Earnings Labs

Optical Cable Corporation (OCC)

Q4 2017 Earnings Call· Wed, Dec 20, 2017

$9.39

-11.42%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Brandy, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Optical Cable Corporation Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2017 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker’s remarks, there will be a question-and-answer period [Operator Instructions]. Mr. [Weston], you may begin your conference.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

Good morning. And thank you all for participating on Optical Cable Corporation’s fourth quarter of fiscal year 2017 conference call. By this time, everyone should have a copy of the earnings press release issued earlier today. You can also visit www.occfiber.com for a copy. On the call with us today are Neil Wilkin, President and Chief Executive Officer of OCC, and Tracy Smith, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that this call may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The actual future results of Optical Cable Corporation may differ materially due to a number of factors and risks including, but not limited to, those factors referenced in the forward-looking statements section of this morning’s press release. These cautionary statements apply to the contents of the Internet webcast on www.occfiber.com as well as today’s call. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Neil Wilkin. Neil, please begin.

Neil Wilkin

Analyst

Thank you, [Lyle], and good morning everyone. I will begin the call today with a few opening remarks regarding our fourth quarter and fiscal year ended October 31, 2017. Tracy will then review the fourth quarter and full year results for the three months and the 12 month periods ended October 31, 2017 and some additional detail. After Tracy’s remarks, we will answer as many your questions as we can. As this is our normal practice, we will only take questions from analysts and institutional investors during the Q&A session. However, we also offer other shareholders the opportunities to submit questions in advance of our earnings call, instructions regarding such submissions are included in our press release announcing the date and time of our call. Optical Cable Corporation’s fiscal year 2017 was a year of meaningful progress, market challenges and necessary adjustments. During fiscal 2017, the OCC team achieved meaningful progress executing on few strategic initiatives. In particular, we implemented sales, marketing and product initiatives design to grow sales in targeted markets with the greatest growth opportunities and maintain our strong market position and our other markets. As a result of these efforts, we achieved sales growth of a certain industrial and specialty markets, sales growth that was offset -- that offset much of the weakness in military and wireless carrier markets, as well as declines in sales outside of the U.S. Importantly, we achieved sales growth with certain of our larger strategic distribution partners and with our -- distribution partners in total earnings in fiscal 2017. Overall, our enterprise market tails remain stable in fiscal year 2017, particularly when compared to challenges seen by some of OCCs competitors. We launched a number of new products during the year across each of our product categories, including fiber optic cable and,…

Tracy Smith

Analyst

Thank you, Neil. Consolidated net sales for fiscal year 2017 were $64.1 million a decrease of less than 1% when compared to net sales of $64.6 million in fiscal year 2016. During fiscal year 2017, OCCs net sales in the enterprise market, including OEM, remained relative stable while OCC achieved increases in a number of industrial and specialty markets compared to fiscal year 2016. These increases, however, will offset by decreases in net sales in the wireless carrier in military markets. Consolidated net sales for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2017 were $17.2 million compared to net sales of $17.3 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016. The Company increased net sales in its enterprise market in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017 compared to same period of last year, but the increase was offset by decrease in net sales in the specialty market. Sequentially, net sales continued to grow in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2017, increasing 4.7% compared to net sales of $16.4 million in the third quarter of fiscal year 2016. Net sales in the fourth quarter increased 8.6% and 17.8% as compared to net sales of $15.8 million and $14.6 million respectively for the second quarter and third quarter of fiscal year 2017. Turning to gross profit. Gross profit increased 5.4% to $28.8 million in fiscal year 2017 from $19.7 million in fiscal year 2016. Gross profit margin or gross profit as a percentage of net sales increased to 32.4% for fiscal year 2017 compared to 30.5% for fiscal year 2016. Gross profit was $5 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2017, a decrease of 19.2% compared to gross profit of $6.2 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016. Gross profit margin was 29.2% in the fourth quarter…

Neil Wilkin

Analyst

Thank you, Tracy. At this time, if you have any questions we are happy to answer them. Operator, if you can please indicate the instructions for our participants to call in any questions they may have I would appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

The floor is now open for questions. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from John Deysher of Pinnacle.

John Deysher

Analyst

I have a couple of questions. First, in the fourth quarter it was nice to see sales flat, but the gross profit declined by $1.2 million, which in our mind is significant. And I know it’s due to a change in Optical Cable product mix, perhaps you were selling more low margin product and fewer high margin products. But can we get a little more granular as to exactly what’s happening in that change in Optical Cable mix?

Neil Wilkin

Analyst

There was definitely a product mix change, we generally don’t comment on the specific details of which market categories have changed that are resulting in those changes, which you may realize about OCC’s fiber optic cable while it sounds like a fairly simple category includes multiple markets that were participating in whether it’s the enterprise market, the wireless carrier market, a lot of our specialty markets, including military, oil and gas, mining or other markets in which we participate in. And depending on which market we’re selling into as well as which types of products we’re selling into these markets we can see rather dramatics flames in our gross profit percentage. So, fourth quarter was a little unusual, because we have some large orders in products that had lower margins that resulted in that swing. But that can just as easily swing the other way anytime from quarter-to-quarter. So, I haven’t given you the exact specifics of which markets and which products we’re talking about, but hopefully that gives you better sense of what’s going on, I don’t think that it’s a trend that you should be concerned about going forward. But it is something we will see from time-to-time, quarter-to-quarter.

John Deysher

Analyst

Okay. That’s helpful. So, so far in the New Year would you say that that trend is continuing or is it an operation you make into the fourth quarter?

Neil Wilkin

Analyst

I think specifically based on what I know now, I can’t comment on that -- well first of all, I can’t really comment on gross profit margin in the first quarter, because that’s difficult for us to see. What I can tell you is that, that those larger orders for that specific market that we saw in the fourth quarter I don’t expect to impact the first quarter in the same way we did in the second quarter. And does that mean that the margins will automatically go up, I can’t guarantee that it’s going to depend on what the mix ultimately plays out today. But based on what we’re seeing so far it that’s only would not be that same sort of product and that thing sort of market that impacted the fourth quarter. And in the first quarter we’re also seeing and I mentioned in my remarks and you’ll see this in our filings, we’ve also seen an increase in our four low volume and we believe that’s going to positively increase sales in the first quarter and that tends to, but there is no guarantee that it does increases our tends to provide to increased margin as we spread higher sales dollars over fixed cost.

John Deysher

Analyst

And then coming down to the SG&A, I think in the prepared remarks there was comments about new hirings, healthcare cost and was there something about legal cost in there as well?

Neil Wilkin

Analyst

Correct, that’s correct.

John Deysher

Analyst

What’s the legal cost related to?

Neil Wilkin

Analyst

So, the legal cost and I don’t know how much specifics we’ve gone into but we had some increased fees related to some litigation on a -- the acquisition of Applied Optical Systems. We had accrued -- those legal fees were essentially offset in the second quarter, correct. In the second quarter, related to a reversal of an accrual on an earn out that was made. And so while we have some increase in legal fees we also had an offset in the second quarter of about 171,000.

John Deysher

Analyst

So that litigation is ongoing regarding that acquisition?

Neil Wilkin

Analyst

No. While we had some -- litigation was ongoing, but most of that’s wound down that’s -- we don’t expect the legal fees to be at the same level. There is one matter that’s still open but we haven’t ban incurring significant legal fees associated with it.

John Deysher

Analyst

So those legal fees that probably go down in the New Year, you’re saying?

Neil Wilkin

Analyst

That’s what I would expect.

John Deysher

Analyst

Thank you very much. And finally when do you anticipate filing your 10-K?

Tracy Smith

Analyst

We’re hoping to file that shortly today.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And there are no other questions at this time.

Neil Wilkin

Analyst

Thank you, Operator. [Lyle], are there any questions that were submitted by individual investors in advance of today’s call.

Unidentified Company Representative

Analyst

Neil, at this time we do not have any questions submitted by individual shareholders.

Neil Wilkin

Analyst

Well, with that, I would like to thank everyone for listening to our fourth quarter conference call today. As always, we appreciate your time and interest in OCC. During this holiday season, please remember those men and women in uniform defending freedom and protecting our country and our families, we thank them for their service and sacrifice and for their family sacrifice. Happy holidays Marry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you. And thank you for your continued interest in Optical Cable Corporation.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. That does conclude today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.