George Strickler
Analyst · Stephens. Your line is now open
Thank you, Jon. Stoneridge reported strong adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations of $0.41 in the second quarter of this year, compared to earnings per share from continuing operations of $0.25 per share in the second quarter of last year, an improvement of $0.16 a share or an increase of 64% on combined strength of North America Control Devices, automotive performance, European commercial vehicle performance for Electronics segment and improving financial results of PST over the first quarter of this year. The financial results were achieved by growing our top-line sales and maintaining key costs, direct labor, manufacturing overhead and SG&A expense slightly above 2015 levels. By business unit sales in the second quarter increased to Control Devices by $24.5 million or 29%, and were flat Electronics in comparison to the last year, with sales of $57.8 million. Electronics revenues were negatively affected by lower volumes in North America truck market. And PST sales were unfavorably affected by $2.9 million, due to weakening of the Brazilian real to U.S. dollar. See Slide 5 for more detail. Passenger car and light truck revenues were $90.2 million in the second quarter, a 37% increase over the second quarter 2015 sales of $67.3 million, as volumes increased in Control Device products which included new programs primarily through shift-by-wire. In addition the North America passenger car market continued to show significant growth in the second quarter of 2016, compared to the second quarter of last year. And from a geographic diversification perspective, our sales in North America represented 61%, Latin America was 11% and Europe and Asia was at 28% of our sales in the second quarter of 2016. The geographic detail can be seen on Slide 8. Our customer diversification has improved with a balance between automotive and commercial customers also can be seen on Slide 8. Our business in China, which is part of our Control Device reportable segment, has continued to show improvement with an operating margin of 18.9% in the second quarter, as operating income increased from $400,000 to $1.3 million in comparison with the second quarter of last year. This is a significant improvement over last year’s second quarter operating margin of 7.3% and even higher than the first quarter operating margin of 17.4%. Sales in our commercial vehicle category which are predominantly electronic sales were $66.9 million in the second quarter compared to $67 million. Revenues were negatively impacted by lower volumes in the North America commercial market, but the sales decline was less than $2 million. And due to the strength of the Control Device in Electronics business units, Stoneridge’s second quarter of 2016 operating margin was 7.3% which is a 280-basis point increase over second quarter of last year’s operating margin of 4.5% due to the leverage of our SG&A and D&D cost structures. Second quarter operating margin excluding PST was 8.8% of net sales for the second quarter. This is an improvement over the second quarter of last year, which we recorded operating margin of 7% and higher than our first quarter of 2016, and is our highest performance of the last six quarters, which includes the 8% operating margin in the first quarter of 2016. See Slide 6 for further details. PST’s second quarter sales declined by $2.7 million or 12% to $20.1 million compared to the second quarter of last year. These results were negatively impacted by approximately $2.9 million for FX translation as the Brazilian real devalued by 14.1% in the second quarter of 2016 compared to the second quarter of 2015. And on a local currency basis, PST sales were marginally higher by about 1%. In addition, PST also experienced a negative transactional impact of $1.3 million in the second quarter in direct material which is offsetting some of the restructuring benefits. The Brazilian real improved revaluation from the first quarter has alleviated some of the negative transactional impacts that we’ve experienced during the last 9 to 12 months. And PST imports most of which Electronic components information [ph] and 70% of their imports are in U.S. dollars. Consolidated Stoneridge operating income margin was 7.3% in the second quarter of 2016 compared to 4.5% in the second quarter of 2015. And it was our expectation that we can leverage our cost structure to lift our operating income margin in 2016. As of today we are raising our guidance by 170 to 300 basis points in 2016 over 2015 levels on slightly lower sales estimates which were driven primarily by PST. See slide 14 of our earnings deck. Our sales are slightly lower than our second quarter expectations due to lower commercial vehicle sales in North America and unfavorable currency. In spite of this, our sales were 13.1% higher than the second quarter of last year due to the expected increase shift-by-wire sales in North and shipments to U.S. customers in China and increased volumes in European commercial vehicle market. Stoneridge’s operating margins excluding PST improved to 8.8% or $14.7 million in the second quarter of 2016 in comparison to 7% in the second quarter of last year, due mostly to leveraging SG&A, D&D expenses, lower overhead and raw material costs. PST experienced decreased profitability from raw material FX transactional exposure to the U.S. dollar, the sales of local currency marginally higher. Electronics’ profitability was negatively impacted by lower volumes in the North America’s commercial vehicle market. Slide 6 of our deck has a complete P&L breakout on second quarter of this year versus second quarter of last year for continuing operations, with a bridge item differences identified on Slide 7. Slide 4 identifies the Stoneridge’s segment sales increases and decreases versus the prior year second quarter. Minda Stoneridge, our unconsolidated JV in India posted second quarter sales of $11.4 million, which is an increase of $0.5 million or 5% in comparison to the second quarter of last year. And the rupee weakened by approximately 12% in comparison to the second quarter of last year. Our share of Minda’s net income from operations in the second quarter was a profitable $153,000, compared to a profit of $143,000 in the second quarter of last year. China continues to show the improved operating performance as a result the focus of SRI product lines for the Asian market. And our Control Device sales in China $5.9 million increased in the second quarter by $1.4 million or 32% in comparison to the second quarter of 2015. Like our first quarter of 2016 and fourth quarter of last year, the leverage on higher-margin sales has allowed Control Devices in China to achieve a double-digit operating margin. For the three months ended June 30, the company recognized income tax expense of $1.4 million on pretax income from continuing operations of $12.3 million or an effective tax rate of 11%. The increase in tax expense, the effective tax rate compared to the same period for last year was primarily driven due to the overall increase in earnings, and the PST operating loss for which we can no longer provide a tax benefit due to the full valuation allowance, we began providing at December 31 of 2015. The 2016 projected annual effective tax rate, which was used to calculate our 2016 guidance, is based upon maintaining the valuation allowances that are currently provided against our U.S. and Brazil deferred tax assets throughout 2016. The exact timing and the amount of the valuation allowance reversal are subject to change on the basis of the level of profitability that we are able to actually achieve as well as earnings the can be reliably forecasted. We will continue to maintain a full valuation allowance on our U.S. and Brazil deferred tax assets until there are sufficient positive evidence to support the reversal of these allowances. The other and most important thing to remember about this subject is that the timing and amount of any reversals does not change the intrinsic value of Stoneridge, or does it change the amount of cash taxes we pay in this year and the next couple of years. It merely affects the amount of book taxes we would recognize and less EPS for the period affected. The other focus for our team is free cash flow and return on invested capital. We are still projecting to generate free cash flow for the year at the top of our range of 3% to 4% of net sales. And in the second quarter, operating cash flow was an inflow of $16.6 million dollars in comparison to an inflow of $5.9 million during the second quarter of last year. And our free cash flow for the quarter was $11.5 million compared to a negative $800,000 during the second quarter of 2015. Our cash balance at June 30, was $55.3 million, an increase of $6.1 from March 31 of 2016. The increase was primarily due to increased profitability as a result of higher sales in our Control Device segment, the European commercial vehicle market. And as indicated on Slide 12, we continue to improve our debt leverage from continuing operations as measured by total debt-to-EBITDA ratio, which has now been reduced to 2 times at the end of the second quarter of 2016. And another important metric that we’ve been tracking is our ROIC, which was at 12.6% in 2015. And our guidance implies that our return on invested capital will improve to the range of 17% to 19% based on our ability to increase our profitability by leveraging our sales and cost structure. We are very pleased with our second quarter results and our ability to build on the progress we made through 2015. Having repositioned Stoneridge to be a high-performing company based on top line growth with a focus in cost reduction and maintaining flat SG&A and D&D levels, our earnings illustrate our ability to increase our profitability and also leverage our sales increases resulting in our improved profitability in comparison to last year. We’re very excited the opportunities which will add to our revised net new business number of 232 million over the next five years for each one of our businesses. And we have a number of ways to increase top-line sales. Our content per vehicle has increased for products like shift-by-wire for Control Devices. Electronics has the opportunity do the same with mirror replacement. We have the opportunity for growth by cross-selling our products and technologies in other markets such as in Europe and Asia and especially India and China. This applies to PST as well. We’ve developed a sustainable technology process that is a pipeline for new products and technologies that will continue to drive organic growth over our five-year planning horizon. And in our existing pipeline for future opportunities, we are focused on soot sensing, turbo actuation, high-temp sensing and shift-by-wire to name a few product families for Control Devices. In Electronics, we have opportunities such as MirrorEye, a new and exciting product in the commercial market and ELD legislation recently approved for the North America commercial market, which provides the opportunity for Stoneridge to utilize capabilities developed in Europe and PST for expansion in our North America market. Our plans are to continue to invest and our opportunities for organic growth, we’re actively pursuing M&A opportunities to cut our needs, to support growth in our Control Devices and Electronic business units. And we’re excited about our potential for 2016 as our first and second quarter demonstrated our improved profitability and financial results. Our ability to improve our profit conversion while controlling our cost structure and lower than expected sales of PST, a profit as to revise our guidance as shown on Slide 14. Our revised projections indicated are sales for growth greater than 10% a year. Our operating margin will improve by 1.7% to 3% to net sales by leveraging our cost structure and earnings per share guidance has been raised to $1.25 a share to $1.40 a share which is a 52.4% to 70.7% increase of our reported EPS of $0.82 in 2015. We will now open the call for questions.