Wilson Jones
Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question
Thanks, Pat. Good morning everyone. Before I share my general comments, I'm going to take a step back and remind everyone that we are truly a different integrated global industrial. We are better positioned to navigate through a crisis like COVID-19 than ever before. We have a strong balance sheet and liquidity. We have strong backlogs in our Defense and Fire & Emergency segments, giving us visibility well into 2021. And we have strong people first culture driven to persevere through adversity. We responded quickly to the outbreak and have already developed a robust return to work plan that we continue to refine. With that said, we're all facing challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our first priority has been to keep our team members safe and to help reduce the spread of this virus. We're balancing that safety focused approach with our responsibilities to customers as we supply them with essential products and services that operates in many critical industries. In fact, all of our products and services are considered essential. And we received communication from the Department of Defense requesting us to continue manufacturing defense vehicles and fire trucks. It's a tremendous responsibility, and we were proud of the important role we play in keeping our country safe. Our teams move quickly when the virus came to light in the first part of the quarter. At that time, the business impact was isolated to China and didn't become a major issue in Europe or North America until later in the quarter, but we didn't wait. We began daily action meetings, including all key functional areas to assess risks regarding our people, our customers, our operations, our supply chains and our communities. We've analyzed many scenarios as we strive to balance team members' safety and protection, while maintaining operations to serve our customers. Our office team members remain productive and are working remotely. For those team members required to be onsite for production, we've implemented center for disease control recommendations to promote social distancing and to help keep our workplaces safe. We've gone beyond these stringent guidelines with stagger breaks and work schedules and increased access to disinfecting cleaning supplies and sanitizers. And our teams are investing time to extensively clean work areas to minimize the chances of infection among our 15,000 plus team members. I want to give a shout out to all Oshkosh team members for their passion and commitment, especially our manufacturing teams that are answering the call every single day. With near term demand and supply chain challenges facing our businesses, we are squarely focused on managing our cost structure and preserving liquidity. We've instituted temporary plant shutdowns in our Access Equipment segment to match production and customer demand and supply chain constraints. And we've implemented salary reductions, furloughs, and other cost reduction actions across the company. We believe these cost reductions are a responsible way to manage the company during these unprecedented times. We have not made permanent staff reductions as we believe the crisis is temporary in nature. We've been through many challenges before and while COVID-19 is different, our business is well-positioned to manage to this pandemic. I remain confident in our leaders, our people, and our ability to deliver healthy, detrimental margins for the year. Please turn to slide four for some highlights on the quarter. Revenues were down 9.7% to $1.8 billion, leading to operating income of $134 million and adjusted earnings per share of $1.25. I'm proud of all the efforts the Oshkosh team members provided this quarter, and our people first culture is alive and well to deliver these solid results. Late in our second quarter, we began to hear from customers in our Access Equipment segment that wanted to push-out delivery requirements and cancel some existing orders. There were similar requests, but to a lesser extent with our Commercial segment. While COVID-19 has impacted demand in our Access and Commercial segments, demand was largely unaffected in our -- in both of our Fire & Emergency and Defense segments. And these two segments has strong backlog extending well into 2021, as we enter the back half of 2020. Again, this illustrates what makes us different from other industrials. John and Mike will talk more about these developments and the actions we're taking to drive our performance during this period. During the quarter, we did refinance our senior notes that were due in 2025, extending the maturity and lowering the interest rate, which will save the several million dollars per year. The market demand was very strong for our investment grade debt. And finally, our Board has approved another quarterly dividend payment of $0.30 per share. Please turn to slide five to begin the discussion for each of our business segments. I'll start it off with Defense. Our Defense segment provides a solid foundation for the company, led by its three strong programs of record. And demand side of this business has been unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic. You know the programs by the military acronyms, the JLTV, a high tech, next-generation lot payload protected tactical wheeled vehicle. JLTV production is still ramping up and went out to two more international customers for JLTVs in February. We also participated in the US Army's Industry Day in preparation for a potential re-compete of the program in 2022. We are confident in our ability to retain this program. Under the current contract, we maintain strong visibility and expect to deliver JLTVs for 2024. Next up is the FMTV, which is the US Army's medium payload tactical wheeled vehicle. Our production of the current A1P2 version is winding down. We are beginning to transition to the next-generation version, the A2. We expect to produce the FMTV A2 through 2026 under the current contract. And finally, the pride of Oshkosh Defense for nearly 40 years, the FHTV. We really kicked off the modern off-road heavy payload tactical wheeled vehicle industry when the Us Army selected our entry in their open competition in the early 1980s. We've continued integrating new technologies and upgrading capabilities of these critical units over the past four decades. During the quarter, we received large orders for both the JLTV and FHTV programs that positively impacted our quarterly performance and increased our backlog. In fact, we now have the largest backlog for Defense in the last eight years at $3.4 billion, including nearly $2 billion for 2021. Our team at Oshkosh Defense works very hard to deliver strong results and that was the case again this quarter. While demand remained strong in our Defense segment, the team still faces production challenges due to the COVID-19 related supply chain disruptions and workforce availability. They have successfully navigated through numerous suppliers shutdown while resourcing critical components and they have addressed workforce issues with social distancing and increased cleaning frequency to enable continued production. However, it’s possible these factors could cause a slow down in the coming months. Let's turn to slide six and I'll pass it to John to discuss or non-defense segment.