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TE Connectivity Ltd. (TEL)

Q4 2012 Earnings Call· Mon, Nov 5, 2012

$202.76

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the quarter four earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Keith Kolstrom, Vice President Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Keith Kolstrom – VP, IR: Thank you, good morning, and thank you for joining our conference call to discuss TE Connectivity's fourth quarter 2012 results. With me today is our Chief Executive Officer, Tom Lynch and our Chief Financial Officer, Bob Hau. During the course of this call, we will be providing certain forward-looking information and we ask you to review the forward-looking cautionary statements included in today's press release. In addition, we will use certain non-GAAP measures in our discussion this morning and we ask you to review the sections of our press release and the accompanying slide presentation that addresses the use of these items. The press release and related tables along with the slide presentation can be found on the Investor Relations portion of our website at TE.com. Finally, for participants on the Q&A portion of today's call, I would like to remind everyone to limit themselves to one follow-up question to make sure we are able to cover all questions during the allotted time. Now let me turn the call over to Tom for some opening comments.

Thomas J. Lynch

Management

Thanks, Keith, and good morning everyone. Please turn to slide three and we'll get started. We had a pretty solid Q4, delivering sales of 3.4 billion, adjusted earnings per share of $0.76 and free cash flow of 569 million. Our operating performance was in line with our guidance. And are adjusted EPS benefitted by $0.02 due to a lower tax rate. Our Transportation business had another strong quarter, while our CIS and Networks businesses continued to experience soft markets as expected. Overall, I consider this to be a quarter of good execution. Our adjusted operating margin at 13.5% during the quarter and ran just under 14% during the second half of the year despite the fact our Networks business continues to be in a very weak part of the cycle. Our overall business is now running at a full-year adjusted operating margin of 13 to 14% at the $13 to $14 billion revenue range. So I feel good about the improvement in our operating leverage. However, in this uncertain and slow economic environment, it's also clear that we need to reduce our costs further. I'll touch on this in more detail later in the call. During the quarter, we resumed our share repurchase program and bought back 5.5 million shares spending just under $200 million. Integration of Deutsch is proceeding very well. And the touch in services business – divestitures are complete. With these changes, we have a very strong and focused connectivity portfolio. For the full year, sales were 13.3 billion, down 3% organically versus fiscal 2011. Adjusted EPS was $2.86, also down 3% versus the 52-week fiscal 2011. Free cash flow was 1.43 billion, up 7% versus the prior year. And operating cash flow was right around 2 billion. I'm especially pleased about our free cash flow performance,…

Bob Hau - CFO

Management

Thanks Tom, and good morning, everyone. Before I cover the fourth quarter financial performance, I want to remind everyone that the segment reporting changes as Tom mentioned earlier are effective with the first quarter. We will report first quarter results in this new structure in January of 2013. And we expect to file an 8-K with recast historical P&L information in December, well in advance of the January earnings call. Now let me discuss earnings, which start on slide eight. Our GAAP operating income for the quarter was $401 million, which includes 14 million of charges related to the acquisition of Deutsch and restructuring charges of $39 million. The Deutsch acquisition-related charges includes $7 million of non-cash fair value purchase accounting adjustments and cash acquisitions charges of 7 million. We expect approximately $75 million of total cash charges related to the acquisition of Deutsch. About $40 million of the cash portion was incurred in 2012. With the remainder expected in 2013. The Deutsch acquisition is on track, and EBITDA, exiting the year, was in line with our expectations. Our adjusted operating income was $454 million with an adjusted operating margin of 13.5%. Both gross and operating margins were in line with our outlook for the quarter. We do anticipate revenue levels and margins to be down sequentially in Q1 due to normal seasonal trends and continued softness in Telecom and Industrial markets. GAAP EPS were $0.93 and adjusted EPS were $0.76 for the fourth quarter. GAAP EPS included $0.07 of restructuring and other charges, $0.03 of acquisition-related charges, and $0.27 of income related to tax items. The tax income was related to a reduction in evaluation allowances associated with tax loss carry forwards in certain non-U.S. jurisdictions where the ability to use NOL's in future periods now seems more certain…

Thomas J. Lynch

Management

Thank you, Bob. Please turn to slide 13. Before I get into the orders and our outlook, I just wanted to refresh everybody's memory on the new segment structure, and this slide shows are fiscal 2012 revenues in the new segment groupings. The regrouping of our business units into these four segments has two primary objectives as we discussed on the last call. First and foremost, it enables us to best leverage our capabilities for the customer and further optimize our efficiency. It's pretty critical for us. And it also has enabled several of our top leaders to move into expanded or different roles, which is very important for the organization's totality and long term. We believe this will also provide improved information regarding the performance of the company for all of our investors. And as Bob indicated, a recap of historical period results will be filed in December. Please turn to slide 14. As we alluded to earlier, as we enter into fiscal '13, and I don’t think any surprise to anyone, things are pretty uncertain in much of the global economy. And many of our customers, many of which I have talked to in just the last month, especially tier-one customers are taking a very cautious approach to the outlook, which translates into tightening down the amount of inventory and supply chains; a typical reaction. As our fourth quarter progressed, we saw our order rates slow. And this slowdown was pretty much across the board in Europe and in our industrial business in the U.S. and Asia. Total orders for the quarter were 3.19 billion. And our book-to-bill was 0.94 excluding SubCom. This trend is very, very similar to the trend we had in the fourth quarter of last year and our book-to-bill was very similar to the…

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions). Our first question comes from the line of Wamsi Mohan – BofA. Please go ahead. Wamsi Mohan – BofA Merrill Lynch: Yes thank you. Good morning. Tom can you talk a little more about what you’re seeing in the automotive market and MAF. We’ve heard from some of the companies of an atypical buildup of inventory of “zero kilometer used cars” is how they dubbed it? Also curious, are you seeing any softness in China in the luxury car market, and I’ll follow up. Thomas Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: Thanks Wamsi. Well Europe continues to slow down, and I think right now, and some of it is a little bit of extra inventory. I don’t think it’s overwhelming, because I think the automakers have been adjusting as well as the tier one. But right now the expectation in Europe is to be down 10% year-over-year in Q1 in number of cars produced. And that is our biggest market. With respect to China, China was - by China measures flow even in automotive through 2012 we had a very strong year again. But production was in single digits for the first time. [inaudible] digits for the first time in a while. Now most of the decline was at the mid-tier to low end vehicles, it was not at the high-tier. We’re seeing a little bit of slowdown at the high-tier, but it’s still fairly robust. I was there last week with our automotive team, and they expect production to be up slightly. Total production of Chinese cars to be – China cars to be up slightly in the year, and for us to have another year of double digit revenue growth, so obviously watching it pretty closely. Wamsi Mohan – BofA Merrill Lynch: Okay, thanks Tom. As a…

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Matt Sheerin – Stifel, Nicolaus. Please go ahead. Matthew Sheerin – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. Inc: Yes, thank you. So, regarding your commentary Tom on weakness in the industrial markets, I know that a lot of that is through distribution in terms of your overall exposure to distribution, not as much as other suppliers but certainly in the industrial side. Are you seeing sell into distribution at a lower rate than sell out like we say last year when we saw an inventory correction? Or are you getting signs that just demand from the distributors is weak and will continue to be weaker? Thomas Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: I would say it’s more just sell out is weak. I will also say Matt that we do have a pretty substantial amount of our business go through the channel for the company as a whole of 20%. In our industrial businesses it’s closer to 50%. So we leverage the channel, benefit from the channel, work with the channel quite a bit. Matthew Sheerin – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. Inc: Okay. And then on the cost cutting actions that you’re taking, it sounds like it makes sense on the networking side. Are you looking at mostly manufacturing related cost, as opposed to technical sales and support, because we are potentially at the bottom of the market here and you don’t want to take those kind of costs our and those kind of resources out right? Thomas Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: We totally agree with that and as we did in the big downturn three and a half years ago, we didn’t take those kind of resources out. We believe that’s really kind of the heart and soul of the company, and that’s where we create our value. So, no, it’s more around excess capacity that – hey I think there’s a couple of things. We’re getting smarter, we’re getting better with our leans, so we’re creating capacity every year, which if you go back two or three years ago we would have expected to use for growth, but in these times we don’t need it, and so we’re going to take advantage of the slowdown and take some of this capacity offline and move it into other locations. Matthew Sheerin – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. Inc: Okay, thank you. Thomas Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We have a question from Amitabh Pass – UBS. Please go ahead. Amitabh Pass – UBS: Thank you. I had a clarification and then a question. My clarification was, in you EPS guidance for fiscal ’13, have you already embedded the potential impact of your share repurchases of somewhere between 150 to 250 million per quarter? And then Tom, my question for you was, your (Y line) segments, whether it be your telecom, fiber business, the service provider segment, of Subsea has been weak for quite some time. Just wanted to get your thoughts on what do you think spurs incremental spending there, particularly in North America? And is there a need for you to perhaps bulk up the macro cellular wireless piece of your business to perhaps complement what’s going on with the wire line markets? Bob Hau –CFO: Hi, this is Bob. From a share repurchase standpoint, as we’ve indicated, we’re planning about 150 to 250 million per quarter in 2013. We did restart the fourth quarter of ’12, and that is baked into the EPS guidance per employer. Thomas Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: And on your question about the networks business, it really depends on where – the cycle depends on where we are in the world. So Europe is kind of flattish right now. Some carriers there are being very aggressive pushing fiber deep, others are backing off typically because they did it a few years ago. But in general, fiber’s still not that deep in the network. It’s deepest in the U.S., but it’s still not close enough to the home or the office to handle all the digital content that’s coming. And then in Asia, it’s still growing, although it’s lumpy. And then you have big programs like what’s going on in Australia…

Operator

Operator

We have Sharron Harrison – Longbow Research. Please go ahead. Sharron M. Harrison – Longbow Research LLC: Hi, good morning. Two questions, just the first on Deutsch. Maybe if you could just – it sounds as if things are going pretty well there, but if you could maybe talk about just how it’s progressing, what we should expect from that business in ’13 and both kind of just the earning contribution whether you think there’s upside or challenges? And then just second, the raw material environment, if you’re facing any incremental headwinds right now, or if you think you’re kind of relatively neutral to raw materials? Thanks. Thomas Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: Thanks Sharron. With respect to Deutsch, going very well. The cultural – and I’ve been to most of the locations is very good as we’ve said before, our people have been in these similar businesses a longtime, so there’s an initial point of understanding to start with, which I think is important. The business is a little slower than, you know when we bought it. The assumptions we had when we bought it, I think that’s reflective of the slowdown in the global economy. The synergy is higher, so on balance we expect the earnings contribution from Deutsch in ’13 to be as we stated at the time of acquisition, which I’m pretty pleased with given it’s a little softer topline. We also feel there’s – the longer term there’s a little more opportunity than we thought from a sales perspective. The ability to take these products, some directly, some with modification and other applications so, so far so good. I have a tremendous amount of enthusiasm I think with the Deutsch team and us about what the prospects are. And then with respect to raw material.

Bob Hau - CFO

Management

Raw materials for us, about a push for 2013 perhaps a very small tailwind if copper, gold, and silver stay where they’re at today, but it would be low single digit millions of tailwind if it were to hold, particularly given where we stand from a hedging standpoint. Also add on a Deutsch standpoint, I mentioned in my opening comments, we exited 2012 about on expectations from an EBITDA standpoint. As Tom pointed out, sales a little bit late. Integration cost coming in better, integration segments coming in better than we had anticipated. So, we actually crossed the 30% EBITDA margin in the second half of 2012 in the first six months of ownership. So, we’re very pleased from that standpoint.

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions). Our next question is from Amit Daryanani with RBC Capital Markets, please go ahead.

Amit Daryanani - RBC Capital Markets, LLC

Management

Yes, thanks a lot, good morning, guys. There’s two questions on my side – one, just on the Deutsch side, you touched on this a little, but, you know, your revenues were 27 million off, which you guys were initially expecting last quarter from Deutsch – even though the rest of tel transportation segments seem to have held a blow, what do you think Deutsch under performed on the revenue line so severely? Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: The biggest part, Amit, is in the heavy truck business – you know, with slow down and industrial activity, so that’s really where we’ve seen it. I think you’ve seen some of the companies, the big OEM’s, how they’re guiding in that area in the last month, and they’re big customers of ours. And China, we’re starting to see acceleration again towards the new café – equivalent to the café standards which is a big opportunity for us, and was one of the core series of the case, for doing Deutsch, where today trucks in China are, unlike the automotive market, a truck market is all kind of local and at the low end with a few exceptions, but with a new, much more strict emissions standards that should come into play over the next year-and-a-half, and get ready for that over the next year, we see a really big opportunity there. But in the short term, it’s off-road heavy truck.

Amit Daryanani - RBC Capital Markets, LLC

Management

Good, that’s helpful, and then, you know, could you just touch on what drove the sequential margin declines for the transportation segment? Was that about 160 basis points – was that largely just a revenue mix, or something else that impacted that? And then how do you think that segment will perform in fiscal ’13 – you know, that you’re baking into your guide? Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: Amit, from a sequential stand point, you hit it right on the head, it’s definitely associated with the lower revenue partially on a seasonal basis. We saw a bit of weakening in operating margins just from a standpoint of leverage through the factories.

Bob Hau - CFO

Management

At the – and Amit, at the 13.7, $3.15 EPS scenario, I would expect the margin in that business to be up modestly.

Amit Daryanani - RBC Capital Markets, LLC

Management

Fair enough, thanks a lot.

Bob Hau - CFO

Management

It takes another year of good performance.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jim Suva with Citi, please go ahead. Jim Suva – Citi: Thank you, congratulations to your team. Can they talk a little bit about the restructuring – is it mostly attributed to activity or ADC, or Deutsch, or a combination of the three? Proportionately, how would you think about where their structure actions are?

Thomas J. Lynch

Management

That’s a – I appreciate that question, Jim, and thanks for the complement. It’s hard to cut it that finely because, you know, ADC’s been a part of us almost two years now, but if you were to go back and look at some of the locations we’ve already announced – you know, there’s a couple that are ADC locations that were originally contemplated, you know, as part of this synergy, and we’re doing more than we originally contemplated because the business is slower. There is a little bit of fine tuning in Deutsch, I would say. Again, as we get smarter, and as Bob mentioned, we’re identifying more synergies. If you want to break it down, the business is – I mean, we’re going through and finding wherever we have excess capacity that’s still may not be where the customer is going, or where the customer has gone – it’s an ongoing journey to make that happen. But generally speaking, you could say the majority of it is going to be around Consumer and Network. Jim Suva – Citi: Okay, and then as a quick follow up, with this restructuring actions going on, is your M&A pipeline still very active, or has this slow down economy you’re taking a cause on it, or are those people focused on restructuring – are they like different [inaudible]? I’m just trying to get a feel for your M&As? You talked about stock buyback, you talked about restructuring but M&A, just really didn’t come up, and I’m just wondering about your outlook [inaudible]? Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: No, our M&A headline is still full because I think in that case, it’s all part of understanding what’s going on in your markets, and we certainly have areas where we’ve said many…

Thomas J. Lynch

Management

Thanks, Jim.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Craig Hettenbach with Goldman Sachs, please go ahead.

Craig Hettenbach - Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Management

Yes, thank you. Tom, you called out the parallel to the restructuring actions to automotive market in ’08, ’09. So, I was hoping to get a sense of the operating leverages [inaudible] in that business kind of coming out of the down turn, if you see any similar parallels to the earnings power for the networks and consumer once end demand comes back?

Thomas J. Lynch

Management

Yes, I – in automotive we picked up a point-and-a-half to two points, we also did increase our investment in R&D, and that business at that time, especially in hydroelectric and a few other areas. We – I would expect in the businesses we’re primarily focused on to get a similar kind of leverage a point to two points in consumer or networks, that’s the objective, and the opportunity is there because the team has identified, you know, the excess capacity and how we could take advantage of locations that have capacity.

Craig Hettenbach - Goldman Sachs Group Inc

Management

Okay.

Bob Hau - CFO

Management

Overall, we expect about $75 million worth of savings, which once we get up to that run rate in the second half of 2015 – Tom indicated, we see an accelerated opportunity to get to the 15% operating margin, $75 million will remain to [inaudible] point at the total [inaudible] connectivity level.

Craig Hettenbach - Goldman Sachs Group Inc

Management

Got it, thanks for that – and then as it relates to the [inaudible] location, the buyback is [inaudible] this quarter. Any thoughts on the dividend, which if you look at your payout, even though you steadily increased it sense it’s been out, it’s still, you know, below the overall market, and just really curious how you think about that payout ratio, if there’s on opportunity over time to increase that from where it is today? Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: Well, we do think for us, depending on where we are in the cycle and what our other opportunities are, that payout ratio in the 25-35% range isn’t – would be a right ratio for us. And as you know, we’ve been consistently increasing the dividend, I would expect that at the upcoming board meetings in advance of our annual meeting, that’s certainly a topic that we will be reviewing with the board to see what we want to do in the coming calendar year regarding payout, but we have to take into consideration what does the economy look like, what do the other opportunities look like, but our philosophy would be consistent increase in the dividend rate, we just have a lot down with that [inaudible] yet for the coming year. Okay?

Operator

Operator

We have a question from Steven Fox, Cross Research. Please go ahead. Steven Fox – Cross Research : Thanks. Good morning. Two questions, first, as it goes to the restructuring, I was just curious what it implies about your typical incremental margins, whether there’s been any change there or the ability to realize meaningful sales synergies from Deutsch over a longer period of time? And then secondly, Tom, maybe you could just talk a little bit more about China, around the other markets there seems to be – seems to be the lynchpin maybe for the next six months in terms of which way the economy goes globally and how your operations have improved over the last year or two there. I know you’ve been – had some initiatives underway to bring them up to par maybe with other areas, so that will be helpful. Thank you. Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: Just a point of clarification on your first question, restructuring relative to Deutsch? Steven Fox – Cross Research : No, the overall restructuring, the new restructuring charge that you’re announcing. I’m trying to understand what it implies about your typical incremental margins, if you have to take cost actions here. Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: We’re addressing fixed costs, primarily in the restructuring. So the goal is to continue to improve the flow through on higher volume growth. So yeah, we – we typically fluctuate between 25 and 30% depending on the mix of businesses and the region it happens in and you know, we want to continue to reduce where it makes sense and we don’t sacrifice capacity for growth, that’s fixed cost base. So that’s the way to think about that. As far as Deutsch sales synergy, I think it’s early, but…

Operator

Operator

You have question from the line of Mike Wood with Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Mike Wood - Macquarie Research

Management

Hi, good morning. Regarding the outperformance that you’re expecting with global auto production, is that being driven by higher content per vehicle or Deutsch synergies or is this just better performance on the high end? And can you talk about whether or not you’re worried about a trade down impact as the economy is slowing? Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, President : Sure. It’s not really Deutsch related in the automotive business. They bring a little bit of capability, but they’re more harsh environment. It’s continuing content at every category of cars, A, B, C, D, E. It is selective expansion beyond our traditional product line in areas like sensors. It’s continuing to lead, we’ve invested a lot for a long time in light-weight and be able to connect alternative metals and copper and we’ve got tremendous capability there. So it’s a combination of factors that contribute to us growing a little bit faster than the market.

Mike Wood - Macquarie Research

Management

Okay, and the growth that you mentioned in tablets and smartphones, are these new wins with customers or are these just an expansion with your current business? Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, President: We’ve had a couple of significant new wins, not enough to say, you know, we’re well established yet. I think enough to tell our customers that, hey, we really are a good capable, innovative supplier to these markets and to tell ourselves that we can do it. So the last year was an important year for us to convince more than anything ourselves that this is a market that we should be able to be successful in. So it’s a couple of more wins, not just extensions of existing wins. And, of course, in that business, you’ve got to have wins all the time because unlike automotive or industrial, you don’t typically get designed in with a particular part number that lasts that long. It is – if you’re not that well established in the business, it’s a good thing because it gives you a chance to get established, but it does make pretty ferocious business. So you have to be good at it and you have to be quick to ramping volume, which has not been our strong suit in the past, but which we’re getting much better at.

Mike Wood - Macquarie Research

Management

Great. Thank you. Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Sherri Scribner with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Kevin LaBuz – Deutsche Bank AG: Hi. Thank you. This is Kevin LaBuz on for the behalf of Sherri. It’s really no surprise given the macro situation that you’ve seen it slowdown in sales, but I’m wondering what have you seen on the design side? Has the pace activity there slowed? Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: Not really. You know, we’ve seen a little bit and I’d say there are really one-offs where when things slow down, sometimes customers slow down their efforts to introduce something that might be cutting edge. But we haven’t seen even a lot of that, a couple things where we were close to getting designed in and then the customer decided, in light of the market, to hold onto the incumbent solution. But for the most part, the customers aren’t slowing down their demands on the number of designs. I think that’s not in their best interest and you can really lose a lot of momentum if you have a customer doing that. You want to have a pipeline of design so that when things do come back and they spend more money, they’re ready. And a lot of what we do in this industry, supporting our customers, whether it’s high-speed or light-weight or fiber optic related are important parts of the architecture. So it’s not just a simple component that gets dropped into a design, it is very often a component that is custom designed or partially custom designed for their application. And in many of our industries, the consumer might have the shortest cycle but in almost any industry, next-generation products are designed several years out and if you delay that, you really run the risk of missing a window. So we’ve kept…

Operator

Operator

We have a question from Tony Kure, KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

Anthony C. Kure - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc.

Management

Hey, good morning. Just a quick question on the guidance for fiscal ’13. As you look at the EPS and the revenue lines, I’m sort of trying to back into the EBIT margin improvement. We’ve already talked to your expectations on the transport side, but you know, overall for the company, I’m looking at sort of a 20 to 30 basis point operating margin improvement. First, is that correct? And second, how would it be influenced by the other segments, the two segments at this point? Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: That’s directionally correct, yeah. You’re in the ballpark with that. With that kind of revenue growth we would expect the productivity we have in the pipeline to generate that kind of operating margin.

Anthony C. Kure - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc.

Management

And then like you talked about the transport being up marginally, could you talk about the other two segments from the margin expectations? Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: Yeah. I would say… Bob Hau – CFO: I think ultimately to your point, the 20 to 30 basis points operating margin is about right on a year-over-year basis. Transportation being the strongest one given some growth opportunities there. The other three segments; industrial, consumer and networks, all expanding on a year-over-year basis, but to a smaller level given the lack of volume leverage from those three individual segments.

Anthony C. Kure - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc.

Management

Great. And then on the Enterprise IT side, obviously slowing down there, just – if you have visibility into what’s driving that, I mean, we’ve heard a lot about the C-level decision making extending, a lot of projects pushing out. Do you have that sort of visibility that these types of things are pushing into 2013 or are these just cancelations on run rate business? Maybe if you provide [inaudible] down onto that market? Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: I think, again, it depends on the region of the world and the customer. There’s some customers that are very aggressive and pushing us for earlier implementation of next-generation, high-speed solutions. There are some that are, in light of the economic circumstances and holding capital budgets in an uncertain economy are living with the solutions they have. So I would say it’s mixed, but if I were to categorize in one area, I’d say it’s more of a push than a cancelation. We often don’t – we don’t see too much kind of cancelation because I think from an end – our customer’s point of view, that’s not a smart thing for them to do. It’s easier for them just to push rather than lose the attention of the supply base and the continued innovation and investment we bring.

Anthony C. Kure - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc.

Management

Okay, great. Thank you so much. Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And our last question is from Michael Wherley, Janney. Please go ahead.

Michael J. Wherley - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Management

I just had a question about the consumer restructuring and you know, if you’re seeing some program wins there, where does exactly is consumer restructuring? Does it have to do with customers that lost share or is it just more broad based? Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: It’s really about tightening up the capacity, Michael, and when I talked about the organization change we made three months ago, that had been in the works for a while, it was really founded on grouping like businesses together and making the final break from what had always in this company been structured as a regional geographic business and making the transition to a vertical global business. So in the past, consumer really was three businesses in the Americas, Europe and Asia. We concluded a couple years ago that that was not going to enable us to be, one, cost effective, or nimble in responding to the needs of that market. So part of the capacity in the restructuring that you hear us talking about is really tightening up the backend of that business now that we’ve had it as standalone for about nine months now and you know, getting scale because time to volume and scale in that business is critical to getting the margin you need to make it an attractive business and I’m encouraged with the leadership and team we put in a year ago, the progress they’ve made in that year both on new products, important new wins that the key customers and the customers are setting the pace in that market. As well as making a lot more sense out of the backend of that business and making us much more efficient.

Michael J. Wherley - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Management

Okay. And what’s your core confidence that you can – that you’ve gotten better at sort of the quick ramp ups where you’ve struggled in the past in that consumer business? Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: Growing confidence. We have a couple of really great success stories with a couple of the biggest and the most demanding customers and they were – they were critically important for us, of course because we don’t have a long track record of doing that, so we – very important products for these customers that we did a very, very good job, and you know, in one case, helped them out of a bind. So I think we’re building our confidence and their confidence in us, in this business. You’re only as good as your last experience, so you, you know, we have to be good every time. So far, so good, knock on wood. But you know, we’re not – we’re far from declaring victory and probably never would anyway, but I think our team’s confidence in the ability to make this a good business is growing.

Michael J. Wherley - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Management

Okay. Thanks very much. The last question I have is just sort of on your LEAN opportunities across TE. You know, separate from the restructuring, what sort of headwind are you making with LEAN and how does that sort of tie in with the current restructuring? Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: The headwind on LEAN is really good and I think you could start to see it in the year last year where we had the actual flight shrinkage in some of our markets, in revenue and overall, and you know, the operating margin held in there nicely. Three years ago, that would not have been the case. So LEAN is focused on taking the waste out of the process and it’s a – it’s been around, it’s a tool-based program, it requires a lot of discipline and strong site-by-site leadership and it’s – it is implemented at every site we have; some further along than others. But in at least half our sites, and we refer to it as a Star 3, you get when it’s actually improving your performance. So it’s a – it’s a journey that takes a lot of perseverance. It is helping us, and it is bringing up physical capacity, which plays into some of the decisions we're making now.

Michael J. Wherley - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC

Management

Thanks very much. Thomas J. Lynch – CEO, Executive Director: Thank you all very much for the questions. Keith Kolstrom – VP, IR: Thanks very much for joining the call today. Please call the IR team with any follow-up questions.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Executive Teleconference Service. You may now disconnect.