Earnings Labs

Tecnoglass Inc. (TGLS)

Q3 2016 Earnings Call· Mon, Oct 31, 2016

$43.25

-2.61%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Tecnoglass Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to your host, Rodny Nacier with ICR. Thank you, Mr. Nacier. You may begin.

Rodny Nacier

Analyst

Thank you for joining us for Tecnoglass’ third quarter 2016 conference call. A copy of the slide presentation to accompany this call may be obtained on the Investor section of the Tecnoglass Web site at www.tecnoglass.com. Our speakers for the call today will be José Manuel Daes, Chief Executive Officer and Santiago Giraldo, Deputy CFO. Moving to Slide 2, before turning the call over to José Manuel, I would like to remind everyone that matters discussed in this call, except for historical information, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding our future financial performance, future growth and future acquisitions. These statements are based on Tecnoglass’ current expectations or beliefs and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may differ in a material nature from those expressed or implied by any of the statements herein due to changes in economic, business, competitive and/or regulatory factors and other risks and uncertainties affecting the operation of Tecnoglass' business. These risks, uncertainties and contingencies are indicated from time-to-time in Tecnoglass' filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The information discussed during the call is presented in light of such risks. Further, investors should keep in mind that Tecnoglass' financial results in any particular period may not be indicative of future results. Tecnoglass is under no obligation to and expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions or otherwise. I will now turn the call over to José Manuel. José Manuel Daes: Thank you, Rodny and thanks everyone for participating on today's call. I will begin with a review of our third quarter highlight; Santiago will then discuss more details on our operations, our financial results,…

Santiago Giraldo

Analyst

Thank you, José Manuel, and good morning to all of you on the line. Turning to Slide 6, looking more closely on our backlog by geography a significant portion of our growth in recent years reflects our targeted efforts to use our dominance from hold in Florida to expanding to other U.S. markets through our longstanding commitment to quality, innovation and service. This U.S. expansion continues to drive high margins in our business, and we now operating a growing list of highly populated areas such as Baltimore, California, New York, New Jersey and Texas. To be clear, while we have received a healthy amount of quotes in new markets, we also continue to see a lot of current activity in our Florida base. Overall, approximately 60% of our backlog was for the U.S. market, supporting our expectation for the U.S. to continue to represent the largest share of our business. In Colombia, the improving economy and rising income per capita is supporting a strong pipeline of commercial construction activity. We are further capitalizing on our local leadership position to produce outpace market growth. This rapid growth is reflecting backlog, which had a strong mix of Columbian projects compared to a year ago. Moving to Slide number 7, our end-markets are primarily commercial, which tends to [indiscernible] initial by one or two years and provide some visibility on common growth or construction in other years. As you can see in our backlog trend, approximately 90% of our business comes from commercial, which include multi-family projects. In these commercial markets, we continue to experience a favorable pace of activity throughout our footprint in mid and high-rise rental buildings, office buildings and hotels. The remainder of our business is residentially focused which remains a potential longer -- long-term opportunity as we introduce new…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Jeremy Hamblin from Dougherty and Company. Please proceed with your question.

Jeremy Hamblin

Analyst

Good morning, gentlemen. Congratulations on another strong quarter. Wanted to start by just asking about the sales guidance for the fourth quarter. The implied figure is right around $70 million, a step-down from what you saw, obviously, the last two quarters. Just want to make sure I understand that you did see strong backlog growth again. Is this just seasonality? Is this because you have greater exposure into U.S. markets than you ever have before? Just can you provide some color on this step-down on sales from the run rates that you’ve seen in the last couple of quarters or is it just specific to individual projects? José Manuel Daes: Jeremy, let me explain. We close the factory around December 20 or December 22. So we have one week left to work. And number two, we are being conservative. We hope to do a little more than that. But as I said, we close one week and we want to play conservative.

Jeremy Hamblin

Analyst

Okay, great. Understood. And then in terms of – in a similar vein just looking forward, you do – the $40 million plus in backlog provides nice visibility on 2017. Just in terms of the industry, we understand that you're taking share. How do you think the industry is shaping up? Would you expect your peers also to see nice growth heading into next year? Do you feel like market conditions remain strong? José Manuel Daes: Yes, I do, I do. We are not only in the market to sell windows, but we also sell glass and aluminum to some of our competitors and everybody is increasing. So we believe the market is strong and we believe everybody is going to grow. I don’t know if [indiscernible] or not. But the market has weakened in a few spots like, for example, in South Florida, we are seeing a slowdown in commercial high-rise for multifamily condos, but by the same token that we're seeing a lot of hotels, commercial properties for offices and shopping center and a lot of rentals now – I mean, rentals is really strong, high-rise for rental. So one thing compensated the other. And then as we are moving away from Florida a lot, we're gaining a lot of ground in Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Jeremy Hamblin

Analyst

Great. I also want to -- I wasn’t sure if Christian was on the line, but I wanted to ask about the progress being made on the soft coat production facility. And I know that got off to a slower start this year than had been planned. Any status update on that? When you expect to achieve the $6 million to $8 million in annual savings run rate that you had forecast about a year ago? José Manuel Daes: Christian is not available. I can answer that. The thing is this, Jeremy. We have found now that most of the glass that is sold with soft coat, it’s insulated related. And we were not prepared enough for insulated line. So we have two insulated lines and we're adding one more in January and perhaps another one in June in order for us to sell the additional capacity we have in soft coat. That is what is happening.

Jeremy Hamblin

Analyst

So it sounds like the expectation would be to get to that savings run rate by the middle of next year. Is that of accurate? José Manuel Daes: Yes.

Jeremy Hamblin

Analyst

Okay. And – what about in terms of – I know there had been – one of the issues was that you had started some projects using externally sourced soft coated glass and wanting to make sure to please customers did not want to transition to your proprietary product. Have you mostly transitioned at this point to not have any leftover projects that had PPG glass as opposed to the Tecnoglass, are we've kind of through that phase? José Manuel Daes: Yeah, we’re mostly out of it. We are like 85% done. There remains two or three jobs that we just need to finish and that will be it. We hope by March or May we may end up with all the backlog we have on the PPG glass. The problem with transition is that no matter what you do, since our machine is lot newer than theirs, the color difference even though is slight that is a difference. And we didn’t want to mix one glass with the other because then it might look different then we have a lot of trouble.

Jeremy Hamblin

Analyst

Okay, understood. Just shifting gears here, a question I think for Santiago on the share counts. Could you just walk me through, I see on Slide 14, the results of the dividend election. There's a quote in here for roughly 31.6 million shares. Is that basic shares outstanding or is that the diluted count?

Santiago Giraldo

Analyst

That that includes 1.5 million of earn-out that have not been released, Jeremy. So as of now what you see is closer to 30 million and what you will have on a fully diluted count is the remaining warrants that have not been exercised plus the 1.5 million that I just mentioned. That will get you to a fully diluted count of about 31.6 million.

Jeremy Hamblin

Analyst

Okay. And then I guess modeling going forward we should be thinking there's probably going to be a similar election profile to take stock dividends and so we could be adding roughly 275,000 to 300,000 shares per quarter to the basic share count?

Santiago Giraldo

Analyst

Yeah, actually, there was an 8K filed this morning reiterating that Energy Holding Corp. as majority shareholder is committed to take in stock for the three next quarters. So it’s a fair assumption to model a similar breakdown on the election.

Jeremy Hamblin

Analyst

Okay. Wanted to just ask one other question related to input costs and what you are seeing. We have seen a little bit of a rise in aluminum costs over the last month or two. Just in terms -- could you comment on what you're seeing overall on input costs? And as it relates to your gross profit, you saw a nice acceleration on gross profit, almost 300 basis points from the second quarter and we know there were some things specific to El Niño in Q2, but how should we be thinking about gross margins moving forward? Is this kind of 36% to 37% a pretty soon good estimate on that?

Santiago Giraldo

Analyst

Yeah, I think that's a fair assumption in a conservative way of looking at it. We mostly try to make our raw materials cost as a pass through in the way that we structure our contracts. So despite of what volatility you may see on raw material prices, you should expect us to maintain – to be able to maintain our margins going forward. We’d always like to get a pick of additional spread in there, but being conservative, I would model it at that range between 36%, 37%.

Jeremy Hamblin

Analyst

To this effect on products mix, I saw that was a slight drag in the quarter – given the backlog, the visibility you have there, how should we be thinking about product mix as a contributor to gross margins for 2017?

Santiago Giraldo

Analyst

I don’t know if José Manuel has a different opinion, but I think you would continue to focus on a lot of commercial type construction and just kind of model it flat. I think it would be too risky to assume otherwise given the composition of the current backlog. I think you would just assume the product and product mix, which probably not changed margin significantly and everything is just going to come more from the volume side of the equation.

Jeremy Hamblin

Analyst

Understood. Congratulations. I will hop back in the queue and let others ask questions.

Santiago Giraldo

Analyst

All right. Thank you, Jeremy. José Manuel Daes: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

There are no other questions in queue. I would like to hand the call back over to management for closing comments. José Manuel Daes: Okay. Thank you everybody for participating in today’s call and for the continuing interest in Tecnoglass. We look forward to speaking again soon. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this doesn't conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.