Ted W. Owen
Analyst · Stephens Inc
Thank you, Phil. First this morning, I'll read our traditional Safe Harbor statement and then go into a discussion of financial results for the quarter and provide a little more color on our operating results and outlook. As usual, I want to remind everyone that any forward-looking information that we discuss today is being provided in accordance with the provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We've made reasonable efforts to ensure that the information, assumptions and beliefs, upon which this forward-looking information is based are current, reasonable and complete. However, a variety of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in any forward-looking information. A description of those factors is set forth in the company's SEC filings. There can be no assurance that the forward-looking information discussed today will occur or that our objectives will be achieved. We assume no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements made today or any other forward-looking statements made by the company whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Now let me summarize our results for the quarter and then discuss more fully our operating results and our business outlook. Adjusted net income available to shareholders was $0.63 per share in the current year quarter versus $0.54 in last year's quarter. That's an improvement of 17% or $0.09 per share. The adjusted net income for the quarter excludes a $2.1 million pretax accounting loss associated with the revaluation of our net assets in Venezuela, as I discussed, at length, on our call on June 24. The adjusted EPS for the quarter and for the year is $0.03 higher than we had indicated in our June pre-announcement due to a favorable effective tax rate for both the quarter and the year as compared to our earlier estimates. By the way, the full fiscal year 2014 35% tax rate and the 33% tax rate for the quarter is due to a unique set of events pertaining to a change in the foreign exchange rate impact on deferred tax liability accounts. We do not expect a similar benefit in the future, so you should model a 36% tax rate in 2015 and beyond. Overall, revenues were $211 million in the quarter, up 5% over last year's quarter, and we are particularly encouraged by the fact that our U.S. growth rate was 11% in the quarter. For the full year, adjusted earnings were $1.48 per-share on revenues of $750 million. Now with respect to some cash flow and balance sheet related items, capital expenditures were $9.2 million for the quarter and depreciation and amortization plus noncash compensation charges were $6.5 million in the quarter. So adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $27 million and for the trailing 12 months was $78 million. A further word about capital expenditures. As I described in our last call, capital expenditures were higher than usual in fiscal 2014 and will continue to be over the next year due to: a, the recent completion of our renovated and repurposed Alvin Texas Technology and Training Center; and b, the implementation of a new ERP system. We began the design build phase of the ERP system in fiscal 2014 and are now moving into the next phase, which involves extensive testing of the system and training of Team personnel. In fiscal 2015 we will begin to incur a relatively significant amount of training costs associated with the new system. Under accounting rules, those costs will be expensed and not capitalized. You should keep in mind that our earnings plan of $2 per share for fiscal 2015 does not include the nonrecurring expenses associated with ERP training. We will report those costs separately as we go forward and we will begin our first installation late in this fiscal year and expect enterprise-wide implementation to be complete by the end of fiscal year 2016. At the end of fiscal 2014, May 31, our total debt was $74 million which was up only slightly from the debt balance of $73 million at the end of fiscal 2013. In spite of the fact that we incurred $15 million of nonroutine capital expenditures for facilities and ERP, we repurchased $13 million of stock and we used $10 million of cash for a small acquisition. At year end, total cash was $35 million, again not much different from last year's $34 million, thereby our year end net debt was $39 million and our net debt to trailing 12-month EBITDA was 0.5:1. Now let me shift the discussion to our business unit performance. As you all know, we are organized into 3 business groups: Inspection & Heat Treating or IHT, which provided a little more than half of our revenues; Mechanical Services, which represents about 35% of our revenues; and Quest Integrity Group, which is about 10% of our revenues but a larger share of our operating profits. I will discuss the operating results of each of these groups separately. First, IHT. Total IHT revenues were $118 million in the quarter, up 9% over last year's quarter. $91 million of that amount is from inspection services, both traditional NDE and advanced services. These services grew $14 million or 18% in the quarter, of which $12.6 million was organic. For the full year, we continued to enjoy outsized growth in NDE services more than 12% year-over-year. During fiscal '14, we successfully negotiated 8 significant, new or expanded run and maintain relationships; we opened 4 new service locations; we began to generate opportunities related to the low-cost North American energy environment with expanded services in the Bakken, Marcellus and Permian basins; and we secured a new LNG facility inspection contract on the Gulf Coast. Additionally, we continued to expand our services into new areas, with the introduction of rope access services in the Gulf Coast, Southeast and Midwest, as well as the expansion of our TCI tank services, our phased array capabilities and pipeline integrity management services. We continue to be very pleased with the overall historical growth and growth outlook in our inspection services. The growth in inspection services within IHT was partially offset by a decline in heat treating services, which as you'll recall, are associated with project and turnaround activities and represented about $27 million of IHT revenues in the quarter, down about $4 million or 14% year-over-year, principally as a result of fewer large heat treat projects in Canada in comparison to last year. Now let's shift the discussion to Mechanical Services. In total, Mechanical Service revenues for the quarter were relatively flat with last year. As you'll recall, Mechanical Service revenues can be classified into 2 broad areas: Onstream, which represented about $40 million in revenue for the quarter, up $3 million or 8% year-over-year; and turnaround or project activity, which was about $35 million in the quarter and down about $3 million or 10%. The year-over-year decline in project activity was outside the United States, principally in Canada. Our U.S. project activity actually increased year-over-year, a positive indicator. As you're all aware, most of our performance issues over the past year have been within the Mechanical Services Group. We are pleased to report significant progress now within this group. Our relatively flat revenues, we improved operating profit by 100 basis points to 12% of revenues from 11% of revenues in last year's quarter. Over the last year, we have rebalanced resources and have new leaders in several of our Mechanical Service locations. We have enhanced our focus on quality, and job execution and have adjusted to an environment with fewer large projects, especially in Canada, where we had been overweighted toward large upgrader expansion project opportunities. We have recently established a project services group within Mechanical Services to provide more focus in our delivery of turnaround service opportunities, and have also achieved significant wins in the last year, with new MSAs in the U.S. and in Europe and new turnaround opportunities in several facilities that represent new relationships for Team. We are on the right track in Mechanical Services. And now let's talk about Quest. For the quarter, Quest revenues were $18.5 million, up only 5% over last year, far short of Quest's overall growth rate of 15% for the year and the more than 30% compound annual growth rate since we acquired Quest in 2010. We talked extensively about Quest's project deferrals in our pre-announcement call in June. In fact, as you'll recall, about half of our fourth quarter miss against prior expectations was due to the timing of projects at Quest. As we also said though, the issue for Quest was not that projects were lost, rather that there is a complexity to the in-line inspection projects in Quest "unpiggable or difficult to pig" target market. Often with no ILI precedent and limited line condition knowledge, which requires substantial planning and operational preparation in front of Quest inspections. As a consequence, several significant projects have been deferred to the current fiscal year 2015. For Quest, 2014 was also a year of major capability and capacity investment in the forms of next-generation tool development, that is, enhanced capability; and heavy personnel tool production and geographic expansion, that is, enhanced capacity. To put this capacity increase in perspective, we have, over the past 2 years, more than doubled the number of qualified inspection technicians and the number of ILI tools in our inventory. To put capability investment in perspective, we have increased our investment in engineering and development activities, which are expensed by 36% in 2014, far outpacing our 15% revenue growth rate. This heavy investment in capital, personnel and R&D pressured profit margins at a time when significant project activity was being deferred into 2015. As a result, Quest's operating profit for the full year was basically flat with fiscal year 2013 in spite of the 15% increase in revenues. As a result of those investments, Quest is now well positioned to continue its outsized growth rates from a revenue and an operating profit perspective, and from the perspective of supporting our clients with more turnkey project management through our project integrity management service group, or PIM group, that should reduce the number of ILI project delays in the future. In summary, overall, it wasn't a bad quarter. Earnings were 17% over last year, but it clearly did not meet our expectations. So let's talk about our outlook. As we have said to many of you, we certainly recognize that we have had to adjust expectations far too often over the past couple of years. We have issued ranges of guidance for both revenue and earnings, but have lacked credibility in hitting those marks, for varying reasons, including unforeseeable issues, like the weather we experienced in this year's third quarter. Also the tailwinds we expected to be in full force by now are still probably a year away, but we, and the entire industry, continue to believe that they will be there. So we acknowledge that we have not been very good at guiding and we are not going to do that again until we have demonstrated an ability to hit our marks. But what we can do is tell you what we believe and why we believe it, and that is our internal plan for 2015, $842 million of revenue and $2 in earnings per share. And it's important to note that our entire management team is invested in achieving that budget. All our incentive compensation plans are tied to earning $2 per share, so we are all in. And why are we confident? Our expectations for fiscal 2015 reflect revenue growth of $92 million or 12% with an operating leverage on that growth of about 20%, which translates into about $18 million of growth in operating income. That certainly does not take us on an uncharted course. As you will recall, our original fiscal 2014 expectation was about $2 per share on $780 million of revenue. We have set the table in each of our business groups to achieve our expectations. While we believe we will begin to see the benefit of secular tailwinds in fiscal 2015, achievement of our budget does not depend upon it. We may also benefit from acquisitions in fiscal 2015, but again achieving our budget does not depend upon it. What our budget does depend upon is us, it is within our control. Over the past 2 years we have added $125 million in revenue without much to show for it, quite frankly. What we have to do now is get some margin on that growth. Focus on execution, don't spill it, and take advantage of the market opportunities that present themselves by being a great service company and the employer of choice in our space. Now before I close, let me also go ahead and address the question that I know that will be asked and that is, where has the budget fit into prior guidance ranges? When we have previously provided a range of guidance at the beginning of a year, our budget has always been within that range, sometimes on the low end, sometimes in the middle, sometimes at the higher end. What we're doing now is simply saying that we haven't demonstrated much of an ability to specify a range so our shift, if you will, is simply to tell you what our expectations are. I am grateful for the opportunity to lead such a great organization and I am proud of all my Team colleagues. Together, we are all looking forward to a great year. And so with that, Phil, let me turn it back to you for additional comments.