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Gibraltar Industries, Inc. (ROCK)

Q3 2014 Earnings Call· Tue, Oct 28, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Gibraltar Industries Third Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. We will be conducting a question-and-answer session towards the end of the conference call. I would like to now turn the call over to your host for today, Mr. David Calusdian from the Investor Relations firm, Sharon Merrill. Please proceed.

David Calusdian

Management

Good morning everyone, and thank you for joining us. If you have not received a copy of the earnings press release that was issued this morning, you can find it in the Investor Info section of the Gibraltar website, www.gibraltar1.com. During the prepared remarks today, management will be referring to presentation slides that summarize the Company’s third quarter performance. These slides also are posted to the Company’s Web site. Please turn to Slide 2 in the presentation. The Company’s earnings release and slide presentation contain forward-looking statements about future financial results. The Company’s actual results may differ materially from the anticipated events, performance or results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Gibraltar advises you to read the risk factors detailed in its SEC filings, which can be also accessed through the Company’s Web site. Additionally, Gibraltar’s earnings release and remarks this morning contain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of GAAP to adjusted measures have been appended to the earnings release. On our call this morning is Gibraltar’s Chairman and CEO, Brian Lipke; President and Chief Operating Officer, Frank Heard; and Chief Financial Officer, Ken Smith. At this point, I will turn the call over to Brian.

Brian Lipke

Management

Thank you, David. Good morning everyone, and thanks for joining us on our call today. As usual I’m going to start with some introductory comments on the quarter, and then Frank will discussed each segments performance and related market conditions and Ken will provide more financial details. I’ll close our prepared remarks with some thoughts on the outlook, and at that point, we’ll open the call to any questions that any of you may have. This morning in addition to our normal quarterly earnings release we also issued an addition press release announcing two leadership changes each of which bodes well for Gibraltar’s future. Our first announcement related to our succession planning process and stated that Frank Heard will be taking over as CEO on January 1st and I will remain in the position of Chairman. Frank’s hiring earlier this year was part of strategic succession plan developed by the board and myself almost two years ago. Frank was hired back on May 1st of the year because he had the right experience and skills necessary to drive improvements in operating performance and accelerate our strategy for proving shareholder value. Frank’s years of experience in the building products market with ITW allowed him to hit the ground running upon joining Gibraltar. In the six months Frank is been on board he is visited each of our 45 facilities, interacted with the business unit leaders and their management teams, gained an understanding of this strategic positioning of the company and has meet with many of Gibraltar’s shareholders. More specifically he’s began -- to help each business unit become more focused on driving product and business unit profitability. And he has initiated processes that will help the business units sharpen their focus on capturing strategic growth opportunities. In addition his past acquisition…

Frank Heard

Management

Thank you Brian and good morning everyone. I'm certainly looking forward to taking over a CEO at the beginning of the year. My focus will be on accelerating our growth strategy and driving higher returns on capital. As we discussed on our last call, this will be accomplished in two phases. First we'll focus more deeply on operational excellence by seeking ways to drive complexity out of our existing businesses while adding to our capacity for innovation. And second, we'll think differently about how we allocate people and capital both inside and beyond our existing business portfolio. I look forward to working with Brian, the Board and the entire Gibraltar team to drive long term profitable growth and enhance shareholder value. Let's now turn into a discussion of our operations during the third quarter. Please turn to Slide 4. I'll start with the residential products segment, where third quarter revenues grew 13% year over year. This growth was driven by an uptick in sales of roofing related products and most importantly continued acceleration in shipment volumes for our new line of postal storage products. On our call last quarter we predicted a slight improvement in reroofing demand during the second half of 2014. We did in fact see modestly higher sales in the third quarter for our roof related products of ventilation and rain dispersion. Overall residential remodeling and repair activity as well as new construction remain generally steady. Majority of our growth this quarter came from market size expansion which bodes well for the quarters ahead. The majority of this quarter’s residential growth came from sales of postal and parcel storage products which were up 20% from third quarter last year and now comprise about one-third of our residential product segment revenues. Gibraltar is a long standing leader in…

Ken Smith

Management

Before describing more of our third quarter results, I want to comment on our results for the quarter compared to our third quarter guidance. Adjusted EPS for the third quarter 2014 came in at $0.30 or $0.05 above the midpoint of our guidance of $0.23 per share to $0.27 per share. The $0.05 improvement came from stronger than expected sales volume for roofing related products, plus lower employee cost, plus favorable positions on hedging programs. And given the variability in the underlying transaction and values for the employee claims and the hedging derivatives, our fourth quarter guidance does not include continuance of the third quarter improvement. Now, let's turn to Slide 7 titled Consolidated Results. As previously cited, third quarter revenues were up 8% year-over-year, essentially all the increase stemmed from higher unit volume. Unit volume increased sales by 700 basis points, improved pricing contributed another 50 basis points and 50 basis points of improvement came from our September 2013 acquisition of a solar powered attic ventilation product line. As Frank discussed, our most significant volume growth this quarter was led by double-digit increase in sales of postal products and we also had the single-digit growth in industrial markets and sales of roofing related products. This combined unit growth more than offset the lower volumes shipped to transportation infrastructure projects. The third quarter's adjusted operating income was equivalent to last years, the net result of factors described in Slide 7’s comment box and as previously mentioned. As a result of all these factors adjusted earnings per share for the third quarter 2014, we are at quarter for the same quarter last year. While not shown on Slide 7 but equally important was the sequential earnings improvement. Adjusted operating margin increased a 180 basis points in the third quarter versus the…

Brian Lipke

Management

Thank you Ken. Before we open the call to your questions I’ll conclude our prepared remarks with some thoughts on Q4 and the quarters of head. Despite the generally flat demand environment in our end markets, we’re continuing to focus on driving organic growth and improving Gibraltar’s profitability. In the residential product segment our goal is to outgrow the overall market and we’re making good progress there. We believe the U.S housing market will continue its long term recovery. Near term, the latest industry in this seize such as a National Association of Home Builders, Housing Market Index, Harvard’s Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity, as well as the latest Census Bureau reports on housing sales and starts, all pointed to a continued modest level of growth through the balance of the year ahead in 2015. In terms of residential repair and remodeling our outlook remains our outlook remains unchanged, where it continues to be a great deal of uncertainty in the sector. As a result, we continue to expect re-roofing demand will be modestly unfavorable for full year 2014, but slightly improved in the second half compared with the first half. The modest increase in roofing-related product demand that we experienced in the third quarter reinforces this forecast. Our sense of optimism about the residential outlook is stronger than it was a year ago. We're seeing good success with our new postal storage products, while making progress in launching new residential ventilation products that expand our presence from the roof to the basement and the entire house. These organic growth initiatives are beginning to create strategic distance between our residential product sales and the underlying trends in the housing starts and residential improvement spending. In terms of our fourth quarter performance in the Industrial and Infrastructure segment, industry statistics such…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) Our first question today is coming from Ken Zener from KeyBanc. Please proceed with your question.

Ken Zener - KeyBanc

Analyst

Given the beat in 3Q, I just want to drill in. I realized you guys operate different businesses, but can you discuss the visibility you have on that postal business which obviously continues to grow well but, where does that volatility come from and how does that kind of impact the cost side or how you’re buying in material? And I guess related to that is, how long do you think these challenges will exist in terms of staffing up or the costs for that growth? Thank you.

Brian Lipke

Management

Visibility extends multiple quarters, including the fourth quarter and procurement of supplies are timed to coincide with the lead times necessary to produce and deliver the products on time. And regarding our ramp-up and bringing out efficiencies from our expanded capability to deliver and produce such product, we cited in our prepared remarks that we expect that to subside and be behind us by the time we finish up the first quarter.

Ken Zener

Analyst

So I guess if the visibility -- where did the beat come with the visibility though just -- is it a timing of orders and it's just -- because you guys obviously did better than you initially expected in the third quarterly right, on [indiscernible]?

Brian Lipke

Management

[indiscernible], but that over performance on the third quarter compared to guidance anyway was related to the roof-related residential products. Where higher volume came in.

Ken Zener

Analyst

Correct. And then I guess that that was my fault. Thank you for clarifying that. Frank, you are outlined to longer term ideas in terms of the next phases of the company operational excellence, less capacity and then how you are going to allocate people and capital. Is there any -- you had more time to travel throughout the company in country I assume, are there thoughts about how we might be able to broadly frame that philosophy in terms of the businesses you have today, the businesses you'll be interested in or some of their characteristics? Thank you.

Frank Heard

Management

Well certainly from an operational excellence perspective, I think that the time spent from our last call to today, I traveled through most of the 45 operations now looking at -- to validate the opportunity from a simplification perspective using sort of the 80-20 principles that I've utilized in the past. And certainly, I've seen that I mean I think I said in the past call that, I saw the opportunity for some incremental improvements in terms of the existing portfolio, in terms of returns and certainly that's been validated and I'm quite optimistic that we're going to be able to apply those types of approaches and drive some incremental returns in a very material way throughout the portfolio, not isolated to certain types of businesses, but I think we have a tremendous amount of complexity in some of our existing businesses. And I think our leadership team has embraced the approach and we're working our way through the process. So, on that basis I think you know, we can take what we have and we can deliver higher results in a measurable period of time as we work through that in 2015. From a strategic -- from a portfolio perspective moving forward, certainly we have a strong interest in the dynamics going on in the postal centralized -- centralization of us in the postal area moving from single family delivery to centralized delivery, but more importantly on the parts of delivery side as well with some of the changing dynamics going on and how people buy and how products delivered to their homes and businesses. So a big part of our focus there will be trying to expand that, while at the same time looking at the infrastructure segment as well with bridges, roads and dams where we see some real long term prospects moving forward. Now both of those are supported by a strong residential platform where we today we primarily participate in the roof -- in my background, it has been in that residential building project segment and I think there is some very attractive businesses and product opportunities in that area as well. All supported by you know a very strong industrial base of businesses that I think we can enhance from a return perspective. So a big part of allocating capital and people will be in those 3 areas, while at the same time trying to identify future growth things outside the existing portfolio. And we'll resource the people appropriately that we have internally, but also seek out new and different talents outside the corporation to support those initiatives.

Ken Zener

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Seth Yeager from Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Seth Yeager - Jefferies

Analyst

Is steel, is that the product that's giving you the most trouble over the last couple of quarters in terms of raw material inflation and what are the mills doing right now, what's your visibility around price increases there and continued inflation going into the fourth quarter?

Brian Lipke

Management

So steel is approximately it's 80% to little over -- 80% to 85% of our raw material purchases. So yes it changes a bit, in that basic material is an influence on our cost of sales, but we've also experienced recent rises in aluminum costs. Probably going through several of our products, particularly in residential product set. And we have multiplicity diversity of contracts with a wide variety of suppliers to manage the best supply, available supply, at the lowest cost that we can over time. And so, but the visibility is lined in varying degrees, varies over the types of contracts that we have in place, but we do have enough visibility to predict pretty accurately what our fourth quarter cost of sales will be, which will be a delivery of product, using raw materials that we bought, sensing then, second half of Q3 and the early part of the fourth quarter.

Brian Lipke

Management

Seth, this is Brian Lipke. Suffered from what we're doing about this, what we see from a pricing perspective from the steel mills today is, during the fourth quarter pricing for hot-rolled may come down some, but we're expecting for next year that raw material cost will go back up. We've got a number of different initiatives that we've had in place to help us deal with those situations, but as strange as this may sound a substantial portion of our business, increasing raw material costs are a good thing for us because we generally have the ability to pass those on as -- once the price increases have been put into effect. So that's our outlook relative to what the steel mills, pricing is going to look like over the near term.

Seth Yeager - Jefferies

Analyst

Got it. Okay, that's helpful. And then, just when you look at the landscape of competitors, are you seeing some guys out there. I mean obviously you've had some nice improvement in volumes that are essentially trying to pick up some share and are being a bit more competitive on the pricing side, is that part of the issue towards passing that through?

Brian Lipke

Management

You hit the nail on the head, Seth. Particularly in our industrial infrastructure products area, particularly in the industrial part of that there is more capacity than demand at the present time, which has made it difficult during this year to do what we’ve historically done, being able to pass raw material cost increases on as soon as -- or prior to them actually being inserted into our inventory. A little bit stronger demand will certainly change all of that, but right now what you have are its too much demand takes chasing or too much supply chasing too little demand.

Frank Heard

Management

And Seth, this is Frank, just to flush this out a little bit more. We have passed along some prices-increases on various products throughout the portfolio to your earlier point. We're trying to do that in a strategic way where we can. In some cases, we have not done that in order to defend share in certain types of businesses, maybe in more of the heavily steel processing businesses that we have, and in some cases we haven't strictly because we're in a better position to grow share against some competitors in certain market segments and this is the opportunity to do it. So where we have passed on price and in some cases we've recovered the cost of the material rise, but also the margin, that's not flowing through from a result perspective because some of it is timing based and we'll begin to see that in future quarters.

Seth Yeager - Jefferies

Analyst

Got it, okay. Now, thank you very much. It's helpful. It sounds like on the industrial side, you guys had some -- a little bit of a pickup. Can you just remind us your exposure to energy related end markets and have you seen -- I guess just given the drop in energy prices over the last month or so, have you seen any slowdown activity there?

Brian Lipke

Management

There is a meaningful proportion of our grading and expanded metal products that do go into energy related projects, whether that be methane plants or fertilizer plants or new chemical distilling or processing plants in the Gulf Coast even lower in the border into Mexico. And there has been -- that was an element of the uptick in volume that we had in the third quarter. Having said that, there are some recent phone calls about delaying some timed deliveries that would have been in the fourth quarter and the early part of Q1 to a couple of months later and that could be a reflection of some recent drops in those commodity costs, but I can't directly attribute it -- buy into it, but it could well be.

Seth Yeager - Jefferies

Analyst

Got it.

Brian Lipke

Management

But is nonetheless, it is nonetheless. In 2014, we expect in 2015 that particular sector of the industrial base in the U.S., we continue to -- it’s been strong and I think it's going to get stronger.

Seth Yeager - Jefferies

Analyst

Sure. Okay. And just a last one for me. You had mentioned the expectation of improved cash flows in 2015, just as you look towards the budget on CapEx, you've had somewhat of an elevated CapEx over the last year with some discrete projects. Any initial thoughts on what the budget may look like going into next year?

Brian Lipke

Management

Yes, we have our initial thoughts on it. It's probably going to be in the mid to high teens in millions of dollars. So depreciation runs about $20 million a year for us. Amortizations and another $6 million or $7 million, but on the depreciation element of those two pieces, we expect that 2015's CapEx will probably be below depreciation in the $16 million, $17 million, $18 million range.

Seth Yeager - Jefferies

Analyst

Okay thanks a lot. Good luck guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) At this time, we've reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I will now turn the conference back over to Mr. Lipke for any closing or additional remarks.

Brian Lipke

Management

Thanks operator and thanks to all of you for joining us on our call today. Our fourth quarter 2014 earnings results conference call will be on February 19th and we look forward to talking with you at that time. This concludes our call today, thank you.