Steven W. Berglund
Analyst · Robert W
Good afternoon. First quarter results were consistent with the narrative from the fourth quarterly call, although we fell outside of our revenue guidance in the quarter. Three months ago, we expected the first half of the year to be a challenge, which is turning out to be true. We also expect the second half results to demonstrate meaningful improvement, which continues to be our expectation. In this case, the definition of improvement would be a return to high single-digit revenue growth and a return to an operating margin converging on 20%. We had a revenue surprise in the quarter, which is emphatically not part of our historical culture. We are addressing the issue with a series of organizational actions I will explain later. As anticipated, the weakness in agriculture continued, although we believe our ability to forecast the business is better than it was in the second half of last year. We obviously need to be wary of market volatility, particularly among the agricultural OEMs, but we think we are seeing some signs of stabilization. We are currently forecasting our agriculture revenue in the second quarter to be down from last year. But absent the OEM inventory effects of 2014, we see agriculture being closer to flat year-to-year on the second half of the year and into the first part of 2016. Even if they course our -- agricultural machine sales are down by another 15% in the second half. The dollar further strengthened against the rate we had used to setting guidance which pushed revenue down. It had a differential impact on earnings at the segment level, although the earnings impact at the consolidated level was relatively small. The weather in the Northern and Eastern U.S. in the first quarter had a significant effect on those regions' construction and geospatial sales and postponed the typical search we see in the final 4 to 6 weeks of the first quarter. Against total company revenue, this is not particularly material and that it represents about 1% to 2% of revenue, but the exchange rate effect and the weather effect, in combination, pushed us out of the revenue guidance range. The primary driver, which drove our revenue down in the quarter, was a nonanticipated drop in geospatial sales primarily in North America. Some of this was the impact of weather in the Northern and Eastern U.S. and some was exchange rates. Given that the drop was centered in North America, there is no macroeconomic rationale that explains the drop. In addition, market share data shows us to be either in stable or improving market position. The decrease is centered in the oil-producing regions and the oil price decline appears to be the causal factor. Last quarter, we described the primary expected impact on us of the oil price shock to be approximately 1% of total company revenue or $25 million per year. This judgment appears to remain valid. What we did not adequately anticipate were the secondary effects. The oil bust has put a damper on the oil-producing regional economies and has caused a generalized pull-back of investment activity. This has played out, in our case, by a sharp reduction in inventory in the channel in certain regions. Although the market may normalize later in the year, we have added more conservatism to our geospatial expectations. Construction, the other large component of E&C was also impacted in the quarter by exchange rates, weather and regionalized secondary effects of the oil price, although the oil price effects are much less severe than in geospatial. The heavy civil component of construction also continues to be negatively impacted by the mediocre international economic environment, most particularly by Australia. The fundamentals remain strong, and we expect to regain traction as we work through these short-term issues. The Mobile Solutions segment performance showed improvement in the quarter, and we expect even better performance in the second half, largely based on the Transportation & Logistics business. At the moment, this segment is the best-performing element of Trimble. Europe, both North and South, is showing more buoyancy than we have seen in some time aside from the exchange translation effects. An offsetting factor is the trend for Russia, which continues to deteriorate, and the negative outlook for Brazil. If the European trend develops, this would be meaningful for us since Europe constitutes over 1/4 of our revenue and has not been a significant constructive part of our story for years. It is too early to be conclusive since there are competing European positives and negatives, the ongoing Greek crisis being the primary negative and lower energy costs and a traded damaged euro being the positives. Last quarter, I described the need for improved performance from specific elements of our business portfolio. These are agriculture in the Field Solutions segment; the real estate and workplace solutions business, which includes Manhattan Software and E&C; and construction supply and Field Services management, which are in Mobile Solutions. Beyond the obvious impact of agriculture, the combined effects of these businesses currently represent meaningful trades and current results, and create potential future opportunities. We believe all of these are growth businesses and add to the Trimble franchise, and expect to see all of them demonstrate meaningful progress in 2015. Manhattan Software should show a lift later in the year as we resolve the initial post-acquisition revenue recognition accounting challenges. The construction supply business is anticipating growing strength during the year based on the improving economy in the U.S. and a stronger product portfolio. Field Solutions and the Mobile Solutions segment is looking at a strong orders pipeline, which leads to a trend of improvement in the second half of the year and a stronger 2016. Although we stumbled in the quarter against our expectations, we have a number of recent examples of strategic process -- progress that foreshadow future revenue. Let me identify 3 of them. All 3 of these announcements are based on capabilities that have been assembled over the last several years through a combination of internal development and selective technology focused to acquisitions that have created strong franchise effects. The first is the public announcement of our win of our Beijing new airport project for what the customers calling a construction information system. Beijing's new airport project is designed with a target of 72 million travelers and 620,000 flights in 2025, and represents one of the most challenging and highest profiled projects to be awarded in 2015. The project has an explicit objective of establishing a new standard in digital construction of large strategic projects. Trimble won with a web-based construction workflow management solution that allows construction operations to be monitored real time. This project should provide meaningful leverage as a reference account and highlights that Trimble has a competitively unique portfolio of capabilities centered on the constructible model that can move the needle on construction site operations. We also announced during the quarter a new multiyear alliance with Paccar, the manufacturer of trucks, including the Kenworth and Peterbilt brands. This will significantly boost our T&L subscriber base in the Mobile Solutions segment and have a meaningful impact on revenue later in 2015 and throughout 2016. It involves installing Trimble hardware in the factory in every Kenworth and Peterbilt truck with an MX engine. Trimble will provide remote diagnostic services for a monthly recurring fee. This opportunity is attractive in its own right. But beyond the base point capability, it provides a significant platform for us to upsell additional fleet management solutions. Just as we talked about the next fleet problem with construction machines, the same problem exists in transportation. The Paccar platform gives us a head start in solving transportation's next-fleet challenge. This win can be attributed to the synergistic effects of Trimble's unique ability to bring together the elements of mobility, enterprise and analytics into one bundle. Another event that has longer-term meaning related to the announcement yesterday that Microsoft and Trimble are working together to develop a new generation of tools integrated with Windows HoloLens holographic platform on Windows 10, which is intended to improve quality, collaboration and efficiency in the design, construction and the operation of buildings and structures. Proof of concept for the solution was demonstrated yesterday at Microsoft's Build Developer Conference in San Francisco. Augmented reality, which Microsoft calls mixed reality, is becoming real and can have a major impact on how work gets done. The ability to juxtapose models' information and virtual collaboration in the context of the real world and do this in a natural comfortable way is all new. The technology is applicable in many of Trimble's markets, but the initial focus will be in construction and geospatial. We contemplate things like facilities managers who can see all of the building model elements and status as they walk through a building or the office designer who can take a workstation out of Trimble's 3D warehouse and digitalize it right in the workspace where it will be used. In Microsoft's published video, you can see SketchUp in use with HoloLens and an integration with Trimble's V10 imagery capture product. A link to the video is available on Trimble's website. While the demonstrations yesterday highlighted Trimble's technology capabilities and were not a product announcement, they did represent Trimble leadership and what will be an important applied technology and our intention to be a leader in the commercial development of that technology. Although we expect some natural lift in the second half of the year, we are not satisfied with our current management performance and are taking actions to improve it. We have therefore launched a number of changes to improve our ability to deliver against expectations, maintain margins and execute strategically. In the last 3 months, we have taken significant cost reduction steps by reducing headcount by over 115 with accompanying steps to reduce other costs. The magnitude of the recent cuts is over $15 million annualized. Our business model supports the expectation that we can operate with an aggregate 20% non-GAAP operating margin, and we will take actions to regain that model. In the last 3 months, we also undertook a significant reorganization. This includes changes at multiple levels of the organization, including senior executives. This change in roles and alignments is intended to improve both our short term and strategic execution with a singular focus on making the numbers. The organizational changes have concentrated more authority with individuals who have a history of execution. The realignment also recognizes the changing nature of Trimble, which is rapidly becoming more focused on software and solutions, away from hardware, and therefore requires different skills and capabilities within the management group. Although we have had a plan of organizational change, the current challenges helped motivated us to accelerate the process. Our focus is on aligning individuals within the right structure to enable effective execution of a market strategy that remains as robust as ever in terms of producing growth. At the senior management levels, let me identify both recent and pending changes, all of these are direct reports to me. Peter Large, who is responsible for Trimble's distribution channel strategy development, departed in December. Last week, we announced that Chris Gibson, a long-term Trimble sector head focused on the geospatial businesses, will take over the significantly expanded role with specific mandates to accelerate our development in emerging geographical regions, professional services and key accounts. Bryn Fosburgh, who has led the sector focused on the construction businesses, will add the geospatial business to his portfolio. Mark Harrington, who leads the sector that includes agriculture, will retire as planned in the middle part of the year. We have launched a search for a successor that will include both internal and external candidates. During the last month, Mike Scarpa has joined us as Chief Human Resource Officer. He comes with experience at HARMAN electronics, ABB and GE. His primary focus will be on developing the skills and organizational processes consistent with a more complex environment. We continue to expect to establish an inflection point at midyear and to reestablish and up into the right revenue trend in the second half of the year after 3 quarters of failing to produce growth. We believe our forecast is sober and possibly conservative, although it needs to be quantified by the possibility of any new shocks from the environment. Let me identify the discrete elements of the analysis for the second half. First, at current exchange rates, we will start out 4% to 5% in the hole from a revenue perspective. Second, the acquisitions already enhanced should produce 4% of growth. Third, we are assuming our agricultural sales to be basically flat in the second half of 2015 year-to-year. We believe this is an objective view after 18 months of declines in our agriculture revenue. It does not assume any kind of recovery in commodity prices or the equipment market. If we can achieve stability in our base business, we can then start to reintroduce the concept of incremental growth in 2016 through the development of new product categories. Fourth, we are anticipating strong growth in the Mobile Solutions segment in the second half, much of which is already in backlog. For the rest of the company, we are forecasting relatively modest organic growth at least until we better understand the full secondary effects of the oil price impact. The combination of these effects leads to a view of the year that is consistent directionally with the outlook we described last quarter. Exchange rates and the full effect of the oil price shock have added additional headwinds, but the signs from Europe and a sense of the stabilization in agriculture may offset some of that. We have stumbled recently on short-term results, but the 3-year view on potential remains unchanged. We simply need to execute. Let me turn the call over to Francois.