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Oshkosh Corporation (OSK)

Q1 2018 Earnings Call· Thu, Jan 25, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Oshkosh Corporation Fiscal 2018 First Quarter Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Pat Davidson, Vice President of Investor Relations for Oshkosh Corporation. Thank you. Mr. Davidson, you may begin.

Pat Davidson

Analyst

Good morning and thanks for joining us. Earlier today, we published our first quarter 2018 results. 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 GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures that we will use during this call, and it's 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 references on this call to a quarter or a year are to our fiscal quarter or fiscal year, unless stated otherwise. Our presenters today include Wilson Jones, President and Chief Executive Officer and Dave Sagehorn, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please turn to slide 3 and I'll turn it over to you, Wilson.

Wilson Jones

Analyst

Thanks, Pat and good morning, everyone. We're pleased to announce a positive start to 2018 with consolidated results that exceeded our expectations. Adjusted earnings per share of $0.84 was more than triple the $0.26 that we reported in 2017. This performance was driven by consolidated sales growth of approximately 30%, the result of double digit percentage increases in the defense, access equipment and commercial segments. Order intake was up in all four segments and we finished the quarter with strong backlog across all four segments. The order activity we experienced in the quarter in our non-defense segments and really for the last few quarters, reflects the broader, positive macroeconomic conditions that we were seeing, especially in the US. We believe these positive economic conditions will continue through at least 2018. It’s a great way to start the new year and our entire team takes pride in this performance. But we know we have more work to do. As a result of our better than expected results and positive outlook, along with the impact of the new tax law, I'm pleased to announce that we are raising our full year adjusted earnings per share estimate to a range of $5 to $5.45. Dave will break down the drivers of the increase in a few minutes. Please turn to slide 4 to begin the discussion for each of our business segments. I’ll start off as I typically do with our access equipment segment. The access equipment team concluded annual negotiations with most of the large national rental companies in the quarter. The big takeaway from our interactions with these customers was the consistent positive outlook they communicated regarding their businesses and the rental market. This positive outlook is reflected in the level of purchase orders received in the quarter. Orders in this…

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst

Thanks, Wilson and good morning, everyone. Please turn to slide 8. We had a good start to the year, which gives us confidence in increasing our full-year outlook. Consolidated net sales for the quarter were $1.59 billion, up 30.9% from the prior year quarter. Sales were up strong double digit percent in all segments with the exception of fire and emergency, where sales were down slightly. Access equipment sales reflected the strong market environment that Wilson mentioned, led by North America and the Europe, Middle East, Africa region. The significant increase in defense segment sales was driven by the continued ramp up of JLTV deliveries and the final deliveries of M-ATVs under the international order received in 2016. We didn't sell any M-ATVs in the prior year quarter. The commercial segment saw solid sales increases in both concrete mixers and RCVs, reflecting a reversion to a more normal order and delivery pattern. You may recall that last year, this segment experienced a pause in orders in the first quarter. Adjusted consolidated operating income for the first quarter was $92.4 million or 5.8% of sales compared to $36.2 million or 3% of sales in the prior year quarter. All segments delivered higher adjusted operating income, led by the defense segment, which benefited from the higher volume and improved performance. During our last earnings call, we said that we expected a challenging quarter for the access equipment segment in terms of incremental margin and that's what we experienced. Higher material costs compared to the prior year accounted for the majority of the lower incremental margin and unfavorable customer mix along with adverse foreign exchange and miscellaneous reserve adjustments also contributed to the lower incremental margin. Access equipment adjusted results for the quarter exclude $16.1 million of charges and inefficiencies associated with our…

Wilson Jones

Analyst

Thanks, Dave. In summary, we had a good first quarter and we’re pleased to be able to increase our full year outlook. As we said on our last call, we have opportunities to capture and more work to do. Our team is committed to driving shareholder value as we work to make Oshkosh Corporation a great place to work and a great business partner to our customers, suppliers and communities in which we work. I'll turn it back over to Pat to get the Q&A started.

Pat Davidson

Analyst

Thanks, Wilson. I'd like to remind everybody please limit your questions to one plus a follow up. After the follow up, we ask that you get back in queue if you'd like to ask additional questions. Operator, please begin the question-and-answer period of this call.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Tim Thein with Citigroup.

Tim Thein

Analyst

Just a question on access, you had alluded to a less favorable product mix. Just wondering if you can comment from a customer perspective just based on the order strength, as we look at the sales through the remainder of the year, how does customer mix play into that, either positive or negative, neutral? And then second, just on the revenue guidance for access. Was the increase all volume driven or does that include any assumption in terms of price delta relative to last quarter's guidance?

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst

Sure. Tim in the first quarter, what we saw really was actually a heavier mix of NRCs, national rental companies than we saw last year. Looking to the backlog and what the team at access is telling us, we think that's going to kind of revert over the remainder of the year here, so that we’ll actually end up year-over-year relatively flat from a mix -- customer mix standpoint from NRC, IRC. I think from a region standpoint, we actually saw from a percentage standpoint, Europe be a little bit stronger than we thought. So I think, you compare it back to what we said a couple of months ago, we now think that Europe is going to be a little stronger vis-a-vis where we thought North America and Europe were going to be back then. In terms of the backlog and revenue guide, we came into the year assuming we're going to get some price. That is still our expectation. So our outlook really from a pricing standpoint hasn't changed much from what we told you three months ago. So as we look at the increased revenue guidance, that really is all volume driven.

Operator

Operator

And the next question comes from the line of Stanley Elliott with Stifel.

Stanley Elliott

Analyst · Stifel.

Congratulations and thanks for taking my question. Quick question, so with the discussion, you go back a couple of years ago, there wasn't a whole lot of access equipment in the marketplace being purchased. All this to me sounds like this is just to meet current demand and we're not talking about anything in terms of a replacement cycle in a way. Is that fair?

Wilson Jones

Analyst · Stifel.

No. Stanley, we've been saying that replacement demand should pick up in ’18 or ’19 and we believe what we just had in the quarter showed some replacement. Our customers don't signal us on order of it's a replacement demand or if it’s for like construction demand. But we do believe in the quarter, we saw some replacement demand starting to pick up.

Stanley Elliott

Analyst · Stifel.

Great news. And then secondly kind of switching gears on the defense business, assuming it all works out as, I think it could, how quickly can you ramp the international JLTV in terms of units when you start thinking about that on an international basis along with the domestics?

Wilson Jones

Analyst · Stifel.

Yeah. Stanley, at this time, we're looking at it from a capacity planning standpoint and don't anticipate any problems, ramping up JLTV international orders. They're not all clear in focus yet. We're just starting a lot of discussions, a lot of interest, but at this point, if you dial back to when we were building M-ATVs back in 2009, we were building 1000 of those a month. So, we have the capacity here to ramp up JLTV and we've got a slow ramp up now, we lowered production and we’ll move to the full rate production decision there in Q1 of ’19. But we're positioned well to build in international JLTV orders.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jerry Revich with Goldman Sachs.

Jerry Revich

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

I’m wondering if you could talk about the steps that you folks are taking to manage the supply chain as we're seeing a ramp up in demand for key components across -- really across industrials. What steps are you folks taking to make sure you’re your fair allocation of critical components? And how should we think about the impact that has on price cost across the portfolio over the course of ’18?

Wilson Jones

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Well, Jerry, I'll start and Dave, you can fill in some of the commentary around this. From a supply chain standpoint, Jerry, our global procurement team works very close with our suppliers. We do a lot of advanced planning through our sales and inventory operation and planning process. So our goal has always been to stay as far ahead as we can with our suppliers, giving them plenty of advanced knowledge of what we're planning, where we're going, even in terms of our forecasting. So we stay very close to our suppliers. Over the years, we've done -- our supply chain team has done a really good job of consolidating suppliers and getting -- helping build up our supply chain to be at one that can run as we do go up and down in our volumes. So I think we're in a good spot with supply chain. It's always a negotiation from a material standpoint. We've been navigating through that. As Dave talked about, Q1 was a tough material quarter for us, but that's an area we’ll continue to negotiate and our current outlook from a supply chain forecast is built into our financial forecast that we just shared today.

Jerry Revich

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

And sorry, just a clarification. So if actually, the equipment demand, let’s say, surpasses 10% to 15% to the upside, do you think you'll be able to get the supply chain to respond to help you folks ramp, if demand is stronger than what you're laying out today?

Wilson Jones

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Yeah. Jerry, we believe so. And again, we do a lot of the advanced planning where we forecast, I think the teams would tell you, it's more of a brainstorming session with suppliers on the what ifs and can they do that, if not, then we always have secondary suppliers that can support that too.

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

And Jerry, one of the things that, if you look at the order pattern that we saw this quarter, it does help with the customers giving us more advanced notice and you may recall the last year or two, we saw some of our customers, specifically in access kind of be a more just in time approach. That puts a little more pressure on the system, but the extent that we get a better earlier outlook from them, we're better able to get our supply base ready to support that demand as it's coming. But in terms of continuing to ramp up, it's certainly a good challenge to have.

Wilson Jones

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Yeah. I think Dave makes a good point. The last couple of years, we've been on what we call a very short porch in terms of order intake and going into quarters with needing 60% of orders to complete the quarter and to sit down through the quarter that we just finished and have the long planning discussions with our customers and where obviously, you can see the order intake we had there. We’re now planning out in several quarters and that takes a lot of stress and pressure off of not only our operations, but our suppliers too.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Ann Duignan with JPMorgan.

Ann Duignan

Analyst · JPMorgan.

I just wanted to pick up on what you were talking about there. Can you just talk a little bit about the cadence of sales in access, just given where the orders and backlog sit today?

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Ann, I think we're going to see the typical seasonal cadence that we would normally see. Q1 is going to be the lowest quarter of the year. It's going to ramp up through Q3 and then Q4 is probably going to drop off a little bit. No indications that we should expect anything different from that standpoint.

Ann Duignan

Analyst · JPMorgan.

And then can you just dig a little deeper into the restructuring and the pushback of the timing on restructuring and what exactly is going on there, it’s kind of uncharacteristic of Oshkosh to have operational issues.

Wilson Jones

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Ann, a good question and certainly one that we're not pleased with what's happened there. Two really big issues. One, we were, as you know, we were moving our aftermarket parts to a 3PO. The first move was out to Vegas and that went very well. The second move was to Atlanta and that was kind of the final move to get completely out of our Ohio facility. And that last several months of hand-offs didn't go as smooth as the team had planned. There were several training issues with the new workforce. There were some process issues from JLG to the 3PO causing redundant labor, causing us to keep some facilities open longer than planned. And then obviously with all that, you get some expedite freight issues going. The other side of the issue, as you know, we were moving telehandler production. We were consolidating that in Europe and consolidating that in the US. And our goal was to get that completed. We knew that there was going to be an opportunity for more telehandler sales this year. Those sales actually came in quicker than we expected. So the ramp up of more sales was a good thing, but it did create more complexity as we were consolidating these lines in the US and in Europe. So, those are the two main issues. And I will say as I did in my prepared remarks, the team has done a nice job of recovery here. The metrics are all pointing in the right direction from the fulfillment rate, on time delivery. So we believe the heavy lifting is behind us at this point.

Ann Duignan

Analyst · JPMorgan.

And what's the timing now to achieve the full year run rate savings?

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · JPMorgan.

Ann, we're going to have a little bit of a delay. I don't think it's going to impact ’19. I do believe that the benefits that we expected this year, we're going to start to see them a little later and as a result, we’re probably going to see a little less of the benefits and that's partially reflected in the updated guidance that we are providing this morning for that segment.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jamie Cook with Credit Suisse.

Jamie Cook

Analyst · Credit Suisse.

I guess first question back to the order strengthen on the aerial side. Understanding the first quarter, you generally have good orders, but was there anything unusual in that order mix that would have created a pull forward, whether it was ordering ahead of price increases or a certain customer where you have more favorable market share and sort of how you're thinking about order trend in the remaining nine months, just given the strength that you saw in the first quarter? And then I guess my second question, I think you said most of the strength was from the big national rental companies. How do you think that impacts the independents and how they think about ordering? Are they starting to get concerned about lead times and stuff like that?

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · Credit Suisse.

I’ll start, Jamie and then if Wilson wants to get in anything, he can. I think one of the things that we did see and we kind of alluded to it on another question was in the last couple of years, you had a number of customers that were kind of taking a more just in time approach to their ordering. And we saw a few of those and these were some of the larger customers and we saw a number of them this year decide to put in more of an advanced order, similar to what we would have historically seen. So that certainly was at play here. In terms of your questioning, were they trying to get ahead of price increases? The price increase was effective for deliveries after January 1 or starting January 1. So that wasn't a part of it. I just think overall, this is a reflection of the increased confidence that our customers have in their businesses and in their rental market overall and the economy. And it's -- not only did we see strength in the US, we saw strength internationally as well. So it's fairly broad based from that standpoint.

Wilson Jones

Analyst · Credit Suisse.

I think just to add to the timing on that Dave is, we had a couple of national rental companies that normally worked their agreements with us more into this quarter, we saw them actually working in the last quarter with us. So that was one thing that changed from previous quarter.

Jamie Cook

Analyst · Credit Suisse.

And then sorry, how that's impacting the independents thoughts about ordering, because generally, there is a herd mentality, i.e., when the nationals start going, the independents follow?

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · Credit Suisse.

The nationals, we go through that exercise with them every year. I think when we look at the volume that we had in the quarter, again as Wilson mentioned, there is certainly some timing there. We can't necessarily predict what the independents are going to do. We saw good activity from them in the quarter as well. I think we should make sure everyone understand this wasn't just the national rental companies coming in with orders. It was strong orders across the board. What we did say however is, we don't expect that magnitude of growth quarter-after-quarter through the remainder of the year. So I think, especially with some of the timing of the big guys placing orders vis-à-vis where they did last year, I think the year-over-year cadence is certainly -- we would expect to slow down a little bit, but overall for the year, very positive.

Wilson Jones

Analyst · Credit Suisse.

Yeah. I think and you said it earlier Dave, we're expecting, Jamie, a similar customer mix in our CIRC as we had last year through the full year.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Mike Shlisky with Seaport Global Securities.

Mike Shlisky

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities.

In defense, can just kind of remind us, how the JLTV has kind of done here? Besides the ramp up of JLTV, are there any big lumps in the backlog there that kind of left, kind of model the cadence of the top line for the rest of the year here.

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities.

Mike, I don't think it's going to be real lumpy. I don't have the numbers at my fingertips from a quarterly cadence standpoint, but I think in general, you're going to see, hang on, just a sec, I think it's going to be largely flattish in Q2 through Q4, just kind of across those three. No one quarter is going to really stand out versus the others, out of those three quarters.

Wilson Jones

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities.

Versus prior year or versus each other.

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities.

No. Versus each other within the year.

Mike Shlisky

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities.

Got you. And then secondly in commercial, you just talked to the kind of 2018 there, but the outlook [indiscernible], that kind of suggests that it’s going to slow down from here. And generally, fiscal Q3 is the high point of the year for that segment. So, it’s obvious that mix has changed and it was a little bit of a strange order cadence last year, but is there anything else that’s kind of going on here where this year’s Q3 lumpy the high point for that segment?

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · Seaport Global Securities.

I think it's really a reflection of last year, not so much this year, Mike. As you recall, we did have an order pause last year that impacted both our Q1, Q2. You saw a bunch of catch up occurring in Q3 and Q4 last year. So that's probably going to distort things really throughout this whole fiscal year. But other than that, when we think about market dynamics, nothing really is changing there.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Stephen Volkmann with Jefferies.

Stephen Volkmann

Analyst · Jefferies.

So one quick sort of follow-up. Just you mentioned in the release that there were some higher legal and inventory reserve adjustments. I think that was in access. Was that material? Is there any way to put a size around that?

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · Jefferies.

The biggest driver Steve was material and we knew that was coming. We talked about that last quarter. Typically, what you'll see, reserves move around every quarter and more often than not, things offset and none of them really move large amounts. What we saw this quarter was everything kind of seemed to move in the same direction, none significant, but when you add them all together, it was a component that we felt we should probably call out in terms of helping describe the year-over-year performance of the segment.

Stephen Volkmann

Analyst · Jefferies.

And then maybe more of a big picture question, maybe for Wilson, but I'm just curious, does the tax change change the way you view any of your investment opportunities? I mean I suppose you will have a little bit of repatriated cash that's now more widely available? And then secondarily, obviously, you raised your cash flow estimate a little bit due to tax and are there internal or external opportunities that look better in that type of environment or do you hurdle rates not change and it becomes more of a return to shareholders? How do you just think about that strategically?

Wilson Jones

Analyst · Jefferies.

Yeah. I think Steve, we're going to stay, just from a capital allocation process, it's a robust process that we work with our board on a regular basis with. For us, it's $40 million. So it's significant, but yet, in the scheme of things, it's not as significant to make us divert from any of our previous allocation strategy. So we're going to stay due course. As we've said over the years, as we want to be opportunistic when those opportunities come about, and so having some cash is not a bad thing. We'll continue. Dave mentioned keeping our share count level. We repurchase shares this year. We’ll continue to focus with the goal of raising our dividend every year and then keep our out there to see if there are some opportunities.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Nicole DeBlase with Deutsche Bank.

Nicole DeBlase

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

So I just want to start with Access. And I guess my question is when you thought about pulling together the new full year guidance, did you embed any additional material inflation, relative to what you had guided for before? Just scale costs have continued to move higher and I'm trying to gauge how much risk there is to the rest of the year if that continues.

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

I would say a little. People that we talk to Nicole in general, what we're hearing pretty consistently is there's an expectation that we actually might see a material cost -- steel cost tick down in the second half of the year. But we did take into consideration what we have seen, where that steel mills are out there with additional price increase requests, but everybody we've talked to seems to believe that they're going to see a drift down in the second half of the year.

Nicole DeBlase

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

And then shifting to F&E, backlog was up pretty nicely, I think up like 9% year-on-year, but you're only guiding for flattish revenue in the segment. So I'm just curious to the disconnect there, if it's just some conservatism?

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

I would say maybe timing. Nothing really sticks out one way or the other and we do certainly benefit from the long lead times and good visibility from that standpoint. So, just based on where we are from a production scheduling standpoint, the only thing that really comes to mind would be timing.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Mircea Dobre with Robert W. Baird.

Mircea Dobre

Analyst · Robert W. Baird.

I want to go back to access orders as well and I'll tell you that the numbers here are just a little hard for me to wrap my mind around. If my math is correct here, we had something like 1.75 billion worth of orders in a quarter. And I’m ye to find a quarter that looks anything like this one. So I guess my question is this, when you think about the order cadence, I understand that maybe some things have been pulled forward. But historically, you get anywhere between 20% to 35% of your full-year order is in the first quarter. Should we expect something materially different than even the high end of that range? Is something all of the sudden in a market changing just structurally versus what we've seen in the past decade or so?

Wilson Jones

Analyst · Robert W. Baird.

No, Mircea. I don't think it's -- I think what changes the confidence -- has increased confidence in the market. I think you're seeing -- the commentary we're having is that they are starting some replacement cycles and then you're also getting just a little bit more better planning, getting advanced planning into the next couple of quarters. So structurally, we don't see anything. There was not – it didn't benefit either one to pull forward orders around pricing or anything like that. So we really believe the commentary that we're hearing is its replacement cycle is starting and then there is just more advanced planning.

Mircea Dobre

Analyst · Robert W. Baird.

Then this to me would imply that you're essentially going to be running with a pretty significant backlog for maybe the rest of this year, which means that for any new orders that you're taking, deliveries get pushed out. How are you dealing with that and I guess the corollary here is, if really demand is this solid, would that argue for continued robust pricing going forward?

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · Robert W. Baird.

I'll start, we still need to capture a fair amount of orders to deliver the year and again, there certainly was some timing here and a lot of discussions need to continue to occur through the rest of the year. You hear us talk all the time about you get into the May, June timeframe and that really will decide the year, but I think overall, the backlog certainly does take us through Q2 and into Q3 today, but there's still a fair amount of orders to capture yet for the year.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Seth Weber with RBC Capital Markets.

Seth Weber

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

I wanted to go back to Ann's question about the restructuring and how we should be thinking about the cadence here, because to get to your access margin guidance for the year, it implies a pretty big incremental margin at some point, north of 30% certainly for the back half of the year. So should we not assume that there is any benefit here in the second quarter and then the incrementals in the back half are just very large? Is that the right way to kind of model this? Or I'm just trying to figure out how to get from 4.8 in the first quarter to 11 for the year, if you could help at all there Dave?

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

Well, we’ll give it a shot. I think overall, at the high level, you should think about incrementals improving quarter-after-quarter as we go through the year, really driven by a couple of things. One, the year-over-year impact from the material cost drag is going to lessen as we go through there. So, that certainly will help. You had touched upon the benefits of the restructuring. I think we’ll see a little of that in Q2, but more of that -- more so of that in Q3 and Q4. So those are really the two big drivers of how I would view driving the incremental margin cadence for the remainder of the year.

Seth Weber

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

And is your assumption that the independents kind of come in, in the back half of the year like they usually do and that's perhaps a little bit better from -- just from an margin perspective, from a sales perspective as well and the mix goes back more towards aerials versus telehandlers. Is that also part of it?

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

Well, a couple of other moving pieces there. So as we mentioned earlier in the call, in the first quarter, we saw -- we did see a heavier mix of the NRCs. But we do think that's going to be balanced over the course of the year. So yes, we do believe there will be a better mix as we go through the remaining three quarters of IRCs to NRCs than we saw in the first quarter. And then from a product mix standpoint, one of the things we called out was, we're seeing heavier demand for telehandlers and that's actually going to go -- drive things the other way, because I think as you probably know, there is a margin differential between telehandlers and the aerial work platform product line.

Seth Weber

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

Right. So you don't expect that to normalize by the back half of the year. So you think telehandlers are stronger for the year. Is that what I’m hearing?

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

Yes. For the remainder of the year, we expect – because if you look at the first quarter, there wasn't -- they both grew pretty decent percentages. We expect we're going to see stronger growth in telehandlers for the remainder of the year than in aerial work platforms.

Seth Weber

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

And then if I can just ask on the defense business, I know you had some international M-ATV, but it wasn't -- I don't think it was a big number. So was there anything else that contributed to the margin strength. Was there high parts business or something that really tweaked the margin higher here in the first quarter?

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets.

What we said on the last call was there was more than 100 M-ATVs to deliver in the quarter. So those were all delivered. The other thing I would call out is just the, as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, the better overall execution that we saw out of the segment. So kudos to John Bryant's team. They continue to focus on improving their operational efficiency and we saw some of that come through in the quarter as well.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Charlie Brady with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.

Charlie Brady

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.

Hey, just on access yet again here. Can you talk in terms of Europe? You talked, maybe it was a little bit stronger than you thought it was going to be. I'm just wondering, is currency helping you competitively over there or is it just fundamentally the market in Europe is stronger than maybe you thought it was going to be and kind of how does that bode for the remainder of fiscal ’18?

Wilson Jones

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.

Yeah. I think Europe Charlie gives us more strength and a positive outlook. I would say the market is stabilized and growing some. I wouldn't say there's anything structural around Europe other than just market outlook, much like North America is picking up and confidence levels are increasing to.

Charlie Brady

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.

As a follow-up on commercial, it sound as though your outlook for mixers and the RCVs are stronger than what it was a quarter ago and I think -- thinking maybe I might be, whether RCVs come through or not, it sounds like they are, you just comment to what's giving you that higher confidence. Is it a function of just what the order pattern you saw in the quarter here or is there something else that’s tied into that?

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.

Charlie, the adjustment we made really was to take the sales estimate to the high end of the previous range. So I guess I would say it was, we have more confidence in the range that we put out initially and that's really driven by the activity that we saw in the quarter and what our teams are hearing from their customers. I would say mixer still is not back to where it was in a even normalized pre-recession levels. So I don't want to kid anybody on that one, but things were, overall, I would say, just a little bit better in terms of customer sentiment from what the team is telling us, as they experienced in the first quarter.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of [indiscernible] with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Ross Gilardi

Analyst

You guys might have addressed this in the opening comments, which I missed some of. So I apologize in advance if you did, but so what are you saying on access pricing. You were trying to get price at the beginning of the year, your incrementals were soft in the first quarter. But what happened with pricing? Did you get it, what you were looking for or is it still to be determined or is there competitive support for what you were looking for and you seem to indicate that you hadn't increased your pricing assumptions for the year, even though presumably the cost pressures have ratcheted up even further?

Wilson Jones

Analyst

Ross, I'll start off and Dave may have some commentary based on our assumptions for pricing for the year. What -- we went through the quarter and good discussions with the NRCs and IRCs and announced a price increase effective January 1. Pricing discussions, as you know, are always difficult. You don't always get exactly what you're trying to get, but we're pleased that we think we did okay and that's reflected in our financial forecast. One good thing we have is that level of sophistication of our customers is really good. They understand the markets, they understand material costs. They know that a couple of years, we've done some mission work and obviously it’s tough to mark up things like that. So I think there's a good understanding there and good discussions going on around the table on our pricing going forward. So, you're never totally pleased with where you are on pricing, but we do feel like we did okay.

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst

And Ross, just maybe to clarify, in terms of the first fiscal quarter, our price increases wasn’t effective until delivery starting January 1. So we knew we weren’t going to benefit from the price increase in the first fiscal quarter.

Ross Gilardi

Analyst

And real simple question, I mean you’ve touched this in many ways, you’re your backlog is up almost $1 billion and you've taken your revenue guidance for access up 200 million. So what is the disconnect there? Because, like you said, you've got deals like close to two quarters of revenue already covered. Would revenue be up more substantially is what I’m asking?

Wilson Jones

Analyst

Yeah. Good question. What we've said is we believe that the large order intake in the quarter was largely a timing issue. We don't -- although we’d love to have quarters like that, we don't expect that through the rest of the year. Again, our customers are much more confident today with the market and their business. And so we're seeing a little change in order patterns, now there annual purchase agreements are going out more than one quarter at a time. They’re doing some good planning around their business along with what we believe is the replacement cycle has started. So we really look at the quarter and the order intake is more of a timing issue. I'll be honest, that's one thing that we hope we're wrong on next quarter that we have another quarter like that, but again, we're not expecting that. So that's really what's created that. Obviously, we talk always on the call about May and June tell us a lot in this market and that would be the goal if things continue to improve and there's more orders available, we would address our guidance again at that point.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Mircea Dobre with Robert W. Baird.

Mircea Dobre

Analyst · Robert W. Baird.

Very quickly, just maybe some comments on progress with international defense sales, excluding JLTVs or anything else that you might have there. And related to this, I'm just curious with the FDII -- from a tax perspective, would the FDII incentive for US production apply to your foreign defense sales?

Wilson Jones

Analyst · Robert W. Baird.

Okay. I normally would answer the tax question, but I'm going to defer that today. On the international sales, from a defense standpoint, we are seeing good progress with a couple of different opportunities there. I mentioned in my prepared remarks we've -- from a contract standpoint, we went through another good gate. So we feel like, those are materializing, nothing that we're going to be definitive about at this time, but what we see in the international side, Mircea is, we’ve talked about the international interest in JLTV, but it's much more than just our M-ATVs currently in scope. Our FMTVs, our FHTVs, there's needs for those internationally too. So couple that with opportunities for sustainment, services, so we still remain very positive about our international opportunities in the short term and then even more so in the long term with JLTV.

Dave Sagehorn

Analyst · Robert W. Baird.

Mircea, on your FDII question, I will preface it at the beginning by saying, tax is not my full time job, but my understanding of FDII is that's more around intangible income or income generated from foreign sources on intangible income. And if you think about what we're selling, it's certainly very tangible. A lot of impact from FDII related to our defense sales.

Operator

Operator

Our final question comes from the line of Charlie Brady with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.

Charlie Brady

Analyst

Just a quick one, back on the access pricing. Can you quantify the impact material cost had in Q1 and with the pricing, let's assume, you get what you expect to get. Are you material -- are you neutral on material cost headwind you starting in January 1.

Wilson Jones

Analyst

So we look at the year-over-year impact in Q1 Charlie. If you think about incrementals where they might normally be, more than half of the decline was related to what we saw from a material cost standpoint. And then looking forward, we believe we're largely neutral for the remainder of the year with pricing and the additional material cost escalation that we expect to see.

Charlie Brady

Analyst

And just to clarify, your guidance in terms of steel costs, you’ve baked in an increase in the steel cost, not necessarily a potential decline that you talked about in the second half, correct?

Wilson Jones

Analyst

I would say, there's not a lot baked in, but we are not factoring in a large decline either.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Jones for any closing remarks.

Wilson Jones

Analyst

Thank you, operator and thanks to all for your interest in the Oshkosh Corporation. Our team will remain focused on exceeding customer expectations and delivering strong shareholder value. We look forward to speaking with you on the road in Oshkosh, we’re doing an investor conference. Thanks for your time. Have a good day, everyone.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.