Earnings Labs

Pioneer Power Solutions, Inc. (PPSI)

Q2 2018 Earnings Call· Sun, Aug 12, 2018

$3.78

+13.70%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to today’s Pioneer Power Solutions Incorporated Second Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference. Just a reminder that today’s call is being recorded. And now it’s my pleasure to turn the conference over to Brett Maas. Please go ahead, sir.

Brett Maas

Management

Thank you, and welcome. Call today will be hosted by Nathan Mazurek, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Tom Klink, Chief Financial Officer. Following this discussion, there’ll be formal Q&A session open to participants on the call. We appreciate having the opportunity to review the second quarter financial results. Before we get started, let me remind you this call is being broadcast over the Internet, and a recording of the call and the text of the management’s prepared remarks will be made available on the company’s website. During this call, management will make forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to the cautionary text regarding forward-looking statements contained in the earnings release issued earlier today and in the posted version of these prepared remarks, both of which apply to the content of the call. I’d now turn the call over to Nathan Mazurek, Chairman and CEO. Nathan, please go ahead.

Nathan Mazurek

Management

Thank you, Brett. Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us today for our conference call. I’ll begin the call by discussing our continuing operations, then make some remarks about our discontinued operations, the planned sale of our switchgear business and our exploration of strategic alternatives. In our second quarter, we delivered significant an improvements across the board, revenue, margin, EBITDA, on a sequential basis when compared to the first quarter and especially, compared to the fourth quarter of last year. As a company that serves multiple end markets and many different customers, the mix-related issues which impacted our margin and overall profitability in the fourth quarter and first quarter are part of our business. Our liquid-filled segment maintains long-term agreements with major utilities and large industrial companies. On the plus side, these agreements provide us with a certain amount of stability and predictability. The nature and timing of projects covered by these agreements, however, are not only the optimal for Pioneer, and our customers are not required to cater to our particular wishes on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Over the long term, we go through periods that have a higher mix of lower-margin business that per our agreements, we are required to fulfill. This utilizes our finite capacity less ideally, pushing out some higher-margin projects. That is the nature of our business. In the fourth quarter of last year and the fourth – and the first quarter of this year, we went through one of those periods, and it impacted our profitability negatively. The mix began to normalize in the second quarter, and we were able to deliver a meaningful improvement in revenue, gross margin and EBITDA as well as a narrowing of our net loss from continuing operations by more than $0.5 million from a loss of $581,000…

Tom Klink

Management

Thank you, Nathan, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I get started, as Nathan discussed, on May 2, we signed an agreement to sell our switchgear business. Accordingly, this portion of our business has been reclassified as discontinued operations for second quarter and year-to-date reporting. The results presented in our press release and that I’m about to discuss, reflect continuing operations only. Revenue was $24.6 million for the second quarter of 2018, up 4.8% on a sequential basis with each business unit reports increased sales volume. Year-over-year, second quarter 2018 revenue compares to $27.3 million in the second quarter of 2017. The year-over-year decrease was due primarily to lower sales of generator equipment and liquid-filled transformers, which was partially offset by an increase in revenue from our generator service business. Service revenue from the maintenance of generators increased by $326,000 or 14.4% year-over-year. As a reminder, the second quarter of last year was a particularly strong quarter, especially for our liquid-filled products, creating a challenging year-over-year comparison. Gross profit for the second quarter of 2018 was $5.2 million or 21.2% compared to $5.8 million or 21.3% gross profit in the year-ago quarter. Sequentially, gross profit was up substantially from 18.9% in the first quarter of 2018 with each business unit reporting improved profitability. Selling, general and administrative expenses of $4.15 million for the second quarter of 2018 were essentially flat on an absolute dollar basis, both year-over-year and sequentially. As a percentage of revenue, SG&A expenses were lower sequentially at 16.9% of revenue in the second quarter of 2018 compared to 17.9% in the first quarter of 2018. In the second quarter of 2018, we incurred a foreign exchange loss of $197,000 compared to a gain from foreign exchange activity of $210,000 in the second quarter of 2017. Operating income from…

Nathan Mazurek

Management

Thank you, Tom. I’m encouraged with the sequential improvement, moreover, our record backlog. And improved mix of that backlog gives us a significant visibility into the remainder of 2018. We expect the second half of 2018 to be better than the first half, both on a top and bottom line basis. In addition, we are expecting sequential improvements from Q2 to Q3 and again, from Q3 to Q4. Operator, I’d now like to open the call for questions.

Q -

Management

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And I currently have no questions, gentleman.

Brett Maas

Management

Great. Excellent. Thank you all for your time and support, and we look forward to updating you again on our next call.