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Orion Energy Systems, Inc. (OESX)

Q1 2014 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 1, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Orion Energy’s First Quarter Fiscal 2014 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 call may be recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Scott Jensen, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Scott Jensen

Management

Thank you. And welcome to Orion Energy's fiscal 2014 first quarter conference call. With me today is John Scribante, our Chief Executive Officer. As a reminder the earnings press release issued today once again includes a section that briefly discusses the supplemental information document that was posted to the company’s website. This supplemental information document provides additional details and analyses on Orion’s financial performance for the fiscal first quarter ended June 30, 2013. Additionally, several slides that highlight key metrics from the company’s financial and operational performance for the same time period have also been posted to the company’s website. I will now read the Safe Harbor statement. Remarks that follow, including answers to questions, include statements that we believe to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are generally identified as such because the context of such statements will include words, such as believe, anticipate, expect or words of similar import. Similarly, statements that describe future plans, objectives, or goals are also forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different. Those risks, include among others, matters that we have described in our press release issued this afternoon and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as described in these filings we disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, which may not be updated until our next quarterly conference call if at all. And now, I would like to turn the call over to John Scribante, Chief Executive Officer of Orion Energy Systems. Please go ahead, John.

John Scribante

Management

Good afternoon everybody and thank you for joining us today. I will begin with a brief overview of our results for the quarter and then I will discuss the integration of Harris, our go forward strategy and some commentary on our end markets, after which we will return to Scott to go over our financial results in detail. While it pains me to have to announce a loss and recognizing that we have rarely ever posted a profit in our first quarter we were nonetheless very pleased to announce once again we delivered significant year-over-year improvement in our financial performance. Our total revenue rose 36% to $20.9 million and our operating loss was reduced to $800,000 from $3.6 million last year a 77% improvement. Our core lighting efficiency revenue increased by 26% year-over-year, the second consecutive quarter of growth in this segment and LED products accounted for 7% of our efficiency sales, up from 2% last year. Our solar revenue also grew as we began construction on our $20 million [Brick] township landfill project. As our listeners may know Orion’s revenue is somewhat seasonal and this has in the past impacted our first quarter bottom line results. That being said we are clearly not satisfied with the fact that we didn’t turn profit this quarter. However we continue to make meaningful progress across a number of fronts and believe that our days of losses are now behind us. We know that the company is moving in the right direction and therefore we have begun to provide quarterly guidance which speaks to our confidence in our future results and Scott will speak further on this in a moment about some one-time expenses. The company generated $2 million of net cash from operations during the fiscal first quarter compared to a breakeven…

Scott Jensen

Management

Thank you, John. After the market close today we reported results for the first quarter of fiscal 2014. Consistent with our prior earnings announcements we have provided additional content within the supplemental information document which was posted to our website earlier this afternoon covering our fiscal first quarter performance. Accordingly I will not be walking you down the P&L on a line-by-line basis but I will address some of our key areas. We are pleased with the substantial improvements in our performance as reflected in our results for the fiscal 2014 first quarter. Revenue of 20.9 million exceeded our prior year first quarter by 36% and included $5 million or approximately 24% of total revenue from solar projects within our engineered systems segment. Our gross margins for the quarter were negatively impacted by several items. First we had a higher mix of solar revenue at lower than average margins, reflecting the kick-off of construction on our $20 million solar landfill project for which we expect margins to be in the low 20% range for the remainder of fiscal 2014. Our lighting efficiency margins for the quarter were 29.1%, an improvement over the prior year’s first quarter margins of 27.2%. Additionally this year’s margins were reduced by approximately 150 basis points, due to the liquidation of slow moving inventories. During the first quarter we begin the formal implementation of lean manufacturing concepts across our operations. We made tremendous strides in a short period of time and we expect this initiative to allow us to increase output, without increasing variable cost, providing even great gross margin operating leverage. Our cost containment measures implemented over the past nine months have continued to positively impact our financial results. Operating expenses were 6.6 million for the fiscal first quarter compared to approximately $8 million in…

John Scribante

Management

Before opening up call for questions let me just say a few words to summarize where we stand. We set out to transform this company a few quarters ago and I am pleased to say we are well on our way of doing just that. We posted another quarter of substantial year-over-year top line growth and improved margins dramatically, at the same time increasing cash flow, streamlining the organization and building a topknot sales team, continuing the trend built on a solid focus on financial discipline. We weren’t profitable this quarter primarily due to order timing. But we were dedicated to seeing if this that does not happen again. As I said in the past our strategic operating plan is focused on five key areas; driving growth and margin expansion, creating innovative products and being the leader in customer satisfaction, delivering lighting solutions in markets with significant growth opportunities, developing a talented and effective work force to sustain our product leadership and customer retention and in doing all of this, increasing shareholder returns through EPS growth and a higher return on capital. After three consecutive quarters of improved performance we are now well on our way to building Orion Energy into the company we know it can be. One positions for revenue acceleration, improved margins and stronger cash flow going forward. We have much more work to do but we are confident that the future looks bright. And I’d like to personally thank our employees for all of their hard work thus far and our investors for their steadfast patience and continued compliments. Our best is yet to come. With that operator we will now open up the call for questions.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from Steve Shaw from Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead. Steve Shaw - Sidoti & Company : Hi, guys how are you doing?

John Scribante

Management

Hi, Steve. Steve Shaw - Sidoti & Company: I got on little late but what would you guys say is it causing a revenue growth is it more of the added sales effort or more of a customer's opening up their pockets.

John Scribante

Management

Yeah I it’s probably little bit of both, although I honestly believe that our focus and the consolidation of our sales teams and just a renewed energy around driving results, driving performance in the sales organization we have a higher caliber sales organization today than we have ever had. We have brought on some solid people but also sales management just a lot more dedicated attitude of just getting after the business and going out and getting. There is enough business out there that we just need to be getting our share of. So I am going to put a lot of credibility on just our consolidation of our sales force and leadership and the sales organization but I also see some opening up of the wallets happening too. The customers seem to be planning more and we are getting a lot more enquiries about future projects that they have been putting on shelf for a while. So I see a little bit of both. But I got to give a lot of credit to what we have been doing in the sales organization as well. Steve Shaw - Sidoti & Company: Okay. and then you guys noted that the solar project were bigger than you guys last year is there anything that you can point to directly that caused that or is that sort of a random thing?

John Scribante

Management

Steve you missed opening part of the call. We did kick off our $20 million solar landfill project in New Jersey. Construction started during the quarter and a large portion of our $5 million was specifically attributed to that project. Steve Shaw - Sidoti & Company: And then I know you guys talked a lot about Harris specifically regarding the LED products have you guys had any Orion customers either asked about them or order them this past quarter?

John Scribante

Management

Yeah, so that is a product that is just come into its final stages of commercialization. We are waiting on some approvals, DLC approvals and things like. So that’s a product that is just now being introduced to the marketplace. So little early to say that we are converting Orion customers to actually placing orders, although we have received some orders just recently. It’s really in the introduction stage right now. So… Steve Shaw - Sidoti & Company: Okay. And then once that LED project is sort of up and running for you guys is there any cost over with some of the intelligent lighting system that you guys have or in other words how easy would it be to stimulate that technology to some of the other products?

John Scribante

Management

You are saying taking our existing controls and applying it to the office environment? Steve Shaw - Sidoti & Company: Yeah.

John Scribante

Management

So little bit of front end tweaking on that but it can certainly be dropped in. It’s in our controls. We took from the high base space applied it to the exterior lightings and we are exploring options right now as to what we want to do in the office space but there is some front end hardware that’s going to be a little different, that’s off the shelf in terms of some of some of the sensoring and the receiving equipment but the back end is all products that we have already just developed. It’s now with that said I am also anticipating that existing customers may have particularly high rise buildings, commercial office buildings are going to have different controls that they have already invested in. And so we are already making provisions to just back-end integrate to existing control systems. So whatever we do we’ll have to apply to both, both ours as well as other third parties that people are using. Steve Shaw - Sidoti & Company: Okay all right thanks John, thanks Scott.

John Scribante

Management

Thanks Steve.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). And we have a question from Anthony Orbanic from OGT. Please go ahead.

Anthony Orbanic - OGT Trading

Analyst

Hi, good afternoon, Anthony from OTG Trading. Actually I have few questions, actually in (inaudible) energy management especially with the solar lamps. Also for, that…

Operator

Operator

I am sorry. I think Anthony has connected. And I am not showing any further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to John Scribante for any further remarks.

John Scribante

Management

Okay, great. Well thank you very much. We appreciate all of your support and all of your confidence in us. We've got a lot ahead of us and a lot of great opportunity. So we have our annual shareholder meeting coming up next week. I may see some of you there but if not we will look forward to talking with you in a few months. Thank you and have a good day.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes today's program. You may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.

John Scribante

Management

Thank you.