Steven W. Berglund
Analyst · Rich Valera
Good afternoon. The issues that impacted us in the first quarter remained with us in the second quarter. These revolved around inconsistent market conditions in multiple regions, deferrals of investment due to continuing economic uncertainty, harsh weather and confusion around government funding sources. Revenue growth of 11.3% to $576 million was consistent with our expectations, and a non-GAAP operating margin of 20.9% continued our bottom line progression. The second quarter provided additional evidence of the ongoing development of the Trimble financial model. The non-GAAP gross margin exceeded 56% for the first time since we started reporting non-GAAP gross margin in 2006, which reflects the increasing value of content being provided by bundles of hardware, software and services. The deferred revenue balance also established a new threshold exceeding $200 million for the first time, driven by greater recurring revenue and more enterprise sales. The non-GAAP operating expense level was at 35.4% of revenue, with the increase entirely due to the impact of recent acquisitions. As we discussed in prior calls, the opportunity for us is to bank the higher gross margins and to work expenses as a percentage of revenue down to historical levels, providing operating margin lift. We expect to achieve this leverage without reducing the current relative R&D spending level, which was slightly over 13% of revenue in the second quarter. The regional results for the quarter reflected the uncertainty we are experiencing in the market, particularly in Europe and Asia-Pacific. European sales were up strong double digits year-to-year in spite of the still dismal state of the economy. This was virtually all organic growth and reflected comparatively strong agriculture sales, increasing penetration of a difficult construction market with technology and expansion in the mobile space. We do not believe the underlying economy provided any lift and won't for at least for the remainder of the year. Asia-Pacific, which has been a robust market for us, fell 4% year-to-year, with the majority of the drop occurring in Australia, which is in recession, with particularly severe ramifications for construction. E&C segment revenue grew at 10% year-over-year. Although this remains short of the segment's potential, it is nonetheless meaningful because it was generated in spite of market headwinds, which centered on government funding, unusually poor weather and in different market conditions in a number of regions. The message from the worldwide E&C market remains mixed. On the one hand, the distribution channel was able to identify a significant pipeline and is often quite positive about prospects. On the other hand, the backlog of signature-ready projects awaiting approval is high against historical standards and reflects uncertainty in the desire to defer investment decisions while awaiting greater clarity. Construction in general provided most of the E&C revenue lift and appears to be firming up despite some regional issues. Heavy civil grew in North America and Europe and declined year-to-year in Asia-Pacific, primarily as a result of the serious economic slowdown in Australia. Australia is a disproportionate factor for heavy civil as it was an early adopter market and has become the second largest national market for us for construction machine control after the U.S. The implicit good news in for instance that it reflects the market potential for the rest of the world, as the rest of the world catches up to Australian adoption rate. In addition to Australia, both Germany and Canada, which tend to be major contributors to the heavy civil business, are struggling to maintain traditional growth rates. We currently expect heavy civil to step-up to a higher growth rate in the second half the year from the first half, although the market remains difficult to forecast with precision. Building construction is currently growing faster than heavy civil, partly as a result of a slowly improving commercial and residential market in the U.S., partly as a result of the increasing general adoption of BIM or BIM-enabled tools and partly through early traction from the synergistic portfolio of capabilities Trimble has assembled around the constructible model. The current state of the building construction market is hardly robust and does not compare to the market in 2007 and early 2008. Nonetheless, the building and construction market provides us with a workable platform and the potential for continued growth for the remainder of the year and stronger growth in 2014 when more of the effect of our strategy will be seen in operating results. The survey instruments business recovered somewhat from first quarter performance levels, but continues to struggle against our historical standard of growth. North America provided some growth, but was limited by direct and indirect sequester-related constraints in federal, state and local spending. Europe was comparatively flat, but remains a challenging survey market with a general reluctance to invest in the private sector and an austerity-driven inability to spend in the public sector. The Chinese market, which has been a driver of strong growth for survey instruments over the last 10 years, is encountering a significant slowdown of government payments, which is limiting the ability to process new orders. Last quarter, we expected that some of these issues, particularly the U.S. sequester and Chinese payment issues, to be resolved relatively quickly with some potential of increased growth in the second half. This does not appear to be happening, and our revised expectations that survey will now be relatively flat in the second half and to be a relative drag on the E&C segment. The combined picture for heavy civil, building construction and survey leads us to expect E&C to generate better results in the second half of the year than the first, although not as strong as we anticipated earlier in the year because of the uncertainties of the survey instruments business. Second quarter results for the Field Solutions segment were disappointing, with a revenue decline of 6% year-to-year. Although Agriculture declined slightly year-to-year, the majority of the segment's revenue decline came from GIS, which continued to be impacted by the pullback of government funding sources. We saw significant GIS declines in the U.S., China and Europe. The impact of the U.S. sequester had both direct and indirect impacts. The slowness in payment by the Chinese government had a chilling effect similar to the one we are experiencing in survey and the effects of European government austerity are impacting relevant new GIS investment. The Agriculture revenue story vary geographically. North American revenue declined year-to-year, while revenue from other geographies grew, with Europe growing in strong double digits. We believe both the North American and European markets were heavily impacted by market distortions caused by unusual weather conditions, which delayed and compressed the planting season to a very short period. In addition, we had some U.S. sales deferred out of the second quarter as farmers anticipated new product releases which will occur later in the year. The U.S. farm market is currently unsettled, and we are assuming this will continue into the second half. As a result, we have scaled back our original expectations for Agriculture for the second half of the year while awaiting further clarity in the U.S. Our expectations for the rest of the world remain optimistic, and the blended view is that Agriculture will grow in the upper-single digits in the second half. Mobile Solutions revenue was up 42% for the total year and the non-GAAP operating margins improved to 14.2%. While year-to-year comparisons are influenced by acquisition effects, the underlying trend line for the segment remains positive, particularly in the transportation and logistics market. This market is in many ways analogous to the construction market. Both are highly competitive traditional industries in which the participants are under severe margin pressure with the additional burden of growing regulation in trucking. In both cases, the adoption of technology is seen as a primary mechanism for improving productivity, eliminating waste, ensuring regulatory compliance and achieving competitive differentiation. We have built the capability to be a central source for providing this leverage to the transportation enterprise. The Advanced Devices segment, again, provided relatively strong performance, with 10% year-to-year revenue growth and strong operating margins. This increase was due primarily to increased sales of RFID and military components and subsystems. Last quarter, we believe we retained a window to achieve the second half expectations we had established at the beginning of the year. In the third quarter guidance, we are tuning this expectation down to a more conservative level. The primary reasons for doing these are the GIS market difficulties, the current market ambivalence we are seeing in survey instruments, the uncertainties in the U.S. agricultural market, and the relatively recent challenges in the Australian and Chinese markets. On a concluding note, our CFO search has been underway for a number of weeks. We have a search firm engaged, which is conducting a nationwide search and some initial interviews with candidates have been held. Early evidence suggest a positive outcome. In the meantime, Julie Shepard is acting as our Interim CFO. She has been Vice President of Finance and Chief Accounting Officer since 2006. Let me turn the call over to her.