Bruce Hoechner
Analyst · CJS Securities. Your line is now open
Thanks, Bill. Good morning, everyone. In Q1 2015 Rogers completed its acquisition of Arlon LLC and excellent addition to our portfolio hosted by this acquisition Rogers achieved substantial growth in earnings excluding the street acquisition related charges delivering 0.94 per diluted share and increase of 19% versus Q1 of 2014. In addition we delivered all time record net sales of 165.1 million up 12.6% over Q1 2014. We attribute this success to our effective execution of the four vital elements of our growth strategy achieving a market driven mindset within our company delivering industry leading technology innovation effectively identifying and integrating synergistic acquisitions and enhancing our operational excellence capabilities. We believe this approach in addition to our strong customer focus engaged employees and the positive outlook in a number of our core markets will enable us to continue to driven robust revenue and profit performance into the future. Turning to Slide 4. I'd like to review our strategy in greater depth and share updates on our progress towards our growth targets. We take a market driven approach across our company where the term outside in has become part of our daily lexicon. For example we continually evaluate attractive growth opportunities in the market as we stated in Q4 2014 earnings call we are directing increased attention to safety and protection as a key megatrend focus for Rogers due to the growth we have experienced in worldwide demand for innovative solutions for consumer safety and protection. I will discuss more about our megatrend changes later in the call. Since 2012 we have increased our investment in technology innovation we introduce 6 new products in 2014 and the team at Rogers’ innovation center and divisional R&D are continuing to build a strong pipeline of opportunities. Our technology innovation is focused on next generation products and solutions as well as emerging and long term game changing technologies. We are very pleased with our progress to date and we are now moving ahead on plan to expand the innovation center model into our Asia region. We are very pleased with our progress in synergistic M&A and the Arlon acquisition. Given the EBITDA multiples in the market today, we believe the 7.3 EBITDA multiple on full-year 2014 earnings we paid for Arlon was very reasonable. We are now three months into the integration, and it's clear that Arlon is an excellent fit with our PCM and HPF business segments. We are very enthusiastic about the talent and passion our new colleagues bring to Rogers. We are also getting positive feedback from customers, several of whom have expressed interest in our ability to develop new materials as a result of the acquisition. We have finalized and implemented the new organizational structure, and the combined business teams are now focused on driving top-line growth. We remain on target to our goal of completing the integration by the end of 2015. David will discuss more about Arlon during his portion of the call. We are also excited about our progress within the final element of our strategy operational excellence. Over the past two years, we have deepened our focus on our processes and systems to increase efficiency while reducing costs. Shortly, I will speak more about the yield improvements, throughput increases and investments in new technology that are helping us reduce costs and improve on-time delivery. At the bottom of this slide, you’ll see our interim three-year financial goals, which serve as a check point in our long-term plan. We are a growth company, and we have strong confidence in our three-year goal of achieving a 15% compounded annual growth rate of combined organic and acquired growth. Some years, this will be driven primarily from organic growth and other years will come through acquisitions. Turning to Slide 5, I'd like to review our Q1 operating highlights. As previously mentioned, we achieved net sales of $165.1 million, an increase of 12.6%, and delivered strong earnings with non-GAAP EPS of $0.94 per diluted share, which is a 19% increase over last year. On a currency adjusted basis, we delivered organic sales growth of 3.2% over Q1 2014, with Arlon contributing $20.2 million of net sales and earnings of $0.17 per diluted share in the quarter. Fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates since the first quarter of 2014 unfavorably impacted the revenue of legacy Rogers businesses by approximately $6.5 million, or 4.3%. David will review both of these items later in the call. Our operational excellence initiatives contributed to solid margin improvement with a non-GAAP gross margin of 38.8%, which is an increase of 200 basis points over Q1 2014, and non-GAAP operating margin of 15.8%, up 120 basis points over Q1 2014. We expect to see continued margin strength from ongoing commitment to process and system improvements. Turning to Slide 6, you will see our first quarter highlights for Printed Circuit Materials, where we had another record quarter. PCM achieved net sales of $71.3 million, including $10.5 million from Arlon, which is an increase of 21.8% over Q1 2014. We see healthy demand for high-frequency circuit materials for wireless infrastructure, automotive safety radar applications for advanced driver assistance systems and aerospace and defense applications. This strong growth offset lower demand in mobile Internet device wireless antenna applications caused by higher than expected inventory levels in the supply chain. We are expecting this market to rebound in the second half of 2014. While keeping pace with unprecedented demand, the PCM teams are also helping drive operational improvements to enhance profitability. In order to increase capacity to meet market demand, PCM has delivered sizable yield and productivity improvements across our three global manufacturing facilities. In addition, our investments in a new treater and new lamination press in China are now coming online. Looking ahead in PCM, we believe we see continued strong demand for wireless infrastructure applications to support the 4G LTE build out in China, where the three major telecom operators plan to build a combined 800,000 mobile broadband base stations in 2015. We are also starting to see 4G LTE demand growing in markets beyond China such as India, Japan and Europe. In addition, strong consumer demand is helping to drive growth in automotive advanced driver assistance systems as mid-range cars adopt features that were previously only available in luxury cars. Turning to Slide 7, our High Performance Foam segment achieved net sales of $44.6 million, including $5.2 million from Arlon, yielding an increase of 8.1% over Q1 2014. Weaker demand in portable electronics was primarily due to a slowdown in the China OEM smartphone market, as reported by Mobile World Live, where Chinese vendors experienced a 30% drop in demand for the period. This partially offset higher demand in general industrial and consumer applications. HPF has implemented a number of process improvements to reduce costs and improve output. For example, the team designed, fabricated and installed new process systems enhancements and minimized scrap and increased throughput with meaningful cost savings. Another effort involved working closely with a supplier to upgrade raw material quality, which led to improved yields. From a market standpoint, we believe that smartphone rollouts in the second half of 2015 will rebound. HPF has intensified its efforts on general industrial applications, which now represent roughly 30% of HPF sales. In addition, we have expanded our investments into higher growth consumer comfort and impact protection segment to accelerate our market penetration. We see opportunities for sales and profitability growth at HPF through geographic expansion of both consumer and general industrial offerings. Turning to Slide 8, PES net sales were $38.5 million, a decrease of 5.6% compared to Q1 2014. PES sales grew 6.9% on a currency-adjusted basis from the prior year, indicating solid volume growth. Our results reflect strong demand in EVHEV applications and mass transit. This performance was offset in part by weaker demand in variable-frequency drives, where demand was affected in Q1 by downstream supply chain adjustments. PES made key investments in 2014 to drive manufacturing process improvements. Automating processes in our PES manufacturing operations helped to reduce operational cycle time and improve productivity, enabling greater speed to market and driving yield improvements. Looking ahead for PES, we see continued growth in EVHEV markets and in variable-frequency drives due to the worldwide demand for greater energy efficiency. Turning now to Slide 9, as mentioned previously, we are introducing safety and protection as our new megatrend category in order to align with the growth we have experienced in worldwide demand for our consumer safety and protection solutions. We will continue to focus on the Internet connectivity and clean energy megatrends as well. Mass transit remains strategically important and will be realigned primarily within our clean energy and safety and protection megatrend categories. Key applications in safety and protection include automotive safety radar, consumer impact and protection, and materials used in food safety, industrial and mass transit applications. In Q1 2015, safety and protection applications grew 41% over Q1 2014, representing 10% of our overall sales. These results were due in large part to strong demand for Rogers' and Arlon's applications in automotive radar systems. We believe this market will see continued growth, with industry experts predicting a compound annual growth rate of more than 30% through 2020 and growth from less than 20 million units in 2014 to nearly 96 million units in 2020. With the Arlon acquisition, our 3 megatrend categories now represent a greater portion of Rogers' revenues at 68% versus 61%, excluding Arlon. In Q1, strong demand for high-frequency circuit materials for wireless infrastructure yielded an increase of 20% in Internet connectivity applications. This improvement was somewhat tempered by weakness in demand for portable electronic devices, which we expect to rebound in the second half of 2015. We believe strong demand will continue for applications found in wireless communication base stations and antenna systems. In the clean energy category, our volumes were up slightly. However, currency headwinds led to a decrease of 6% from Q1 2014. We see ongoing opportunities for Rogers' unique solutions in energy-efficient motor drives, which comprise approximately 35% of PES sales. In addition, the vehicle electrification market is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of roughly 15% through 2019. I will now turn the call over to David, who will report our Q1 results in greater detail as well as additional financial highlights. David?