Barry Steele
Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Dan. Thanks, everyone for joining us today. Our revenue in the quarter grew by about 4% to $232.6 million, which was an increase of $8.8 million. This included $98 million or 5% in higher sales for our automotive segment and $14.9 million in new revenue from the company we acquired earlier this year, Cincinnati Sub-Zero or we like to call CSZ. These gains were partially offset by lower revenue for Global Power Technologies, or GPT, our remote power generation subsidiary that sells into the energy sector. GPT’s revenues were off by $16 million. This softness was caused by large project deferrals similar to the previous two quarters. It was more pronounced in this quarter due to the fact that a significant amount of GPT sales in 2015 came in the third quarter making for a very difficult comp. In the automotive segment, we had double-digit revenue increases in theaters, thermal heaters, but slower growth in our climate control seat products. As in the prior couple of quarters the impact of new program launches have been less significant than prior years due to a number of reasons. When we launched new programs, the amount of new revenue that we see can vary due to timing of the launch, success of the vehicle in the marketplace, fill at our customers, option application rates and our customer’s decisions on marketing and pricing of option packages. The 5% growth in our automotive segment continued to outpace that part of the automotive industry, where we have our greatest presence. Half of our revenue comes from the North American market, which according to IHS grew less than 2% during the quarter. Additionally, automotive production in Europe which represents about a quarter of our automotive revenue actually declined about 2%. Automotive production in Asia which was much higher at nearly 23% increase for the quarter, but this growth was mainly in China, a region which produces vehicles with much lower comfort and convenience content. Most of our revenue in Asia is the customers in Japan and Korea which also showed a decrease in production volumes. Our preliminary revenue forecast for 2017 indicate that we will continue to see high single-digit revenue increases, but the growth will not be from the same product sources. For example, CCS growth will experience some headwind as some of our customers, which in the past had only developed active heat and cool climate seats for their vehicles begin rebalancing their product offering between heated and cooled seats for their luxury cars versus lower priced heated and ventilated seats more appropriate for their mid range vehicles. Other existing products will then represent a more significant part of the growth such as the continued rapid increase in the heated steering wheel product, some recovery for GPT and some nice growth coming from CSZ’s medical business, where we are expecting benefits from some product improvements, new products and it goes from a change in our sales strategy that involves hiring a direct sales force to take the place of independent product reps. In addition to these benefits, during the fourth quarter of 2017, we will see some early revenues from some of our more advanced new products such as the thermoelectric based battery thermal management device or BTM as we call it. After 2017, new products will be the catalyst that boosts our growth back to double-digit range. We are making the investments in these new products today, which come in the form of capital expenditures to expand production capacity and spending on engineering and development resources. That brings me to our operating expenses, which totaled $49.3 million, which was again significantly higher than the prior year quarter, but about the same as the second quarter of this year. About half of the increase in operating expenses which totaled $11.8 million or 31% came from new operating expenses from the CSZ acquisition or about $5.4 million, most of this on the SG&A line. The rest of the increase comes in the form of investments or higher development costs for many new product initiatives. Some of which we have announced like the battery thermal management and electronics products, some of which we have not announced, also offer overdue improvements to our business systems. About $12 million of the total operating spending is attributable to these initiatives and activities. Just to be clear that’s not the interest in the prior year, but the current rate of spending for these investments whose benefits begin to hit the top line in 2018. The new business systems by the way include both the human resources information system which will help us grow and develop the talent of our team members and a new product life cycle management system which is needed to increase our product design and development capacity. Both systems will also drive improvements to our efficiency and productivity of these critical functions. The spending for these two infrastructure projects were about $1.3 million during the quarter. About half of this cost is for implementation and will increase during 2018, after which as the installations are completed the costs will then decrease. All of these investments will continue to be financed through our current operating resources. So far this year, we generated $71 million in operating cash flow, although we also spend about $50 million in capital expenditures. The capital expenditures have primarily been driven by capacity expansion for new manufacturing facilities and production equipment for some of the new products. At the end of the quarter, we had a very low level of net debt leverage with $150 million in cash and $142 million in outstanding debt. We also had $125 million in available borrowing capacity under our revolving credit facility, bringing our total available liquidity along with the cash to $258 million. That’s all I have Dan.