baird. Please go ahead.

Yes. Good morning and very nice quarter. Congrats to your whole team there, Nish.

Thanks.

Nish, a couple of things that you had mentioned around backlog and strength. Does the same strength in the same product lines apply to the International business? Or will we going forward see some bifurcation between growth rates between International and North America?

Off the top of my head, Rick, and I think Ken might have more insight into this, it was fairly consistent. We saw more strength in the air-purifying respiratory products here in the Americas than we did internationally. But internationally, we also saw some good buildup and ramp-up of the APR products. So, we saw some consistency there. Really, the fixed gas and flame-detection products were stronger in International from a booking standpoint and that's really on the strength of the Middle East. The Middle East, we've seen really good activity for our new transmitter. The X&S 5000 has performed really well in that market as customers have a good understanding of the cost savings they can have when they get that product in place and it's been taking some share and doing a nice job. In fact, one of our biggest customers just approved a new technology that we acquired a couple of years ago with Senscient, open path, hydrogen sulfide detection, which was a big breakthrough for us. Getting that new technology into that major customer of ours that was about a year testing that they had performed on that product and it was really exciting that they didn't back off that in this downturn for oil and gas. So, International saw more with fixed gas and flame. I would say that the Americas a little bit stronger on the APR products. But on short cycle products, from a booking standpoint, they all declined fairly similar across the board. From an invoicing standpoint in the first quarter, the International fall protection was off significantly where I think the Americas was up maybe 1% or down 1%. The International is down so much and that's really the nature of the business there. There's a lot of engineered systems that are sold, especially in Europe and that's kind of construction type business that we weren't able to install. So, that's why you saw a much deeper decline in fall protection in the first quarter than you had in the first quarter for the Americas.

I see. Okay. Okay. And then I did want to -- just to recon again, with that sales mix going forward, does gross margin get pressured a bit just by the sales mix? I am kind of pegging off of Ken's comments where he emphasized that a little bit. But our general feeling is SCBA and clearly, the APRs would not have a gross margin perhaps that -- anything on the short cycle might have. Just curious, is that something to just pay attention to here as we start to model out the mid-section of the year?

No. Rick, the APR is actually a pretty good gross margin product line. That's right in line with the rest of our business. It's actually better than the fire service business, not quite as good as the gas detection. But no, that's a good healthy margin business for us.

Okay. Okay. And just the last thing and just around APR. Is the end market for the APR products -- I consider that more a SSC than a PPE. But is the end market for that again, industrial? And what is the end market for that? And then also the capacity that you're adding, it sounds like you have enough capacity in-house to not quite double the business year-over-year, but I think you said it was up 60%. And so, the capacity that we're going to bring online would essentially fulfill growth in the second half of the year, I mean, growth above or consistent with like 60%. Is that the cadence there?

Let's see. Let me go. On the APR side, as far as the ramp-up, obviously, we don't give guidance. But we're ramping up significantly. That 60% number is -- I don't want to say, it's conservative, because really you didn't get a full quarter in the first quarter. I mean, that's just the reality of the situation. So, double of the -- doubling of the business, I don't think is unrealistic as we look out for the full year. And the application for the product is really broad. It's across all manufacturing type applications. I saw a video clip of some workers decontaminating an airplane and they happen to be wearing our Advantage 200 mask, while they were doing that. So, it's -- the use for our half mask, full facepiece and powered air-purifying respirators, the APR adapters for firefighters, it -- those products are used in a very broad range of industries whether it's utilities or general industrial. That's across a very broad range.

I see. Okay. Okay. Very good. And that meets all standards for what we would find in Europe as well?

Correct. So, we have products that meet both CE and NIOSH standards, of course.

Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Congrats again to your team.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Our next question comes from Larry De Maria with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Just staying on this APR for a second. Can you -- just for clarification, with most of this generally outsourced and non-core and now you are ramping production capacity and it will become core. And as you ramp production capacity, just give us a handle on how big this business potential on the capacity output is going to be? And do you expect to kind of make this a sustainable business as opposed to a short to medium term bump? That's the first question.

So, as far as core and non-core, we really haven’t thought about moving air-purifying respirators into our core what we would find or how you define core products. And I really don't look across our portfolio in that regard any longer. When we started talking about core and non-core products, core products represented about 55%, 60% of our overall revenue. Today, it's between 85% and 90% of our revenue. And the non-core products are those adjacent products, the majority of that include air-purifying respirators and the ballistic helmets we sell internationally. And those are both very good gross margin product lines. When there's opportunity to invest in those product areas, we will do so when there's a good business opportunity to do so. But as far as thinking about moving that into core or non-core, it's -- that's somewhat irrelevant from an internal standpoint. From a priority standpoint, as far as investment is concerned longer term, as I look out three, five years, even seven years, the priority -- in really prioritizing where we invest from a new NPD standpoint, New Product Development, we have other priorities. The other priorities are really in that gas detection, breathing apparatus, fall protection. Those are areas where we've proven where we can really differentiate our product, drive improved margins, grow our market share and bring value to our customers and shareholders, of course. So, maybe that's another way to look at it as we -- after we get through this cycle so to speak, and we get through cycle here on what we have. Those core products that you traditionally know, that's where the vast majority of our investment will go.

To your question, too, Larry, you had asked about manufacturing. We do manufacture these respirators. We've historically manufactured these. The disposable respirator is something we do not manufacture, but we do manufacture the ballistic helmet that Nish spoke to as well as this respirator line. Part of the investment we're making on the CapEx side is just modernizing our equipment as well. We certainly see the opportunity and we see the demand coming through for respirators, but we also see the opportunity to update and modernize our manufacturing facility. And so, that's part of the process as well.

Okay. And with the incremental capacity modernization, et cetera, can you maybe just give us a handle what was APR in 2019? And what is max capacity kind of run rate once we're done with this ramping cycle?

Yeah. We’re in the process of looking at the max capacity. But I'll tell you -- I'll tell you that for the month of March, we saw, call it, between $7 million and $10 million of additional business come through in that month. So, that was about what we saw come through. So, that's -- it's meaningful, right? It's a meaningful growth opportunity for us and we continue to see those orders improve as we go through April. So -- but in terms of max capacity and max potential, I'll just tell you that $11 million to $13 million investment, we certainly are able to justify that with the demand that we're seeing over the last say six weeks.

Okay. Fair enough. That's helpful. Thank you. Now, I don’t know, maybe address the energy elephant in the room, which you talked a little bit about if I can go back to 2015, I guess. But this project's in place and we're probably not seeing the potential for downside in energy given where oil prices are. Can you give us a better idea of how maybe you think that plays out if oil may not stay where it is right now, but it's not to say also going to go back to $50 either, which would be positive. So, if it stays in this anywhere from $10 to $30 range, it's going to be a net negative, I would think overall obviously. So, how do you see that play out? When does that impact you guys more? Is it second half? Or is it 2021? And if you could just talk a little bit more holistically about the energy exposure so we investors can get a better handle on how this plays out over time, if energy prices stay depressed if this structurally impacted or not.

Sure. So, Larry, the energy business -- and again, you go back to 2015 and 2016 that's the last down cycle. And as you know, there is -- the energy market goes through a number of down cycles whether price goes up to $120 down to $40, back up to $140 I think and down to $40. And now we're down significant lows. At some point in the future, the supply will tighten up and demand will come back and the market will come back. The one thing to keep in mind is that the majority of our business in that oil and gas and in that entire system is downstream. So, we're in those refineries. And the refineries will continue to run and operate and so they'll continue to need equipment. They'll continue to do turnarounds and maintenance work in those refineries, which is where the bulk of our product goes in when they spike up in the fall and -- in the spring and in the fall for what we would call plant turnarounds. So, there's still going to be some nice opportunity there. Upstream will certainly be impacted. And as far as capital expense and capital expenditures around pipelines or new refinery or capacity, that will be impacted. So, we will see some tightness in the business around those short cycle products in head protection, fall protection and portable gas detection. But keep in mind, the construction market is a real good market for us for fall protection and head protection. So, if there is this pent-up demand for construction and a lot of government funding coming through, the fall could be a real good timeframe or time period for us for head protection and fall protection. That's when we look at the wide range of possibilities and what could happen with our business. The construction market could be a real nice space for us to offset some of the downside we would see with oil and gas. The one area that we would be challenged with is portable gas detection. The market for that in construction is much smaller than oil and gas. But for head protection and fall protection, in fall protection, we are gaining some nice market share. We could see there is the potential for a nice pop there come the fall.

Just adding a little bit of texture there, Larry, with respect to our growth rates in the past and as Nish keeps referring to 2015 and 2016. When we look at what we're dealing with right now, we don't necessarily compare this to the great recession of 2008/2009. But what we do is we look at it and we say this is a combination of 2015 and 2016 with the energy market declines, combined with 9/11 where we saw a great demand for a number of our safety products. So, it's a combination of those two. There's not one particular recession that we can look at. But if we do look at the industrial recession of 2015 when oil went from well north of $100 a barrel down to $37 in the fourth quarter of 2015, our fixed gas and flame detection business held in there. It was flat in 2015 and 2016. And part of the reason it was flat was because of the global nature of the portfolio and I spoke about that in my prepared comments. What we did see was weakness in portables and head protection. Portable is at the worst point down around 15 -- 13% to 15% and head protection was off double-digits as well. April now -- of course, in April it's hard to compare April to any other period because the economy is effectively in a coma. But with that said, we certainly do see weakness in those short cycle employment related products. But what's good to see is the fixed gas business holding in there.

Okay. And then just -- I don't want to -- last question, I don't want put words in you guys' mouth. But given your comments on April and that seems like the short term is fairly okay, given some of the offsets. So, is it safe to say that we're looking for organic growth in the first half overall and then second half declines as we start some of the stuff that plays out? Is that what you're trying to imply?

Well, shorter term, I think, when you think about growth shorter term in the second quarter, I think that's somewhat difficult because of the nature of the backlog we have, Larry. When you -- we talked about the fact that the backlog we have, which are backlogs at an all-time record. We have a record backlog. It's up I think 10% from a year ago at this point. What's in that backlog will ship out over two and three quarters. What's not in that backlog is a tremendous amount with head protection, fall protection, portable gas detection. And again, those are the things that we book and bill in the same quarter. So, that's where you're going to see -- a little bit of softness is probably here in the second quarter. Line of sight to the overall business as you get into the second half of the year, that gets really difficult. We have a real wide range of possibilities of what could happen with our business as we'll get into the second half of the year. And it's just tough to predict. You've heard that from probably every investor's call. Line of sight in the second half of the year is really tough, because you don't know if this thing falls into the background and we get back to business as usual and get a real good recovery and good things could happen or does COVID-19 come back stronger in the fall and as that creates some more problems for us. And so, we just don't have good line of sight to that. And it's real hard for us to have confidence in saying that we'll have organic growth throughout the year or in any one particular quarter. That's challenging for us. The management team has done an excellent job here in pivoting and getting product out the door for air-purifying respirator products and filling the gap. And those factors that we control, we've done a nice job of -- and I know we're going to continue to do that. It's just those macroeconomic conditions that give us some real pause.

Okay. Fair enough. I was just trying to make sure I understood your messaging. And thanks, good luck and nice quarter.

Thank you.

Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Edward Marshall with Sidoti. Please go ahead.

Hey, Nish and Elyse, how are you? Good morning.

Good.

Well, good job operating in one of the more difficult environments we've seen. And I guess we've just come to expect a high performance from you guys. I wanted to get back to APR for a second. I think it was the longest time on any call that I can remember. We can focus on non-core product line, and that kind of goes to the root of my question. As you spend what looks like, I guess, 30% of your average CapEx spend over the last couple of years on a project, I wanted to understand -- and you're not shifting in R&D spend and the margins, let's just call okay, kind of in line with the rest of the business. Just wanted to get your sense as to the decision to spend kind of what could be a short term improvement in the sales line, or do you see this kind of a shift in the overall way people do business and therefore, the string of revenues behind that is a much longer term?

Yeah. I think when we -- and I'll answer the first part from a market standpoint. Maybe Ken can add a bit around how we're looking at our CapEx and some of the thought around that. But when we look at what we're seeing with demand for air-purifying respirator products, we believe -- and Ken mentioned it, we believe that there is going to be a build of stockpile. There's going to be demand that could continue into 2021 at an elevated level and maybe even longer. I think the attitude around what occurred and the damage it's done to our economy is going to have a significant shift and how we're looking at respiratory protection products and making sure -- business is making sure that they have stockpiles and available product going into the future. So, we see demand that would probably continue at an elevated level into 2021. And a lot of this CapEx is quite frankly updating a lot of equipment that we have in our plant. It was to a degree in our CapEx plan. We do a five-year outlook plan on CapEx. And really what we're doing is we're pulling a lot of these projects forward, so we're able to get this ramped up quickly for this spike in demand. And hopefully, this continues into 2021. And then as things go back to normal and I think the back to normal will be elevated from past history and we'll be in a much better position from an operations standpoint to support that as we go forward. As far as the CapEx and how we're looking at that, Ken, maybe you can provide more color on that.

Yeah. Sure. As I spoke about one of the questions previously, we are certainly compelled to make this investment. And the reason I say we're compelled is because when we see -- look at the returns, for example, in the month of March, my reference to $7 million to $10 million of additional revenue in that month, if we just play that forward and use that as a run rate going forward, which oftentimes can be hard to do. But even if you just look at the order pattern in April, this investment has an opportunity to pay for itself in a very short time period. And so, we couldn't pass up that opportunity to make this investment in a line where margins are very healthy. And so, we decided to go forward and make this investment into an area that needed some investment. It was an area that we saw an opportunity to modernize and upgrade some of our equipment.

So, it sounds like it meets all the hurdles as well. Is it just -- it's refreshing I guess this get the sense that it's accelerating plans that were already in place. Yeah. So, I wanted to ask I guess about there's been manufacturing, construction, et cetera, layouts furloughs. Can you talk about the new spend as those workers come back? I mean, do they just pick-up their helmet and go back to work. I mean, kind of talking through kind of how the spend works as blue collar workers start to come back to the line? Thanks.

Ed, that's a really interesting question and you bring up a good point. And what we've seen -- again, when you go back and you look at the different cycles we go through with those short cycle products, what we see is in the declines, the declines are always greater than the GDP decline. It's just the way it works, right? The supply chain stops. People really slowdown on buying hard hats, replacement suspensions and fall protection, et cetera, then the whole supply chain behind that slows down. And we see this accelerated slowdown. When things come back, they bounce back. They bounce back hard, because what you said isn't true. The construction worker does not keep their hard hat. They typically -- the fall protection products aren't kept. So, when they come back to work, they buy a new hard hat. They get some new fault protection product and that's -- and then the supply chain begins to fill and you get the synergistic effect in the business where end users are building their inventory, channel partners build their inventory, and as supply chain builds and we get that nice lift in growth and bounce back in head protection. So, when you go back and you look at our growth patterns with -- for hard hats and I would say fall protection in a similar category, you'll see that. Fact of the matter is, as we may see depressed sales to a degree with portable gas detection, but we know that market is going to come back. And when it comes back and they have a little extra money, they're going to replace their entire fleet of portable gas detection when it comes to oil and gas. So that will bounce back strong at some point. It could be…

There's a lot of thought process to go into that something for me to kind of really dig into for a while. But the final one for me, as I think about distributors, we've sat on a few calls this earnings season, talked about de-stocking. When I look at your supply chain and I look at your product lines, it doesn't look like you are actually seeing signs of de-stocking. Is that something that you expect coming down the line, or is it that health and safety is more of a -- as we've talked about several times, defensive product and therefore, kind of skip that de-stocking stage on the supply chain?

Yeah. We didn't see any -- there's not any de-stocking that we've seen in our products. In fact, what was really interesting to us and we were a little surprised, quite frankly is the strength of hard hats during the first quarter. If you look at our hard hat business, it was I believe up 1% overall. We were really surprised by that. We would assume that there would have been some de-stocking, and there would have been -- the business would have declined some. But we're not seeing that. And there are some distributors who are well funded and in a good position. They are also talking about the fact that we could see a bounce back in construction and they want to be positioned with product going forward. So, there are a couple of distributors who are looking out ahead and trying to position themselves if there is somewhat of a bounce back from a construction standpoint.

Yeah. And there is just -- and just adding on that. There is just not a tremendous amount of inventory in the channel. There is a lot of it -- a lot of our business books and ships and gets to the end user in a pretty quick manner. And so, there isn't a tremendous amount of inventory sitting out there in those channels.

Got it. Got it. I want to actually -- I could squeeze one more in. Opportunistically, you guys, I think do a lot of -- most transactions with M&A and that you drip on privately held businesses. As we go through maybe a difficult time with -- over the next 12 months, is -- are you looking opportunistically? Do you expect that some of those family run businesses that you look at from time-to-time may look at the next 12 months as that's it we're going to -- where are you on some of those M&A discussions? And how do you think about using your balance sheet aggressively in an environment that could see some weakness for the next 12 months?

We continue. Actually, we have a meeting on our M&A pipeline after this meeting here today just to update on where we are and what's happening with that pipeline. So, we continue to cultivate that, analyze the pipeline and look at that. MSA's balance sheet is a real source of strength to help us in uncertain times. We know how to batten down the hatches and get through a storm. We will certainly use our resources and the strength in that balance sheet to expand our business when the opportunity presents itself. One of the great moves we made when you think back in the history was 2009, when we didn't quite know if we were out of the Great Recession, we went out -- made the largest acquisition we ever made and acquiring General Monitors, I think we've levered up to three and a half, four times our EBITDA at that time and did make a dynamic change in the business in doing so. So, we're in this for the long-term. And we're going to look at things carefully and spend our money wisely. So, we can serve our customers, carry out our mission and provide a good return for our investors.

The same goes for Latchways in 2015. When we acquired Latchways, it was during the industrial recession. And so, we've taken the opportunity during past downturns to use our balance sheet. And we are positioned well to go on the offensive when appropriate when we see that opportunity and have that clarity in terms of go forward direction.

Great. Great. Thanks for all your responses. Good work this quarter, and hope everyone stays safe and well. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ed.

Our next question comes from Garo Norian with Palisade Capital Management. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Just had two quick questions on the APR investments. First, how certain I guess is the line of sight on both getting the equipment you want to install and kind of ability to get that with whatever service people -- whatever needs to happen to get it into the facility? And then second, is it right to think about it as a series of different investments so that it's not like the ramp-up is nothing, nothing, nothing and then all of a sudden the big bang when you get to having everything in place? Thanks.

So, Garo, what I'll do is I'll answer some of this and Steve Blanco will join us. And Steve, as most of you know, is Vice President of MSA Operations for several years before becoming President of the Americas. And Steve has obviously been intimately involved in this and has real depth of knowledge around what we're doing with the investment. But what I'll say, Garo, is we've got a lot of senior people, veteran people who are on this project. One person, in particular, has been with us for 35 years. He started, I think, a month or two I did. And he is intimately involved in what we're doing. And in fact, we are actually bringing a couple of retirees who have tremendous knowledge in building the line of APR and they are here to help us, which is fantastic. So, we have a high degree of confidence of being able to do this. Originally, we thought it would be a four to six-month period to ramp-up. And I'll let Steve comment more around that. We're just looking now like around 4.5 months. We're already seeing some investment, show some yield improvements. So, there's a series of investments that we're making that will help over a period of time. There is one component of it, which will make a significant improvement and that will be somewhat the last piece that will come later this summer. But why don't I have Steve chime in here and give a little more color around that?

Yeah. Thanks, Nish. And Garo, I think when you think about our ramp-up, I think you're right to look at it in phases. It really is a phased approach that is going to extend out through into and throughout the third quarter, maybe a little bit into the fourth quarter. And you look at it, it's not only the capital equipment, because the team has done a great job with employees as well. Nish mentioned early on in his prepared remarks, we've hired dozens of new employees and I think we've done a great job there. And that will continue. Training is a critical aspect of that, and we want to make sure that we get the right people doing the right work. So, I see that -- and I think the team expects that throughout the year.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Nish Vartanian for any closing remarks.

Yeah. I would like to conclude today's call by providing just a few closing thoughts and comments. First, I want to thank everyone for your interest in MSA and we never take that for granted. Second, it goes without saying that we're living in a very different time than our last earnings call in February. Our team did a great job of pivoting and executing in Q1, but the business conditions are challenging. And like so many other organizations, our line of sight into the second half is not as clear as it was entering the year. That said, I do know this. MSA has a diversified portfolio of products and end markets that we serve. We know that defense development has served us well in the past in market downturns, the most recent being 2015. We know that our brand and market position has never been stronger. Our product portfolio and NPD pipeline has never been more robust. Our balance sheet has never been stronger. Our talent and level of employment -- employee engagement is as strong today as it's ever been. And our mission of protecting people's lives as never in 106 years been more important or more relevant throughout the world than it is today. And the world hasn't stopped spinning. And the need for safety equipment has not diminished. In fact, it's front and center more than ever before. For example, the recently enacted CARES Act that add $100 million to the fire service for COVID-19 related products is a good example of that. And organizations and companies across the world in a diverse range of markets are buying safety equipment every day and it's our job to make sure it's MSA. So, once again, thank you for joining us this morning, and please stay safe everyone.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.