W. Nicholas Howley - Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors
Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please proceed
Good morning and thanks again to everybody for calling in to hear about our company. As I've done in the past, again, because we are a relatively new public equity, I'll give a very short overview of TransDigm. To remind everyone, we completed our initial public offering and our shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in March of 2006 under the symbol TDG. At the time, we sold about 12.6 million shares or 28% of the equity at a price of $21 a share. During Q3 of 2007, we completed the sale of approximately 11.5 million shares or about 26% of our outstanding shares in a secondary offering. That transaction closed in May of '07 at $35.25 a share. In late November and early December of 2007, Warburg Pincus distributed about 7 million shares or about 15% of the equity to their limited partners. The Warburg Pincus ownership is now about 30% and we are no longer a controlled company under the New York Stock Exchange rules. Our shares closed last night at about $44.15 a share I believe and are balancing around this morning here. TransDigm is a supplier of highly engineered aerospace components. The components are used on almost all commercial and military aircraft in use. We estimate that about 95% of our sales are generated by proprietary products, which means we own the intellectual property. Similarly, we estimate that about 80% of our sales come from products for which we are the sole source provider. Commercial business currently accounts for about three-quarters of our revenue with the balance being defense-related. We generate about 60% of our revenue from aftermarket sales this year. Aftermarket revenues have historically produced a higher gross margin and been more stable than the OEM sales. Because of the large installed base of products' high margins and relatively low capital expenditures, TransDigm has historically generated very strong free cash flow and this has given us a lot of flexibility both in area of our debt and our acquisition pursuit. We have a very consistent, value-based operating strategy focused around what we refer to as our three value drivers: New business development, continual cost improvement and value-based pricing. We stick to these concepts as the core of our operating management methodology. This consistent approach has allowed us to continuously improve and increase the intrinsic value of the businesses. A key fourth element of our value proposition has been active in acquiring businesses, or we have been active. We acquire proprietary aerospace product businesses with significant aftermarket content. We have in total acquired 21 such businesses with 4 of them... 4 businesses and 3 transactions in 2007 fiscal year. Now let me turn to our latest financial performance. I will remind you that this is the first quarter review for fiscal year 2008. Our fiscal year started on October 1, 2007. As I have said in the past, quarterly comparisons can be significantly impacted by differences in the OEM aftermarket mix, large orders that occur from time-to-time, transient inventory fluctuations, seasonality and other factors. In spite of some timing issues, we had a good start to the fiscal 2008 year. Revenues were up about 33% on a year-over-year basis, organic growth was a little under 8%. If I review the revenues by market segment, and this on a pro forma basis versus the prior year, that is assuming we own the same mix of businesses in both periods. In the commercial segment, which makes up about three quarters of our revenues, our commercial OEM revenues were about flat on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Commercial transport segment revenues were up modestly and regional and biz jet revenues were down modestly. We believe this is just a timing of shipment issue versus the prior year. Just to give us some increased confidence in that, our incoming orders in the quarter were up about 20% in the commercial transport segment and just under 15% in the regional biz jet segment. We still expect our pro forma commercial OEM business to be up about 10% for the full year. Commercial aftermarket revenues were up about 9% on a year-over-year basis. If we remove the impact of a one-time shipment in the prior Q1, our core aftermarket was up about 13% on a year-over-year basis. As we mentioned before, we continue to be cautious regarding the sustainability of last year's high rate of growth in the commercial aftermarket. We still anticipate pro forma commercial aftermarket revenues to be up over 10% for the full year. Our defense segment, which makes up about a quarter of our business, revenues were up 8% on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Defense business is always difficult to predict in the near term. We remain cautious. Always somewhat subject to the political wins and budget uncertainties, but absent any significant change, we still expect pro forma defense revenues to be up in the 5% to 10% range versus the prior year. Moving on to profitability, and on a reported basis I am going to talk primarily about our operating performance or EBITDA as defined. I will point out that total adjustments to EBITDA are almost identical from year-to-year, so it's not really much of an issue. On Q1 versus the comparable basis, the prior year, our EBITDA as defined of $75.9 million was up 35% versus the prior Q1. Significantly, the EBITDA as defined margin is 46.5% for Q1. This is about half a point higher than the prior Q1 at 45.9% in spite of the dilutive impact of acquisitions which totaled approximately 2 margin points. The margin expansion is due primarily to strong aftermarket pricing, our ongoing productivity efforts offset somewhat by higher development expenses as the 787 program stretches out a bit. Greg will review the financials in more detail. With respect to our acquisition pipeline, we continue actively looking at opportunities. We have a typical pipeline of possibilities, more small than large opportunities. We remain disciplined and focused on value creation. Predicting the timing is always difficult. As a general rule, we are not going to give specifics on any acquisitions until they are closed. Regarding the latest stretch out of 787 deliveries, we will likely see some higher development expense, but in total we do not believe it will have any material impact on our 2008 financial performance. With respect to our 2008 guidance, we see some potential upside to our guidance both in lower interest rates, and, though there may be quarterly variations, we may see a higher full year margin. To a lesser extent, and though we haven't seen this yet, there may be some potential downside in the possibility of general economic softening and defense buys. However, on balance after only a quarter... one quarter of the year gone by, we are still comfortable with our previously issued 2008 guidance. I am going to ask Ray Laubenthal, our Chief Operating Officer just to give you a short operating overview and then Greg will get into the financials in a little more detail. Ray?