Paul Vasington
Analyst · Morgan Stanley
Thank you, Jeff. Key highlights for the first quarter as shown on slide 10 include, revenue of $774.3 million, a decrease of 11.1% from the first quarter of 2019. Changes in foreign currency decreased revenues by 0.7%. Excluding the impact of foreign currency, organic revenue declined 10.4% largely due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Adjusted operating income was $136.7 million, a decrease of 27.5% compared to the first quarter of 2019, primarily due to lower revenues, productivity headwinds from our manufacturing facilities running at significantly lower capacity, elevated cost to safeguard our employees, and local government restrictions, which altogether limited our ability to align our costs to the declining end market demand. Higher design and development spend execute on new business wins and megatrend growth programs, as well as higher compensation costs to retain Sensata top talent were mostly offset by savings from repositioning actions taken last year. Adjusted net income was $83.2 million, a decrease of 40.3% compared to the first quarter of 2019. Adjusted EPS was $0.53 in the first quarter, a decrease of 37.6%, compared to the prior year quarter and slightly better than decline in adjusted net income, the benefit of share repurchases. Now I’d like to comment on the performance of our two business segments in the first quarter of 2020. I will start with Performance Sensing on slide 11. Performance sensing business reported revenue of $568.7 million in the first quarter of 2020, a decrease of 11.1% compared to the same quarter last year. Excluding the negative impact from foreign currency of 0.7%, Performance Sensing reported an organic revenue decline of 10.4%. Our Automotive business reported, an organic revenue decline of 10.4% in the first quarter, but outpaced its end market by 600 basis points. In addition, organic revenue declined in each of our three major geographic regions. Our HVOR business reported an organic revenue decline of 10.7% in the first quarter, but outpaced its end market by 930 basis points, primarily, due to sharp content growth and our China on road truck business driven by the adoption of NS6 emission regulations. Performance Sensing operating income was $129.1 million in the first quarter of 2020, a decrease of 14.2%, as compared to the same quarter last year. Performance Sensing profit as a percent of revenue was 22.7% in the first quarter, a decline of 80 basis points for the same quarter last year. The decline in segment operating income was primarily driven by lower revenues, manufacturing facilities operating in significantly lower capacity and higher design and development effort to execute our new business wins and megatrend growth programs somewhat offset by savings repositioning actions taken last year. As shown on slide 12, Sensing Solutions reported revenues of $205.6 million in the first quarter of 2020, a decrease of 10.8% as compared to the same quarter last year. Excluding the negative impact from foreign currency of 0.4%, Sensing Solutions organic revenue declined 10.4%. Revenue in our industrial business declined 12.3% organically in the first quarter, as industrial end markets declined 15%. Revenue in our aerospace business declined 2% organically in the first quarter, producing 430 basis points of growth above its end market, which declined 6.3%, and OEM production delays in a weaker aftermarket. Sensing Solutions operating income was $55.9 million in the first quarter of 2020, a decrease of 25.4% from the same quarter last year. Sensing Solutions profit, as a percentage of revenue was 27.2% in the first quarter, a decline of 530 basis points for the same quarter last year. The decline in segment operating income was primarily due to lower revenues, manufacturing facilities operating at significantly lower capacity and unfavorable product mix somewhat offset by savings from restructuring actions taken last year. Corporate and other costs not included in segment operating income were $88.8 million in the first quarter of 2020, which includes a $29.2 million loss related to an intellectual property litigation judgment, which we intend to appeal. Higher compensation costs to retain and set our top down, and higher administrative expenses attributed to the higher corporate and other costs, as compared to the same quarter last year. Excluding charges added back to our non-GAAP results. Corporate and other costs were 47 million in the first quarter of 2020, an increase of $12.3 million, in the same quarter last year, due primarily to higher compensation in administrative costs. Slide 13 shows Sensata’s first quarter 2029 GAAP results. Adjusted gross profit declined 17.2%, as compared to the same quarter last year to $243.9 million. The gross margins declined 230 basis points to 31.5%. The decline in gross profit and margin were primarily due to lower revenues, productivity headwinds from our manufacturing facilities running at significantly lower capacity, elevated cost to safeguard our employees, and local government restrictions, which altogether limited our ability to align our cost to decline in market demand. We continue to increase design and development spend to execute on new business wins megatrend growth programs, primarily areas with smart and connected, electrification. Despite the higher investment, R&D costs were down 1.8%, as compared to the same quarter last year, due to savings from repositioning actions and favorable changes in foreign exchange rates. Higher compensation to retain incentive or top talent was the primary driver of the $1.9 million, increase in SG&A costs, as compared to the same quarter last year, or a 2.9% increase. As a result adjusted operating income was down 27.5% compared to the prior year quarter. Our tax rate as a present of adjusted profit before tax increased 410 basis points, compared to the prior year, primarily due to jurisdictional profit mix. And finally adjusted EPS was $0.53 down $0.32 or 37.6% as compared to the first quarter, 2019. On slide 14, during 2016 financial data, we provide a breakdown for the types of span, that make up our cost structure and their relative sized to net revenue. The majority of our costs are variable in nature. The largest portion which is material purchases power by direct labor wages, rate and operating supplies. These types of costs scale directly with revenue and are reduced through continuous product design and cost productivity improvements. Some of the variable costs are comprised primarily of indirect salaries and benefits. Private spend, outside services and utilities. These costs are more structural in nature, and scale with revenue to some extent but require more specific management action to drive this outcome. These costs include items such as depreciation, facility leases and licensing and support costs, related to our enterprise operating systems. In the first quarter of 2020, we saw decremental margins higher than normal, as the COVID-19 pandemic restricted our operation and limited our ability to manage and align our costs to the rapid decline demand and from our actions to protect our employees. Moreover, government mandates in certain locations, required us to continue to pay our direct labor despite plant closures and freight costs increased dramatically as logistics supply chains were disrupted. We’ve taken a number of strong actions going into the second quarter to reduce our costs given the anticipated lower revenue. For example, as Jeff mentioned, we have reduced salaries for managers by 25% during the quarter and implemented furloughs across the employee base in line with regional and country-specific roles to achieve a similar savings across our indirect labor population. We are also closely examining all of our operating costs to ensure they are prioritized appropriately. We expect these actions to generate approximately $15 million to $20 million in cost savings during the second quarter. It’s also important to note that approximately 5% of our total operating costs are non-cash, such as depreciation expense, amortization expense and equity compensation. In short, we are actively managing our business and cost structure to manage the impact of the operating challenges we are facing and the end-market declines we’re experiencing and anticipating, while continuing to invest in our people, our future, and to create increasing value for all of our stakeholders. Slide 15 demonstrates Sensata’s ability to manage down its net leverage and net leverage ratio, which has declined steadily from 4.6 times at the end of 2015 to 2.9 today, reflecting our strong cash generation and effective capital deployment. Having drawn down $400 million from our revolving line of credit on April 1, we enter the second quarter with $1.2 billion in cash on the balance sheet. We have substantial buffer to our leveraged covenants and our debt agreements, and the first outstanding maturity of our debt is not until October 2023 when the $500 million unsecured note becomes due. Consequently we are confident about our liquidity position and our ability to manage through and adapt to the current market environment. Free cash flow was $69 million during the first quarter of 2020 or 83% of adjusted net income, which is a dramatic improvement when compared to 51% of adjusted net income in the same quarter last year. We are reducing capital expenditures by $45 million to $120 million to $130 million for the full year 2020 to further improve our financial flexibility. As announced earlier this month, we have withdrawn our full year guidance as a negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business remains highly uncertain with the changing and unpredictable. However, based on current indicators of demand, revenue in the second quarter of 2020 will likely be down significantly for the first quarter of 2020. On slide 16, I show a number of economic indicators that we track to help assess future demand for our products and solutions. IHS is our primary source for information on future automotive production. Currently they are predicting a 47% decline in global automotive production the second quarter and 22% decline for the full year. In addition, we track automotive plant closures and communicate routinely with our automotive customers to get alignment on future demand expectations, which strongly influenced our view of the market. Each week of auto production in North America and Europe has worth approximately $25 million in revenue to Sensata. We estimate that during the second quarter, auto OEMs in these regions will shut down their production line for an average of four to five weeks. For our heavy vehicle and off-road business, we use various production forecasts from third-party firms such as LMC to help us understand future production levels. For the second quarter, LMC is projecting a 60% decline in North America Class A production rates. We also evaluate economic indicators to gauge the health of our HVR customers and the markets they serve, and which we believe are strongly correlated to demand for our HVR products. These indicators include freight load factors, inventory sales ratios, building permits, industrial production, crop features, and farm machinery, and public statements from our large customers in the construction and ag sectors, also helped them to form our view of the market. For our industrial business, we evaluate regional PMI data and forecast for GDP and housing starts, develop a forward-looking view in industrial demand given there’s strong correlation with our historical industrial revenue. For aerospace, expectations for future OEM commercial and defense production and passenger miles flown are good indicators of future demand for our aerospace products and aftermarket services. In February, we expect a lower production and demand relating to COVID-19 will lower our revenue by $40 million and our operating profit by approximately $20 million in the first quarter of 2020. Those estimates proved to be insufficient as we experienced a drop in both revenue and operating profit of roughly twice of what we predicted as COVID-19 spread worldwide. Until we have a good sense for future levels of demand, it is difficult to accurately project revenue, operating profit, and other financial metrics. With that said, we will continue our efforts to align our costs, to normalize demand levels that we anticipate to develop over the coming quarters, while ensuring we are able to protect our employees and serve the needs of our customers. In closing, I’ll echo Jeff’s comments that we are operating in unprecedented times. We’re fortunate that our employees are healthy and that as an organization, we have risen to meet the challenges this crisis has presented. While we cannot currently provide more comprehensive financial guidance for the remainder of 2020, we are all working diligently to ensure Sensata emerges from this time in a stronger financial position. I’ll turn the call back to Jeff for summary remarks.