Earnings Labs

Spire Inc. (SR)

Q1 2010 Earnings Call· Fri, Apr 30, 2010

$89.88

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to The Standard Register’s first quarter 2010 conference call. Today’s conference is being recorded. As a reminder, the presentation slides for today’s conference are available by accessing the investor center section of The Standard Register website at www.StandardRegister.com/investorcenter. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Shaun Smith.

Shaun Smith

Management

Welcome to the company’s third quarter 2009 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Joe Morgan, President and Chief Executive Officer and Bob Ginnan, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements including language concerning future projections. These projections should be considered in the conjunction with the Safe Harbor statement contained in our earnings news release as well as the Safe Harbor statement that can be found by accessing the home page of the investor center on the company’s website. In addition, we will make references to financial measures that are not in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. This information is not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitution for GAAP. The use of these measures is meant to enhance our audience’s understanding of the company’s performance. For today’s call, Joe has a few key highlights that he wishes to discuss. This will be followed by Bob’s review of our financial statement. After Bob’s report, we’ll open it up for questions, so please let me turn it over to Joe for his opening remarks.

Joseph Morgan

Management

Thanks, Shaun. Good morning. As Shaun said, I want to go through a few key highlights from the quarter and then I’d like to just talk about some things that we’re observing in the market. From a financial perspective, as the information that we provide will show, our revenue was down by approximately 4%, which is again, as we’ve seen over the previous quarters, the decline has slowed. Our units are starting to stabilize, but we’re seeing some price and mix change that’s obviously impacting our bottom line. Gross margin was slightly up on a percentage basis in great part due to the effort that we’ve put forward through the MyC3 process that in previous calls. Our SG&A as you’ll note is up by $2.3 million primarily due to planned investments that we’re making to transform the portfolio and the company now that we’ve moved to a market focus. Bob will describe that in a little bit more detail. We are feeling good though about the unit stabilization. That isn’t an accident. That has a lot to do with the work we’re doing in the front end of the market. There has been some mix shift that has affected the price of the products that are in the performance of the business, but unfortunately, that combined with the SG&A has resulted in a loss for the quarter. We did however, manage cash differently than we had planned, and we had a positive quarter of $1.9 million as Bob will probably describe in a little greater detail for the business. We did spend a good deal of capital in the quarter in terms of some strategic investments that we’re making. In terms of highlights, in terms of those investments, one of the things that we’ve talked about on previous call is…

Robert Ginnan

Management

Thank you, Joe. As Joe mentioned, revenues came in at $167.4 million, down 4.1%. This represents a continued trend in our improved quarter over quarter decline rate. As you recall, last year we were at 15.7% decline, end of the year at 5.7%. We back off the extra week, we were at 10.3% so at 4.1%, that represents a significant improvement there. The highlight in the revenue on the segments was a 32% growth in our industrial business unit. On the gross margin side, we actually improved gross margin by 9/10 of a percent to 32%. However, underneath this gross margin, there is really three stories. One is improved factory costs. We’ve improved our factory costs. We did have a favorable LIFO adjustment of $1.7 million, but these were offset by continued price pressure as Joe mentioned at the start of his discussion. It’s most evident when you turn to segments, you’ll see that margins improved in every segment except for emerging, which is where we saw the majority of the price pressure. On the SG&A front, we actually increased our SG&A by $2.3 million in the quarter, and this was primarily as we continued to make investments in our IT infrastructure, our customer platform and also the investments in marketing and material science. The total investments were actually offset by some cost savings, but we were still left with a $2.3 million investment in our SG&A. We do believe that this SG&A level will continue to step down throughout the year, and that we’ll start to see the cost savings come through there. Down below SG&A, if you recall last year, we had a $19.7 million pension settlement charge in the first quarter that dramatically changed the earnings of the first quarter last year. So if you look pre-tax…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Charles Strauzer – CJS Securities.

Charles Strauzer

Analyst

If we can talk about the higher SG&A spend in the quarter, you explained some of that was IT related, smart works and others, how much of that was more one time in nature versus recurring, and if I look at the last couple of years, the cost savings you’ve been taking it seems like when you take out costs, it seems like you plow them back in through new spending and net net, you talk about a step down over the year. What kind of magnitude should we expect in the SG&A line?

Robert Ginnan

Management

I think you’re right on in that in the past, we’ve taken out cost but now we have to reinvest that savings here. While a lot of the stuff in the quarter I would say was one time, the reality is, that’s going to be replaced by other planned investments that we have throughout the year, so in total I think the investment will stay pretty close there. We’re going to continue to see savings that will kick in. They will actually then start to step it down. I don’t think at this point we’re prepared to really talk about how much that’s going to step down, but we still believe that between SG&A and gross margin, that we’re on track to exit the year at this $30 million to $40 million savings from the MyC3 initiatives.

Charles Strauzer

Analyst

Is that a net savings now or is that just the gross savings.

Robert Ginnan

Management

That’s the net savings.

Charles Strauzer

Analyst

There’s some language in the press release if you look at it about the dividend and kind of funding dividend through surplus earnings etc. Can you expand a little bit more on what you’re trying to get at there?

Robert Ginnan

Management

When you look at our equity, you look at the components of equity being the stated capital, retained earnings and then you have the comprehensive loss in there, and obviously the pension accounting is driving the other comprehensive loss pretty significantly. And over time that number will change based on as we re-measure pensions and also that we recognize the amortization. But on a net equity basis, obviously it’s driven the equity down and so right now, you have your stated capital, which is roughly the $28 million to $29 million, and then the excess of that represents the surplus. Once you get to what’s called the earned surplus, which is really the net retained earnings, that’s typically what the dividend comes out. However, under Ohio law, we just have to have surplus to pay dividends. So due to the pension fund, we’re kind of in that position right now where we’re actually dipping into that surplus. As you noticed on the balance sheet, we actually increased our equity in the quarter so we feel like we’re on the right track there.

Charles Strauzer

Analyst

If we could go back to SG&A for one second, obviously you had the year over year jump in Q1 in SG&A and again, I know you don’t want to get into the details of the step down, but is it safe to assume that we’re going to see year over year declines going forward in this SG&A or is it going to be more flattish from last year?

Robert Ginnan

Management

I would say that, I don’t really expect declines until the fourth quarter.

Charles Strauzer

Analyst

If you look at the bigger picture right now, obviously I’m hearing across the industry signs of life again and it sounds like customers are coming back and cautiously spending a little bit more in various areas. What are you seeing from your clients and what areas in particular are seeing strength versus continued weakness?

Joseph Morgan

Management

It really, with our market segmentation, the story varies depending on which segment you’re talking about, so I’ll give you perspective because I spend a lot of time in the field with customers. I would say the health care business, it’s an interesting discussion because health care reform is both a good thing and a bad thing depending upon how it actually rolls out as we go forward. So there is some opportunity that will likely be created, but there’s also some cautious optimism in terms of how investment should be made around EMR, electronic medical record and some other technologies that will facilitate the flow of information in hospitals. So I think we’re seeing more stabilization there, but if you look at our portfolio, clinical documentation, if you’re in the print space is a big part of what goes on with an acute care institution. So that is affected more than anything as it relates to health care reform. However, there’s a period of time that we’re seeing where the status quo continues. So that would be my response on the health care side specifically around acute care health. If we look at the financial services, while the economy is maybe feeling a little better, there’s still a lot of uncertainty in the financial services space, so we’ve taken some pretty sizable retail banks in our portfolio over the course of the last 12 months. But there’s been a softening in terms of spend in that portfolio. I think caution is how I would describe it, but we continue to make good progress. We had in the first quarter organized our go-to-market effort around that financial segment because it turns out we’re really good at that. So it’s a bit of a mixed bag there. In the industrial segment,…

Charles Strauzer

Analyst

If you look at the, you had a little bit revenue performance. You’re seeing sequential improvement off of Q1 in the rate of decline. Can we expect to see that kind of continuation as we progress through the year in terms of rate of decline kind of ebbing as we go through Q2 through Q4?

Joseph Morgan

Management

I think we share your desire for that outcome, but as Bob said before, we’re still not in a position to give guidance in that area, but we share the desire for that enthusiastic outcome for sure.

Charles Strauzer

Analyst

At least if you look in Q2, you already have basically April under your belt here and you’re kind of going into the balance of the quarter. What is the sales force telling you. What are the kind of early scans you’re getting. Are you seeing the same type of progress there?

Joseph Morgan

Management

It’s kind of hard to answer that question. I know why you’re asking it, but I’ll give you a couple of perspectives on that. Our activity in the market, our pipeline is up. We’re seeing more action there, which is a good thing. I think we’re seeing a higher level of enthusiasm about the hybrid discussion that I just mentioned to you. We’re in clay right now, which is really a change for our company. We’re participating in the growth parts of the industry at a higher level than we have before, so I can’t tell you exactly how that’s going to turn out, but there are certainly some encouraging signs in terms of how data register is being perceived in the market and the actions we’re taking.

Charles Strauzer

Analyst

Just a quick question on the credit facility, what was the new rate on that?

Robert Ginnan

Management

We went from a spread of 150 basis points to 325 basis points.

Charles Strauzer

Analyst

Over LIBOR?

Robert Ginnan

Management

Over LIBOR, yes.

Charles Strauzer

Analyst

Is there a LIBOR four on that?

Robert Ginnan

Management

No.

Charles Strauzer

Analyst

And then just talk a little bit about, obviously this year is going to be a tough year for cash flow given that the pension funding and investments you’re making, but ultimately if you had your preference, would you start thinking about making some acquisitions again?

Joseph Morgan

Management

I think we will. We always consider acquisitions. I think that we’re much clearer on the strategy so it’s easier to evaluate those. I think there’s some out there and open to us.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time.

Joseph Morgan

Management

It doesn’t look like anyone else has any questions so that concludes today’s conference call and we’d like to thank you for your participation and we look forward to reviewing our second quarter results in late July.