Dave Anderson
Analyst · Ruplu Bhattacharya from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open
Thanks, Paige. Please turn to Slide three. Overall, as Bob mentioned during our pre-earnings call last Monday, we are extremely disappointed with our first quarter results. Revenue was challenged late in the quarter by cancellation and push outs, primarily in the communication segment. Revenue ended the quarter at $1.74 billion, down 0.6% from Q1 and up 1.4% from the first quarter of last year. From a GAAP perspective, we reported a net loss of $154.9 million, which resulted in a loss per share of $2.60 for the first quarter. This was down compared to last quarter by $2.49 per share. This resulted largely from a non-cash tax charge of $2.27 per share that was driven by the enactment in December of 2017 of the US Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, otherwise known as the Tax Act. The $2.16 loss per share was also impacted by restructuring costs of $0.33 per share that related primarily to our recently announced consolidated restructuring plan. I will discuss the impact of the Tax Act and our consolidated restructuring plan in more detail in a few minutes. My remaining comments will focus on our non-GAAP financials for the first quarter. At $112.5 million, gross profit was down $13.9 million from the prior quarter. Gross margin came in at 6.4%, which was 80 basis points lower than we reported in Q4. Operating expenses were flat with the previous quarter at $65 million or 3.7% of revenue. At $47.5 million, operating income decreased by 22.4% from the prior quarter and 33.8% from Q1 of last year. Operating margin was 2.7%, which was down 80 basis points from last quarter. Other income and expense of $3 million was basically flat when compared with last quarter and down approximately $1 million from the first quarter of last year. The tax rate for the quarter was 18% of pretax income, which was higher than our expectations of 14.5%. Our tax rate came in higher due to the change in geographic distribution of our expected profit for the year. We earned $36.5 million in net income, with non-GAAP EPS of $0.48, which was down 24.7% from Q4 and 35.4% from Q1 of last year. This was based on 75.5 million shares outstanding on a fully diluted basis. As was mentioned during our call last Monday, non-GAAP EPS for the first quarter was impacted by a number of challenges, including a new program ramps that had engineering changes, under absorption of overhead due to higher anticipated production levels for these programs, which were primarily in the automotive and communications sectors, supply constraints and an unfavorable program mix. In addition, we were also impacted by customer pushouts and cancellations that we experienced late in the quarter, primarily in the communications sector. The timing of these push outs and cancellations did not allow us enough time to realign our cost structure to the decreased revenue level within the communications sector. Please turn to Slide four where we are providing more information on our IMS and CPS segments. The Integrated Manufacturing Solutions segment represents printed circuit board assembly and test, final system assembly and test, as well as direct order fulfillment. As you can see from the graph on the left, the IMS segment revenue was down $11.5 million from last quarter at $1.429 billion. Our gross margin decreased by 0.7 percentage points from Q4 to 5.8%. This gross margin decline was largely driven by unfavorable program mix, high fixed costs associated with new program ramps that were impacted by continuing customer design changes, and slower than expected yield improvements, as well as ongoing supply constraints that impacted the number of our IMS plants. To the right is our second segment, Components, Products and Services. Components include printed circuit board fabrication, backplane assemblies, cable assemblies, enclosures, precision machining and plastic injection molding. Products include computing and storage products, defense and aerospace products, memory and SSD modules, as well as optical and RF modules. Services include design and engineering, as well as logistics and repair services. In aggregate, the revenue for this segment was down $7.8 million to $357 million, with gross margin down 0.4 percentage points from Q4 to 8.4%. The CPS segment gross margin was down primarily as a result of our oil and gas business, which is part of components. Our products and services gross margins increased sequentially. On slide five, we're showing you key non-GAAP P&L metrics. Revenue was down 0.6% from last quarter and up 1.4% over Q1 of last year. Gross profit decreased 11% from last quarter to $112.5 million. Gross margin at 6.4% was down 80 basis points from last quarter. Our operating profit decreased 22.4% from last quarter to $47.5 million, and this led to operating margins of 2.7% and non-GAAP EPS of $0.48. In addition to our previously announced consolidated restructuring plan, we are taking additional actions to optimize our cost structure across the company. These actions include scrutinizing our materials cost for immediate savings opportunities, reassessing our capacity investments for ways to further optimize our equipment and people utilization, in line with our current revenue base, and scrutinizing every discretionary spending item in every operation and department globally. Revenue in the second quarter is expected to be in the range of $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion, primarily driven by seasonality in the industrial sector and by continued softness in the wireless portion of the communications sector. While revenue may - will be down sequentially, we expect that the immediate cost optimization actions we're taking, will help improve our gross margins 20 to 60 basis points from Q1. I will talk more about Q2’s guidance in a few minutes. Now I'd like you to turn your attention to the balance sheet on Slide six. Our cash and cash equivalents were $405 million. Cash was basically flat with the previous quarter. Accounts receivable were up $12 million and inventory was up $28 million. We'll talk more about inventory in a moment. Our deferred tax assets declined by $120 million, which was primarily driven by the non-cash charge we recorded in Q1 for the impact of the US Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. I will talk more about this shortly. From a liability standpoint, we had a decrease of $20 million in accounts payable during the quarter. Our short term debt was up $81 million from last quarter, and we purchased $34.3 million worth of common shares. Specifically, we repurchased approximately one million shares at an average share price of $33.62. As of the end of the quarter, we had $392 million in long term debt and our gross leverage was approximately 1.6. Overall, our balance sheet and capital structure remain in great shape. Please turn to Slide seven where we will review our balance sheet metrics for the fourth quarter. Cash was very consistent with prior quarters. Cash flow from operations for the quarter was positive at $8.4 million and net capital expenditures for the quarter were $48.4 million, which was in line with our expectations. This led to negative free cash flow of $40 million. Inventory dollars were up last quarter by $28 million, ending the quarter at $1.08 billion, with inventory turns coming in at 6.1, down 0.1 of a turn from Q4. Inventory turns continued to be a challenge, largely driven by the new product ramps and material shortages as we saw lead times continue to extend out on certain commodities such as memory, capacitors and discrete semiconductors. In Q1’18, we saw the number of parts with lead times over 100 days move from 13% to 19% over the past quarter. We’re seeing component manufacturers adding capacity, but not at a rate in line with industry demand, and some component manufacturers are indicating that certain component constraints will continue through the second half of calendar 2018. As our new program ramps move to volume production, we expect fewer customer design changes, which should help to alleviate the need to get certain component parts within a supply constrained environment, and ultimately improve our inventory over the balance of FY’18. In the lower left quadrant, we're showing cash cycle days, which combines our cycle time for inventory, accounts receivable and accounts payable. Overall, cash cycle time increased from 42.8 days last quarter to 46.1 days. This change was mainly driven by an increase in our accounts receivable days sales outstanding and inventory days. Finally, pretax ROIC declined to 14.9% from the prior quarter. This decline resulted from the reduction in annualized operating profit, combined with the increase in net invested capital. On slide number 8, we have provided additional details on our share repurchase program. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately one million shares for $34.3 million at an average share price of $33.62. Since FY’14, we have repurchased $531 million of shares at an average price of $24.02. At the end of Q1’18, we had $290 million remaining on our board authorization for future purchases. As I mentioned during last Monday's call, we are executing on our share repurchase plan on an opportunistic basis and will continue to do so for the remainder of fiscal 2018 and beyond. We expect to continue to generate cash in the coming years, which is the driving force behind our ability to invest in our business through capital equipment, fund small strategic acquisitions and repurchase equity. We remain focused on creating value for our shareholders with the cash that we generate. Please turn to slide nine where we're outlining the impact of the Tax Act on our business. We very supportive of US tax reform and think the Tax Act will immediately improve the competitiveness of the US. We welcome the opportunity to participate in incremental manufacturing initiatives that our existing and new customers may invest in within the US as a result of the Tax Act. With the enactment of this Tax Act, we were required to record a non-cash GAAP charge of $162.4 million, which translates to a GAAP loss per share of $2.27. This noncash GAAP charge was mainly related to the estimated reduction in the carrying value of our net deferred tax assets that resulted from the reduction in the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. We do not expect to be impacted by the mandatory repatriation tax, which is commonly referred to as the toll charge. We do not have any immediate plans for any significant incremental cash repatriation as we already have an effective business model in place that allows for the efficient repatriation of our cash. We usually have over 50% of our cash in the US, with Q1 ending at 52%. For the remainder of fiscal 2018, we expect the US capital tax rate will be lower in prior years due to - than in prior years due to the reduction in the corporate tax rate to 21%. We do not expect the US GAAP tax rate will increase slightly, or we do expect the US GAAP tax rate will increase slightly in our fiscal 2019 as a result of the global intangible low tax income provision, as well as the disallowed executive compensation section of the act that applies to Sanmina’s 2019 fiscal year. We do not expect the non-GAAP tax rate of 18% to be impacted in fiscal 2018 or for any years within the immediate future as a result of the enactment of the new Act. While we do not expect any additional material non-cash GAAP charges for the balance of fiscal 2018 related to the enactment of the Tax Act, the company will continue to analyze the full effects of tax reform on our financial statements, taking into account the SEC’s guidance for refining our estimates during the one year measurement period. Please turn to Slide 10 where we are providing more details on our consolidated restructuring plan. While we are working through the various constraints on our revenue level, we made the decision to optimize our cost structure across the company in support of our long term strategy. On January 12, we adopted a consolidated restructuring plan that impacted three of our manufacturing facilities, which we announced on January the 19th. As we mentioned on last Monday's call, one facility is in Owego, New York and two facilities are in China. The driving force behind the restructuring decision for the two Chinese facilities, was the landlord's decision not to renew the leases for these facilities. This drove one customer to move their business in house. However, we expect to be able to move our remaining customers production to other facilities in China. As a result of this consolidated restructuring plan, we expect to incur cash restructuring charges of approximately $35 million that are expected to be paid throughout - through calendar 2019. During the first quarter, we recorded a charge of $23.3 million that consisted of severance and retention pay for affected employees that will be paid over the period of the consolidated restructuring plan. We expect to be in a wind down mode over the next year and a half, with the customer in our Chinese facility that is moving their business in-house, which will negate any incremental cost savings from the restructuring of this facility. For the other Chinese facility, we do not see any significant incremental cost savings from its relocation. As we wind down the Owego, New York operation, with production expected to be finished in June, we do anticipate incremental cost savings in the range of $2 million to $4 million, which we expect to flow through our financials, beginning in Q4 of fiscal 2018. As I previously mentioned, we are taking additional immediate actions to optimize our cost structure across the company. We expect these actions will start to provide some benefit to our gross margins in Q2, and combined with the expected recovery in our revenue levels in the second half of fiscal 2018, will deliver - help us deliver gross margins in the second half that are significantly better than the first half of fiscal 2018. We remain focused on getting the optimal cost structure in place to support our long term profitable growth strategy. Please turn to Slide 11. I would now like to share with you our guidance for the second quarter of fiscal 2018. Our view is that revenue will be in the range of $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion. On a non-GAAP basis, we expect that gross margin will be in the range of 6.6% to 7%. Operating expense should be $64 million to $66 million. This leads to an operating margin in the range of 2.7% to 3.1%. We expect that other income and expense will be in the range of $5 million to $7 million, and our tax rate should be around 18% due to the expected geographic distribution of our profits. This non-GAAP tax rate should be used for the remainder of the year. We expect our fully diluted share count to be around 75 million shares, plus or minus 0.5 million shares. When you consider all of this guidance, we believe that we will end up with non-GAAP earnings per share in the range of $0.40 to $0.50. Finally, free cash flow modeling, we expect that capital expenditures will be around $35 million, while depreciation and amortization will be around $30 million. Overall, while we are disappointed with Q1's results, we believe that the second half of the year will be stronger than the first half from a revenue, gross margin and cash flow perspective, as we work through the constraints on our revenue levels and start seeing the benefits of our various initiatives to optimize our cost structure across the company, in keeping with our long term profitable growth strategy. At this point, I will turn the discussion back over to Bob for more comments on our target markets and our overall business priorities.