Scott Sproule
Analyst · Credit Suisse. Your line is open
Thanks, Gene. I will start with our net results for the quarter. On an adjusted basis earnings per share were $0.69 for the quarter and a $1.47 for the year. In addition to adjusting out the results of the South African projects, for Q4 we have adjusted our GAAP EPS to exclude non-service pension items and a non-cash charge to write down intangible assets associated with our U.S. heat exchangers business which we have been in the process of restructuring. The impairment charge associated with our heat exchanger business is connected to our overall strategic focus of reducing exposure to power generation markets. As we assess the near-term outlook for this business, we do not anticipate an improvement in the demand profile and plan to remain selective in our level of market participation. We will continue to take actions to improve the performance of this business, as with all of our businesses, we expect to generate returns above our cost of capital or we will consider other alternatives. As Gene noted, our Q4 results reflected generally strong operating performance for the company. Fourth quarter core revenues declined 15.2% to $378 million compared with the prior year period, reflecting the sale of our dry cooling business, as well as an organic decline at 10% and a 1% currency effect. I will get into the drivers of the organic decline as I review the segment results. Core segment income margin was 15.8% compared with 14.2% in the prior year period, with year-over-year improvement in our HVAC and engineering solution segments, partially offset by lower project related business in our detection and measurement segment. For the full year, total core revenues declined 9.3% to approximately $1.4 billion, including a negative currency effect of 1.2%. The remaining 9.1% decline was larger result of the sale of the dry cooling business and reduced participation in the heat exchanger market. Full year segment income and operating income margins increased nicely with higher year-over-year margins in all three segments. Now I will walk you through the details of our results by segment. Starting with HVAC. For the quarter revenues were slightly below the prior year period with growth in cooling product sales more than offset by the negative effects of currency exchange rates and lower sales of heating products, related to above average winter temperatures in our geographic end-markets. Given the seasonal nature of the segment the fourth quarter typically represents the peak level of margin performance. We are particularly pleased with our Q4 segment income margin of almost 20%, which is an increase of 70 basis points over the prior year. This reflects our team’s commitment to continuous operational improvement in both the heating and cooling businesses. On a full year basis revenues declined 3.7% from the prior year to $509.5 million, including a 1.3% negative effect from currency changes. A track cooling experienced low single-digit organic growth, driven primarily by strength in the America’s commercial market, whereas our heating business was affected by warmer than average temperatures. The operational performance of our business was very strong helping us achieved record high operating income margins for the overall HVAC segment of 15.7%, a 50 basis point improvement from the prior year period. As a reminder, 2015 margins benefited from an unusually large cooling project, so the absolute operational performance our teams are able to deliver this year was quite impressive. In Detection & Measurement, revenues decreased 11.6% for Q4 compared with the prior year period including a negative currency effect of 3%. The organic decline was primarily due to lower sales of communication technologies products, which were heavily weighted towards Q4 in the prior year. Although down from the prior year, segment income margins were at very solid 24.6% in Q4. For the full year, a modest decline in revenues was almost entirely due to a negative currency effect of 2.2%, generally flat organic revenues reflect solid growth in sales of fare collection and especially lighting products offset primarily by lower project related sales in communication technologies. Throughout 2016, we saw an extended sales cycle in a portion of our communication technologies business. We attribute these delays to customers adjusting their budgetary requirements as a result of low market prices of oil and other commodities during 2016. That said, overall for the segment backlog has improved particularly driven by fare collection and product demand. Segment income margins of 20% are inline with the prior year and we will discuss later we expect to see margins improved in 2017. In our newly named Engineered Solutions segment excluding the results of the South African projects, revenues decline 26.8% compared with the prior year period. Approximately 8% of the decline was driven by the sale of the dry cooling business in March of 2016. The rest was primarily due to decline in sales of heat exchangers and a difference in timing of transformer shipments compared with Q4 of 2015. Segment income margin improved 200 basis points in the quarter to 8.4%, due to higher transformer margins compared with the prior year period associated with the operational improvements in the business. For the full year, segment revenues declined 15.2% including 10.8% from the sale of dry cooling and a modest effect from currency. The remaining decline was primarily due to lower sales of power generation related products. Segment margins improved 60 basis points compared with the prior year due to the outstanding operational performance in our transformer business. We ended 2016 with transformer margins of about 10%, an increase of approximately 300 basis points over 2015, which exceeded our expectations. This strong performance was partially offset by the challenges in the remaining power generation focused businesses in the segment. Based on the actions taken in 2016 we expect to see solid margin improvement in 2017. Regarding the South African projects there were no material changes in the operating environment and our overall results were largely in line with our expectations. You can refer to the appendix of this presentation for more detail. Turning now to our financial position at the end of the year, our balance sheet remains solid. We ended the quarter with cash and equivalents of around $100 million. Our net leverage declined sequentially to 2.1 times at the end of the year. Overall we are very pleased with our strong balance sheet and liquidity position. As a reminder our target leverage range is 1.5 to 2.5 times. At our current leverage, we feel confident in our capacity and ability to deploy capital for actions to drive incremental shareholder value, including acquisitions in the growth focused areas of our Company. The cash flow dynamics of the company in 2016 reflect the transformational nature of the actions we have been taking to de-risk and improve the earnings profile of our portfolio. Free cash flow generated from core continuing operations was approximately $75 million for the full year, representing a conversion ratio of about 120% of adjusted net income. This was significantly above our normalized target of converting 100% of net income, largely due to working capital improvement in our Engineered Solutions segment. For 2017, we will be targeting 100% conversion of adjusted net income. During the course of the year, we reduced debt by $15.6 million, including $8.8 million of regular quarterly principal payments under our term loan and received net cash from the sale of businesses of approximately $27 million. Our South African projects used about $33 million of cash for the full year, towards the lower end of our expectations. Overall, we are targeting $20 million to $25 million of cash usage for these projects in 2017 and expect the material decline in 2018 and beyond. Overall we see no net change to future cash spent on the projects from what we have previously communicated. And of course, the significant losses from the European Power Generation business were drag on our cash in 2016, but go away with the sale of that business. Given our favorable EBITDA and cash flow dynamics, we project having capacity of $400 million of capital available for deployment over the next four years including around $100 million in 2017. And with that, I’ll turn the call back to Gene.