Robert Buckley
Analyst · CJS
Thank you. I'm going to provide you with the financial summary of our third quarter results, highlight a few areas and give you an update to our financial outlook. We started the third quarter up strong which put us in a great position to neither exceed guidance despite a fairly meaningful slowdown in the broader industrial capital spending environment in the last week of August and into September. In addition as John noted earlier, the third quarter March period where many of our key medical applications return to growth and demonstrated at the medical capital spending cycles or unrelated to the industrial capital spending cycles. These unique mix of revenue on the back of our continuous improvement business system gives us confidence and a strong foundation to deliver a consistent and predictable profit growth, while deploying capital through an acquisition focused strategy to accelerate our strategic vision. GAAP revenue was $92.3 million down 3% from $94.7 million in the third quarter of 2014 due to the divestiture of the JK Laser business earlier in the year. However, adjusted revenue growth in the quarter which excludes the JK revenues for both periods was up 4% to $92.3 million from $88.8 million. Our organic revenue growth which excludes acquisitions, divestitures and the impact of foreign exchange was up 4%. From the segment perspective, our laser product adjusted revenue was up 4% year-over-year despite a fairly significant impact from foreign exchange. Our Precision Motion adjusted revenue was up 23% year-over-year, despite a roughly $2 million decline in our PCB spindle products year-over-year. And our Vision Technologies adjusted revenue was down 5%, but is now reaching a turning point in terms of its demand at the medical capital equipment market has finally stabilized. Overall, sales into industrial – advanced industrial markets which represents 60% of the company's revenue were up high single digits, despite the slowdown in industrial capital spending. Whereas sales in our medical market which represents 40% of our sales were down just under 2%. Our bookings strength in the quarter supports a better fourth quarter for our medical sales. Third quarter GAAP gross profit was $39.9 million or 43.3% gross margin compared to $39.7 million or 41.9% gross margin in the third quarter 2014. On a non-GAAP basis, third quarter adjusted gross profit was $41.1 million or 44.5% gross margin compared to adjusted gross profit of $39.5 million or 44.5% gross margin during the same period of last year. Overall gross margins were fairly healthy in the quarter. Our continuous improvement program provided us with significant benefits in the quarter, which allowed the businesses to make a number of difficult decisions. This included discontinuing a handful of all our margin products and rationalization of legacy products that simplify our manufacturing processes and better position us for continued margin expansion. As a consequence, we see and expect continued progress on gross margin expansion as our path to achieving the goal, up 20% plus adjusted EBITDA margins outlined in the our strategic Vision. GAAP operating expenses decreased nearly $2 million in the third quarter to $30.9 million or $32.9 million in the prior period. Research and development expenses were $7.7 million or 8.3% of sales, compared to $7.7 million or 8.2% of sales in the prior period. While R&D was essentially flat year-over-year, under the covers we have dramatically shifted our investments to maximize our resources and focus on the highest returning opportunities. As an example, we opened a new research and development center in Suzhou, China, focused on being delivery technologies and products more tailored for the China market. Not only it does this increase our effectiveness China, but it also enables us to do more with less. We also continued to invest heavily in the integrated operating room and medical data collection technologies through our Vision Technologies operating segment. As John mentioned previously, the fruit of these investments are beginning to pay off as evident in a number of large OEM customer wins achieved in the quarter. For our own internal capabilities and IP are very strong in this area, you can't expect us to acquire companies that accelerate our time-to-market and further penetrate this high growth application area. SG&A expenses were approximately $20 million, or nearly 21.7%. This compared to $22 million or 22.7% of sales for the third quarter of 2014. Adjusted operating income was $13.5 million or 14.6% of sales in the third quarter, compared to $12.5 million or 13.2% of sales in the third quarter of 2014. Similarly, adjusted EBITDA was $16.1 million in the third quarter, compared to $15.4 million in the third quarter of 2014. Net interest expense in the third quarter was down slightly year-over-year and sequentially at $1.2 million. The weighted average interest rate on our senior credit facility was approximately 3.1%. Other income was approximately $850,000 in the third quarter, the majority of this income was related to earnings from our equity interest in laser quantum. I will note that we continue to monitor our investment in this business and have no plans at this time to make any significant changes. However, we're also pleased with the continued financial performance and business performance of this business, particularly around the predominantly medical oriented OEM customer base. GAAP diluted earnings per share from continuing operations was $0.19 in the quarter, compared to $0.15 in the third quarter of 2014. Adjusted earnings per share were $0.24 in the quarter, compared to $0.23 in the prior year. Turning to the balance sheet, we finished the third quarter with approximately $107.5 million in total debt and approximately $80 million in cash. In the third quarter we adopted ASU 2015-03 which resulted as a reclassification of unamortized debt issuance cost related to the senior credit facilities from other assets to debt in the consolidated balance sheet. This had the effect of reducing our debt reported on our balance sheet at $1.9 million. Consequently, our calculated net debt in the third quarter was $27.4 million, however adjusting out this accounting change, I would consider our true net debt figure to be $29.3 million. Operating cash flow from continuing operations for the third quarter with $10.9 million and $25.5 million for the first nine months of 2015. Free cash flow which we define as operating cash flow after capital expenditures was nearly $9 million or 105% of adjusted net income. Capital expenditures were $2 million in the quarter, an uptick from the second quarter largely as a consequence of investments in our Oracle ERP system. As previously mentioned, we've embarked on a multiyear implementation plan to bring all businesses in size to a single instance of Oracle. We expect to complete this initiative by the end of 2017. Working capital in the third quarter did not meet our expectations and this was largely due to the late quarter drop in demand which resulted in the company holding more inventory than required and shipping product later in the quarter than we anticipated. That being said, we have now adjusted our processes and our business systems for this climate and expect to see a healthy improvement in the fourth quarter. During the third quarter of 2015, the company also repurchased approximately 77,000 of shares in the open market for an aggregated purchase price of $1 million at an average price of $13 per share. We will continue to be opportunistic with our share repurchase program, while always considering our acquisition deal pipeline in the cash needs associated with these investments. Finally, as a consequence of our operational maturity and the progress that we've made with our continuous improvement program, we announced in the third quarter and started to execute on a three quarter restructuring program, targeting annualized cost savings of $4.5 million to $5.5 million after the program that’s fully implemented. This program is focused on consolidating our manufacturing operations and administrative locations around centers of excellence, to better optimize our facility footprint and better utilize resources. While the bulk of the restructuring actions we'll initially focus on the Vision Technology's operating segment, we also expect that Precision Motion segment to capture some benefit as a consequence of reducing redundant cost identified by its productivity programs, as well as cost reduction actions to better align the business to reduce volume. We expect the overall program to incur cash charges of $3.5 million to $4.5 million and expect to be fully completed with our actions during the second quarter of 2016. In addition, while we are not ready to give financial guidance for 2016, we do expect this restructure program to position us very strongly to deliver solid earnings growth in 2016 compared to 2015, even if the industrial capital spending environment is fairly sluggish. As we look at the remainder of 2015, we remained well on track. For the last nine months, our organization has demonstrated an ability to generate profitable growth in a number of challenge economic clients. Their ability to react quickly to change and focus on the growth opportunities gives us the confidence to remain on our revenue and earnings guidance that we provided back in January of this year, despite the weaker industrial capital spending climate. For the full year 2015, the company expect adjusted revenue of approximately $365 million to $370 million. This compares to adjusted revenue of $343 million in the full year 2014. This guidance represents anticipated year-over-year adjusted revenue growth of 6% to 8% and year-over-year organic revenue growth in the 3% to 5% range. For the full year 2015, we expect adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $60 million to $61 million, in addition we expect adjusted EPS to be in the range of $0.82 to $0.86. Adjusted gross margins for the full year expect to be in line with the third quarter of 2015. We do expect R&D expenses to finish the year and its current run rate of roughly 8.5% of sales. SG&A expenses are expected to be around 22% to 23% of sales for the full year 2015, as we build out our sales channels, strengthen our application engineering and invest in [indiscernible] of Oracle across our business lines. Interest expense have fairly significant acquisitions should finish the year around $5.1 million or flat with 2014. Our equity investment in laser quantum should finish the year at approximately $2.5 million to $3 million. And our non-GAAP tax rate is still expected to be around 36%, but I'd highlight that both our tax rate and adjusted EPS does not include any significant foreign exchange volatility which could impact both figures. I'd also highlight that this rate does not include the U.S. R&D tax credit which is currently under consideration of the U.S. Center, if this credit is renewed, it would have a favorable impact to our rate. Our fully diluted shares outstanding should be around $35 million. Restructuring expenses in the fourth quarter will climb to $2 million to $3 million as we build momentum on the 2016 restructuring program. Finally, the acquisition of Lincoln Laser company which was announced earlier today will be funded with cash on hand and is not expected to have a material impact to our financial results of capital structure in 2015. In summary, we feel very good about the state of our business and how effective we've been executing on our strategic and operational plans despite a challenging capital spending climate. We also feel well positioned to deliver profit growth in 2016 and believe we're on an accelerated track to achieving our strategic goals. This concludes my prepared remarks. We'll now open the call up for questions.