Jeremy W. Smeltser
Analyst · Morgan Stanley
Thanks, Chris. I'll begin with earnings per share. For the third quarter, we reported diluted earnings per share from continuing operations of $1.52, up 7% over the prior year and $0.12 above our guidance range. This included a $0.10 charge related to incremental taxes on the gain from the sale of our interest in the EGS joint venture. This gain was recorded in the first quarter this year, and as Ryan mentioned, is not included in our EPS guidance. Excluding this item, adjusted EPS was $1.62 per share, up 14% year-over-year and $0.22 above our guidance range. Compared to our midpoint guidance, segment income was $0.04 better than expected. Within the segments, Flow and Thermal reported income higher than anticipated, with Industrial's profit coming in lower than expected. Currency fluctuations were a $0.04 headwind to segment income due to the strengthening of the dollar during the period. Looking at special charges. We recorded $4 million of restructuring expense in the quarter or about half of the targeted amount. This is simply a shift in the timing of a few actions that are now planned in the fourth quarter. As a result, we moved $0.07 of restructuring expense from Q3 to Q4 in our earnings model. And net other items were a $0.10 benefit versus our guidance. This included a handful of benefits, such as reduced corporate overhead and a lower effective tax rate as well as a small asset gain recorded in other income. Total revenue in the quarter was $1.16 billion, up 1% versus the prior year. Organic revenue increased 1.5%, offset partially by currency. As expected, revenue in the large power projects in South Africa declined $13 million. Excluding the impact from that decline, organic growth across the rest of SPX was just under 3%. Overall, revenue was lighter than anticipated, due primarily to shipping delays and currency fluctuations. The shipping delays were concentrated in our Flow and Industrial segments, and currency caused an $18 million variance as compared to our target. Despite these revenue headwinds, segment income was $140 million, in line with our guidance and up 8% over the prior year. Segment margins were better than expected at 12.1%, up 80 points over the prior year period. The segment income and margin growth was driven by Flow. Looking at Flow's Q3 results. Revenue was $639 million, down 2% versus the prior year. This decline was due to lower sales of power and energy pumps, which reflects the order delays we experienced in the OE part of the business over the past few quarters as well as our discipline on large project awards. We also had approximately $20 million of revenue in our power and energy business delayed due to timing of customer acceptance and, in some cases, supplier constraints. Sales in the food and beverage and industrial markets were flat year-over-year. Segment income increased $14 million or 17% to $98 million, and margins expanded 250 points to 15.3%. This income and margin improvement was driven by Flow's power and energy business, where profitability increased sharply, driven by improved operational performance, a favorable sales mix and cost reductions associated with restructuring actions. For the last 12-month period, Flow's segment income margin was 13.5%, firmly within our longer-term target margin range. We are very pleased with the improved performance across all 3 end markets. Tony Renzi, Marc Michael and David Wilson have all had a positive impact on their respective businesses since we moved to the new alignment 1 year ago. And we are particularly pleased with the significant turnaround at ClydeUnion, where the trailing 12-month operating margin was above 12%, as Chris mentioned. Flow's ending Q3 backlog was approximately $1.2 billion, down $161 million or 12% sequentially. Nearly 1/3 of this decline, about $45 million, was attributable to currency rate fluctuations. On an organic basis, a slowdown in Asia-Pacific orders and the timing of large capital decisions by our customers in energy and food markets were the primary causes of the backlog decline. To illustrate how the timing of large projects can influence the backlog trend, in Q3 2013, we booked 3 orders that totaled over $100 million. In contrast, the largest order booked in Q3 this year was $10 million. We are encouraged with the strong uptick in Flow's power and energy orders in October, and we're also closing in on a couple of large food and beverage projects. As a reminder, we continue to be selective on large orders. While this has likely contributed to the slower pace of large order development, we believe it has improved the overall quality of our backlog and our ability to meet customer commitments. The benefits from this project selectivity are a contributing factor in Flow's margin improvement. Over the past 12 months, our project management and on-time delivery has improved. Simultaneously, we are building an installed base with higher aftermarket potential. Moving on to Thermal. This segment continues to benefit from its growth and improvement initiatives. Thermal's Q3 revenue increased 4.5% year-over-year to $339 million. Organic revenue increased 6.2%, partially offset by currency fluctuations, which decreased revenue by 1.7%. The organic growth was driven by increased sales of cooling equipment and personal comfort heating products in North America. In South Africa, revenue associated with the large power projects declined $13 million organically. Excluding this expected ramp-down in South Africa, organic revenue for the core Thermal segment grew 11% or $28 million. Segment income was up 7% to $23 million, and margins improved modestly to 6.8%. The increased profitability was driven by the organic revenue growth in the core business as well as cost reductions associated with restructuring actions. This improvement was partially offset by lower income and margins in South Africa. We continue to see steady positive development in Thermal's backlog. At the end of Q3, Thermal's core backlog increased to $588 million and is now up 16% or $81 million over the past 12 months. This is net of a $13 million decline from currency. The core backlog development underscores the success of our commercial initiatives across this segment. In South Africa, the backlog continues to decline, as our work on the large power projects winds down. As Gene described at our Investor Meeting in September, there are 4 phases to these projects: manufacturing, construction, commissioning and the warranty period. At this point, we are approximately 85% through the manufacturing phase and expect to fully complete this phase in 2015. Most of the work going forward involves constructing the filters and cooling towers. Over the balance of these projects, we estimate approximately $180 million of additional revenue as we complete our contractual commitments, with the majority expected to be recognized by the end of 2015. Commissioning is an important milestone, particularly for the first plant, which Eskom plans to commission by the end of this year. We are pleased to say that the commissioning process is now underway. Earlier this month, Eskom reported that the Medupi location successfully fired up a portion of the boiler at 1 of its 6 power plants. This is a significant step in the commissioning process, and we are encouraged by this successful outcome. Moving on to Industrial. Revenue in the period was $181 million, up 6% over the prior year, driven by organic growth. Currency was a modest benefit. The most notable revenue growth was in our power transformer business, where revenue increased by more than 20% year-over-year, primarily driven by a higher volume of medium-power shipments. Coming into the quarter, we anticipated even stronger revenue growth in the transformer business. However, we experienced some production challenges that led to fewer shipments in the period as compared to our expectations. As we continue to ramp up volume at the Wisconsin plant, we are generally pleased with the level of productivity at the facility, which is running better than historical comparisons. The growth in transformer revenue was largely offset by a sharp decline in sales of fare collection systems due primarily to project delays, which we believe are due to the availability and processing of government funding. This had a significant impact on profitability in the quarter, as segment income decreased $6 million over the prior year to $19 million. Margins declined to 10.5%. The decline in fare collection sales was the main driver of the reduced profitability. However, margins were also impacted by the increased mix of lower-margin transformer sales. The ending Q3 backlog for Industrial was up 9% sequentially and 11% or $37 million over the prior year period. The backlog growth was driven by strong Q3 order volume for power transformers and communication technologies. We're encouraged with the strong demand and extended lead times in the medium-power transformer market. This gives us very good visibility to 2015 revenue, and we continue to focus on optimizing productivity and driving operational improvements in our transformer business. In the medium to long term, we believe the U.S. power transformer market is very attractive. This assessment is supported by several encouraging data points, including the positive economic outlook in the U.S., new home starts and a continued commitment by utilities to upgrade the aged infrastructure in the grid. At our Genfare business, the customers are primarily U.S. cities who rely heavily on federal funding to the U.S. highway bill. As this year has progressed, we've seen several cities delay fare collection orders into next year. As a result, quoting activity and order placement in 2014 have been much lower than the market anticipated. We believe the delays in order placement have been impacted by the timing and availability of government funding, and in some cases, the application process for federal funding has taken longer than anticipated. Although these delays have impacted 2014, they have also increased the pipeline of opportunities for 2015 and '16. Additionally, the revitalization of urban centers and an influx of young professional riders has created a need to upgrade traditional fare collection systems with electronic solutions. In anticipation of this trend, Genfare ramped up its innovation efforts over 1 year ago and is now offering a full suite of integrated e-solutions, including mobile ticketing, cloud-based hosting and point-of-sale delivery systems. We featured this next-generation technology at the recent Transportation Expo and received very positive feedback from the customer base. As a result of the order delays and our innovation efforts, we believe Genfare is very well positioned for growth over the next few years, as customer investment resumes. Moving on now to our fourth quarter and full year expectations. Beginning with revenue, based on the recent currency rates, we are modeling a 2% or $30 million revenue headwind due to currency translation. Organic revenue is expected to grow in the low to mid-single-digits. Segment income is targeted between $173 million and $185 million. This includes a currency headwind of about $3 million to $4 million year-over-year. Margins are expected to improve about 30 points over the prior year, driven again by our Flow segment. Margins at our Industrial segment are expected to decline modestly. We are targeting approximately $7 million of restructuring expense, as we continue to focus on cost-reduction initiatives. The tax rate is estimated to be between 25% and 26%, and we are modeling approximately 41.5 million shares outstanding. Based on these assumptions, our Q4 adjusted EPS guidance range is $2.05 to $2.30 per share. Looking at our updated targets for the full year, beginning with revenue. Compared to our prior targets, currency rate fluctuations decreased our full year revenue target by approximately $60 million or a little more than 1%. Based on recent currency rates, the Q3 revenue and backlog development, we are now targeting revenue to be flat to up 1% across each segment and in total. We have increased our margin target for Flow to about 13.6% or 190 points better than last year. Thermal's margin target is unchanged at just under 6%. And at Industrial, we now expect margins to decline about 150 points to approximately 13.6%. On a consolidated basis, we held our margin target at approximately 11.5%, up 80 points year-over-year. Our updated adjusted EPS guidance is $5.25 to $5.50 per share. This slide shows the midpoint EPS model, which includes our full year estimates for corporate-related items. Note that this model assumes just over 43 million shares outstanding and a 25% tax rate. The tax rate is lower than our previous expectations, due primarily to a shift in the geographic mix of earnings. Specifically, we now expect lower U.S. income as a result of the revised assumptions in our Industrial segment. Moving to the next slide. We also thought it would be helpful to provide a bridge to our prior EPS midpoint guidance to highlight the most significant changes. Beginning with the organic changes to segment income, Flow is now expected to contribute an additional $0.14 to the full year. This is based on the continued improvement in operational performance and favorable sales mix. We expect $0.19 less contribution from the Industrial segment, due primarily to the delayed project timing at the Genfare business. There were also 2 nonorganic items that impacted segment income. Changes to currency rates reduced our segment income target by $0.13 or $8 million. And as a result of the strategic action announced today, we will reclassify our Flash Technologies business as a continuing operation beginning in Q4 2014. With this change, we won't have any businesses left in discontinued operations. Flash is a leading provider of specialty LED tower lighting for aviation safety. It will be reported in the Industrial segment going forward. Note that Flash was not included in the results from continuing operations for the third quarter. For the full year, Flash is targeting just over $40 million in sales and will contribute approximately $0.13 of earnings per share, nearly all of which was earned in the first 9 months. Lastly, the net impact of the lower corporate-driven items, primarily the reduced tax rate, contributed $0.18 to our updated EPS model. As a result of our updated expectations, we have raised the midpoint of our adjusted EPS guidance by $0.13 to $5.38 per share. Our financial position remains healthy and flexible. In the third quarter, we paid an incremental $63 million of taxes related to gains on asset sales and also completed $140 million of share repurchases. From an operational perspective, we generated $78 million of adjusted free cash flow. We ended the quarter with over $500 million of cash on hand and $1.45 billion of total debt. Our gross leverage ratio was approximately 2.5x, and our net leverage was 1.7. In the fourth quarter, we are targeting $155 million to $205 million of adjusted free cash flow, consistent with our segment income target and our historical seasonality. We expect our $500 million share repurchase plan to complete trading in early November. That would put our Q4 share repurchases at about $75 million. And we also plan to pay the remaining taxes on asset sale gains during the quarter, which we estimate to be about $60 million. In summary, the work we've done over the past 12 to 18 months to reduce our debt and pension obligations has put us in a very good financial position to execute the spin transaction. On that note, I'll turn the call back over to Chris to discuss the spin announcement in more detail.