Operator
Operator
Good morning. My name is Melissa, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Terex Corporation Fourth Quarter 2014 Financial Results Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. DeFeo. Please go ahead. Ronald M. DeFeo - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Melissa, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We appreciate your interest today in Terex. And on the call with me is Kevin Bradley, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Kevin O'Reilly, Vice President of Operational Finance; Tom Gelston, Vice President of Investor Relations; and several of our leadership team members including our business segment presidents. As usual, a replay of this call will be archived on the Terex website www.terex.com under Audio Archives in the Investor Relations section. I will begin with some overall commentary and highlights. Kevin will follow with a more detailed financial report and I'll return to provide some additional comments on where we're headed and summarize before we open it up to your questions. We will be following the presentation that accompanied the earnings release and is available on our website. I would like to request that you ask one question and a follow-up in order to give everyone a chance to participate. Let me direct your attention now to page two, which is the forward-looking statement and non-GAAP measures explanation. We encourage you to read this as well as all other items in our disclosures because information we'll be discussing today does include forward-looking material. So now let me begin. Turning to page 3. 2014 had many positive developments and a number of challenges as well. Operationally, our Material Handling & Port Solutions business improved profitability by $54 million as they executed the ongoing integration plan delivered on the large port automation projects and launched some newly designed products as anticipated. Our Construction business returned to profitability and today is a more focused business following the divesture of our Off-Highway Truck business and 51% of ASV. These transactions together delivered cash benefits in excess of $275 million to Terex. In addition, our cash flow performance in the year was very good, delivering $329 million or $2.88 a share in free cash flow. We partially used this to repurchase 5.3 million shares during the year, with just under 70% of this done in the fourth quarter. We did this while reducing our leverage to 2.1 times EBITDA. Lastly, our return on invested capital improved 310 basis points to 11.2%. We believe Terex, even in a challenging environment, continues to strengthen. On page 4, we highlight some of the challenges we faced. End markets for our equipment in general were unpredictable, if not, declining. This was especially true with our Cranes and Materials Processing segments. Our Aerial Work Platform business conversely had improved sales, but the combination of manufacturing inefficiencies, rising material costs and the startup cost of Oklahoma City muted the margin performance. Companywide, the recent sharp move in oil prices has caused uncertainty for some of our customers especially in the fourth quarter. Lastly, we saw significant move in currency exchange rates also in the final weeks of 2014. On page 5, we highlight the net sales and operating profit bridges for both the fourth quarter and the full-year periods. While Q4 sales were fairly similar on a year-over-year basis, currency did negatively pressure the Cranes and Material Handling and Port Solutions segments enough to hide slight growth on a constant currency basis. The largest change in our fourth quarter results was the lower profitability of the AWP segment. We did expect below year-ago performance as AWP focused on cash generation in the fourth quarter of 2014, whereas in 2013 Q4, we built inventory preparing for 2014 growth. Other factors were higher steel costs and the product mix shifting towards telehandlers versus a higher mix of booms in the year-ago quarter. Some of this was influenced by Tier 4 engine conversions in both periods. For the full year, AWP and MHPS posted sales growth rates of 11% and 5% respectively. Cranes finished the year down 7%. Mobile Crane customers continued to be hesitant to place orders for fleet in the face of uncertain market conditions. Incremental profitability for our Construction and MHPS segments were very strong as both reflected the ongoing effort to streamline operations and remove overhead costs. AWP results were disappointing as less profit was made on more sales. As I mentioned on the last slide, staffing decisions, input costs, product mix and startup expense for our facility all contributed to that result. On page 6, we've presented our geographic footprint. This is for your information. You'll see that our largest market remains North America, which showed a slight 3% growth for the year. Our most improved market was Western Europe which was up 28% for the year and now accounts for 31% of our net sales. The balance of our markets were negative, resulting in a decline in sales from the Rest of the World to 28% of total sales, down from 34% the prior year. In the fourth quarter, however, we saw a slight improvement in Latin America and the Middle East, which seems to point to a more stable environment for these areas in 2015. I'd like to now turn it over to Kevin who will walk through the detailed financial results in the quarter. Kevin? Kevin P. Bradley - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President: Thanks, Ron, and good morning, everyone. I'll be reviewing earnings per share detail for the 2014 full year and comparing them to prior year results. I'll also review some of the progress we made in 2014 on our capital structure and the impact it has had on key financial metrics. Let's turn to slide 7 which bridges our earnings per share from 2013 to 2014. Adjusting for restructuring charges taken in 2013, our as-adjusted EPS was $2.23. Overall results for the business in 2014 led to a $0.12 increase in EPS, with the majority of that improvement coming from lower interest expense and a lower tax rate. The adjusted EPS of $2.35 removes the impact of the following items: The $0.26 charge for restructuring actions taken in our MHPS business. In addition to lowering costs, the restructuring action will delayer and simplify the organization. The $0.17 adjustment for portfolio management primarily represents a loss on the sale of our Australian Material Handling business, which more than offset the gain we recorded on the sale of ASV. The $0.36 adjustment for net tax impact was a tax benefit triggered by the ASV transaction, partially offset by a valuation allowance recorded in the period. Lastly, $0.52 was reported related to discontinued operations in 2014, which includes the gain on sale of our Off-Highway Truck business. Page 8 bridges the $342 million increase in liquidity for the year to approximately $1.1 billion. Free cash flow was $329 million, well above our previous guidance. Improvement in working capital reflects some early results from our accounts receivable and accounts payable improvement initiatives. We repurchased roughly 5.3 million shares of stock during 2014. This combined with our dividend, our dividend represented $192 million usage of cash during the year. We also used $171 million to repay debt and other debt-related expenses during 2014. This includes revolver repayments and maturing debt in Italy. Portfolio activities resulted in a net benefit of $214 million, generated from the sale of our Off-Highway Truck business and the ASV joint venture formation. During the year, we refinanced our senior credit facility, which lowered our borrowing costs and added $100 million in revolver borrowing capacity. On page 9, you will find graphs of key financial metrics over the last three years. As I've previously mentioned, our working capital performance has continued to progress as a percentage of sales from 24.8% to 22.5% in 2014. Approximately 45% of this improvement, however, was driven by foreign exchange. Our free cash flow was $329 million, a solid increase from the 2013 results. And our ROIC for 2014 was 11.2%, a 310 basis point improvement from last year. Continued focused on improved capital efficiency and tax rate as well as the targeted use of cash to de-lever Terex are the main reasons for the improved ROIC performance. Page 10 covers key capital structure and coverage ratios. Our debt-to-total capital was reduced to 46.7%, continuing the trend to de-lever Terex since our acquisition of Demag Cranes AG back in 2011. As a result of the deleveraging and the new senior debt facility, with its lower interest rate, we covered – our coverage ratio expanded to 5.6 times. Our net debt to EBITDA ratio improved to 2.1 times. The lower ratio reflects good progress in a relatively flat operating environment. We remain focused on our debt structure and would expect to see net debt to EBITDA ratio continue to trend lower. With that, let me turn it back to Ron. Ronald M. DeFeo - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Kevin. I'll take the next couple of minutes to go through each of our segments in a bit more detail. On page 11, we discuss the Aerial Work Platform business. Of note is the very strong order intake in the quarter of $936 million leading to a book-to-bill ratio of 207% and a year-ending backlog of $698 million. This is a good way to start a somewhat cautious year. As the lower left chart shows, the order patterns for the last year's deliveries were entered into mainly in the first quarter. Whereas for this year, a more traditional order pattern of larger orders being placed in the prior fourth quarter took place. This should not suggest a stronger first quarter as we know most of our customers want deliveries starting in late March, unlike last quarter when we were shipping earlier – unlike last year rather. We are adding a number of new products to our lineup this year such as the 150-foot boomlift and a more complete telehandler range with the introduction of our new six-ton and eight-ton machines. We continue to ramp production in Oklahoma City for telehandlers, and in China, we are ramping production on a broader range of Aerial Work Platform models. We believe this business is back in balance overall from a labor and efficiency perspective. We're gradually addressing the various manufacturing footprint issues. Furthermore, while 2014 experienced significant increases in the price of steel, we expect 2015 to be a slight improvement in this area over prior year costs. Lastly, we are prepared for some level of headwinds associated with demand that was driven by the upstream oil activities in North America and some negative currency pressure. For the full year, we believe net sales will be down mid-single digits versus 2014 with margins in the low teens. Turning to page 12, our Construction business, it had a book-to-bill ratio of above 100% coming in at 103%. I should note however that while ASV is not included in our consolidated figures going forward, the historic periods prior to Q4 do still reflect ASV in our consolidated results. That sale, along with the sale of our Off-Highway Truck business, has led to a far more streamlined and focused business. But with several markets still weak, it's not yet a healthy business. We continue to see strong demand for our concrete mixing truck product line in North America. While the strong dollar relative to the euro and to a lesser extent the pound sterling, with that, we are looking to export as an opportunity from Europe. And that may afford us some short-term opportunities. We have been essentially locked out of the U.S. for nearly eight years. We've just launched a push on compact equipment into the rental channel with a purpose-built product to a rental spec and we would expect some uptick from this during the year. However, one of our historically more profitable products in this category, our material or scrap handler, is still seeing a challenging marketplace with very low scrap steel pricing. Overall construction with net sales excluding ASV should be flat to the prior period considering the currency headwind. With currency and excluding the divestiture of ASV, net sales are likely to be down about mid-to-high single-digits and the overall business is likely to break even or slightly be better. On page 13, we show our Crane business, which continues to operate in a fairly muted demand environment. Backlog was up roughly 8% versus the year-ago period, but still generally below the level we'd like to see for this business. We've launched a revamped all-terrain crane product line in the 4-axle to 5-axle size classes, and we feel this better positions us from a selling perspective and enhances our productivity from a manufacturing perspective. The strongest performer in this segment continues to be our Utilities business and we continue to look for growth here as well as new opportunities to leverage our customer reach. As part of that, we've seen – we've continued to see some expansion of our Services business in North America. Lastly, we don't expect to see much change in the challenging markets of the Americas and Australia for our main mobile crane product lines. Visibility in these two markets is challenging. Overall, we expect net sales for this segment to decline as a result of currency and end market uncertainty by high-single digits to low-double digits and margins to be similar to up slightly from a comparison with 2014. Turning to page 14, on our Material Handling & Port Solutions business, results for backlog and book-to-bill ratios reflect the delivery of the substantial port automation solutions projects in 2014. We've previously indicated that this dynamic will likely cause a lower sales level in 2015 as a result, and the book-to-bill ratio of 70% highlights this dynamic. Our backlog is down versus 2013 by approximately 29%. However, much of that change can be isolated to the automation product order book and as illustrated in the shaded part of the bar graphs on this page. Backlog for all other products was down 12%, but relatively flat when adjusted for currency. The relative profitability of this segment, however, continues to strengthen, reflecting the impact from restructuring activities done to-date. As mentioned back in our November Analyst Day, we have a number of new products coming out especially on the material handling side of the business such as our V girder crane design and our new hoist design. This business is expected to have significant currency translation headwinds as a result of the weaker euro. We do expect overall net sales to decline for the segment in total, mid to high teens percentages and margins to be at or slightly better than the 2014 period despite the lower business levels. Lastly on page 15, we discuss the Materials Processing business. This business continues to perform steadily in terms of demand, although still at softer levels from mining-related markets such as Australia. In 2014, we invested in new products to expand our portfolio into aggregate washing systems and recycling. This, as well as stability in the global aggregate markets, has us more optimistic for improved results on a unit basis. The business is headquartered in Northern Ireland and will have similar currency challenges as the rest of our businesses, but this also may present some increased export opportunities. Lastly, lower commodity prices such as iron ore and coal continue to drag sentiment down, exasperated by geographical – geopolitical rather, uncertainty, especially in markets like Russia and the Ukraine. We expect net sales to be high to single digits lower as a result of currency with margins at or about the 2014 levels. Turning to page 16. Summarizing the improvement initiatives underway in the company, we discussed a few months ago expectations for $202 million of profit improvement to be implemented across the business by the end of 2016. We are on track to achieve this. We anticipate approximately $50 million will be realized in the 2015 income statement. And exiting the year, we will be exiting at a higher run rate than that. We expect continued improvement in our tax rate with roughly half of the 300 basis point improvement in our rate expected to occur in 2015. Our working capital efficiency gained traction and is expected to continue throughout 2015. And our newly authorized share repurchase program enhances our ability to deliver value to shareholders. We are on track with these programs. On page 17, we present our outlook for 2015. We're calling for net sales to be in the range of $6.2 billion to $6.6 billion. The impact from currency and the deconsolidation of ASV results represent about $650 million to $750 million of this decline. The balance is a combination of lower MHPS sales given the impact of not having the large port automation projects that occurred in 2014, and that won't repeat in that size in 2015 as well as some headwind assumptions associated with the oil and gas markets. We're expecting operating margins to be in the 7% to 7.5% range mainly as a result of improved AWP performance and the impact from the savings initiatives for our programs overall. Our resulting earnings range is for $2 to $2.30 per share, a slight decline from the $2.35 we delivered in 2014 as adjusted. We anticipate interest will be approximately $115 million with the interest being slightly lower in the second half than the first half due to the timing of the maturity of our convertible bonds in 2000 – in June. Our tax rate is anticipated to be 30% to 32%, and our share count approximately 113 million. Free cash flow is targeted at $200 million to $250 million. For the cadence of our earnings, we expect that our first half EPS will be roughly 40% to 45% of the full year, similar to this past year, with the first quarter starting more slowly as AWP deliveries will be below year ago. Consequently, the first quarter EPS should be about 7% to 9% of our full year versus the roughly 10% to 12% that occurred in the past two years. So in summary, on page 18, our organization is focused on simple and straightforward objectives for the year: drive improvement in those activities we can control. And with that, we are on track. AWP did have a challenging year in terms of profit margin. We think we've addressed much of these causes in 2014 and feel most of them are behind us. The market dynamics of currency and the volatility in oil pricing does create a headwind for us in 2015. Financial efficiency opportunities remain, however, through the company. It will be, as we concentrate on working capital, tax, interest expense and share count improvement opportunities. We're working all these aspects and expect to unlock value from these in 2015 and beyond. We expect modestly weaker markets and significant currency volatility. But like 2014, we think we can make meaningful improvements during this period that will position us for better days when and if they arrive. Thank you. And Melissa, could you open the line up for questions?