Richard Johnson
Analyst · Piper Jaffray
Thanks Jack. Well before we get into the numbers, there is one page in the slide that just talks a little more in depth about the GAAP and non-GAAP financial information. Just as a reminder, our adjusted numbers are adjusted to exclude all acquisition-related items, so in a common parlance, that would be purchase accounting or business combination accounting type adjustments. We also exclude any unusual non-operational or non-recurring items. Over the course of this year, we’ve had things like pension settlement cost, a gain on insurance settlement, and loss on extinguishment of debt. We also exclude the foreign currency gains and losses that we report separately. And then lastly, we adjust income tax expense to reflect any income tax related to the pretax adjustments and also to remove unusual or non-recurring items that are in the GAAP income tax provision. So with that, let’s first review the highlights for our June quarter. Consolidated sales were $195 million for the quarter, a 3% increase compared to last year. That increase was driven by volume growth in the animal health segment, and also volume growth and some pricing in the mineral nutrition segment. GAAP results included a $2.6 million pre-tax loss on extinguishment of debt related to the refinancing we completed in June 2017. GAAP results for 2017 and 2016 quarters, the quarters each benefited from sort of unusual or one-time items and the income tax provision was $2.5 million in 2017 quarter and $2.9 million total in the same quarter a year earlier. And these were benefits from the release of a valuation allowance related to foreign operations, the exercise of employee stock options, sometimes known as a windfall tax benefit, and the recognition of previously unrecognized benefits. The adjusted results, when we talk about those exclude all of the items I have just talked about. We exclude the loss on debt extinguishment and we exclude the favorable income tax items. At the adjusted EBITDA line, adjusted EBITDA was $29.4 million, up a little more than $1 million over last year, we will get into that in more detail when we look at the segments in the coming slides. And our adjusted diluted EPS was $0.39 a share. That was up $0.07 or 22% above last year. That was driven by a number of positive factors, including improved adjusted EBITDA, we had lower depreciation expense in the quarter, reduced net interest expense, and a lower adjusted effective tax rate. All of those items contributed to the adjusted net income and the EPS growth. So turning to Page 6, looking at just selected line items from the P&L, not a lot more to talk about here, but you see consolidated sales grew 3%, and adjusted gross profit, which basically removes again acquisition-related items grew by 4%, grew faster than sales on favorable product mix. Adjusted SG&A increased $1.1 million in total. The entire - more than the entire increase was driven by the animal health segment as to position ourselves for future growth. We continued to increase spending on product development and organizational capabilities. And looking more closely at the animal health segment, we had sales of $128.6 million for the quarter, that was growth of $2.4 million or 2% over last year. We saw similar trends to what we have been seeing in recent quarters. The growth was driven by strong increases in nutritional specialties and vaccine product group. We did see a decline in the MFAs and other category. Nutritional specialties of $28.1 million grew $3.4 million or 14% over last year. The same -- continuation of the same story and that is volume growth of products for the US poultry and dairy industries and a bit of geographic expansion of those products also. Vaccine sales on the quarter were $16.3 million, that was growth of $1.2 million or 8% over last year, and that again was due to volume growth. I would say that our underlying vaccine demand remained strong, but timing of certain customer shipments resulted in a lower than typical growth rate in the quarter. For the MFAs and others, sales were approximately $84 million in the quarter, a $2 million or 7% decrease from last year, sorry that should be a 3% decrease from last year. We saw continued reductions in sales of medically important antimicrobials in the US due to regulatory and due to consumer preference factors we saw sales decline in Brazil resulting from challenging economic conditions. However, we did have sales growth of other products in other regions that partially offset the declines I talked about. Adjusted EBITDA of $31.2 million for the quarter decreased $200,000 or 1%, just slightly below last year. Nice gross profit growth in the segment was offset by increased operating expenses as we talked about. In looking at our other segments for the quarter, mineral nutrition’s had a very nice quarter. Net sales were $53 million, up $2.5 million or 5% on volume growth and some commodity pricing. The nice part about this business was the $4.4 million of adjusted EBITDA with an increase of $700,000 over last year, well ahead of the sales growth and so good profit performance as we have seen really all year from the mineral nutrition segment. Our performance products net sales were about $13 million, slightly above last year, adjusted EBITDA was also slightly ahead of last year, and corporate expenses were slightly favorable to last year. So now if we look at Page 9, looking at a summary of our full fiscal year, our net sales for the full year were $764 million that was about $13 million of growth or 3%, and those sales generated growth in adjusted EBITDA of $7.4 million. And obviously - I mean, we’ve talked about this a number of times, our gross profit grew faster than sales on favorable product mix, and also ongoing benefit of manufacturing cost efficiencies we’ve been seeing from some of the CapEx investments we have been making. Adjusted SG&A across the entire company for the year increased $3.5 million, driven entirely by investments we’re making in the animal health segment. Adjusted net interest expense was favorable due to interest income on deposits and foreign jurisdictions. The adjusted effective income tax rate for the year was 30.1%, up slightly compared to 29.5% last year. And that brings us all down to adjusted diluted EPS of $1.51 per share for the year, up $0.08 or 6% over the same period last year. Looking at capitalization and capital allocation, our leverage ratio, which is debt to adjusted EBITDA was 2.6 times on a gross basis at June 30, our positive cash flow continues to improve the leverage ratio. We also had $56 million of cash on the balance sheet at year-end. For our June quarter, we generated $9 million of net cash flow before financing; and for the year, we generated $76 million of net cash flow before financing. And on the dividend front, we paid a routine quarterly dividend in the quarter and have declared the same amount per share to be paid in September. So now turning to guidance. On Page 11 and I guess 12 and 13. You see the numbers on Slide 11. We’ve given guidance on both a GAAP and adjusted basis. There is more detail in the press release on these numbers. These are some of the highlight numbers. We forecast animal health net sales at $500 million to $515 million. That’s up to a 3% increase over last year at the top end of that range. We continue - we expect that nutritional specialties and vaccines will continue to grow at double-digit rates. We expect MFAs and others sales will decline something in the single-digit neighborhood. As we expect continued reduction in US sales of medically important antimicrobials through the first half of our fiscal year, we do expect continued growth in international markets, which will be a partial offset to those declines. In mineral nutrition, we expect revenues to remain steady to slight increase with volume growth being offset by reduced pricing related to commodity prices and performance products we expect to remain stable or decline slightly. At the adjusted EBITDA line, sorry so that gives you - for the total company, consolidated net sales of between $765 million and $790 million expected next year. Again up to a 3% increase. On a GAAP basis, we expect GAAP diluted earnings per share of $1.43 to $1.56. That’s down from 2017, primarily due to a higher call it more normalized GAAP effective tax rate. The 2017 effective tax rate and therefore tax expense included some unusual benefits that we do not expect to recur in fiscal 2018. So looking now at adjusted EBITDA, we expect that adjusted EBITDA for our fiscal 2018 to be in the $123 million to $126 million range. That’s 3% to 6% increase over 2017. We expect margins to improve - bottom-line EBITDA margin or operating margin to improve by 30 basis points to 40 basis points, and that will be driven by an improved gross profit ratio really due to favorable product mix. However, we will continue with increased spending on operating expenses for product development, which will partially offset the gross profit growth. We expect adjusted EPS will be between $1.55 and $1.61. That’s 3% to 7% increase over the prior year. The growth in adjusted EBITDA is really the primary driver of the growth in adjusted earnings per share. We expect adjusted EBITDA for our September and December quarters, so the first two quarters, the first half of our fiscal year. We expect adjusted EBITDA for the first of will be approximately equal to the comparable quarter last year. So we expect that the growth in adjusted EBITDA will come primarily in the second half of our fiscal year. And finally, we expect positive cash flows and remain interested in acquisitions. So that is the conclusion of my prepared remarks. So operator, if you would please open the line for questions.