John Scribante
Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Your line is now open
Thank you, Victoria. Good afternoon, everybody. For the fiscal 2016 third quarter, we reported total revenues of $16.8 million, gross margins of 28.1% and earnings per share that show the fifth quarter of sequential improvement averaging 22% growth. Importantly these results demonstrate a dramatic improvement in profits generating 23% more gross profit dollars on less revenue than in the prior year period and 62% more gross profit dollars sequentially than our fiscal Q2. This 1350 basis point year-over-year expansion and almost 1,000 basis point sequentially and gross margin was at the top end of our margin roadmap for the quarter. We saw continued strength in our LED lighting product sales, which increased 13% sequentially to $12 million for the third quarter and LED product revenue reached 75% of total lighting revenue. At the same time, backlog reached $7.5 million for the quarter. These achievements clearly illustrate that our profit improvement plan is working and underscores the success of our business transformation. Concurrently we also generated $2 million in positive free cash flow from operations compared to using $5.1 million in the prior year period and ended Q3 2016 with $17.5 million in the cash up from $13.4 million from last quarter. So, while revenues were down on a year-over-year basis, they were up sequentially 6.5% and despite revenues being heavily pressured during the period, we made considerably more gross profit dollars than we did during the same period last year. There are several reasons for our sales results. First and foremost as we've discussed during past earnings calls, our historical florescent seasonal patterns are shifting whereas in the past our December quarter was by far our strongest followed by our March quarter due to industrial yearend's capital spending cycles. Our sales are becoming more diversified particularly with our LED product line expansion and as such we expect our revenue stream to be less December loaded and show a more gradual build throughout the full fiscal year. And second, while our sales are diversifying a large portion of our sales are still impacted by our industrial customers and as a result we're seeing the effect of a slowing and highly uncertain industrial sector. This magnified our year-over-year decline as customers push projects out to conserve cash and protect their financial positions at the end of the year. During fiscal Q3 last year, the Purchasing Managers Index was indicating a very strong and expanding industrial sector while fiscal Q3 this year the Purchasing Managers Index showed an industrial sector contracting at a level not seen since 2009. As a reminder Orion's industrial customers fund their lighting retrofit projects through discretionary CapEx funds and these projects are easily pushed if their business is stressed. So that said over the past several months we began increasing our pipeline as well as its diversity to mitigate these risks and buffer the short term push-outs during future quarters. Even with these cyclical pressures, we’ve been able to position the company to deliver more profit on less revenue. When these revenue pressure lift Orion will be in a much stronger place. As I stated earlier, gross margin expanded 1350 basis points year-over-year and 960 basis points sequentially to 28.1% in line with our margin improvement roadmap that we showed last February. The improvement was driven primarily by the validation of our Gen2 High Bay product, which delivers over twice the selling price and twice the margin as our current LDR line. We also benefited during the quarter from improved absorption and lower supply chain costs. Our margins will show further improvement over the long-term with the introduction of our next generation of LDR which is expected to be launched next month. The outlook for our story remains solid, as evidenced by several major projects being awarded to Orion recently. This demonstrates the strength of our product roadmap, which of course includes the successful launch of our Gen2 LED High-Bay fixtures, the highest performing LED High-Bay fixtures in the marketplace. And we're significantly improving our profitability by achieving the margin targets that we promised. Now let’s review our progress on our strategic priorities for the 2016 fiscal year. First, LED product revenue climbed to 75% of total product revenue -- lighting product revenue, which compares to 55% a year ago and 72% in the second quarter, further validating our florescent to LED transition strategy and conversion rate well ahead of our industry peers. Some key quarter three wins since our last conference call include an award from a regional East Coast utility from one of our new sales agencies and our very first Gen2 ISON High-Bay sale, an award for LED High-Bay fixtures for a food processing facility of a large publicly traded packaged food company in a highly competitive sale and again utilizing our new High Bay line which outperformed all of our competitors that were competing. An LED High Bay Award from an Asian automotive manufacturing plant unseating a competitor's product who was already specified for the job. This customer delayed their purchasing decision from another lighting company until they reviewed our new High Bay line. This auto maker has purchased over 10,000 florescent fixtures from Orion about eight or 10 years ago, illustrating the value of our patented modular upgrade options and the performance value we bring to the table. We announced an additional VA hospital of $1.58 million just yesterday, a $2.8 million federal research agency announced last week, a $0.5 million LED High Bay retrofit project for an existing High Bay customer, a publicly traded home and professional appliance manufacturer. And interestingly a Fortune 500 conglomerate who operates a large commercial and industrial Tier 1 lighting division of their own, has retrofitted one of their large U.S. manufacturing plants with the Orion LDR and is now beginning to upgrade their High Bay fixtures with the Orion ISON and APOLLO products rather than using their own company's brand. It should be noted that the industry leading performance, the ease of installation, customer experience and our five-day ship times were most commonly cited as the reasons given for why Orion is selected for these projects. And to capture the growing opportunity ahead of us, we've been working diligently to leverage our growing sales and distribution networks and I am happy to report that we're gaining momentum. We've signed 10 large sales agencies recently representing over 120 lighting sales reps, each with significant pipeline of business. By the end of our fiscal year, we expect to have sales agencies covering nearly all of the U.S. market. We're well positioned to drive continued growth in LED sales and over time as the manufacturing sector strengthens, we expect to be highly successful converting our pipeline into topline growth. Now let's turn to our second priority, which is innovation. Our recently introduced Gen2 High Bay fixture line is gaining tremendous traction. It is now the highest performing High Bay portfolio in the marketplace delivering as much as 179 lumens per watt meaning that it delivers more light with less energy than any other lighting company in the market. Many industry experts have asked us how we can deliver such high performance using the same chips and drivers available to everyone else. And the answer lies in our patent portfolio, our supply chain strategy as well as the ingenuity of our R&D team. Efficiency gap between the ISON Class and our competitor's products has never been wider. While its modular design goes one step beyond all other LED products meaning that as LED technology advances, our customers can simply upgrade the components rather than replacing the entire chassis. Further we have the industry's fastest ship times to support our customer's needs while minimizing our inventory risk. The success we're realizing with this product line underscores the strength of our innovation and the attractive returns we're seeing on our human and capital investments. Building on the success of the High Bay launch, we intend to launch our new higher margin LDR one-to-two minute Troffer Retrofit product this March, next month. The massive market acceptance of our LDR product has led us to expand the line to improve margins and functionality. We're expanding the current APOLLO LDR with a new ISON Class LDR with new functionality never seen in the market and we're introducing a new HARRIS class product designed to drive volume and margin. We further plan to release a wide range of centers and controls to meet our customer's demand for IoT and PoE as well as newer State Energy Conservation Regulations. As we look ahead, our development efforts are focused around performance, margin and product differentiation. We have a robust product line in development and are committed to producing state-of-the-art, industry-leading products that will continue to drive market share growth going forward. Finally, our margin objectives, we've made great progress in expanding our margin profile. With gross margins at 28.1%, this is our fourth quarter in a row generating year-over-year increase in gross margins and the fiscal third quarter, marks the strongest gross margins we've reported in eight quarters. This reflects not only our efforts to drive sales in our higher margin product categories, but also the execution of the strategic initiatives we implemented at the start of the year that includes focusing on our core competencies, enhancing our product design, improving our supply chain agreements and further adopting lean principles throughout our company. It has been nearly one year since we described our gross margin strategy during our secondary offering and we've already surpassed our promise of a 13% LDR gross margin by delivering 15% to 18% actual gross margins during the two quarters and expect to release more LDR product in March that have approximately 25% gross margins beating the original targets handsomely. This product launch will not only lift our consolidated gross margins but will also reduce the impact of the product mix issues that we've experienced recently. Ultimately, we expect to realize gross margins, comparable or better to those of our industry peers. We've permanently eliminated a significant amount of cost out of the business through various overhead reductions, which are reflected in the operating margin improvement we have realized to date. On a go-forward basis, we intend to capture additional operational improvement as we realize further efficiency and scale benefits. So in summary, we're executing extremely well against our strategic priorities. Our LED sales penetration is growing. We've delivered four consecutive quarters of significant year-over-year margin expansion and we're moving closer to positive earnings as we continue to launch state-of-the-art breakthrough products. And while the economic turmoil is beyond our control, we're aggressively building our pipeline to position us well to capitalize on these opportunities now and when the markets ultimately improve. So with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Bill.