Rich Wasielewski
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question
Thanks, Paula, and good morning, everyone. Our third quarter saw, plus executed on several key strategies and events. We acquired and integrated design engineering service from Devicix specializing in medical devices. We had billing from our new PCB operation out of Mexico after absorbing ramp up cost over the past several months. Our expansion in China move forward with several milestones accomplished. We selected our location, secured an agreement on a facility lease, hired the plant OP manager, all keeping us on track and on plan for a mid-2016 production launch. We moved our corporate offices to a new location in Maple Grove, Northwest suburb of Minneapolis. The new offices provide needed space for growth and expansion for our engineering, strategic sourcing and business development teams. Creating a more collaborative environment building on the One Nortech solution for our customers. And we continued our 25th anniversary celebration recognizing three facilities, honoring their heritage and commitment in Nortech and its customers. The event included testimonials from defense customers emphasizing the importance of our product and service to our troops in our military operations. And from our strategic medical customers how we helped improve and save people’s life. It was always good for our -- its always good for our employees to hear directly from our customers and how important they are not only to the OEM, but the end user of the applications. Their pride and job satisfaction shows up in our quality and workmanship and that's why they come to work. Looking at the economy and industrial trend, on the economy, we agree with many of our peer companies that we are still experiencing mix performances. Pockets of sluggish and pockets of improving demand vary by markets and by customers. We are feeling some macro-economic impacts in our customers are too. Global uncertainty, softness in the oil and gas, and the strong barrel [ph] continues to affect our largest customers. However, we also have other top ten customers who are showing signs of stability and recovery. After trending negatively from most of the year, we are seeing increased activity and it’s showing up in our backlog. Considering the overall EMS industry in North America, the analyst firm, New Venture Research estimates 6% revenue growth both in 2015 and now in 2016. This is down considerably from a robust 12% in 2014. When we look at the EMS peers in our side range companies over a 100 million, less than a 500 million in annual sales, our performance is on par with -- on a year-to-date basis. With that as background let us look at our third quarter results. Our sales in the third quarter showed a healthy increase up 13% sequentially to 30.4 million and up 8% over the prior year. Our industrial customers led the way up 14% and are steadily recovering over the past several quarters. As we discussed on a number of our quarters calls it is the industrial markets that are taken biggest hits since the 2009 financial recession. Our industrial strategies were simplified. So One Nortech improved the qualifications of new business opportunities and increases the penetration with existing accounts like cross selling all of our service offerings into integrated solution and its starting to take hold. Our new acquisition was also a contributing factor recording 1.1 million in additional revenue in a quarter. Our 90-day backlog on September 30th was 24 million was up 23% in the beginning of the quarter. Backlog for the industrial and aerospace customers showed double-digit percentage increases both sequentially and year-over-year. Our medical backlog was down from the prior year but posted a healthy sequential increase aided in part by 1.3 million from our acquisition. Taking a deeper dive into our three key markets. For industrial as just mentioned it was another strong quarter with many of our positive trends continuing. Sales were up sequentially and over the prior year along with the backlog. The majority of our industrial segments are having success. Semiconductor equipment continues to strengthen, year-over-year for the third quarter were up 61%, for the year growth was just under 50%. Increases have been driven by our high-level box build assembly expansion and our capabilities with specialized cable assembly. Transportation is another bright spot for us year-over-year we’re up 34% in the third quarter and full year is up 35%. So we've been very consistent in our growth in this area. Some of this is driven by the upcoming regulations for tracking vehicles, fleet management services and time on the road. Power systems for the quarter year-over-year we’re up 79% and year-to-date up 24%. This is really driven by working through early engagement and gain featuring our high-level assembly integration. Some other industrial customers are still experiencing mixed results. Process management and control due to the oil and gas economics as well as the relatively strong U.S. dollar continues to affect the segment as it has in the past two quarters. As it relates the oil and gas we’re down just over 30%, for the three quarters our control business however is up 25%. Environmental controls were slightly down in this sub-segment through third quarter due to NPI, New Product Introduction delays from our customers. Turning to defense and aerospace, aerospace/defense was up 10% both sequentially and over prior year there are signs of positive momentum as mentioned in recent calls including strengthening backlog, bookings in pipeline. Our quarterly bookings were the highest we’ve seen in two years, our 90 day backlog ended the quarter at 5.5 million up 27% sequentially and 48% over the prior year. Our defense successes are driven through our continued unit long term relations with major customers. The vehicle market has started to return in earnest including our recent multiyear award related to the joint light tactile vehicle project. Our extensive experience with the army equipment and their platforms will also enable growth in this associated sub segment including unmanned applications. We recently won a multiyear bomb program that is beginning to increase their orders. Medical revenues were up 21% sequentially and 1% over prior year, through investments like the Devicix acquisition were moving up to the front of the early engagement phase. And Devicix perfectly complement our existing medical device capability, centered on our medical device production facilities in Milaca, Minnesota which was acquired in 2010. We can support all levels of medical devices that’s 1, 2 and 3 by providing design, manufacturing and post market service. We also have experience in navigating the challenging FDA regulatory process. Nortech has had successfully introduced over 40 medical device products through the FDA regulatory process and now with Devicix we’ll be able to communicated a combined 300 devices designed and/or produced, an impressive history of FDA performance and availability. We’re seeing demand expand at both Devicix engineering, their design services and Nortech engineering, production transport services. Especially with the promise of full integration. We've seen four engineering service projects already booked and required our FDA registrated manufacturing capability and are in line for additional opportunity for these same customers. To finish off, the medical market our largest medical customer has raised their demand forecast for the first time in nine months and that bodes well for us heading into the fourth quarter, and also helping us with the improved customer mix. Let's moving on to gross margin, given our recent gross margin performance I'll spend little more time on the causes and the corrective actions. For the third quarter we generated 2.9 million in gross margin dollars at 9.5% of sale, up sequentially 83 basis points and $460,000 to the second quarter. Volume accounted for the majority of the improvements in both dollars and percentage, there are price and cost improvement actions underway to get the margins more in line where they need to be. When you compare to last year we’re down 300 basis points. Our ongoing investigation analysis into the causes of the drop is centered on three major opportunities, customer and product mix, ramp of cost for Mexico PCBA expansion and new product introductions and higher labor cost. The customer and product mix is industrial versus medical, industrial have increased from 48% of the total sale to 53% of total sales in 2015 and the medical market has decreased from 38% to 34%. There is currently a considerable delta between the lower industrial margins and the medical margins. We expect this mixed improve overtime with our medical engineering acquisitions and the new medical products in momentum, coupled with a more aggressive industrial qualification reporting process, focusing more on value and less on price. The ramp up cost for the Mexico PCBA operation has averaged close to $35,000 per month. This is now behind us as we have gone into full production mode at the end of September. The mix of new products introduces into the system this quarter are more complex and required more setup and engineering support than expected cutting into the margins. Last year's third quarter average 14% gross margin for new products and this year we're at 4%. Corrective actions are being taken at the quote and order processing phases. Item such as setup engineering support, part qualification cost are now being more heavily considered where it makes good business practice at -- in a much earlier stage in the process. The other major areas of cost that has showed up in our increasing -- the other major area is our increasing cost of labor and labor related items such as taxes and health insurance that are outpacing our efficiencies. Actions taken are at an increased emphasis in investment into automation and lean manufacturing. Our Mexico and Asia strategies once fully implemented not only support our growth initiatives, but also provide options to deal with the cost and pricing pressure facing us today. There are two other areas of cost that our management team is focused on and they provide major opportunities for improvement. Our material cost which is 50% plus of our total revenue and our underutilization plan capacity, on the material opportunity we're implementing a collaborative global source and team strategy and a large part of that strategy is expansion into the Asia markets and their supply chain. It will give us a sourcing presence for low cost alternatives that is long overdue. The plant capacity studies are ongoing, locations, building, equipment, labor availability, plant capabilities, technical and product knowledge along with qualification and quality certification, customer preferences and financial considerations are all factors that are taken in the consideration. We visit this area on an ongoing basis as I just mentioned. Because our business and customer requires change so quickly and our planning window is so narrow, we have to adjust accordingly. Just going to get off the script little bit to talk about the third quarter here when you’re talking about the narrow window. We had a nice quarter at $30 million, we had $9 million shipments in July, August was $8.3 million and then the rest over $12 million was shipped in the September, so when you’re going from the $8.3 million to $12 million, you’re talking about 50% increase in manufacturing requirements and demand and it puts a stress and complexity on the system. We do have in place the con-bonds [ph] and vendor managed inventory, but when you're talking about that increase and not level it out, it just puts stress on the entire system. Moving on to SG&A, our selling expenses of 1.2 million in the third quarter were down 100,000 from the second quarter with the percentage of sales at 4.1% which is below our target of 4.5%. We are committed to our growth initiatives in the right business development activities required in this level, funding is necessary. On the G&A expense side, 1.6 million was on par with the second quarter and lower on the percentage basis to sale that 5.3 versus 6.2 for the sales last year. For the nine-month period G&A expenses were down 300,000 and 30 basis points. The decrease in SG&A was due to cost reductions implemented throughout the year to match our customer demand. We're pleased to post an operating profit for the third quarter of 23,000 after operating losses of the prior two quarters. We were added by the increase in revenues and other cost reductions that actions taken in the quarter. We've reported a net loss in the third quarter of 124,000 and $0.05 per diluted common share compared sequentially to the second quarter of 378,000 loss and $0.14 per share. Prior year net income was 333,000 and $0.12 as mentioned our net income in 2015 has been impacted by customer mix external factors, acquisitions, and expenses and ramp up cost for growth and cost reduction initiatives both in Mexico and Asia. Taking a look at our liquidity, we set aside our liquidity needs with cash generated by operations and an operative rating [ph] line of credit with Wells Fargo Bank. On September 30, we had an outstanding balance of 6.9 million under the line of credit and unused availability of 7.5 million, and supported by our borrowing base. Net cash provided by operation activities for the nine months ended September 30th was 3.9 million. Cash was generated by non-add back cost which is amortization, depreciation and the timing of accounts payable payments. Working capital increases in account receivables and inventory we’re offset by extending accounts payable terms and conditions. Our supplier base helped this work through the cash bubble related to the acquisition and now cash flow is being helped by the higher revenues. We had positive operating cash flow in the quarter of $3.9 million after using 138,000 from operations in the second quarter. Free cash flow is now positive 2.5 million for the nine months year-to-date. Some additional comments related to the Devicix Engineering Services. First of all the integration, the past 120 days has gone very smooth and as planned, the integrity and talent as the Devicix’s ownership, management team and engineering professionals is very impressive, they do what they say and they do it very well and they’re performing today at a very high level. So we’re very pleased so far with the integration. Devicix Engineering business delivered a 1.5 million in revenue -- I’m sorry, 1.1 million in revenue and starts the fourth quarter with 1.3 million in our 90-day backlog. We’ve already won new programs from the collaborative efforts with several different customers as I mentioned earlier. As we said in the last call this acquisition enhances our medical device business in Medtech product development into the fastest growing market. Many large more establish medical device OEMs are looking for cradle to grave [ph] design and then factoring partners and we now have the necessary breath of capabilities to meet those needs. The 10-Q just reported will provide a full detail look into the acquisition and provides an estimated preliminary fair market value of the assets and the transactions. But I’d like say, I’d like to take your time to little look, a little with a highlight in the major items today. We purchased all of the tangible, intangible assets as Devicix under the agreement of 5.3 million. It breaks down as follows. $2 million in cash at close, 2.3 million in notes over the four years with some offset if certain revenue levels are not met, and a 1 million in assumed working capital adjustments associated with the ongoing business and customer cash deposits. There is additional earning out consideration. One type through the engineering service revenue, and the earn out starts at the $6 million level. And another one tried to new product synergies generated from new and pass Devicix customers. The earn out has a fair market value today of 851,000. Intangible assets after the independent valuation work was completed, came in at 2.1 million, 814,000 of trade name value, and 1.3 million in customer relations. Goodwill came in at 3.2 million in fair market value including the earn out potential of that 851,000 I mentioned earlier. This is in line with service type business transactions, generally a 50-50 split good will to tangible and intangible assets. And then you take into account any additional considerations for items such as earn-out the expected synergies of the combined business are expected to cover the good will. Historically Nortech has not had any significant good will in books and this will be monitor closely as we move forward. So in summary it’s been a challenging 120 days, we’ve made some good progress in many areas, backlog and pipeline activities cash management and have two major initiatives implemented and contributing going forward. The engineering service acquisition and the Mexico PCB expansion, we will continue to monitor the timing and execution of our other growth and cost reduction initiatives. Although we’ve made progress, we need to execute on the gross margin improvements discussed earlier to restore bottom line profitability. We fully expect to make more progress in the fourth quarter and we have the backlog and plan to make it happen, we just need to execute. Thank you and now we look forward to answer any questions you might have this morning. Operator please open the lines.