Operator
Operator
Good morning. My name is Lindsey, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Pentair Q2 2015 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. Thank you. Mr. Jim Lucas, Vice President of Investor Relations and Strategic Planning, you may begin your conference. Jim Lucas - Vice President-Investor Relations & Strategic Planning: Thanks, Lindsey, and welcome to Pentair's second quarter 2015 earnings conference call. We're glad you could join us. With me today is Randy Hogan, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and John Stauch, our Chief Financial Officer. On today's call, we will provide details on our second quarter 2015 performance as well as our third quarter and full-year 2015 outlook, as outlined in this morning's release. 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 most recent 10-K and today's release. 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 Investors section of Pentair's website. We will reference these slides throughout our prepared remarks. Any references to non-GAAP financials are reconciled in the appendix of the presentation. We will be sure to reserve time for questions and answers after our prepared remarks. I would like to request that you limit your questions to one and a follow-up and get back in the queue for further questions, in order to ensure everyone an opportunity to ask their questions. I will now turn the call over to Randy. Randall J. Hogan - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Jim, and good morning, everyone. Let me begin on slide four with a summary of how 2015 has started and how we see ourselves positioned for the remainder of 2015. When we reported our first quarter earnings a few months ago, we indicated cautious optimism that the first quarter was simply an anomaly and a slow start of the year that we and others were facing. While second quarter results came in close to our expectations, with Technical Solutions and Water Quality Systems delivering strong organic growth, we exited the quarter with increased concerns about our Valves & Controls segment. We now have a more cautious outlook on spending in energy and industrial and the ability of our Valves & Controls segment to navigate this more difficult environment in 2015. While energy was expected to be down this year, the first quarter slowdown in the broader industrial market has proven to be more than a pause, and we expect sluggish industrial capital spending to continue throughout 2015. Our Valves & Controls segment ended the quarter without the proper plan in place to manage through these increased market challenges. We've already made significant changes and are accelerating cost actions to position our Valves & Controls business better for the long term. As part of these efforts, we made a leadership change in Valves & Controls. I asked John Stauch to lean in and lead the efforts to more rapidly take out the costs needed to right-size the business given the market challenges we face. I'll talk in more detail in a few slides about what we're doing to more appropriately position the business given the ongoing industrial challenges that are expected to continue into 2016. With the industry challenges within Valves & Controls and no improvement expected in industrial, we've revised our 2015 adjusted EPS guidance to a range of $3.80 to $3.90, which now excludes approximately $0.45 of non-cash amortization. Our prior guidance of $3.80 included amortization. So on a like-for-like basis, the new guidance range would be $3.35 to $3.45. Going forward, we will exclude non-cash amortization for our adjusted EPS guidance to better reflect the company's performance. John will discuss this in more detail later in the call. Our balance sheet remains healthy and we expect 2015 to still be a strong free cash flow year. We'll continue to invest in M&A where appropriate. We have two segments performing very well. And now that it's stabilizing, we are accelerating actions within Valves & Controls to right-size the business for the industry reset. Now let's turn to slide five for a discussion of our second quarter results in more detail. The second quarter saw core sales decline 2%, which is an improvement from the 4% core sales decline experienced in the first quarter. Food and beverage remained strong and we also saw growth within residential and commercial. FX remained a significant headwind in the quarter. Given the continued top-line pressure, particularly within Valves & Controls, productivity and price were not enough to compensate, and adjusted operating income declined and margins contracted in the quarter. Free cash flow improved sequentially but was behind last year's comparable level due to working capital timing. We expect free cash flow for the full year to still be roughly 120% of net income. Now let's turn to slide six for a more detailed look at the second quarter results. Our 2% core sales decline consisted of negative 3 points of volume and 1 point of positive contribution from price. Foreign exchange subtracted another 7%. Adjusted operating income declined 12% in the quarter and operating margins contracted 50 basis points, even though we continued to see lean, sourcing actions, and standardization efforts in G&A gain traction. We expect to see continued margin contraction in the second half, as the accelerated cost actions in Valves & Controls are not expected to read out until 2016. Now let's turn to slide seven for a review of our largest segment, Valves & Controls. For the second quarter, Valves & Controls core sales declined 11% and foreign exchange translation was a further 10% headwind. Currency translation continued to have a negative impact and the quarter ending backlog was flat sequentially, following declines in the preceding two quarters. However, we do not believe this is a turning point and we expect order volatility in both long-cycle and short-cycle businesses to continue over the intermediate term. Core orders declined 12%, which we will discuss in more detail in the next slide. Core sales in all four Valves & Controls sub-verticals were down during the quarter, with a particularly sharp decrease in industrial process sales. In particular, we saw a continued slowdown in spending, including MRO in chemical and petrochemical in Europe and Asia. We also saw a further pause in buying decisions in North American chemical and petrochemicals. The projects in the backlog, while delayed, still appear to be moving forward. As we indicated last quarter, many customers are delaying shipments and this is not just confined to upstream oil and gas. LNG in North America is one area that has been a bright spot, but it is not nearly enough to offset the overall continued decline in CapEx in the global Oil & Gas value chain. The right half of the page shows second quarter Valves & Controls operating profits and margins. While our lean, sourcing and G&A standardization continue to drive productivity within Valves & Controls, it was not nearly enough to offset the sharp volume declines. In addition, FX translation had some impact on the 42% drop in operating income. Now let's turn to slide eight for a look at the backlog in orders for Valves & Controls. As you can see on slide eight, Valves & Controls backlog is broken down into four key sub-verticals, three of which we've put in our Energy vertical, Oil & Gas, Power, and Mining, and one in our Industrial vertical, which is the Process business. Orders were down in all four sub-verticals, with the exception of Power, which did see a 7% increase in core orders. As we indicated previously, LNG in North America has been the one bright spot compared to overall weakness across the entire Oil & Gas value chain. In addition, with project activity being weak, short-cycle MRO business was down mid-single digits for the second consecutive quarter. The good news is that our quoting funnel remains quite healthy, but these quotes have not yet turned into orders. These ongoing push-outs essentially yield an even lower market demand. As we indicated last quarter, we do not expect orders to improve during 2015, as customers continue to reevaluate existing projects in their pipelines of planned projects. The next several quarters will be focused more on cost while handling the increased pricing pressure on the existing business today. However, we continue to believe in the long-term prospects for Valves & Controls and the transformation underway. Now let's move to slide nine to discuss the actions we're taking to right-size our Valves & Controls segment. Valves & Controls is facing increasing challenges across its businesses. Oil and gas CapEx is down over 20% across the globe, and that's not been confined to just exploration and production. We continue to see orders shift to the right and uncertainty with respect to the timing of these projects only increases each quarter they're delayed. We continue to see pricing pressure within the quote funnel. The two pockets of strength we've seen in North America, LNG and petrochemicals, have not been enough to overcome the global capital spending cuts elsewhere. Though there's been some optimism that delayed projects would break loose and this would be just a cyclical downturn, we now believe what has occurred is truly an industry reset. We must acknowledge this reality and aggressively right-size the cost structure of the Valves & Controls business. While we announced previously that we were beginning cost-out actions, the pace has not been urgent enough. We've now identified over $100 million of targeted 2016 savings. This will come in a few different areas. First, we're more aggressively driving sourcing initiatives to offset the pricing pressures. Second, we're looking at the entire footprint from distribution to manufacturing to service. Third, we're also retooling the sales force with more of a focus on key accounts and selling motions, including more specialized sales. We've made good progress on reducing G&A, but there's still room for further improvement. We've made many, many great strides in the nearly three years we've owned the business, and we've run this playbook successfully in other businesses in the past. With the right leadership and planning now in place, we believe we're in a position to navigate successfully the sales decline we expect to continue through next year. We expect to come out of this stronger. A simpler, higher execution business combined with our leadership in the valves and controls industry will enable us we believe to get Valves & Controls back on track to achieving our profitability goals. Now let's move to slide 10 for a look at our Flow & Filtration Solutions segment. Flow & Filtration Solutions saw a 12% top-line decline, as core sales fell 5% and foreign exchange translation was an additional 7% negative impact. Food and beverage showed growth in the quarter, as global beer and dairy remained strong. Residential and commercial was down 10%, as floods throughout the Central region in the U.S. impacted sales of our pumps. Both infrastructure and industrial showed a small decline, but infrastructure saw orders and backlogs stabilize and we expect to see this read out in a return to growth as we exit the year. Segment income declined 8%, but margins expanded 60 basis points as cost action and pricing read out in the quarter. Productivity was strong and the decision to exit low-margin products, while impacting the top line, is helping the profitability of the segment. The focus for Flow & Filtration Solutions is to stabilize the business and drive margin expansion in 2015, and the second quarter performance was a good step in getting the business to where we want it to be. Now let's move to slide 11 for a look at Water Quality Systems. Water Quality Systems was a bright spot once again, with core sales growth of 6%. Despite the flooding in Texas and its impact on pool sales, we saw our residential and commercial vertical grow 5%. In addition to continued growth from our aquatics business, our water and purification business saw gains in Europe and China. The food and beverage vertical was up an impressive 10%, as both our foodservice and aquaculture businesses delivered another strong quarter. The right half of the page shows first quarter Water Quality Systems operating profits and margins. Segment income grew 5% and margins expanded 40 basis points to 22.1%. Price offset inflation and productivity remained strong. We continue to invest in this business in the form of sales, marketing, and new product development. Our outlook for the Water Quality Systems remains very positive, and we expect to see solid growth and margin expansion for the full year. Let's now turn to slide 12 for a look at Technical Solutions results. Technical Solutions saw core sales growth of 6%, which was offset by a 6% FX translation headwind. After a challenging first quarter, the segment posted strong growth in both energy and residential and commercial, while industrial was up a solid 4%. Infrastructure was the only vertical that was down. This was against a very tough comparison last year. Within energy, we continued to ship on two projects in Canada. But more importantly, we saw good backlog growth during the quarter. We recognize that many of these smaller project wins could be subject to delay and are watching them closely. Within our equipment protection business, we saw an improvement from a very challenging first quarter, but the outlook for industrial is guarded and the second half could see muted growth. Within residential and commercial, our building solutions business had solid growth, and the recent acquisition of Nuheat has gotten off to a good start with Pentair. The right half of the page shows first quarter Technical Solutions operating profits and margins. Segment income grew 5% and margins expanded 110 basis points to 19.9%. Price was modest in the quarter but material inflation began to moderate. Productivity was strong despite some ongoing negative FX translation costs. Going into the second half, we expect to see some mix pressures on margin as we see more project than product sales in our industrial heat trace business, while the top line growth will drive good income growth. Now let's turn to slide 13 for a look at our key priorities for each of our four segments. Before I turn the call over to John to discuss our outlook in more detail, I want to update you on our key priorities in each of our four segments. As we discussed in detail already on the call today, our key focus near term within Valves & Controls is aggressively adjusting to the significant industrial reset they're facing. Our second half financial outlook sees further income pressure as our repositioning of the business is not expected to read out in the financials until 2016. We're confident the issues Valves & Controls faces are fixable and we can return the business to its improvement agenda. While John will be leading the business in the interim, we have a strong team in place, including a new sales leader. We believe we have made great strides operationally as well as reducing complexity in the business, yet there remain many opportunities to better align the salesforce, especially on driving the short-cycle business. We're also aggressively looking at the footprint, which includes manufacturing, distribution, and services. While we have made good progress on reducing G&A and we remain committed to our operating model transformation that's underway, the depth of the initial reset will allow us to further improve G&A. There are growth opportunities within Valves & Controls, particularly with North America LNG and petrochem, and we will continue to competitively bid in a disciplined manner on projects across all served industries. We expect orders to remain pressured through the first half of 2016, and we will watch closely for signs of the bottom. Our focus within Flow & Filtration is margin expansion in the short term, but we remain excited about the long-term growth opportunities within this segment. When we aligned our Flow & Filtration businesses earlier this year, it was to improve our ability to deliver solutions to our customers. We've discussed often that our strategy is informed by the food, water, and energy nexus in the growing middle class globally, as this places pressure on the demand for resources. We have a strong portfolio technologies to help solve the needs of a range of customers by combining pumps, valves, and filters into solutions that allows us to drive growth in areas such as industrial water reuse, beer, dairy, and energy recovery. By the end of 2015, we expect to see our investments start to deliver growth and that will be seen in a return to a more consistent predictable top line. We have two high-performing segments in Water Quality Systems and Technical Solutions. Water Quality Systems had some good momentum as the majority of their businesses is within the residential and commercial and food and beverage verticals. Technical Solutions is weathering a slower industrial CapEx cycle, but a solid energy backlog puts them in a good position to grow within a very challenging industry, at least this year. While both Water Quality Systems and Technical Solutions have strong organic growth opportunities ahead, we also continue to build the funnel around strategic bolt-on acquisitions, as these two segments have earned the right to do M&A. With that, I'll turn the call over to John to provide additional color on our outlook. John L. Stauch - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thank you, Andy. Please turn to slide number 14, titled 2015 Current Outlook. This slide looks at the changes that have occurred since we last updated our forecast in April. The biggest change to our guidance, as you can see, is that volume remains a challenge, primarily within our Valves & Controls segment. Price remains in line with what we have been expecting, and FX has actually improved modestly from when we last updated guidance. The negative operating leverage on this additional volume decline could not be offset quickly enough, and we are working to right-size the Valves & Controls business, as Randy stated earlier on the call. Food and beverage remains strong as does residential and commercial, but energy is facing a large reset, as excess capacity that we've built has not been met by expected demand. For our industrial vertical, we are not expecting any second half recovery as industrial CapEx remains muted. While three segments are expected to deliver margin expansion for the full year, given the challenges within Valves & Controls, overall operating margins are expected to contract for the company. Last quarter we discussed cost actions we were taking to help mitigate FX headwinds and top line pressures. But now we'd like to be even more aggressive in right-sizing the Valve & Controls, and we expect we will get the cost out and better position the business for an eventual industry recovery. Please turn to slide number 15, labeled 2015 Adjusted EPS Outlook. I want to take a moment to discuss the change we are making to our adjusted earnings outlook to avoid any confusion that may arise. Our prior guidance included the amortization that we carry from past acquisitions, which we do not believe accurately reflects the underlying performance of the company. Beginning with this quarter, we will exclude intangible amortization from our adjusted EPS guidance. On a like-for-like basis, our prior guidance of $3.80 per share for 2015 has been lowered to a range of $3.35 to $3.45, which relates to what we view as an industry reset faced by our Valves & Controls segment. As a result, excluding $0.45 of amortization, our new 2015 guidance of $3.80 to $3.90 would compare to $4.22 in 2014 on a like-for-like basis, not the $3.78 of adjusted EPS we reported last year. We have included a reconciliation at the back of our earnings presentation to show what the comparable year-ago period would look like in our new adjusted EPS look. Please turn to slide number 16, labeled Balance Sheet and Cash Flow. Ending debt was approximately $3.3 billion, or $3.2 billion on a net debt basis, inclusive of global cash on hand. In the first half of this year, we returned over $300 million of cash to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. As a reminder, we completed $200 million in share repurchases during the first quarter, and we have $800 million left under our current $1 billion authorization. Our ROIC ended the quarter at 10.9%. As expected, free cash flow did improve from the first quarter, but our working capital performance is still not where we'd like it to be given our top line performance so far this year. The working capital opportunities, mostly inventory, are within Valves & Controls and Flow & Filtration Solutions, and we remain strongly committed to our free cash flow targets for the full year and still expect to generate 120% or greater of net income. Please turn to slide number 17, labeled Improved Cash Generating Capabilities. The left-hand side of the slide is one we introduced recently, and it demonstrates how the cash generating capabilities of the company have changed over the past couple of years. We have a long successful track record of converting 100% of net income into free cash flow. But for the past couple of years, that number has been close to 120%. Given the working capital opportunities we believe that we have over the next few years, we expect our free cash flow conversion to continue to run at these higher levels. However, over the longer term, given our amortization, we expect to generate free cash flow close to 110% of net income. The right-hand side of the page is a reminder that our capital allocation strategy remains disciplined and consistent. We remain committed to maintaining our investment-grade rating. We have raised our dividend for 39 consecutive years, and our dividend yield is competitive at 2%. We continue to invest in organic growth. And finally, we'll continue to look at using our excess cash flow in the best way to drive long-term ROIC improvement, whether that be acquisitions, share repurchases, or a combination of both. Please turn to slide number 18, labeled Q3 2015 Pentair Outlook. For the third quarter, we expect core sales to decline approximately 2% to 3% and FX to present a 6% headwind. At a core basis, we expect Valves & Controls sales to be down 11% to 12% based on the shippable backlog, and we expect to be further project delays. Flow & Filtration Solutions core sales are anticipated to be down 4% to 5% on slower industrial and infrastructure business. Water Quality Systems core sales are expected to grow 7% to 8% on continued strength in aquatics, foodservice, and environmental systems. Finally, Technical Solutions core sales are anticipated to be up 2% to 4% on the strength of energy backlog in our heat management solutions business, offset partially by continued sluggish industrial capital spending. We expect adjusted operating income to be down roughly 18% and adjusted operating margins to contract 140 basis points to 13.8%. Below the operating line, we anticipate our tax rate to be approximately 23%, net interest and other to be around $19 million, and the share count to be approximately 182 million. Our third quarter adjusted EPS guidance range of $0.94 to $0.97 represents a decline of roughly 14% year over year. We also expect free cash flow to continue to improve as we manage working capital closely. Please turn to slide 19, labeled Full Year 2015 Pentair Outlook. For the full year, we are now expecting adjusted EPS of $3.80 to $3.90, which excludes intangible amortization. For the full year, we expect core sales to decline 2% to 3% and FX to be around a 6% headwind. Valves & Controls sales are anticipated to be down 11% to 12% on a core basis. Flow & Filtration Solutions sales are expected to be down 4% to 6% on a core basis. Water Quality Systems sales are anticipated to be up 6% to 7% on a core basis, and Technical Solution sales expected to be up 1% to 2% on a core basis. We anticipate growth in our residential and commercial and food and beverage verticals, with energy declines expected to continue and industrial to remain sluggish. We expect adjusted operating income to be down 14% for the year and adjusted operating margins to compress 70 basis points to 13.8%. We have talked at length during this call about the actions we are taking to right-size the Valves & Controls business, and we expect to enter 2016 stronger as we navigate near-term market challenges, mostly in energy and industrial. We expect overall corporate costs to be approximately $90 million, net interest and other to be around $73 million, our full-year tax rate to be around 23%, and the share count for the full year to be approximately 183 million. Adjusted EPS is now expected to be down roughly 9% at the midpoint of the range. Finally, we expect another strong year of free cash flow at approximately $750 million or greater than 120% of net income. Lindsey, can you please open the line for questions? Thank you.