Earnings Labs

Pentair plc (PNR)

Q4 2009 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 2, 2010

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Stephanie and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Pentair fourth quarter earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the call over to Todd Gleason, Vice President of investor relations; please go ahead, sir.

Todd Gleason

Management

Thanks, Stephanie and welcome to Pentair’s fourth quarter 2009 earnings conference call. We’re glad you can join us. I’m Todd Gleason, Head of Investor Relations and with me today is Randy Hogan, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and John Stauch, Chief Financial Officer. On today’s call, we will provide details on our fourth quarter and full year 2009 results as well as update you on Pentair’s outlook for 2010. Before we begin, let me remind you that any statements made about the company’s anticipated financial results are forward-looking statements, subject to future risks and uncertainties such as the risks outlined in Pentair’s 10-K as of December 31, 2008 and Pentair’s News Releases. Forward-looking statements included herein are made as of today and the company undertakes no obligation to update publicly such statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. Actual results could differ materially from anticipated results. Today’s webcast is accompanied by a presentation which can be found in the information section of Pentair’s website at www.pentair.com. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions-and-answers. I will now hand the call over to Randy. Randy.

Randy Hogan

Management

Thanks, Todd and thank you all for joining us today. Let’s begin by reviewing our fourth quarter results shown on slide number two. The headline for the fourth quarter is that we exceeded the earnings expectations we provided on October by about $0.04 to $0.05 driven by stronger sales and inline operating margins. Sales $702 million were down 9% year-over-year. Sales in both water and technical products exceeded our initial outlook providing about $30 million of upside versus our estimate. While year-over-year sales were negative for both businesses trends continue to improve sequentially. Fourth quarter negative 9% sales Delta was the best comparison of the year. Sales in our water business were down 7%. Our largest market, North American residential continues to improve sequentially and we continue to benefit from strong municipal water sales. Technical product sales declined 12%; however several key vertical markets did show expansion in the quarter led by infrastructure, security and defense. In Q4, we delivered reported earnings per share for continuing operations of $0.29 which was negatively impacted by $0.18 of non-recurring items associated with intangible and asset impairment charges and restructuring actions. If you remove those non-recurring items we delivered $0.47 of adjusted EPS, which was up 15% year-over-year. So our sales were down 9%, our adjusted EPS grew double digits highlighting the positive results of our productivity initiatives. Total company operating margins on an adjusted basis expanded 140 basis points. The positive benefit from productivity and materials deflation more than offset the negative impact from the sales decline. Relative to our adjusted EPS, our fourth quarter effective tax rate was slightly over 30% and interest expense was better by $4 million year-over-year. Finally, we delivered $30 million of free cash flow in Q4 before a discretionary pension contribution that we made in December.…

John Stauch

Management

Thanks, Randy. Please turn to slide number eight. This slide is divided into three sections. The top section reflects GAAP or reported earnings per share for Q4 and full year 2009. The middle section details adjustments from GAAP to adjusted earnings per share for those periods. At the bottom of the slide, we provide 2008 reported and adjusted EPS results for comparison purposes. Starting with the first column, labeled Q4, ‘09 natural, our GAAP reported earnings per share were $0.29. Included in this result, were $0.04 of EPS charges for restructuring costs primarily associated with the closure of technical product, Chicago Engineering and Design facility. As Randy mentioned earlier, we transition the work from this facility to other locations over the past few years. So this is the charge to completely exit the facility. Also included in our GAAP EPS, was $0.14 of charges as a result of asset into tangible impairments. At the end of 2009, we determined that book valuations for certain intangible items and other assets required lowering after three years of revenue decline in our residential water businesses. These charges reflect the revaluation of these items. Additionally, as part of completing a distributing and manufacturing JV in China and transition the manufacturing to our Suzhou facility, we wrote-off non-performing assets related to that JV. Removing the impact of these costs gets you to the $0.47 of adjusted earnings per share for Q4, 2009. The $0.47 is up 15% versus the $0.41 of adjusted earnings if the fourth quarter of 2008. Please shift one column to the right, which provides similar detail regarding our full year totals. Rather than walk through the numbers, I’d simply point out that we had $0.30 of negative delta between our 2009 reported GAAP EPS and our adjusted EPS of $1.47. As…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Hamzah Mazari - Credit Suisse.

Hamzah Mazari - Credit Suisse

Analyst

Question on your water business, you have a number of growth initiatives, you guys are targeting over the next couple of years. Some of them are coming off of a pretty small base. When can we expect those initiatives to have a material impact on both your top and bottom line and how do you any about those initiatives impacting your margin profile longer term within that segment?

Randy Hogan

Management

We do have a number of growth initiatives, because residential is our largest segment. It’s about almost half of all of water. The main most meaningful driver of growth is going to be the residential market actually turning up and that’s the biggest driver of our growth that we expect this year. We don’t expect it to turn up rapidly, so we do expect it to be positive. On top of the base market growth, we have a number of initiatives in terms of new customers, new channels, and new products in our residential filtration business in particular that I’m quite excited about both in the U.S. and globally and I think that they will have a more meaningful impact in the second half of this year and going into next year. Our whole systems initiative that we’ve talked a lot about is going to be a net drag, if you will on our margins, but it’s going to help us enter a number of new markets that are quite exciting the small commercial, small industrial systems business in RO. The water reuse markets, which we think actually will, while we use the example here of what we’re doing with the twins it gives us a nice platform to show people in the U.S., kinds of things we’re going to be doing in India and we are doing in China. So I think they will be a net drag on margins, but they’re a net positive on the top line. Now, what I’d like to do is counter the net drag on margins with really achieving operating excellence on our water side to the tune that we have in technical products. We haven’t gotten there yet. We still have a lot of opportunity in water. As we talk about it, we really have two businesses that I think are performing at the highest of highs and that’s technical products and actually our pool equipment business. All of our other GBU’s have a potential to get to that level from operating standpoint. So that’s how I think about water.

Hamzah Mazari - Credit Suisse

Analyst

Just one follow up question on inventory levels, you talked about them being pretty low in the distribution channel? Are you backing any restocking bump within your 2010 guidance? How should we think about that?

Randy Hogan

Management

Not really. I can’t tell you right now whether the volume we’re seeing some of these markets, particularly the ones related to infrastructure and defense and security and technical products and residential. How much of that is just the channel actually restocking due to what I would call the stable level because they were drawn down too far and how much is end market demand. I hope to be able to get a clear sense of that as this goes on, but we’re not counting on a pop. We’re counting on what we’re seeing now to sustain, which I wouldn’t characterize as a pop.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Jim Lucas – Janney Montgomery Scott. Jim Lucas – Janney Montgomery Scott: Question first on technical products could you just bring us up to date on the electrical versus electronic gap that one of the key areas of improvement was consolidating into a global GBU and could you just talk about the margin differential, how that gap is closed between the two and what you’re seeing geographically within enclosures?

John Stauch

Management

Yes. I’ll take the fist half, Jim, and I’ll have Randy chime in. It’d be nice to say we’d closed the gap. I’d say we haven’t for a good reason. The electrical margins continue to impress and to get larger. We’ll be have made substantial progress on improving the electronics business in a down cycle. So we have seen compression as we talk about the Chicago facility that is further examples of us being able to move into the existing technical products or electrical sites. We closed on the electronics side three more factories within the year, and we’re starting to merge the vertical markets together and start to share some of the regional sales forces to try to get some leverage around getting some better Global Electrical momentum. So I think we made substantial progress this year, and we have improved the margins in electronics. The low single digits right now, Jim, and I think with some particular advancement in sales, we can continue to get closer to the 10% level, but electric will continue to expand. In fact, we have record margins in Q4 on our electrical side of the business.

Randy Hogan

Management

Right on the margin side, I think the Europe is done a nice job and which is predominately electronics, the European business had stabilized. Actually, we saw a little bit of growth, and the margins are up. So I feel good about that and, it’s always tougher to make that kind of progress over there in Europe. So I’d say that’s looking good I think our efforts to globalize technical products remains our number one opportunity on the electrical side and we’re making I would say baby steps, positive ones toward working with some of the global OEMs that so value the Hoffman product line. The product line is mentioned Fusion is a global metric product line on the electrical side that really positions us well to serve those global folks like ABB, Yokogawa, Allen Bradley excuse me, Rockwell automation.

John Stauch

Management

I think would I summarize by saying in way, shape performed do we view these technical products margins what we call peak margin. There’s a lot more potential left in these. Jim Lucas – Janney Montgomery Scott: Then with regards to the capital allocation strategy going forward, in your prepared remarks you did make reference to acquisitions potentially one area of opportunity. Could you just give us an update of where you stand on the capital allocation standpoint and with regards to the acquisition pipeline; you’ve talked about bolt-ons in the past. How would you characterize the pipeline today?

Randy Hogan

Management

Bolt-ons is still a primary focus we have obviously with the level of cash flow we have, and our balance sheet. Those are the only ones that are logical from a cash standpoint. We remain interested in ones that expand our technology base and expand our footprint in terms of reach to customers of global. So, global and technology that’s what we’ve maintained and, we had not been focused on that over the last 18 months that aggressively, and we started to be more keenly focused on it in the fourth quarter and there’s things out there.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Mike Snyder - Robert Baird.

Mike Snyder - Robert Baird

Analyst

Maybe first just starting on water, you mentioned the pace you go restructuring costs winding down, John. Can you give us a sense of what they did hit Q4 and just really how much is left?

John Stauch

Management

My estimate in Q4, Mike, and this isn’t a precise number, because we’ve talked about inefficiencies as we swallowed demand in some of the facilities, but I’m estimating that to be about $2 million to $3 million in Q4 is what cost us in water. I would think it’s going to be probably only about a $1 million or so in Q1.

Mike Snyder - Robert Baird

Analyst

The estimate for Q1 is just the estimate of under absorption, or what is actually now kind of baked into your estimate?

John Stauch

Management

I would say, what I’ve got there is that we’re still running slightly higher labor rates and scrap rates versus what we were running in the pitching sites. We’re making progress on that, but we haven’t yet absorbed it to the level that it was at the pitching site.

Mike Snyder - Robert Baird

Analyst

What is actually left in terms of number of rooftops that have not been closed that will be closed in 2010?

Randy Hogan

Management

We’re actually in 2010, other than just finishing up this facility in Tech Products, which that’s in further consolidation on Minneapolis footprint. Non-anticipating taking on any closings in 2010, but getting back to accountability and back to our lean efforts and making sure that we’re making progress on quality delivery, scrap and making progress on lean.

Mike Snyder - Robert Baird

Analyst

Then the New Orleans pump orders, what is the rough delivery schedule over the next 24 months?

John Stauch

Management

I think it’s between seven and eight this year and the balance next year, yes that’s close.

Mike Snyder - Robert Baird

Analyst

Anything delivered in the fist half of this year?

John Stauch

Management

No. We’ve got some small, component delivery in Q1 and Q2, Mike, but it’s relatively low. Mostly deliveries are in Q3 and Q4.

Mike Snyder - Robert Baird

Analyst

Then pool price increases, I presume nothing was issued as of the start of the year. So can you give us a sense just how the pre-buy or lack of pre-buy and then what you expect in Q1? You mentioned, sequentially it was less than ordinary just any more color on that just how this season will end full?

John Stauch

Management

The sell through actually remains positive and we had a good sell through in Q4. We had a decent standard order quarter in Q4. As I mentioned in the comments, we chose as well as the rest are the market also went along with the stronger early buy than we’ve seen in prior years. We expect that to positively impact Q1 a little bit from the carryover from Q4 into Q1. Right now, we’re seeing sell through rates against some pretty low levels here, Mike. I mean, we’re three years down on the pool compression. So we’re starting to think that we’re going to see year-over-year sales increases in full.

Mike Snyder - Robert Baird

Analyst

Any appetite or I guess ability to issue price increases now given that at least according to slide three, you’re still down about a $1million bucks in the price cost curve?

John Stauch

Management

Yes, I think real quickly, I think pool is not an area that we’re looking at price increases this year at the moment. We’ll keep an eye on commodity costs and…?

Randy Hogan

Management

That’s really going to be the trigger. Our outlook actually isn’t assuming we get any real benefit from price. We saw the benefit of price over the course of 2009, wane from being a positive couple points in the fist quarter to being diminimous in the fourth quarter. So our focus is or our expectation, our plan, within our outlook is actually flat to maybe a little bit of giving a book price. Now that said, if we see materials, we know how to hit the price button. If we see materials inflation, we’re in the kind of businesses where we’ll have some pricing flexibility and we will use in that. That’s really how we’re approaching it right now.

Mike Snyder - Robert Baird

Analyst

Then switching to Technical Products, there is the area where you’re most behind in the price cost curve. Looks again from slide four and just Q4 alone you were about negative $7 million. I’m curious just what’s been issued in price increases so far for January 1 period and just what’s, your, I guess ability is to get mid of your price increases there.

Randy Hogan

Management

Real quick, Mike, I mean I think we’ve got some modest price increases. Let’s count low single digits going forward in Q1. I do want to share with you that, although we had minimal price increases, we did have some sizable commodity benefit in Q4, as we expected and anticipated and as those commodity prices begin to firm up, and increase it gives us the ability to start thinking about price increases into the market.

Mike Snyder - Robert Baird

Analyst

So your outlook now just as you looked at your raw materials inputs still, I presume as rising within your costs of goods sold for GT?

Randy Hogan

Management

Correct.

Mike Snyder - Robert Baird

Analyst

Then I guess just looking at the kind of first half and full year guidance. I’m just curious as to it appears as though you’ve got little or no sequential acceleration in the results, and what I want to just kind of roughly done, if you take fourth quarter earnings of $0.47, you take Q1 even at $0.33, you’re up at $0.80 for the year. It sounds like New Orleans benefits the second half. It sounds like maybe some pricing benefits the second half, and then even pool should have a delayed benefit given the lack of a pre-buy. It strikes me that if you just annualize either the Q4 and Q1 run rate or even the first half run rate of $0.89, there’s no real acceleration built into the second half, again despite some of these benefits, especially New Orleans in the second half. Is there anything as you look at, especially out of the second half guidance that would explain why there wouldn’t be acceleration?

Randy Hogan

Management

Mike, we think the fourth quarter showed a real acceleration already in our earnings capability. We think, it’s reading out already number one. Number two, it’s easier to see all of those things you said on the positive side than the negative stuff that’s going to happen that we don’t know yet and things are still so uncertain. I know stuff’s going to happen. I just don’t want to count on all of the good guys, when I haven’t seen all of the bad guys yet. That’s all.

Mike Snyder - Robert Baird

Analyst

That’s what I’m driving at. It seems conservative and there’s a cushion built in there?

Randy Hogan

Management

I didn’t say I was conservative. There are bad guys out there. I just don’t know all yet.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Deane Dray - FBR Capital Markets.

Deane Dray - FBR Capital Markets

Analyst

Just a follow-up on that last point with regard to having some contingent built into your 2010 estimate, it looked like that growth investments of $0.20 and that mentioned earlier on the call. Is that still the right number?

John Stauch

Management

Yes.

Deane Dray - FBR Capital Markets

Analyst

How do you expect to see that during the course of the year? Would that be front end loaded? Is it going to be linear? How should we think about that?

John Stauch

Management

I think we’re going to be discipline, Deane. I think we want to see Q1, readout Q2, have a good indication of our season in Q2 and then we begin to put the investments out there for 2011 and beyond.

Deane Dray - FBR Capital Markets

Analyst

Then we won’t bring out or accuse Randy that you all being conservative, but it is interesting how you changed your approach to guidance. Back in December, you had a single point for the year. Now you’re framing a range. What changed in terms of your visibility or your risk tolerance in terms of giving a range and then related to that it looks like you’re now in a pattern of giving a sequential two quarter forward guidance. Is that going to be a practice of balance of the year?

Randy Hogan

Management

We’ve got two more month of actuals that made us more confident to actually put a top on the range. That’s simply the change.

John Stauch

Management

Then also as we go out with the pre-guidance or sort of our view, we haven’t seen the pension or the actuary studies yet. We haven’t seen where medical is ending and quite frankly haven’t finalized all of our year end and budgeting, but I think we feel like there’s more visibility to predict Q1, Q2 right now and then we’ll give a further update on the full year as it becomes clearer.

Deane Dray - FBR Capital Markets

Analyst

Then on the asset impairment, you said it was residential. Is it filtration or pull? Just can you clarify, which businesses were impacted?

Randy Hogan

Management

Actually, its brands related to the ones we use in residential flow and pull.

Deane Dray - FBR Capital Markets

Analyst

Just a question of the earnings decline, is that was the driver?

Randy Hogan

Management

It’s actually the volume decline and then our base case, which is not for a snap back, but for a slow growth from there. We also have stopped using some of the brands and those broader ways and frankly that was decisions made in marketing that didn’t anticipate what that would do to intangibles. That’s a lesson learned.

Deane Dray - FBR Capital Markets

Analyst

Then on the regarding restructuring on a go forward basis and we like seeing the pace as you go in the early comments in the call said it was winding down, but if I heard correctly towards the end, you all were going to be doubling down on productivity initiatives in 2010. Is that just a realized savings or actually incremental restructuring?

John Stauch

Management

If you think about the 18 facilities we moved last year it is a substantial utilization of our teams. A lot of our lean people were involved in those moves. We just want to go back to those four walls where we made the majority of products and just focus back on the lien.

Randy Hogan

Management

On the basic disciplines of continuous improvement in driving the safety quality, delivery cost in the new facilities John mentioned that we have a number of facilities that really aren’t productive. They’ve expected a lot, they received a lot of new product that’s really the day-to-day practice of lien enterprise is what we’re talking about.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Michael Cox - Piper Jaffray.

Michael Cox - Piper Jaffray

Analyst

I want to spend a minute on the restructuring charges. To a question earlier about the pay as you go. You’ve referenced some under absorption of labor and scrap. I just want to clarify, is that included in your restructuring charges? Is that what you are calling out for Q1?

John Stauch

Management

No. That was included in the adjusted operating income as part of our ongoing view. That would be slightly better in Q1.

Michael Cox - Piper Jaffray

Analyst

So, it should we expect the call out of restructuring these kind of onetime items that have been cropping up. Should those be done now?

John Stauch

Management

Done is a finite word, but I would say we expect to be very minimal going forward.

Michael Cox - Piper Jaffray

Analyst

So there’s nothing embedded in your guidance for it?

John Stauch

Management

No.

Michael Cox - Piper Jaffray

Analyst

Then in the balance sheet cash flow side, do you have the 2010 year end debt level target that you’re looking towards given your free cash flow assumptions?

John Stauch

Management

I would say it’s more dependent on the EBITDA and we believe that we’re going to continue to expand EBITDA going forward and we have a comfort level around our debt EBITDA levels and so when you think about our debt level, we’d like to trim a little bit more off the debt with the more EBITDA we get gives us more flexibility to make bolt-on acquisitions and or purchase shares back on our share buyback program.

Michael Cox - Piper Jaffray

Analyst

In terms of the capital expenditure plan for the year, should we expect something similar to what we’ve seen in the last few years in the low $50 million range?

John Stauch

Management

Yes.

Michael Cox - Piper Jaffray

Analyst

I guess I know it’s premature, but is that a good run rate as we look forward over the next couple of years?

John Stauch

Management

I would say it actually is, we do what most companies do we spend a budget and the budget changes. Sometimes you’ve got maintenance upgrades. Sometimes you have plan restructuring sometime you have capital related to software, but we’re not a very capital intensive business.

Randy Hogan

Management

Every roof needs capital and we’ve taken out 18 roofs, 18 buildings and so we don’t have the maintenance capital on that. That’s capital we can redeploy to support productivity and growth and we have a number of facilities, particularly Poland and China and new one in India which are not fully utilized yet. So I mean, the investments will go into providing capability in those factories, but it’ll still be inside that $50 to $60 million.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Christopher Glynn - Oppenheimer. Christopher Glynn – Oppenheimer: In the walk to 4Q to 1Q guidance was a comment that all other bucket sequential modest increase, just wonder if that includes Tech products?

John Stauch

Management

Yes. Christopher Glynn – Oppenheimer: As we look at for the year any reason we wouldn’t be looking at least a current run rates quarterly for the year?

John Stauch

Management

You mean Q4 or Q1? Christopher Glynn – Oppenheimer: Well, looks like Q4, Q1 are lining up comparable at any rate?

John Stauch

Management

Yes, I think, Chris, as we kind of alluded, I think we want to kind to get through Q1 we take a look at Q2. The season in Q2 mean as lot to us and when we have that lot we can see the back of the year that will really give us a picture on what the residential market truly is. The second quarter is our high quarter. It’s all driven by residential and flow filtration and pool. It’s so critical for us to understand what the environment is. I agree.

Christopher Glynn - Oppenheimer

Analyst

Then with the revenues certainly outperforming in the fourth quarter, did you see opportunity for any early cost restoration?

John Stauch

Management

We announced we restarted our employee ESOP contributions, our employee option, stock ownership plan where we contribute. We are restarting our 401K match, and we are reinstituting our pay raises practices that we stopped. Those have all been announced.

Christopher Glynn - Oppenheimer

Analyst

Those all impacted water and quarter?

John Stauch

Management

They didn’t impact anything in Q4. It’s the $30 million headwind we talk about when we talk about 2010 those were those costs. A little bit in the first quarter. Chris, a little bit in the first quarter, I mean the sales levels in some of our water business did trigger distributor rebate levels and did trigger distribute a rebate that our levels, and then if you trigger some sales and distribution bonuses.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Brian Coningsburg - Citi.

Brian Coningsburg - Citi

Analyst

Most of questions have been answered. Just coming back to the both on comments, maybe you could just give some color on the quality and attractiveness of the pipeline today and maybe some pricing dynamics?

Randy Hogan

Management

I would say that particularly on the water side, pricing expectations never did decline from the seller’s standpoint. So I can’t talk to the specific number, because I don’t have a specific number my head right now, but the quality of the assets is still good. I mean, there are a number of interesting and intriguing technologies as well as interesting opportunities in the non-U.S. opportunities. We did buy one small business from actually in Brazil to that we bought a small business that basically was their pool equipment business in Brazil. Brazil is the second largest country after the specific country after the U.S. It’s a nice, typical simple built on small, but gives us the opportunity to introduce our eco select products into Brazil, those are the kind of things we’re looking at between that and $50 million. That was diminimous that way.

Brian Coningsburg - Citi

Analyst

Secondly, maybe you could just give an updated on every ones stimulus benefits coming through that you see the…?

Randy Hogan

Management

We’re tracking some 300 projects right now. We’ve won probably $7 billion worth of orders. We didn’t make a meal of it on the conference call, because it’s only $7 million and out of 300 projects we’re tracking, right now, that maybe that would yield another $15 million to $20 million orders. Not anything that’s really significant at this point. So I think we’re still waiting for that big tranche of projects to get released.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Brian Drab - William Blair.

Brian Drab - William Blair

Analyst

You talked about extensively about the water business in general, but could you make some comments on, what your expectations are for the JV versus GE this year and I know we had really high expectations for good EPS accretion from that for 2010 originally, but I imagine that’s more of a kind of a story that’s going to take some time to play out at this point?

Randy Hogan

Management

I think you said that well. We had high expectations and we still have high expectations. We have yet to reach them. I’m very encouraged by how the team’s working together. I’m very encouraged by the wins they’re achieving in terms of new channel coverage and new product introduction, but it’s going to take, I think, another couple years for us to achieve the level that we expect it to achieve.

Brian Drab - William Blair

Analyst

Then just a couple of small items here, I might have missed this, but do you expect further pension contributions later in 2010 or is this is just…?

Randy Hogan

Management

For us, our total pension expanse is about $10 million overall for Pentair and that’s versus $5 million for 2009. It doubled, but I mean it’s only $5 million to us on a year-over-year basis.

Brian Drab - William Blair

Analyst

Then last, with the $24 million in restructuring in the quarter, how does that breakdown between COGS and SG&A?

John Stauch

Management

In the quarter, about $6 million of costs of goods sold. The rest is SG&A, primarily G&A. For the full year it’s about $7 million. Our downsizing line goes through G&A. The only thing that really goes through the cost of goods sold would be asset reductions or asset impairments.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Jeff Hammond - KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Jeff Hammond - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst

Just a follow-up on water, if you look historically of the last four or five year, maybe last year being the exception, your water business was up sequentially 4Q to 1Q. You talked about the sequential decline in pool that you expect, although a little bit less. What’s the offset? Do you typically see flow and filtration tick up?

Randy Hogan

Management

Correct. Filtration and flow, we usually see a pickup, primarily residential flow starts to see stocking orders for Q2 into the residential channel. We have a modest increase expected in that business, but not a significant increase expected.

Jeff Hammond - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Analyst

Then just housekeeping item, corporate expense for ‘10?

Randy Hogan

Management

I think you’re looking at Q4 rates being the sustainable rate going forward.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Garik Shmois - Longbow Research.

Garik Shmois - Longbow Research

Analyst

Really just on the free cash conversion in the slides, I believe in the December call. You were looking for about 125% of net income. Now on the slides it’s equaled or exceeding that income. Is there a material difference we should be reading into there?

John Stauch

Management

Not a material. I mean I’m in my tenth year and I’ve committed to convert over 100%. So we went back to my standard ten years promise.

Garik Shmois - Longbow Research

Analyst

So there’s nothing operationally that’s changed…?

John Stauch

Management

Yes.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Mark Zepf - Goldman Sachs.

Mark Zepf - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

If you look at your business across geographies and verticals, where you raised guidance for 2010 versus the December call, which markets of verticals did you not raise your expectations for?

Randy Hogan

Management

Commercial construction, I think it’s every bit as bad as we thought. It’s going to be every bit as bad as we thought it would be. Western Europe as well, yes, we haven’t raised that.

Operator

Operator

Your final question comes from Shannon O’Callaghan - Barclays Capital. Shannon O’Callaghan - Barclays Capital: Just on the technical products end markets. I mean can you just give us a little more color. You mentioned infrastructure, security defense, just give us a little more color there. Also what about sort of broader industrial piece of that? What do you see in there?

Randy Hogan

Management

Let’s start with your last question. For the year, industrial sales were down 23% year-over-year, but in the fourth quarter, they’re only down 5%. So that gives you a sense of, if you will, strengthening of our industrial sales as the year went on. The ones I mentioned that were actually up in the fourth quarter were infrastructure, security and defense. Everything else was down. The most meaningful change from the third quarter to the fourth quarter was in fact, in that industrial arena. Where we saw stocking orders improve and distributions. I’d say that was the source of the biggest part of the upside surprise in sales for the fourth quarter. Now in terms of outlook, I think infrastructure will continue. I think in particular, tech products are probably seeing more of a bounce from a stimulus spending than water at this point, because the use of enclosures is ubiquitous. I mean, whether there are upgrade in the lighting, in the parking lot or the electrical system or the air conditioning system in a hospital, you buy boxes and so we think that that’s directly benefiting what we call our infrastructure area as well as security and defense has remained a decent market for us. Not big enough in my opinion there’s more we can do there. So those are the ones, security and defense, infrastructure and I think industrial are the ones we expect to see be pretty good and energy actually interestingly enough, energy was strong in the fourth quarter of 2008. It was down over 20% in the fourth quarter of 2009. I think as energy prices stabilize and come up, I think we’ll see energy improve as the year goes. By commercial construction as I mentioned continued to be weak the general electronics and communications for us probably up and down.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time.

Todd Gleason

Management

Okay. Thank you all.

John Stauch

Management

We’d like to thank everyone for participating and Stephanie, if you could give the replay information that would be helpful.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for participating in today’s Pentair conference call. This call will be available for replay beginning at 12 pm Eastern Time today through 11:59 pm Eastern Time on Friday, March 5, 2010. The conference ID number for the replay is 49887994 again the conference ID number for the replay is 49887994. The number to dial for the replay is 1-800-642-1687 or 1-706-645-9291. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.