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Oshkosh Corporation (OSK)

Q4 2012 Earnings Call· Fri, Oct 26, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to Oshkosh Corporation reports fiscal 2012 fourth quarter results. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. (Operator Instructions). It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Pat Davidson, Vice President of Investor Relations for Oshkosh Corporation. Thank you Mr. Davidson, you may begin.

Pat Davidson

Management

Thanks Jessie. Good morning everybody and thanks for joining us. Earlier today we published our fourth quarter results for fiscal 2012. A copy of the release is available on our website at oshkoshcorporation.com. Today’s call is being webcast and is accompanied by a slide presentation, which includes a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures used during this call and is also available on our website. The audio replay and slide presentation will be available on our website for approximately 12 months. Please refer now to slide two of that presentation. Our remarks that follow, including answers to your questions, include statements that we believe to be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks include among others, matters that we have described in our Form 8-K filed with the SEC this morning and other filings we make with the SEC. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, which may not be updated until our next quarterly earnings conference call, if at all. All results stated on this call are for continuing operations attributable to Oshkosh Corporation, unless otherwise stated. Our presenters today include Charlie Szews, Chief Executive Officer; Dave Sagehorn, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Also joining us today is Wilson Jones, our President and Chief Operating Officer. Many of you got a chance to meet Wilson during our Analyst Day on September 14. Wilson, welcome to the group. With that taken care of, please turn to slide three and I’ll turn it over to you Charlie.

Charlie Szews

Management

Thank you Pat and good morning. Before commenting on fourth quarter results, I’d like to provide a brief update on some recent developments. On October 17, 2012, Carl Icahn launched an unsolicited tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Oshkosh common stock at $32.50 per share and announced his intentions to nominate a slate of directors for election to the company’s board at the company’s 2013 annual meeting. After careful consideration with our independent financial and legal advisors, the Oshkosh Board of Directors unanimously recommends that shareholders reject Mr. Icahn’s offer and not tender any of their shares. In conjunction with our earnings release this morning, we followed the board’s full recommendation on Schedule 14D-9 with the SEC and issued a press release summarizing the results and reasons for the board’s recommendation to reject the offer. We also announced that the board unanimously adopted a shareholder rights plan, intended to enable all shareholders to realize the long term value of their investment in the company, hence protect them from unfair or cohesive takeover tactics. The Oshkosh board deemed it appropriate and prudent to adopt the right plan at this time, given the course of nature of Mr. Icahn’s offer. In making its recommendation to reject Mr. Icahn’s unsolicited offer, the board unanimously concluded that the offer significantly undervalues Oshkosh. The offer does not deliver a fair value to shareholders, but is an opportunistic attempt by Mr. Icahn to enrich himself at the expense of the company’s other shareholders. Further, Mr. Icahn’s track record, his relative substantial number of conditions to the offer creates significant uncertainty and risk about the offer. The board also considered that Oshkosh continues to aggressively deliver on its MOVE strategy, and that the operation of the company pursuant to the MOVE will deliver…

Wilson Jones

Management

Thank Charlie and good morning everyone. First off I’ll share Charlie’s confidence and excitement about our MOVE strategy. We spoke about it in detail during our Analyst Day and Charlie just described the progress we are making in reducing our cost structure. Another big portion of this strategy is to maximize performance in the market recovery. We are pleased to say that JLG did that throughout fiscal 2012, finishing with sales to external customers up 44% for the year compared to fiscal 2011. The scene at JLC has racked up some impressive accomplishments this past year. The access equipment market in North America remains strong. We are currently in the process of our annual negotiations with a number of our larger access equipment customers. Our talks are constructive and encouraging as we strive to provide our customers with the necessary equipment they need to satisfy demand that is driving their high utilization rates. Our backlog at fiscal year end was lower when compared to the end of fiscal 2011, mainly due to a shift in order timing in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012 to the first half of fiscal 2013. Now I personally talked to a number of customers recently and they remain positive about their outlook for their 2013 capital spending in our product category. You may have heard their positive comments on recent earnings calls. Consistent with that, we are seeing good order activity in October and we remain confident about the outlook for access equipment business in fiscal 2013. Dave will share more on this in a few minutes. Turning to our Fire and Emergency segment, we are pleased with the sales and margin improvements we delivered in the fourth quarter. This business has faced a lot of challenges over the past couple of years and…

Dave Sagehorn

Management

Thanks Wilson and good morning everyone. Consolidated net sales for our fourth fiscal quarter were $2.06 billion, a decrease of 2.3% from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011. Similar to our third fiscal quarter, sales in each of the non-defense segments were higher than the prior year quarter, led by a 34.2% increase in the commercial segment. These higher sales helped to largely offset an expected 18.6% decline in defense segment sales compared to the prior year quarter. Sales for the quarter were higher than we expected when we presented our fiscal 2012 earnings per share outlook at our Analyst Day, largely due to higher sales for our major defense customer and to a lesser extent higher sales in our access equipment and commercial segments. Adjusted consolidated operating income for the quarter was $110.4 million or 5.4% of sales. This compared to adjusted operating income of $87.4 million or 4.1% of sales in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011. Improved performance in all of our non-defense segments led to higher adjusted operating income and operating income margins compared to the prior year quarter. Similar to sales, our adjusted operating income for the quarter was higher than when we presented our fiscal 2012 earnings per share outlook at our Analyst Day. During the Analyst Day presentation we noted that our results could exceed the range that we were showing investors and that’s exactly what happened. Further, late in the quarter, our defense segment finalized pricing with our customer on a contract for which we had previously met our performance obligations. We also reported a favorable LIFO adjustment in our defense segment versus our previous estimate. Both of these items resulted in a positive operating income impact compared to the estimates shown at our Analyst Day. Overall we are pleased with the…

Charles Szews

Management

Thank you very much Dave. As we now turn our focus to fiscal 2013, we believe we offer the best proposition to deliver substantial value for shareholders. Mid-September at our Analyst Day we presented the details of our MOVE strategy, metrics to measure and assess performance and our vision for driving shareholder value. We introduced you to key leaders of our business segment, as well as our principal functional areas. We shared our assumptions and expectations. We are in the early states of executing our MOVE strategy and it is already starting to deliver results. We believe there is substantial upside for shareholders as we strive to approximately double adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations from fiscal 2012 to a range of $4 to $4.50 per share by fiscal year 2015. We have the right team and the right roadmap to drive superior shareholder value as we transition into a global industrial company. That concludes our formal comments. We are happy to answer your questions. I will turn it back over Pat to get started on the Q&A.

Patrick Davidson

Management

Thanks Charlie. I would like to remind everyone, please limit your questions to one plus a follow-up and after the follow-up we ask that you get back in queue if you would like to ask additional questions. As a reminder, we are not going to comment on the Icahn Group tender offer and threatened proxy contest. The focus of this call is our quarterly performance and our outlook and I will discuss the tender offering in the proper form at the proper time. We appreciate your understanding. Jessie, lets please begin the question-and-answer period of the call.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the like of Eli Lustgarten of Longbow Research. Please proceed with our question.

Eli Lustgarten - Longbow Research

Analyst

Hey. Good morning everyone. It’s a nice quarter.

Charlie Szews

Management

Thank you Eli.

Eli Lustgarten - Longbow Research

Analyst

Can we talk a little bit more about what’s going on in the Access business. I mean we saw these numbers and they also basically told us that there were delays in orders. But your commentary said a delay from this past quarter to the fast half of the year. Can you give us some idea of what’s going on in negotiations? What’s going in pricing and particularly, if it really stretches out over a six-month period instead of a three-month period, I mean how severely will the first quarter be affected and how should we think about modeling this factor as we go through it, because the next two quarters will probably be materially affected by what’s going on.

Charlie Szews

Management

Sure. I’m glad you asked that question, because I like to clarify it. For those of you that have really observing JLG over they years, you will know that its normal for order patterns to change over the course of the cycle. So last year what you saw is in the early stages of recovery. So you had one particular large customer and a few others. They were concerned that this supply base, namely us and some of others and our supply chain, we are going to be able to ramp off fast enough for their recovery, right. So they ordered early, because they wanted to make sure they got their production slots in. This year we are not worried about our ability to meet their production schedules, so they don’t need to order early and so that’s what your really seeing here. We are not concerned about our supply base and if you watch or listened to their earnings calls last year, any time their utilization rate went down a half a point or a point because they were bringing out a lot of the new equipment, they were getting pummeled by the street. So they are going to be little bit more judicious on how they take their equipment over the course of 2013. So now what you are going to see and when there is a consecution up-tick, you are going to see this pattern come back again, where you are going to see early orders in the cycle, because people are going to want to get their orders in early, and capture the limited capacity in the market place. When we are in this early mid-cycle point like we our today, they don’t need to do this. So that’s really all your seeing.

Eli Lustgarten - Longbow Research

Analyst

And can you talk about what’s going on in pricing and how do we model it in, the quarterly earnings, because its looks like the first quarter could be materially effected if orders. (Inaudible) till you mentioned that you had decent orders in October, so…

Charlie Szews

Management

Well, let me talk a little bit about the first quarter and then I’ll let Wilson talk somewhat on the pricing. Early on we gave comments about our first quarter being week seasonally. We are not changing our guidance on the first quarter from what we said at September 14, all right, there shouldn’t be any concern of that. We are looking at a very strong access equipment market, high utilization rates, good pricing in the marketplace, all of the NOCs are making positive comments and we are also seeing finally is that the independent rental companies are coming off, so it’s a healthy market. So let me then pass it on to Wilson to talk about pricing.

Wilson Jones

Management

And just to echo a little bit of what Charlie’s saying there is, you are seeing it too. A lot of announcements out there about rental rates going up. I think that recently we heard that one of our large customers was experiencing a 7% increase in rental rates year-over-year. So I think everyone understands that we are not back to where we were margin wise during peak and that’s the goal everyone is working on, to enhance margins and go forward. I’ll tell you, our discussions have been good as I mentioned earlier with the larger rental companies. I will say that we are encouraged by them. I think all this is going to take some time. As to Charlie’s point they are better managing their utilization rates. If you think about November, December, January, those were the slowest three months of the year, so again, they do want those machines to come in and be idle and hurt their utilization rates. So they are better managing their order patterns and again, that’s what we are experiencing in October. To be specific Eli, from a processing standpoint I don’t want to go into great deal of how we are doing on those, but as you know those discussion are always eventful. But I would tell you, we are encouraged and we are having good dialog with our customers over pricing

Eli Lustgarten - Longbow Research

Analyst

All right, thank you very much. I’ll get back in queue.

Charlie Szews

Management

Thank you Eli.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jamie Cook of Credit Suisse. Please proceed with our question. Linda Yon (ph) – Credit Suisse: Hi guys. This is actually Linda Yon (ph) in for Jamie Cook, great quarter.

Charlie Szews

Management

Thank you. Linda Yon (ph) – Credit Suisse: So my first question kind of on that AWP backlog, just to clarify, so this quarter was that just one large company, one large customer that kind of pushed out orders or is that kind of across the board.

Charlie Szews

Management

It was primarily one customer where we got a big order in the last week of the last fiscal year, all right. There is a little bit of a pattern beyond them, so its not just one customer, but that is greatly affecting our comparison. Linda Yon (ph) – Credit Suisse: Okay and then could you go a little bit into the mix that you guys have, like what’s the small guys versus the larger guys and are you expecting to see that mix shift and then also sort of was the mix with Europe versus the U.S. and how is that mix going to shift in 2013.

Charlie Szews

Management

Okay, I’ll add some things and then we’ll sort of continue here. We are expecting the independent rental companies to be a bigger part of our mix next fiscal year, as well as telehandlers generally is a product line, all right and so that is instructive. The overall financial in our company is roughly flattish is what we are expecting.

Dave Sagehorn

Management

Yes, and that’s consistent with the discussions we are having through ourselves and for the operations planning process. Again, as we mentioned in the Analyst Day, our relationships with our customers today are much more open and transparent, so they are sharing those CapEx figures with us. I would say that if you look at what we are forecasting, we had not built in a lot. We are very modest with our forecast for Europe. We don’t expect really any big things in Europe. There are pockets of opportunities in Europe. We are seeing some pockets in some developing markets that will help us in this fiscal year, but the primary driver going forward will be North America. Linda Yon (ph) – Credit Suisse: All right good, thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Ann Duignan of JPMorgan Chase. Please proceed with your question.

Ann Duignan - JPMorgan Chase

Analyst

Hi, good morning guys.

Charlie Szews

Management

Good morning Ann.

Ann Duignan - JPMorgan Chase

Analyst

Good morning. Can we switch gears and talk about concert mixers and in particular, your comments on demand for CNG products and what percent of your demand is now CNG or how do expect that segment to progress as we go forward?

Charlie Szews

Management

Ann from the RCB or the refuse side, its defiantly a higher percentage of the sales that we are seeing there. That’s where we saw the earliest adaptation of CNG. We are probably in that 35% to 40% of the sales today, our CNG units for refuse. On the mixer side we are seeing customers become more interested in that, but we are not at a penetration rate that we are seeing on the RCB side today, but we do expect that that will continue to grow.

Ann Duignan - JPMorgan Chase

Analyst

So, there’s more customers asking about the availability rather than placing orders for CNG as at this point.

Charlie Szews

Management

Well, on the mixer side?

Ann Duignan - JPMorgan Chase

Analyst

On the mixer side, yes.

Charlie Szews

Management

Yes. No, we definitely received some orders for CNG mixers and again as the market is starting to come back, I think we will have more of those discussions with our customers in terms of, as they are looking to up-grade and up-date their fleets.

Ann Duignan - JPMorgan Chase

Analyst

Okay, and on the defense side, I don’t think you told us, maybe I missed it, what percent of your revenue this quarter was that MTB?

Charlie Szews

Management

It was about 45% in the quarter.

Ann Duignan - JPMorgan Chase

Analyst

Okay. Okay, I’ll get back in line. I think the AWP questions had been asked. Thanks.

Charlie Szews

Management

Thank you. Operator Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Steve Volkmann of Jefferies & Company. Please proceed with our question. Steve Volkmann - Jefferies & Co.: Good morning guys.

Charlie Szews

Management

Good morning Steve. Steve Volkmann - Jefferies & Co.: I’m going to go with defense and curious Dave, you talked about some changes in program accounting it sounds like and so forth. Should we view those as one time and can you quantify that?

Dave Sagehorn

Management

Yes, it was, I wouldn’t say change in accounting, it was just firming up the pricing. It was the type of program that was such that it was an urgent need for the government and they do have a mechanism which allows us to deliver the product and then continue to work with them on finalizing the pricing and that’s what we did during the quarter. The adjustments that we referred to are for programs that are behind us. So in terms of run rate going forward, I guess the guidance that we’ve give for next year, the 5% to5.5% operating income margin does not anticipate that we would have a continuation of those type of activates next year.

Charlie Szews

Management

In fact we don’t have many un-definitized contacts remaining. Steve Volkmann - Jefferies & Co.: Right, okay good. And I guess that sort of brings me to my broader question. Maybe it was just me being too conservative, but you kind of beat me on most of the margins, on most of the segments and it seems like things were a bit better than what you thought and I think you stated to talk about this Dave, but did things really change in the last six weeks or were you just conservative in your initial guidance and I guess what I’m really thinking off is, after the strength in this quarter, why wouldn’t 2013 be looking a little bit better.

Dave Sagehorn

Management

Yes, at the Analyst Day meeting Steve you may recall, I think we did make a comment about the fact that its depending on how things went in the last several weeks of the quarter. We did have an opportunity to exceed the numbers that we were presenting at the Analyst Day, and that’s really what happened. If you know our businesses, you know there is a lot of activity that occurs in the last month of the quarter and even within that, the last several weeks of the quarter and some of that is dynamic in terms of when for example our government customer may sing off for vehicles or when units are shipped both domestically and internationally in our other segments. So things generally went in our favor this quarter and sometimes you see things go the other way, but it was positive, a very positive end to the quarter from that standpoint. As it relates to FY13, that was six or seven weeks ago that we had the Analyst Day and its probably just a little too early to be tinkering with the forecast in big ways for the full year of fiscal 2013. I think you should take some confidence in the fact that we did finish Q4 strong and we are reaffirming the numbers that we have out there for fiscal 2013 estimates at this point. Steve Volkmann - Jefferies & Co.: Okay, all right, that’s good color. I appreciate it.

Charlie Szews

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). Our next question comes from the line of Charlie Brady of BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with our question.

Charles Brady - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · our question.

Hey, thanks. Good morning guys.

Charlie Szews

Management

Good morning Charlie.

Charles Brady - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · our question.

On the Access, I don’t want beat this things, but I’m going to anyway. With the way pf negotiations you are in right now and you are talking about first half, I guess to focus on the first quarter, the backup of sales external customer on a year-over-year basis, jus so I understand this, are you expecting access to be up on a year-over-year basis in Q1, excluding any kind of external sales for the defense business.

Charlie Szews

Management

Charlie, we are talking probably flattish to up a little bit in the quarter based on what we currently see.

Charles Brady - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · our question.

Okay, that’s helpful. And I don’t know if I missed it, did you describe the mix between what percentage of sales in the quarter came out of the large rental companies versus the independents.

Dave Sagehorn

Management

Charlie, I don’t know that we’ve ever disclosed what the mix is. We’ve described directionally that things are changing and I would say that the independent rental companies are starting to buy again and we expect that that trend will accelerate into 2013.

Charles Brady - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · our question.

Okay, I’m just going to throw in on defense really quick and I’ll get back in the queue. In the press release on the layoffs in defense, you noted that you are pursuing over 2000 additions M-ATV and other vehicle orders globally. I wonder if you could just comment on that, the over 2000 number, that’s a big number. How much of that will be at M-ATV, how much will be other type of vehicles and can you give any kind of quantification on kind of timing as to when some of that might hit. Thanks.

Charlie Szews

Management

Sure. For a long time we said we’ve been chasing somewhere around 3000 M-ATV vehicles, but orders are up to 3000 or so M-ATV vehicles. So you’ve seen us announce orders now for about 800 right, and so obviously we’ve got additional opportunities that we are chasing. In our prepared remarks we also said that we hoped in the coming months to announce some additional M-ATV orders. Most likely, those are shipment events in fiscal 2014. Its possible some could slip into 2013, but more likely than not, what we are really going to be doing is building out the portfolio for the future. And the orders are really from multiple countries, previous size orders in some cases that we are seeing and pursuing.

Charles Brady - BMO Capital Markets

Analyst · our question.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the like of Andrew Obin of Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. Please proceed with our question. Mr. Obin, your line is now live. You may proceed with your question. We will move on to our next question which comes from the line of Rob McCarthy of Robert W. Baird & Company. Please proceed with our question. Meg (ph) - Robert W. Baird & Co.: This is Meg (Inaudible) for Rob McCarthy. Good morning gentlemen.

Charlie Szews

Management

Good morning.

Dave Sagehorn

Management

Good morning Meg. Meg (ph) - Robert W. Baird & Co.: I will stick with defense here. First, I might have missed this, but have you guys quantified one-time items in a quarter that drove the margin. Perhaps you can remind me of that if you would. And then looking at the FMTV program specially, can you give us a sense for how margin has progressed there in the quarter and what your expectations are for 2013.

Charlie Szews

Management

Yes Meg, in terms of the first question, the items that we referred to in our prepared remarks were the definitization of finalization of the pricing on the contract as well as a positive LIFO adjustment. Ex those items, margins in the segment would have been down probably in the 5.2% to 5.3% margin for the quarter, as opposed to 6.6% that was reported. In terms of the FMTV program, we are actually really pleased in terms of the progress that we have made on that throughout the course of fiscal 2012. The defense team is really done a lot of work to turn that program around from where we started and we think we are going to continue to see positive improvement as we head through fiscal 2013. Meg (ph) - Robert W. Baird & Co.: Thank you. That is very helpful. And then switching over to commercial, can you comment at all about the mix in backlog that you have there, the concert placement of sales. At that time they were quite a bit better than what they have been in the past and related to that, I’m also wondering about the incremental margin opportunity on additional concert placement sales and how that might play through in your margin next year.

Charlie Szews

Management

Sure. We are happy to talk about that. This is the first time in years where our mix of backlog exceeds our refuse backlog at any quarter. So its clearly a sign that housing is coming back, and this should be good also for margins obviously, because talking about mix of business, it’s a good margin business, but importantly we are really absorbing a lot of overhead when we start to get the mix of volume back into that factory, which has been a bit under valued during this recession.

Dave Sagehorn

Management

And then Meg on your question in terms of the opportunity from a margin standpoint, I guess I would point you to the guidance that we gave for the segment for FY13, 4.5% to 5% margin. Now there is a little bit as I mentioned, the impact of the investment in our MOVE strategy there. After that we’ll probably be looking at margins that would definitely be north of 5% in that segment. Meg (ph) - Robert W. Baird & Co.: Very helpful, thank you.

Charlie Szews

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Walter Liptak of Barrington Research. Please proceed with our question.

Charlie Szews

Management

Walt, are you there?

Walter Liptak - Barrington Research

Analyst · our question.

Sorry about that guys, good morning.

Charlie Szews

Management

Good morning Walt.

Walter Liptak - Barrington Research

Analyst · our question.

Okay, I wanted to ask one on the fire and emergency. Some of the smaller first responder equipment manufacturers that are seeing a pick up in North America for the first time in years and we have your guidance for the full year, but I wonder if you can provide some color about the fleet age, discussions that you are having with customers about pricing and maybe any of the differences between why may be some of the smaller personal equipment in picking up and you are starting to pick up a little bit but what you are seeing that market.

Wilson Jones

Management

Yes Walter, this is Wilson. I think what we are seeing is a little healthier municipal environment and so budgets are becoming a little more plentiful. I wouldn’t say that they are robust but they are getting better. We are seeing pockets around the U.S., but we are seeing increases in activity from our standpoint. I think again you got this issue of fleet age, equipment age, a lot of the loose equipment that you are speaking about has weathered and has been used heavy in these last few years, but not in a replacement cycle. So we are seeing that slight up-tick for us. I think Charlie mentioned it in his comments, the thing that’s slowing us down a little bit from the fire side is our government, our federal business, that’s still a little bit on the decline and slowing our fire and emergency sales funds, specifically in the U.S.

Charlie Szews

Management

But we do expect that to bottom out in 2013 and then municipal would be the driver in demand in ‘14 and ‘15.

Walter Liptak - Barrington Research

Analyst · our question.

Okay. I wonder if I can what the mix is at this point between federal and municipal?

Charlie Szews

Management

Its much more heavily weighted Walt historically to the municipal side.

Walter Liptak - Barrington Research

Analyst · our question.

Okay, thank you.

Charlie Szews

Management

I’ll try to follow up with you on that Walter, okay.

Walter Liptak - Barrington Research

Analyst · our question.

Okay, thank you Pat.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our next question comes from the line of Steve Barger of Keybanc Capital Markets. Please proceed with our question.

Steve Barger - Keybanc Capital Markets

Analyst · our question.

Hey, good morning.

Charlie Szews

Management

Good morning Steve.

Steve Barger - Keybanc Capital Markets

Analyst · our question.

Similar question on fire; are you seeing the municipality starting to increase add-on or go after higher margin content, maybe suggesting a change in tone around spending constraint for themselves.

Charlie Szews

Management

Well Steve, what we are seeing, I get this question a lot, is commercial sales growing and customer sales declining, but its quite the opposite. If you look at the fire press manufacturer association data, the custom side of the business is actually increasing. So I guess the quick answer to your question is yes, we are seeing an increasing in customization.

Steve Barger - Keybanc Capital Markets

Analyst · our question.

Which should be good for mix as you go through the quarters right.

Charlie Szews

Management

It should be good yes.

Steve Barger - Keybanc Capital Markets

Analyst · our question.

And shifting gears, inventory picked up a bit sequentially on the balance sheet. Is that more work in progress or more raw material and given how you see end markets progressing, do you have an inventory target for ‘13 or maybe a target for cash generation from working cap.

Charlie Szews

Management

Steve, I think what you saw in terms of the pick-up in the quarter is largely related to the M-ATV order that we have for the UAE. We are right now heavily involved in the manufacture of those unites. And then I’m sorry, can you...

Dave Sagehorn

Management

With respect to cash flow for next year, we did provide our estimates at the Analyst Day and we’d say that that would be unchanged from that point.

Steve Barger - Keybanc Capital Markets

Analyst · our question.

Okay, thanks.

Charlie Szews

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of David Raso of The ISI Group. Please proceed with our question.

David Raso - The ISI Group

Analyst · our question.

A quick question on the Access for the first quarter.

Charlie Szews

Management

We can hardly hear you. Can you speak-up?

David Raso - The ISI Group

Analyst · our question.

Okay, the first quarter for Access you mentioned sales flat to up slightly. When I look at the profitability for the first quarter, you are going to have the positive year-over-year of the customer mix, but the negative product mix of more telehandlers. So versus last years first quarter margins which were about 2%, probably about 1% if you pull out the defense business impact on the segment. How should we be thinking about profitability in Access roughly, year-over-year for the first quarter?

Charlie Szews

Management

Excuse me David, I think you are going to see and what we expect is a definite improvement year-over-year. As you know we’ve implemented pricing increasing last year, at the beginning of the year and we’ve seen some positive impact from that and expect that to flow through to the first quarter. So I would expect significantly improved margins versus what you saw in the first quarter of fiscal 2012.

David Raso - The ISI Group

Analyst · our question.

And then if the first quarter is able to be flat to up a bit and you are experiencing some of the delay in orders so to speak, we’ve just seeing. Why would you not think the rest of the year can give you much growth in that segment, given your positive commentary about the Access market for next year. Because the first quarter is flat to up a little, why are we thinking the full year is actually basically flat?

Charlie Szews

Management

I got to think about this, because we did have last the M-ATV related volume in the first quarter.

David Raso - The ISI Group

Analyst · our question.

Just about a $100 million. So lets say apples to apples you are saying its $2.8 billion or so, this year going to $2.9 billion, so maybe its up $100 million. I’m just trying to square up your positive commentary about the Access market and if the first quarter isn’t down, why would necessarily the rest of the year not be able to provide better growth. The comp is harder in the first quarter, because it’s the first quarter of last year where you did have the defense revenue in the segment.

Dave Sagehorn

Management

David, we are giving you a range and I think what we are saying is that we do believe that it will be up single digits next year in terms of overall sales over the course of the year. And again, its early, for those that have watched us over time, we don’t get too aggressive right and we are going to give you a realistic view, and if some of the dynamics that see over the course do develop, maybe we can adjust their estimates later in the year. But I think we are at a good point right now.

David Raso - The ISI Group

Analyst · our question.

That’s helpful. Thank very much.

Charlie Szews

Management

Thanks David

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Potter of Piper Jaffray. Please proceed with our question.

Alex Potter - Piper Jaffray

Analyst · our question.

Hi guys. Just a real quick kind of follow up on that one. Trying to figure out the cadence here of revenue, if you just take your guidance as it exists now in terms of top-line across all of your four different segments, could you just comment briefly on whether you would expect it to be back end loaded or front end loaded for each of the four segments. Thanks a lot.

Charlie Szews

Management

I think you got to take into consideration the seasonality that we have. So I would expect that our segments that have exposure to construction related activity, you’ll see the strongest quarter being our second and third fiscal quarter of the year. In terms of from a fire and emergency standpoint, I think that’s going to be more level across the year and then defense, I think that’s going to be – you’ll see a little of a pick-up in the second and third quarter as we sell the M-ATVs that we currently have in the backlog for UAE; those will be the strongest quarters for that segment.

Dave Sagehorn

Management

Commercial probably also a little back end loaded.

Alex Potter - Piper Jaffray

Analyst · our question.

Okay. Very good. Thanks a lot.

Charlie Szews

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our final question comes from the line of Alex Blanton of Clear Harbor Asset Management. Please proceed with your question.

Alex Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management

Analyst

Thank you. I really wasn’t ready, because I didn’t expect to be called on guys.

Charlie Szews

Management

Alex, you are always ready aren’t you?

Alex Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management

Analyst

Listen, always ready, correct. I want to ask about this JLG forecast. I mean if I look at the total here, you are forecasting a 1% increase in sales for the year and you are forecasting a 15% decline in the defense sales, but that’s pretty forecastable, isn’t it, because you have delivery schedules that stretch out many months, so that ought to be good and its higher than I would have expected. But you’re forecasting a 4% in increase in JLG and a 10% increase in commercial, which has the cement trucks. I’m not sure you can really defend these forecasts; they seem every low.

Charlie Szews

Management

Alex, one thing, and I’m not sure if you’re excluding the sales, M-ATV sales from the access segment to defense in fiscal 2012.

Alex Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management

Analyst

I might have missed that, how much is that?

Charlie Szews

Management

That’s about a $125 million for the year.

Alex Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management

Analyst

Sure, okay, I didn’t take that out. Wait a minute, I think I looked at it.

Charlie Szews

Management

Let me say it this way Alex. If you exclude that and if you take the top end of our estimate range for access of $3 billion, it’s about a 7% to 7.5% increase year-over-year.

Alex Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management

Analyst

Okay, so that’s a little bit better than – yes, you are right, I didn’t take that out. By the way, is that a new table that you got in the charts where you break out that…

Charlie Szews

Management

We used it on the Analyst Day, if you’re talking about the expectations for 2013.

Alex Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management

Analyst

Actually no, I’m taking about in the appendix. I’m sorry I’m looking at the release. The table in the release where you have external customers, inner segment net sales for all the segments and the piece...

Charlie Szews

Management

We’ve reported that. We’ve had that for a while.

Dave Sagehorn

Management

At least a year or so.

Charlie Szews

Management

As long as we’ve had significant M-ATV sales going thorough JLG we’ve been reporting that.

Alex Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management

Analyst

That’s a good way to do it, because that’s really confusing when you start talking to Access. But anyway, even a 7% or 8% increase in Access seems ludicrous to me. Because booms are week in the fourth quarter and you are going to get a recovery, and if you have a recovery in the economy, a continued recovery, and if it accelerates because job creation picks up depending on what happens on November 6. You will have commercial booming picking too, because rental rates are going up, houses are now more economic because rents are going up, so people are buying houses, but then they also need – we’ve had a low vacancy rate in the rental. So it looks to me like you are coming up to a pretty good environment fro Access equipment next year. I don’t understand such a low number.

Charlie Szews

Management

Alex, I guess we see a lot of positive things out there in terms of housing markets etc. I think what we said is we gave our estimates and outlook for fiscal 2013 at the Analyst Day. We are not that far away from that yet and we’ll continue to review our outlook for the year and provide an update on our next earnings call.

Alex Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management

Analyst

Okay well, I guess that’s all I can expect. But thanks, it’s a good quarter. Thank you.

Charlie Szews

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. There are no future questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to management for any closing comments.

Charlie Szews

Management

All right, thank you very much and thank you to all our shareholders for your support. We are available to discuss our performance, our expectation and especially our MOVE strategy, which we believe is the best option for driving value for all our shareholders. Out team is mission driven to execute for you. We are also available to discuss the contents of this mornings 14D-9 filing. Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.