Carl R. Christenson
Analyst · Robert W
Thank you, David. And please turn to Slide 2. We're pleased with the overall results despite sales being down 3.6% when compared with the second quarter last year. The capital-intensive end markets that we serve, including metals, mining and energy, remained particularly weak during the second quarter, which resulted in revenues and net income that were lower than we expected. Earlier in the year, many of our customers believed that they would see an improvement in the second half of the year. Many of them have revised their outlook and now expect very little, if any, growth in the second half. Many have also used terms like, "choppy" or "uneven" to describe demand patterns. The good news is that we've recently experienced stronger bookings, with incoming orders improving in June, both sequentially and versus June of last year. This stronger order rate has also continued into the third quarter. Although revenues were off modestly, we continued to see margin improvement. Gross margin was up 20 basis points year-over-year to 30%. Non-GAAP net income, essentially flat when compared with last year despite a tax rate that was over 10 percentage points lower a year ago. Since the second half of 2012, we focused on improvements in selected underperforming businesses. Our restructuring plan in Europe is having the effect we thought it would, driving significant margin expansion despite the economic issues in that region. Based on economic reports we follow, it appears that the outlook for Europe is improving, while the outlook for North America and Asia is slightly worse than we expected. Although our results in the quarter were not what we had hoped, we are optimistic about our opportunities for continued margin improvement going forward. As some of our end markets improve, we expect to reap the benefits of these -- of this increased operating leverage. We're also pleased with cash flow generation in the quarter. Through the first 6 months of 2013, cash flow from operating activities was $36 million, a 33% increase over the same period in 2012. We also paid down nearly $22 million on our credit facility during the quarter. Now please go to Slide 3, and I'll talk about some of our specific end markets. I begin with our distribution channel, which is predominantly comprised of sales of aftermarket parts and original equipment parts for small OEMs. In the second quarter, distribution sales were up slightly from the first quarter. We expect modest year-over-year growth in the distribution channel in the second half. Turning to Turf & Garden, demand in Q2 was off slightly, and sales were down year-over-year. We suspect the unusual soggy spring caused consumers to put off outdoor equipment purchases. Industry forecasts still call for market improvement in the second half of the year when we believe our sales will be essentially flat with the comparable period last year. We recently received delivery schedule changes from some customers that indicate the seasonal decline in demand will be pushed out somewhat. We again performed well in the ag market in the second quarter. The new product programs we've discussed on past calls continue to ship on schedule. We expect that these programs and other new product development efforts will make significant revenue contributions during the remainder of this year and throughout 2014. Business in the transportation market remains strong, maintaining the momentum we had built in the first quarter. As was the case in Q1, demand from automotive OEMs drove this performance. We're benefiting from the ramp up of the automotive programs that we're on, and bookings continue to do well. Moving to the materials handling market, it's really a mixed tale. The elevator and forklift programs our products are on are doing quite well in a steady market. Forklifts tend to be a good mid-cycle indicator as buyers wait to order these products until they are reasonably confident in their own business and in the economy. Our positive performance in these markets was somewhat offset by weakness in the Crane & Hoist markets. Meanwhile, the conveyor system market continues to be flat. Now let's discuss our late cycle markets, beginning with energy. The upstream component of oil and gas segment of the energy market continues to be weak, following lower rig counts, lower new rig builds and excess pressure pumping capacity. This sluggishness is in contrast to the increase in oil production in North America. We are beginning to see some positive signs in frac-ing, but these have not yet translated into an increase in orders. These remains a very good long-term market segment for us. The global power generation market, where we're still seeing a shift towards distributed power, slowed a bit but is still quite strong. Alternative energy was quite soft. The wind turbine market has performed as expected given last year's delay in extending the PTC, which resulted in shipments slowing dramatically earlier in the year. The mining and metals market were again very weak, continuing the trend of the past several quarters. We believe demand in these markets will be soft well into 2014. Aerospace and defense sales continued to be strong during the second quarter, driven by activity in the commercial aircraft market. With that, I'll turn the call over to Christian, and then I will close with a discussion of our strategic initiatives.