Robert Mehrabian
Analyst · Sidoti & Company
Thank you, Jason, and good morning, everyone. Second quarter sales of $518.5 million was an all-time record for Teledyne and GAAP earnings per share of $1.06 was also an all-time record, despite $1.3 million of non-recurring acquisition charges in the quarter.
In the second quarter, backlog increased $28 million to a record $1.02 billion and overall book-to-bill was $1.05. Through both internal R&D investments, as well as our recently-announced acquisitions, we continue our emphasis on higher margin industrial growth for markets. We also continue to increase our global presence and like always, continue to drive improvements in our operations.
Our current portfolio of high technology businesses provide proprietary, highly engineered products and serve markets, such as energy exploration and production, global infrastructure, factory automation, transportation and communication. In order to drive growth and gain market share in challenging economic environments, we continue to invest in R&D for new and improved products.
Our internal R&D expense in the second quarter increased 7%, compared to last year, for approximately $29 million or $116 million annualized. Please also note that we receive an additional $100 million-plus in relevant R&D funding collectively from our government and commercial customers.
Our commercial businesses performed well in the quarter with organic sales growth of 6.4% in our electronic instrumentation segment, record orders and sales at Teledyne DALSA and 9% organic growth in sales of avionics and other commercial electronics in our aerospace and defense electronics segment.
Our government -- government businesses declined year-over-year, nonetheless, government sales increased 6.5% compared to the first quarter and we were also awarded several new contracts, including a very significant award by a foreign customer for software-based microwave radio system and an $18.5 million award from NASA to develop a space-based imaging system to be deployed and operated by Teledyne on the International Space Station.
International sales contributed 38% of total revenue and U.S. government sales accounted for just 31% of sales, down from 36% in 2011 and 47% just a few years ago.
The profile of our government business also continues to evolve with an increase in proprietary products and prime contracts leveraging our marine instrumentation and Digital Imaging Capability.
International sales increased from 2011, but declined slightly from the first quarter of 2012. We did witness substantial weakness in Europe for some product lines such as industrial machine vision cameras. However, growth in European sales of other products such as avionics and marine instrumentation, as well as broad-based growth in the Asian markets more than offset this decline.
I will now comment on our business segments after which Dale Schnittjer will review some of the financials in more detail and provide an earnings outlook for the third quarter and full year 2012.
Turning to our Instrumentation segment, this segment comprises our highest margin group of businesses and primarily serves offshore energy, including deepwater exploration and production and global infrastructure markets. International sales represent about 55% of the segment sales in the second quarter.
Instrumentation segment sales increased 6.4% to $162.4 million, record sales of environmental instruments grew 5.1% year-over-year and sales of marine instrumentation grew 7.3% year-over-year.
Growth of environmental instruments resulted in part from increased power and petrochemical activity in Asia and Middle East. However, strong growth in these markets was partially offset by weak demand from municipalities in the United States and reduced demand for -- from pharmaceutical companies, which combined with some acquisition costs, affected margins in the quarter.
Growth in marine instrumentations resulted from very strong sales of acoustic navigation subsystems using tethered remotely-operated vehicles or ROVs and fully autonomous undersea vehicles or AUVs. During the quarter, we also completed delivery of our first custom, permanent deepwater reservoir monitoring system for offshore oil fields.
While we were pleased with this technical effort and new product milestone we absorbed about $1.4 million of expense related to this project in the quarter. The reservoir monitoring system, if successful, could provide substantial source of new revenue in the future.
Immediately following the end of the quarter, we completed the acquisition of BlueView Technologies, which provides compact forward-looking underwater imaging sonar, also ocean floor imaging system and 3-dimensional scanning sonar.
BlueView’s advanced sonar systems are currently deployed on ROVs, AUVs, surface vessels and fixed and portable platforms. In addition, BlueView’s 3-dimensional scanning sonars provide underwater equivalent to the leading airborne and terrestrial light detection and ranging or LIDAR systems produced by Optech, which became a majority-owned subsidiary at the start of the second quarter.
Finally, we remain very excited about the pending acquisition -- pending shareholder approval of LeCroy Corporation, whose results will be reported within our instrumentation segment.
LeCroy will add a leader in electronics tests and measurement solutions to our analytical instrumentation businesses. In addition, LeCroy brings exceptional technical talent, design capabilities and market access to leverage our unique technology in indium phosphide and analog and mixed signal devices developed at Teledyne Scientific, our R&D laboratory.
With regard to this acquisition as noted earlier, operating profit in the segment was impacted by about $800,000 of acquisition-related legal costs. We currently expect to record additional non-recurring expenses of $5 million in the third quarter and $1.8 million in the fourth quarter within this segment.
Turning to the Digital Imaging segment, this segment provides a broad portfolio of visible, including LIDAR, infrared, X-ray, ultraviolet sensors, cameras and software. Second quarter sales in Digital Imaging increased 15% compared to last year.
Most of the revenue growth was due to the consolidated results of Optech. However, revenue growth excluding Optech also increased marginally. Segment operating profit was flat but reporting operating margin reflects: first, 58 basis points of increased R&D spending compared to last year; second, a total of approximately 320 basis points related to intangible asset amortization; and third, the reclassification of Canadian R&D tax credit from above the line segment income to below the line provision for taxes.
Despite a difficult economic environment, especially in Europe, Teledyne DALSA reported increased orders and sales, which were both at record levels. Year-over-year sales were particularly strong for digital X-ray sensors used in medical and dental applications.
Orders also exceeded sales in each major product category, reflecting increased demand especially in Asia for machine vision cameras, as well as strong orders for specialty micro electromechanical systems or MEMS production.
Non-DALSA revenues declined slightly as sales related to classified imaging and space programs were partially offset by reduced government R&D funds.
Turning to Aerospace and Defense Electronics segment, second quarter sales decreased 0.5% compared to the second quarter of 2011. Sales of higher margin commercial avionics, aircraft batteries and electronic relays increased 9%, while sales of microwave devices and interconnect increased 6.8% due to the acquisition of VariSystems.
The overall decline in total segment sales resulted from significantly-decreased revenue of lower margin government electronic manufacturing services. Within this segment, U.S. government sales were 36% of the total, down from 45% in 2011 and almost 50% in 2009.
Nonetheless, orders in this segment were very strong with book -- with a book-to-bill ratio of 1.25, driven in part by contract awards in some of our defense businesses, including the significant award of a software-based radio system mentioned earlier.
Turning to our Engineered Systems segment, second quarter revenue and margins declined, given the anticipated reduction in services for systems engineering and technical assistance or SETA programs, as a result of government budget cuts and a revised organizational conflict of interest policy.
However, revenue was at the greatest level in the last 4 quarters and was bolstered by approximately $10 million of revenue related to new prime contracts won last year, including the Shallow Water Combat Submersible vehicle for the Navy SEALs and the objective stimulation framework or OSF program for missile defense.
In conclusion, I’m very encouraged with our evolving portfolio of higher technology industrial businesses with greater focus on instrumentation and imaging and our decreased dependence on government program, as well as our increased global presence.
We also have a proven track record of earnings improvement and we expect 2012 to be our 11th consecutive year of GAAP and I emphasize GAAP earnings growth, despite anticipated non-recurring charges of $8.3 million or $0.15 per share related to acquisitions, primarily the pending acquisition of LeCroy.
I will now turn the call over to Dale Schnittjer.