David Dunbar
Analyst · BB&T Capital Markets
Thank you, Tom. Please turn to Slide 15, and I'll begin our segment overview with the Food Service Equipment Group. As I mentioned at the outset of the call, margin improvement continues to be a key area of focus within Food Service Equipment and the focus is paying off. Operating income margins increased 260 basis points to 9.6% and the sales decrease of 3.4% from Q3 last year. The overall decrease in sales was driven primarily by lower refrigeration sales as well as ongoing actions to eliminate less profitable products. The refrigeration sales decline was the result of decreased sales to large national chains due to reduction of store expansion and merger of Family Dollar and Dollar Tree, partially offset by sales through dealers. In Cooking Solutions, sales increased approximately 2% year-over-year primarily driven by strong growth in the supermarket sector and increased shipments in our Fryer chain business. This growth was partially offset by actions to eliminate lower margin commodity products. On time shipments continue to improve and that should help fuel sales expansion during the remainder of the fiscal year. Our Ultrafryer acquisition remains on track and we are actively investing in its product line. Specialty solution was up in Q3 driven by our Pumps business partially offset by exchange rate declines. We're making significant progress in Food Services, we apply Standex's operational excellence initiative to all our production facilities. With these initiatives in place and demonstrating early results, the team is reviewing its commercial strategic initiatives focusing on our product line, attracting adjacencies and sales excellence to ensure the business remains aligned with the Standex 20/20 vision. We anticipate top line performance challenges to continue in our refrigeration group. On the bottom line, we expect that our operational excellence activities will continue to improve overall performance in Food Service. We will be at the National Restaurant Association trade show in May to present some of our new products so if you'll be in Chicago for the show, please stop by to check them out. Turn to Slide 16, the Engraving Group had another strong quarter with sales increasing 6.2% over Q3 of last year including 11.6% organic sales growth and 5.4% negative currency impact. The increase in sales was primarily driven by our Mold-Tech locations in Europe and China, as demand for automotive molds remains strong. Sales were slow in Southeast Asia. In past calls we have been discussing the expected future sales benefits from our new laser and nickel shell technologies as well as our design services. As a result of our investment in these areas during Q3, operating income declined to 18.6%. It’s a testament to the strength of this business that we were still able to generate this impressive margin given the level of investments we've made. In addition to the strong performance at Mold-Tech, sales also increased in our roll plate and machinery business due to pricing and product mix. Our Innovent business also had a strong quarter as a result of customer products roll out. We remain in [indiscernible] with the progress of our architecture design centers. During the quarter we received an order from large America OEM for a model year 2020 automotive roll out. This is the earliest point in product development cycle we have received an award and is a great example of how we are changing the game with our sales approach to our Architexture design hubs. The demand trends and momentum in engraving are strong and we expect this to continue in Q4. Going forward, we will ramp up production of nickel shell molds and laser engraving during the next 12 months to increase capacity and meet demand. We continue to monitor activity in China as there have been indications that automotive OEMs are slowing production although we have yet to see a decline in customer demand. Please turn the Slide 17, Engineering Technologies Group. Organic sales were down 22.7% year-over-year, primarily due to lower demand in oil and gas markets, as well as contracts timing in this space industry. This was partially offset by the increase sales in Aviation. We’ve taken action to align operating cost with demand, giving the ongoing oil and gas downturn and we shifted our progress to the Aviation market. Aviation continues to grow, it is now over 50% of the segment volume and we’re creating capacity to fulfill customer needs. Construction of our aluminum center for Aluminum Center of Excellence in Wisconsin is on track and we expect to be in production at that facility in June. Enginetics performed well during the quarter. As the longer term aviation engine awards are beginning to ramp and operational improvement initiatives are benefitting the bottom line. We continue to look for opportunities to drive further value out of that business through provisional initiative. Looking forward we anticipate year-on-year growth in Q4 and fourth quarter margins in double digits due to improvements from higher sales, margin growth in aviation and an easier year-over-year comparison in the oil and gas market. Please turn to Slide 18, Electronics. Electronics sales increased 6.8% to the Q2 ’16 acquisition of Northlake as well as program launches in Europe, partially offset by softness in China and North America. Foreign exchange negatively affected sales by 2.3%, operating income declined slightly as we integrated Northlake. Senses were up from a prior year, we continue to see more opportunities in Sensors and we’re accelerating growth rate ways of sensor technologies through market caps. We expect our new sensor programs to drive growth over the next 12 months. Magnetics and industrial sales were also strong in the quarter, while medical sales were down, we’ve received a number of newer larger in the quarter that will deliver growth in the coming year as electronics growth initiatives bear fruit. The integration with Northlake is on target and we’re pleased with the progress, during the quarter we consolidated a small Canadian magnetics business into Northlake, which we expect to result in savings in the next four quarters. Final we have been active in a track of M&A pipeline for the electronics business. We remain optimistic about the electronics business long term to deliver organic and inorganic growth. Our hydraulics groups you can see on Slide 19 had a very good quarter, sales were up 12% year-over-year, primarily due to the continued strengthening in our traditional North American dump truck and trailer market, which is tied to the strong North American construction environment. Our customers are optimistic that the passage of the new 5 year highway build could provide further growth opportunities. We leveraged to 12% sales growth and we’re 16.5% increase in our operating income and our operating margin was 17.2%. We continue to capture new OEM platforms in the refuse space by providing customs telescopic hydraulics cylinders manufactured in North America, combined with rod cylinders from China. We are also entering new markets, such as the airline support equipments space. On the operations front, our robotic welding machines at our Ohio facility are up and running and they’re driving performance improvement and efficiencies. To support this growth, we’ve also approved another expansion our TianJin China plant. March was a record month for cylinder production and we’re looking forward to meeting increased demand in fourth quarter. Please turn to Slide 40. In summary we continue to perform well from an operation standpoint despite softness in certain of our markets. We are taking the necessary steps to improve each of our segments and our business leaders are reporting excelling momentum in the execution of our strategy. The operational transformation improved service is processing quite well. We exited the third quarter with a 9.6% operating margin, despite the challenges on the top line that we expect will continue in the near term. The transformation of our engineering technologies business is also progressing as we ramp up as our aviation contracts. Our fourth quarter focus will be to continue our operational excellence in top line initiatives across the business and of course across the organization we will be aggressively executing on the four pillars of this Standex for the accretion system, to drive performance in the business. These include the balance performance plan process, the growth disciplines, operational excellence and tailwind management. Finally, we continue to growth in active M&A pipeline. With that Tom and I will be happy to take your questions.