Christopher J. Kearney
Analyst · Mike Halloran
Thanks, Ryan, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. On a consolidated basis, our first quarter operating performance was largely comparable with the prior year. That said, our revenue and segment income results were lower than anticipated. While the performance across most of SPX was fundamentally steady, we were disproportionately impacted in a couple of discrete areas. We'll talk about those today and the steps we're taking to address the challenges in those areas. Our financial position remains strong, and we made good progress on the capital allocation plans that we announced earlier this year. Looking first at the Q1 results. Earnings per share from continuing operations were $0.20, at the low end of our guidance range. Revenue for the quarter was $1.1 billion, down 2% year-over-year due to currency. Due to strengthening of the dollar, the currency headwind wound up being $15 million greater than we anticipated in our Q1 revenue targets. Organic revenue was flat year-over-year. As compared to our expectations, organic revenue was lower due to certain customer-related project delays and softer demand for book-and-turn business in Asia Pacific and Europe. Segment income was $82 million, about flat to prior year, but also lower than we targeted. This was due primarily to a significant underperformance at our Balcke-Durr business in the Thermal segment and charges related to legacy contracts at ClydeUnion. Taking a closer look at Balcke-Durr, this business supplies large scale heat exchangers and filters for various types of power plants. It also has an aftermarket service business. Its customer base is concentrated in Germany and South Africa. Throughout the EMEA region, regulatory uncertainty and the sluggish economy continue to impact recovery in our core power markets. Nuclear demand has been hit particularly hard due, in large part, to the post-Fukushima nuclear ramp-down in Germany. These factors have combined to trigger an even more rapid decline in Balcke-Durr's more profitable service business in the early part of this year. Based on current market conditions, we don't anticipate recovery in this business during the current year and have lowered our revenue and profit expectations accordingly. Given the lower revenue forecast for this year and the expected ramp-down of the South Africa projects over the next 2 years, we have aggressive restructuring actions underway to reduce the cost structure at Balcke-Durr. In addition, I've named Gene Lowe as the new President of our Thermal segment, which I'll talk about more in a moment. Looking now at ClydeUnion. In Q1, we recorded $5 million of incremental charges on legacy contracts that were part of the acquired backlog. As we've discussed previously, we inherited about $140 million of lost contracts that were in ClydeUnion's backlog at the time of the acquisition. Many of these orders contain highly complex designs on supercritical pumps. In our view, the cost and risk contingencies associated with supplying such highly sophisticated technologies were not adequately priced into the scope of the contracts. As such, we've incurred incremental costs related primarily to testing and rework, as well as late delivery fees. In 2012, we recognized about $100 million of revenue related to these lost contracts. In Q1, we recognized an additional $15 million of revenue and now have about $23 million remaining in the backlog. Improving ClydeUnion's operating performance and capitalizing on the commercial synergies within Flow's power and energy platform is critical to advancing our long-term strategy. We're focused on maintaining discipline on new order acceptance, increasing productivity and improving on-time delivery. As evidenced by the strong Q4 results, there is significant potential to improve the financial performance of this business. To ensure we capitalize on this potential, I've named Tony Renzi as President of ClydeUnion. Tony is Don Canterna's top operational leader at Flow. He has a strong track record of improving operational performance and driving results. In 2004, Don put Tony in charge of Flow's dehydration business, which, at that time, had declining revenue and was barely profitable. Within 2 years, the business was gaining market share and had expanded operating margins into double digits and above Flow's segment average. During the recession, the dehydration business maintained double-digit operating margins, validating the ongoing structural benefits gained through Tony's leadership. In 2008, Tony was given the responsibility of integrating APV, the defining acquisition for our food and beverage platform. As many of you know, at the time we acquired APV, its operating margins were in the low single digits and its systems business was losing money. During a 3-year integration under Tony's leadership, the team at APV significantly reduced its cost structure, streamlined the global supply chain and developed a standardized approach to system designs and improved project management. By 2010, APV's operating margins had improved better than 10%. During the last 2 years, Tony has led the Americas region of our Flow segment, a business with historically strong operating performance. In this role, Tony and his team have improved throughput, on-time delivery and capacity at our key oil and gas valve business in Houston. As a result, our valve business is capitalizing on the robust demand we are seeing in the North American oil and gas pipelines. Based on his past success at SPX, I have high confidence in Tony's ability to drive improvement at ClydeUnion and to accelerate our commercial strategy in Flow's power and energy platform. In 2012, our Flow Technology segment accounted for more than 50% of our revenue and segment profit. Going forward, we expect that percentage to continue to increase through growth in Flow, and also through divestitures of non-Flow businesses. We have a strong track record for creating value through divestitures, as illustrated by our sales of EST, Kendro, BOMAG and, most recently, Service Solutions. As part of our ongoing strategic review process, we regularly evaluate divestiture opportunities. Over the past year, we've evaluated several strategic alternatives for our Thermal segment. The unique requirements of this project-based business, along with the difficult end-market conditions, have made that process more challenging. Based on our evaluation, we believe the best near-term option for our shareholders is to restructure the business further and focus on improving our competitive position. To lead our Thermal segment in these initiatives, I've named Gene Lowe as the new segment President. Prior to SPX, Gene held leadership positions at Bain & Company, Lazard and, most recently, was the Director of Strategic Planning and Corporate Development for Milliken, a large global diversified industrial company. He joined SPX in 2008 as the Vice President of Business Development and Marketing for Thermal. During the past 3 years, he has served as the President of our Evaporative Cooling business. Under Gene's leadership, this business experienced above-market growth rates and significantly improved profitability, reaching its highest levels of annual operating profit. I'm highly confident in Gene's ability to improve the performance and competitive position of our Thermal segment. Over time, we plan to reevaluate strategic alternatives for Thermal as we continue to narrow our focus on building our Flow platforms. Looking now at our restructuring plans, for the full year, we're targeting at least $30 million of restructuring expense, with the majority expected in the second quarter. These targeted actions are concentrated in our Thermal and Flow segments, particularly at Balcke-Durr and ClydeUnion, and we anticipate the majority of them to be focused in Europe. We estimate about $15 million of savings from these actions in the second half of the year, with annualized savings of about $30 million or approximately $0.50 of earnings per share. Moving on to our end markets and beginning with Flow. Broadly speaking, the activity we've seen through the early part of this year in Flow's end markets is pointing towards a lower growth environment than we anticipated at the start of the year. We're seeing good quoting activity for large projects, but in general, customers are delaying large capital investments, most notably for food and beverage systems and OE pumps. In our shorter cycle component and aftermarket businesses, demand for food and beverage is steady on a global basis. In power and energy, we continue to experience strong demand for oil and gas pipeline valves, particularly in North America. And in our industrial markets, increased quoting activity in chemical and petrochemical markets is being offset by quoting activity in mining, which has slowed considerably. On a regional basis, Flow's orders in the Americas were up quarter-to-quarter and versus the prior year. However, orders in Asia Pacific and Europe declined year-over-year and were lower than expected. Looking at our power-related markets. In the U.S., replacement demand for power transformers remains steady. Market pricing and lead times were stable sequentially. A lack of growth in electricity demand and conservation initiatives are extending the life of aged transformers and leading utility customers to pace their replacement investment. We see the same dynamic impacting power generation markets in U.S. -- in the U.S. and in Europe. In these regions, regulatory uncertainty and fuel source changes continue to impact investment decisions. In contrast, we've seen very good demand in China for dry cooling systems on new coal plants. Our joint venture with Shanghai Electric has now been awarded 11 contracts, totaling just over $170 million in value since its inception in January 2012. Our backlog declined 2% in the quarter, mostly due to currency. On an organic basis, the backlog was flat sequentially. Book-to-bill in the period was 1x. Coming into the year, we expected stronger Q1 orders in aggregate across our businesses. In our view, given the seasonally low revenue in Q1, our order and backlog development is indicative of a modestly lower growth economic environment than we expected coming into the year. Based on our operational performance in Q1, recent currency changes and our current view of the macroeconomic environment, we have reduced our full year EPS guidance. As you can see on this chart, the execution challenges at our Balcke-Durr business and reduced full year expectations for our Thermal segment have the greatest impact on our earnings guidance for this year. Our full year EPS guidance range is now $4.25 to $4.65 per share. Jeremy will provide more detail on our full year targets later on the call. Looking at capital allocation. We've made good progress on the $450 million capital allocation commitments we announced earlier this year. As planned, in April, we made a voluntary pension contribution of $250 million to our U.S. qualified pension plan, which essentially puts us in a fully funded position. As you know, we committed $200 million to share repurchases for this year. During Q1, we executed $27 million of repurchases through the open market. That leaves $173 million committed to share repurchases over the balance of the year, and we expect to continue repurchasing shares in the open market during Q2. Since I've been in this position, we've maintained a consistent approach to evaluating capital allocation. That discipline has not changed. Our current focus is on operational improvements and returning capital to shareholders, and we have ample liquidity to evaluate additional repurchases as the year progresses. Given this focus, we are not allocating capital to acquisitions this year. At this time, I'll turn the call over to Jeremy for a detailed analysis of our financial results.