Brian Shore
Analyst · Griffin Securities. You may begin
Okay, thanks a lot Matt. It's Brian here again. Why don’t I start out with a few comments about the quarter itself, then we'll talk about where we're going a little bit. Okay, so let's just deal with the tax provision. As Matt said, it was negative, which obviously, is unusual item. It would have been 18.7%, if not for this Fin48 adjustment. And the EPS would have been $0.09 rather than $0.12 based upon 18.7% tax rate. Okay, just want to make sure you hear that. So, 18.7%, that's quite a high rate based upon recent history. We're not predicting the rate is going to move up that high kind of on a sustainable basis, but it could move up. Couple of things have happened, one is we had a credit where we're benefitting from in Singapore which has expired. And also in the U.S., as we start making more money in the U.S. that will drive our tax rate up as well of course we all know from all the discussions in Washington that the U.S. corporate tax rate is the highest in the industrialized world, so maybe that will change. But based upon current tax rates in the U.S. that can move our combined tax rate up as well, we get through the restructuring out West in electronics and aero continues to perform better. That could drive our tax rate up because U.S. as I indicated has higher tax jurisdiction as compared to Singapore where we have the balance of our major operations. Also couple other specific points, Q1 bottom line, which affected negatively when you compare to Q4 by $600,000 a short-term credit, which we had in the Q4, which were not available in Q1 just based on the operating calendar. Another thing we just want to make sure, you keep in mind because restructuring the P&L is kind of messy now, there are a lot of duplicative costs that we are incurring as we go through the restructuring. And that really surprised what we expected and planned, so until we are done with the restructuring that’s complete -- we're still, the P&L will continue to be burdened by those duplicative costs. At this point, we expect to complete the restructuring by the end of the second quarter, but that’s not a guarantee. That’s our current plan and expectation. So we will see it. Each one should be aware of that. If you look at the top line and bottom line, the bottom line is worse compared to the top line especially when we look at that $0.09 number. Well okay, you can do the math. The $0.09 at this time would be based upon higher tax rate than in the fourth quarter, but you can do the math. You can see that the bottom line is not aligned with the fourth quarter based upon on the top line. So, restructuring charges, just want to update you on those. In the first quarter, I think Matt said, it was 1.4 million or maybe that was in the news release. The second quarter about 3 million. The third quarter -- third quarter and beyond, we should say 1 million to plus, I am not sure. The benefit remember $3 million to $3.5 million and we are hoping that benefit will be mostly, even fully realized in the third quarter, but depends when the restructuring itself was completed. So, and the fact that will stay to a cost, restructuring costs in the third quarter, it doesn’t mean that the benefit won't be there. Those things are not necessarily linked in terms of timing. So, let's talk about electronics in the U.S., obviously, the big news is the restructuring. We discussed this during our fourth quarter conference call, which was I think less than two months ago. So, you have -- you are pretty much updated a lot of the new events on the key things get through the restructuring, the niche focus. We believe that the market in the U.S. is for us anyway a niche market in electronics. So, Egypt, we continue with the aggressive OEM marketing, a program that we discussed for last couple of quarters. We now eight OEMs signed up for program pricing arrangements and we've discussed that in the past that we have updated you on the OEM counts so it keeps moving up. A couple of new products that we introduced last week actually, so if the time is good. One is M-Ply. There is new release on M-Ply. It's a PTFE Bond Ply for PTFE multi-layer hybrid construction, which is something that seems to be becoming more and more popular these days in terms of advanced electronic circuit constructions, circuit board constructions. And the other one is Mercurywave 9350, that’s a 3.5 Dk controlled dielectric and that’s for RF or cellular-based stations another RF applications. For RF, the controlled Dk is very critical apparently. So, I think we mentioned this in the fourth quarter call. But we just start to see the results from these efforts and these situations in electronics in the second half of the fiscal year results through restructuring, results from the OEM marketing program in terms of top line growth. Aerospace, so some of these we'd just reiterate. We covered some of these things in the fourth quarter call, but let's just go through it. First of all, the first quarter of aerospace was a pretty good quarter in terms of both top and bottom line for the base line business, that lets say compared to the fourth quarter. So, there was improvement in top and bottom line over the fourth quarter. And the second quarter for aerospace looks pretty good as well, looks like that improvement will continue. But the real story for me is the huge opportunities in aerospace. It's nice that the base business -- the base line business is moving in the right direction, but the real story has not been told. The real story is based upon the huge opportunities. We announced, I think or we told you anyway during our fourth quarter call that we've signed a long-term agreement with GE Aviation. We entered into a long-term agreement. It's a little bit maybe confusing, but we just did a new release about this agreement a couple of days ago. And the reason for that is that we needed to get approval from GE and it takes a little while, the GE being a big company to get approval. So, even though for some it was old news, we thought to put out the news release anyway about this long-term agreement. It's something that's really very exciting for Park, I think. It deals with hundreds of millions of dollars of business through mid-term and the agreement. Interesting because actually it's in news release, our first sale at Park in 1954 was to GE Schenectady in the amount of $300. So, in a way, that's kind of fitting -- it's really very special thing for Park I believe that we have that agreement. And just continuing with the GE story, we also, as we reported in the past, are working on a joint development agreement. It's going well. It's developed a new product. GE launched to is pushing to go into production with that new product, really next year, very significant revenue that's not what we call a niche product. That's a product which would entail significant revenue. The nice thing when we work on development programs with GE is that when the development is complete or qualified. That's a very, very, very very big deal with aerospace. That's what happened with our AFP material and that's what -- that's a plan anyway with this development project that we're working on now. People on aerospace would tell, you can have the best mousetrap, but if you are not qualified with anybody, it's probably going to sit there for a quite few years and collect dust and maybe rust a little bit too. So, that's the really nice thing as once the project is complete, we're qualified, we do it in our production. And the reason that happens as GE is pushing, this is not so much from our side, this is on GE side something they want to quite a lot. So, and I mention I think last year time, but I'll mention again, we are working actively on a several other opportunities with GE that translated into the meaningful revenue, significant revenues. We are not going to go into details of those right now, but they are being actively worked on. These are not just preliminary discussions, actively worked on, being worked on. So, and the contract we entered into, the long-term agreement is with MRAS, Middle River Aircraft Systems, which is a subsidiary of GE Aviation. It's the subsidiary, the division of GE Aviation which focuses on the sales and thrust reversers for jet engines. There are many other GE Aviation divisions which produce other components for the engines. These are internal structure components. So, we just have a one-year arrangement with GE Aviation because the two groups got out of a sink a little bit. We now have [RFQ] from GE Aviation for the future and we are working through that [RFQ]. But I should mention that we are qualified already on several other products that are included in the [RFQ]. So, we never want to get overconfident, but since we're already qualified the chances I think are quite good that we will continue with at least those products. And obviously, there are opportunities for more because there is some products in the [RFQ] which were not qualified on right now, we are not producing for GE at this time. So that's an upside opportunity and that would be an addition to what we have already. Just want to touch on the redundant factory because we haven’t spoken about that for a while, I don’t think. I think I've told you before that our understanding and arrangement with GE was, once we signed a long-term agreement with them we built the redundant factory. So, we are probably thinking while we sign a long-term agreement what's the status of the factory. We've asked GE for couple of other things, not new agreements, but some additional information that we've asked for. And we're waiting to get your back from GE and those items, and once we had that information then we would go ahead and kick-off that expansion plan. It may move up to 15 million approximately that's a real rough number. I think we previously told just more like 12 million, but the reason for that is that the capability of the factory is expanding from its actual design based upon opportunities that we're working on. This capacity is for redundancy as I said, but it also needed for capacity as it turns out based upon the plans and forecast that we are currently working on with the GE Aviation. Last time we touched on the fact that there is another very large aircraft OEM that we've been working with. I just update you a little bit. It's only I think less than two months since our last call. So some of this maybe repetitive, but the first specification we’re actively working on the qualification that’s specification we’ve already been audited. And I checked back, I wasn’t sure this was the case. I didn’t want to say this was not true. The auditors they came in for whole week. This is I guess pretty large aircraft company. The term they used was they were shocked at how well we did. And I was quite surprised they said that to us, but that’s the term they used. I didn’t go back and check to make sure. That’s what they said. So that went well and I suspect that we’ll be up and running and qualify to that specification in near future. And that should translate into real revenue. I’m not sure exactly when, but I would think by the beginning of next year. There are several other specs that this large aircraft company has that we’re pursuing working on. And should that for the same company, we’re doing parts and spares for military aircraft. I should say we’re working on a progress on parts and spares for military aircraft that hasn’t actually happened yet. We’ve done a lot of the other work that needs to be done for them to be in a position to give that business, and also working on qualifying for a large part for a civilian aircraft, legacy civilian aircraft. To me, it's just my feeling, I’ll tell you just so you'd be probably interested that it feels to me like this one is about to break with the so large aircraft company. There is multiple components to it so that means everything will break at once, but I feel pretty good about our status with that company and our developing business with them. The Scorpion program, we should touch on that every quarter. It's going well. We’re very privileged to be part of that program. I won’t say too much more about it, and actually why don’t we leave it at that because we’ve already spent a lot of time on the introductory remarks when we go to the questions. Operator, we’re ready for questions now.