Brian Shore
Analyst · Leonard Cooper who is a Private Investor. Your line is open
Thanks Matt. And we did decide to provide the detailed share purchase, the stock repurchase plan for the last three quarters. So, let me see if I can add a little more perspective, this is Brian of course. So let’s talk about second quarter. Actually, things were going fairly well for us through June and July and then things kind of fell apart in August. So it’s really when I -- and it’s really to look at the facts and the details for Park, it’s an Asia story, meaning it’s a Singapore story for us. The reasons, now there are people that are probably smarter than I am, not probably, definitely smarter than I am that might have more informed opinions. But to me it’s something about the global economy and that’s kind of maybe a [cop out] [ph] explanation because you could say the global economy is responsible for just about everything. But if you want to focus a little bit more, I think it also relates to China, two of our three largest electronics OEMs are Chinese, large Chinese electronic companies. And I think China has been affected even more so, my feeling is than the rest of the world globally and the electronics industry anyway. So, that’s not good for us because Singapore is where we have better margins. All revenues at Park are not equal, we rather have -- if we have a total of $37 million of revenue for instance in a quarter we want more of that in Singapore and less someplace else because the margins out of Singapore are better than they are in the west. The pricing is not different, that’s not the issue, we keep to -- we have pretty consistent pricing globally because most of our markets are global, but our costs may not be the same. Another factor which you should be aware of which effects a number of things for the quarter, including the aerospace revenues is that we had a one-time sale to a company called AAE, not even mentioned them as a top five customer, they had never appeared as a top five customer before. But this is a special arrangement under which we sold to them a very specialized fabric for ablative purposes. These programs are very -- these are for rocket program, just happens to be mostly for Lockheed. These programs are very long term and the contractors are very concerned about making sure they have a supply of this raw material which is not easy to get actually. And this is a fabric, it’s not prepreg. So our arrangement with this company is, we sell them -- we buy the fabric, we sell it in the same day. So we turn it around in one day, we actually don’t take the inventory risk, we don’t use our cash, we sell it to maybe a small markup though and then we hold it for the ultimate customer and wait for them to call us and say okay now we want this release, that release. And I think most of this product will be released in the next six to nine months, but some could take much longer than that, depending upon the program. That’s the arrangement we have. But at the store it's a lot of things because we got $2.2 million of revenue with very little margin, so it moves and it's a one-time item like I said. The real revenue and the real profit will come when we actually produce the product for them, when we actually make the prepreg out of this product for the end customers. So what it does is it gives us $2.2 million of revenue, it also is aerospace revenue but very little contribution to bottom-line. So if you want to look at Q1 versus Q2 for instance, now we’re talking about the whole company not just aerospace, the top-line are almost identical, weren’t they? But in a way you almost have to subtract that 2.2 million out of the second quarter top-line in order to understand the bottom-line drivers because that 2.2 million did contribute very little to the bottom-line. And there is a small markup just to make sure our costs are covered to the whole of the inventory, but like I said the margins for us come when we produce the prepreg product, which is an ablative product, a highly specialized product for rocketry applications. So I just wanted to mention that. So when -- so we talked about the top-line, now let's talk about the bottom-line. The two big negatives for the bottom-line, it will be Q2 versus Q1 where again the revenues were similar, is that in August things really came unglued in Asia and then we had this other factor, this kind of special one-time factor related to that AAE sale of $2.2 million. Now interestingly the U.S. electronic operations which you know haven’t been hitting any home runs for long time, are just kind of going along, they haven’t really been impacted so much. This is really an Asian story. So they’re operating in the U.S. electronic operations, already operating at much lower level than they were let's say 10 years ago, but it's really not a U.S. story, it's a Asia story, it's a China story and therefore for Park it's a Singapore story and therefore it's also a bottom-line story. Now the other thing that you might noticed is that the SG&A was significantly lower in Q2 as compared to Q1 and that wasn’t an accident. What we did was we reduced the fiscal year 2015 accruals for profit-sharing and bonuses, we actually hadn’t paid or decided to make a final decision on profit-sharing or bonuses for 2015 fiscal year yet and we decided to reduce the accruals for those programs significantly, so many of the people at Park especially I’m not just talking about the officers that will share in that unfortunate event, participate in that event, but that’s the offset, if you look at SG&A you see that the SG&A is actually a benefit for P&L because it's quite lower. But that’s a one-time item, we made a one-time adjustment to that accrual now the bonuses and profit-sharing will be paid. So that’s not sustainable that’s a one-time item. So let's continue here with some other comments with regards to Q3, so we actually have five weeks in the books for Q3 which is based through the month of September, five out of 13? And unfortunately the news continues and at least for September in those first five weeks and the news meaning that Asia is weak, China is weak and the rest of the BUs are kind of just about the same let's say, the same as before August I mean. So not too much has changed for Park except Asia and that all happened in August and that continues in September. And aerospace we know because it’s a matter of totally in the aerospace number, even if we back out the 2.2 million it’s still kind of not a bad number, I think a little bit better than Q1. So that’s not part of story and the France and California and Arizona operations is not really part of story. They haven’t been contributing significantly for a while, they’re operating on a lower level, but that’s not new, that’s kind of just the states close situation, people are looking for explanations and insight into Q1 versus Q2 or vice-versa I guess. So when will the Asia economy and China economy get better, so that’s way beyond over my pay scale, seriously I mean you could watch CNBC or whatever you want and there will be plenty of brilliant people that will give you opinions on it, unfortunately they are all -- not going to agree on anything. What we’re told by customers and OEMs is really all over the lot, but and maybe it’s wishful thinking, I don’t know but some of them say, yes maybe by the end of the year things will kind of sort out and settle down, meaning get better. I am talking again in Asian electronics. So aerospace not really part of the story as we already committed, but you know that because Matt already gave you the aerospace revenues for the quarter. So let’s see buyback, Matt gave you the buyback information as already commented and I just want you to know that at this point we’re pretty restricted in terms of any additional buybacks by the bank covenants, we took out these bank loans as you remember so we could pay these dividends, the special dividends that we pay without having to pay the big tax bill to repatriate funds, we could have done that, but we thought well maybe there would be some kind of breakthrough where the government and we got on the same page and there would be a tax bill that will be approved which would lower the tax penalty -- reduce the tax penalty of brining the money back. Now I know that with all the politics, there is -- a lot of the candidates are talking about that, but of course that’s still quite a ways off and we don’t know what we’re going to do. I mean everything is always on the table everyday including just repatriating the funds paying the taxes and paying the loans offs and getting those loans off our balance sheet. The company has as you know net cash of -- what is it about $165 million, so the Company has very-very strong cash position, extremely strong balance sheet but nevertheless we still deal with these covenants and I guess I won’t comment on them except that these covenants restrict us from doing very many -- much more stock buyback activity, even at these very low prices that the stock is trading at right now. So let’s see, well I guess want -- we’ll go to the questions in a second, but I wanted to just mention that we just declared a dividend a few weeks ago which will be 30 years in a row of regular quarterly dividends without any -- ever skipping a dividend or reducing a dividend, that’s 30 years in a row. I am not sure how many other investments would be able to talk about that, but at least that’s what will be on Park’s record. And I think you know this, but the last -- since 2015 fiscal -- 2005, 2005 fiscal year, $333 million of cash dividends are paid since then. I feel like it’s little bit of a broken record talking about our big aerospace customer, what’s happening because it’s such a big part of our life. But we did receive a 10 year forecast yesterday and it’s quite -- and that’s supposed to lead to a 10 year agreement that is -- and the numbers are quite large. I am not going to give any kind of color on -- other than say they‘re quite large. So I guess that’s progress as I’ve commented in the past that things will move a little more slowly than we’d like but that is some progress. And I don’t know, I think why don’t we leave it at that, maybe some other items will come up in the questions, so operator I think we’re ready for questions at this time.