Earnings Labs

TriMas Corporation (TRS)

Q3 2012 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 25, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the TriMas Corporation Third Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time I would like to turn the conference over to Sherry Lauderback. Please go ahead.

Sherry Lauderback

Management

Thank you, and welcome to the TriMas Corporation third quarter 2012 earnings call. Participating on the call today are David Wathen, TriMas’s President and CEO; and Mark Zeffiro, our Chief Financial Officer. Dave and Mark will review TriMas’s third quarter results, as well as provide some additional detail on our 2012 outlook. After our prepared remarks, we will then open the call up to you questions. In order to assist with your review of our results, we have included the press release and PowerPoint presentation on our company website at www.trimascorp.com, under the Investor section. In addition, a replay of this call will be available later today by calling (888) 203-1112, with the replay code of 4056170. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone that our comments today, which are intended to supplement your understanding of TriMas, may contain forward-looking statements that are inherently subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Please refer to our Form 10-K for a list of factors that could cause our results to differ from those anticipated in any such forward-looking statements. Also, we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, except as required by law. We would also direct your attention to our website, where considerably more information may be found. At this point, I would like to turn the call over to David Wathen, TriMas’s President and CEO. Dave.

David Wathen

Management

Thanks, Sherry, and good morning. We always appreciate your interest and attention as all of us at TriMas continue to grow and improve our businesses. Our agenda today is that I’ll provide an overview of the third quarter and the current environment, then Mark will discuss financial metrics and some details by segment and I’ll finish by discussing our outlook. Then we’ll go on and take your questions. You’d likely seen our press release this morning discussing our third quarter results. Let me add some highlights on Slide 4. Third quarter 2012 results confirmed that our ongoing efforts to grow revenue and earnings are successful. With revenue in the quarter up 21%, operating profit up 8%, income up 18% and EPS up 4% on a 13% increase in shares, all excluding special items. We have also just completed our refinancing that significantly reduces our interest expense with a fall back positively impacting us in 2013. As usual at TriMas earnings time, Mark and I have just finished visiting each of our businesses for quarterly operating reviews. This was a satisfying set of reviews that encouragingly, that our planning and execution processes are working well for growth programs and for productivity. An important point that I want you understand, I am defiantly making choices to accelerate growth programs that we see are working well. My sense is that some competitors are in go-slow mode, and this is leaving opportunities for us to capitalize on, which means a little more spending, a few more hires of key people, more working capital investment, etc. We are accelerating on successful opportunities that we understand well, while still mitigating and controlling risks. Overall, you can see the results of these decisions in our growth rates. I have listed a few examples here on Slide 5,…

A. Zeffiro

Management

Thank you, Dave, and good morning. Let's start with a quick summary of our third quarter results on Slide 7. Our third quarter sales were $336 million, a 21% increase compared to the third quarter 2011. This was our 10th consecutive quarter of double-digit, year-over-year sales increases, with growth in each of our 6 segments. Our organic growth efforts focused on new products, growing end markets and market share gain represent almost half of our growth so far this year. In addition, our recent bolt-on acquisitions are performing as expected. Across the company the successful execution of our growth strategies is driving positive results. We are making disciplined decisions today to invest in opportunities for future, long-term growth and productivity. Third quarter 2012 income from continuing operations attributable to TriMas was $18.7 million. Excluding special items related to restructuring costs associated with sequence manufacturing footprint optimization, third quarter 2012 income from continuing operations would have been $20.1 million, an increase of 18% compared to Q3 of 2011. Margins were tempered by temporary cost in inefficiencies driven by our long-term productivity efforts, including plant consolidations and capacity improvement in certain businesses. Also affecting the Q3 margin were the in-period effects of acquisitions in Brazil and New Zealand to support our longer term strategic plans. We achieved record Q3 diluted EPS of $0.51 excluding special items, while absorbing several headwinds. Our Q3 acquisitions renews EPS by approximately $0.03 in the quarter, primarily due to purchase accounting and diligence related charges. Also, due to higher than expected customer demand at several of our new facilities, we incurred several cents related to short-term production inefficiency. Finally, we also absorbed the effect of 13% more shares compared to Q3, 2011. Favorably, interest expense reductions and effective tax structure management contributed to the quarter. We remain…

David Wathen

Management

Thanks, Mark. Now I’ll close with a summary and a look forward on Slide 17. We’ve accomplished another quarter of solid growth in sales and income. I continue to be encouraged by the results of our combination of growth programs, productivity projects and management processes that keep us on track, improving value. TriMas’s people continue to find great ideas for improvement and we work to provide the resources to implement these ideas. I believe that our growth rate demonstrates that our organic projects and acquisition integrations are growing well. We are selective in which faster growing countries we choose to invest our efforts. We’ve had recent wins in China and Brazil that reinforce the attractiveness of these markets with several of our businesses. Our growth rate does tend to challenge margin rates, with most of our new business, whether organic or via acquisition, tending to mix this down. So I watch underlying margins on continuing business, which continue to be attractive, and also the margin ramp-up on new business and how well we executive improvement plans. I’m satisfied we have a good line of sight on our ongoing margin improvement for all of our new revenue. Allow me to mention our new and refreshing capital structure one more time. The combination of issuing shares in the second quarter and refinancing this month have delivered a major improvement for us. It’s been a long journey, with way too much debt and high interest costs to our current highly competitive metrics for cost of capital. We will utilize this wisely to increase shareholder value. Turning to the 2012 outlook on Slide 18, we are increasing our sales outlook to be up 15% to 17% compared to 2011, based on the recent success of our growth programs and we are reaffirming our previous EPS range from $1.75 to $1.85. We are expecting 2012 free cash flow to be lower, primarily due to increases in CapEx and working capital as we accelerate several growth, capacity and productivity programs and they have integrated our acquisitions. One EPS outlook comparison on a flat level of shares outstanding, $1.75 per share would exceed 2011 by approximately 20% on a comparable basis. I’ll close with a reminder. Our strategic aspirations are consistent and take the long view. Our attempt is to accomplish these aspirations, regardless of the state of the global economy, such that TriMas continues to grow, improve and increase value for all of us. Next earnings call we’ll provide guidance for 2013. We intend to put a check mark beside each of our aspirations. Now we are glad to take your questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Robert Kosowsky of Sidoti.

Robert Kosowsky

Analyst

I was wondering, first off, could you give kind of like your sense of what your general economy is looking like, Dave. What are you seeing right now in industrial closures over in Europe and kind of how far is European sales, European closures sales down this quarter versus say, 2 years ago.

David Wathen

Management

Well specifically, we see the industrial business in Europe down 20%. And of course that’s linked to paints and chemicals and that kind of thing, and I don’t see an improvement on our near horizon any place. We are fortunate we don’t have a much larger mix of our business in Europe. The rest of the world, I don’t have anything different than you hear from everybody else. The fast growing markets in Asia, in Brazil, for example, in South America, are growing slower, but for us they fall upside, so it still feels pretty good. The U.S. is flat and while there are specific, I call them gray spots that are energy related, and you’ve heard me say we’ve got, Lamons has got refineries switching from oil and natural gas. There’s things like that that go on and the trick is to jump on those and capitalize on it. But overall, it feels flat and it’s hard for me to see much improvement for a while. The last comment I’ll make is, I certainly have heard from a few of our division presidents, the premise that they hear from customers that we got to get this election over and then the premise being there might be some people holding back some decisions. We’ll see, we will see when that hits, we will see.

Robert Kosowsky

Analyst

Okay, was the industrial business down versus 2 years ago or was it the year-over-year cost in Europe, the 20% number.

A. Zeffiro

Management

That was the year on year cost.

David Wathen

Management

So you could say 30%, which is a couple of years ago.

Robert Kosowsky

Analyst

Okay, well that’s pretty big and then also, can you maybe elaborate a little more on some of the implored competitive pressures your seeing and kind of just how aggressive are they getting with pricing.

David Wathen

Management

In the north seas there’s 2 manufacturers of cylinders in Europe, and they definitely see those companies trying partly to displace the Chinese competitor that lost the anti-dumping suit. And while we would tend to have long-term contracts with big customers, some of the distributors tend to do a purchase order by purchase ordering and that we are seeing more aggressive quotes from some of those competitors. I mean that said, we’ve still got the basic advantage of being in the U.S. And they are big and heavy and hard to ship and all that, but we are defiantly seeing in that. With German manufactures, mostly are German and French manufacturers of gaskets that go against Lamons, or some of them are trying to do acquisitions in the U.S., that kind thing, so there’s no doubt. If you are sitting there is Europe, the U.S. is looking more attractive than your own market and so we are seeing them come after us. No surprise, but it’s definitely happening.

Robert Kosowsky

Analyst

Okay, that’s helpful and then also, I was wondering, it looks like corporate expenditures were up or corporate spending was up pretty significantly in the quarter. I was wondering if you can collaborate on that and then kind of more broadly, it’s been you know probably like, I think almost 5 of the past 6 quarters or 6 in the past 7 quarters, that we’ve seen very strong revenue growth in excess of operating income growth. When do you see the inflection point where you are going to start generating kind of more meaningful incremental margins on the revenue gains?

David Wathen

Management

The inflection point is driven by how successful we are at some acquisitions and growth programs. I mean that’s a -- I would like to think we can keep our growth rates going via the way we do it. When the growth rate slows down a little, you will see the margin starting to come up. It’s a mix in the classic sense. We tend to find acquisitions that are low margin. Growth programs, while the end game of that growth program, that new product or whatever, or a new branch in another country, the end game is solid margins. There is ramp-up cost and we are driving a lot of that right now. So I’m not giving you a specific answer, because it depends a little on that mix question and what do markets do. Mark, I’ll let you address the spending, corporate.

A. Zeffiro

Management

Yes, the corporate spending increase, if you look on a run rate basis, is largely related to stock compensation associated with the programs we have at TriMas in total. So it’s starting to see the effects on a flattening out run rate basis of those costs.

Robert Kosowsky

Analyst

Okay, so this $10 million is kind of a sustainable level for the corporate spending?

A. Zeffiro

Management

Exactly right.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from Walter Liptak with Barrington Research.

Walter Liptak

Analyst

The first one I want to ask about is the interest expense. I wonder if we could get a number from you about what interest expense looks like for the fourth quarter.

A. Zeffiro

Management

If you look at my comments, there’s about a $0.04 decline, if you look quarter on quarter in terms of the relative expense Walt, and that should be about, if you do the math, between a $1.5 million and $2 million.

Walter Liptak

Analyst

Okay, the savings got in. Okay, in the cash flow statement there was a redemption feed. Did that flow through the income statement?

A. Zeffiro

Management

It’s part of the debt extinguishment cost, yes Walt. You’ll see that directly in the P&L.

Walter Liptak

Analyst

Okay. So that number was included in your expense items.

A. Zeffiro

Management

No, it’s basically considered special item as part and parcel of the debt extinguishments, but you’d see on a GAAP report basis, you’d see that the base line cost fall through the P&L.

Walter Liptak

Analyst

Okay, maybe we can follow up on that one, okay. I wonder if I could skip to revenue. Can we break out the revenue by organic foreign currency and acquisitions?

A. Zeffiro

Management

Yes, for certain. When you look at the organic growth, if you are talking in the quarter about 40% of the growth in the quarter, approximate 50% of the growth for the year is organic. When you talked about FX, it’s really not a material effect within the quarter. A couple million bucks, namely about 3 insurances in the quarter, which was a negative effect in the quarter.

Walter Liptak

Analyst

Okay and the remainder acquisitions obviously, okay. Some of these smaller acquisitions that were like in Brazil and New Zealand, I wonder if we can get a revenue run rate for them?

A. Zeffiro

Management

The reality is in the K that will follow today, it’s about $25 million run rate, revenue up-tick that was the baseline for the businesses, and it’s probably even a bit more than that. If you think about all the pieces of that being CIFAL, Arminak, Trail Com and Engetran, it’s probably a little above $25 million in terms of run rate sales.

Walter Liptak

Analyst

Okay, $25 million combined for the tax rate. Okay, and the Arminak revenue number, I thought I heard you say that that contributed $27 million during the quarter, is that right or did I hear that wrong.

A. Zeffiro

Management

I talked about in total, that being both Innovative and Arminak. If you look at it, the packaging, Arminak acquisition was about $23 million in the quarter and Innovative about $5 million.

Walter Liptak

Analyst

Okay, so Arminak is running significantly ahead of where it was when you purchased it, is that right?

A. Zeffiro

Management

Both of them are, yes.

Walter Liptak

Analyst

So both are.

David Wathen

Management

And Walter, they are working, in a sense that both of those bought new products to the total of Rieke to sell in other places, but also customers of Innovative and Arminak have now got access to the full Rieke lines. So we kind of get the sales synergy in both directions and it’s clearly working. It’s encouraging to me that -- it’s always encouraging to have things like that occur. I mean going in you think it might happen, but I never count on it till we see it happening, and it’s going well.

Walter Liptak

Analyst

Right, you don’t count on it. Okay, good, and if I can skip once more to, during your commentary in the press release, you kind of alluded to different costs that are in your numbers, acquisition related costs that weren’t pulled out, I guess related to purchase accounting on new product and productivity programs. I wonder if you can give us a number that kind of quantifies all those expenses that are non-operating I guess, that flow through the quarter.

A. Zeffiro

Management

Yes, that we did in special item.

Walter Liptak

Analyst

Yes, we can add that.

A. Zeffiro

Management

If you think about the effects associated with acquisitions, it’s about $0.03 a share, just about $0.03 a share, and my comment was several cents in the context of inefficiencies and that’s kind of where we are, the number that probably makes several cents.

Operator

Operator

Next, we go to Mark Tobin with Roth Capital Partners.

Mark Tobin

Analyst

We talked a bit about the margin improvement and I guess the investments that you are making now. Can you walk us through, maybe the next couple of years, or how does it phase and how should we look at segment by segment, where does that margin improvement kick in earlier, where does it kick in later and what drives that.

A. Zeffiro

Management

You want me to try.

David Wathen

Management

Yes, go ahead and try.

A. Zeffiro

Management

If you look at the Rieke business, the core business, we are not really pressing them for margins. The reality is what Lynn Brooks had said is, he expects the acquisition to be 25% operating profit and the run rate of that is happening as we speak. So that’s probably nearer term in terms of the relative improvement there. Counter to that obviously, is the FX of Europe. Europe is very profitable for us and it is quite painful, the volume challenges that they’ve had. But in short, the underlying margins, that’s what you should expect to see. Lamons is a couple year plan that you will see continued out for activity improvement over time, as well as the new facilities continue to improve in terms of the mix of their sales, versus just being open price point related content. So that’s a couple year window. Monogram much to itself is a very good margin rate and, quite frankly, the efforts there are not really driving margin rate Mark, as you know. It’s about making sure that we continue to gain scale, scope and continue to maintain margins as best we can. The Cequent businesses, I would tell you that this is between the Cequent Americas structure with our preliminary announcement. That’s obviously in the future in terms of additional efficiency there, but the Asian numbers will continue to show improvement here, over the next 3, 6, basically 3 to 4 quarters you should see continued improvement.

Mark Tobin

Analyst

Okay, that’s helpful. And then with these investments in the new product development and so forth, you had historically talked about high single digit revenue growth, which I think in rough terms we used to talk about that in terms of half of that being organic and half being through M&A. Do you view that differently now with the investments that you are making or how do you view the long term growth, I guess target model for the whole company?

David Wathen

Management

The strategic aspiration of high single digit growth remains, for sure. I am getting more convinced that we have the ability to develop organic programs that get us into that range, 6%, 7%, 8% kind of range, and then acquisitions on top of that. I know that I prefer not to forecast acquisitions and so part of this is I am seeing more opportunity. It might be because the competitors go in slow. There’s plenty of competitors that just seem to be holding back and that could change. But also we are seeing product changes coming, we are seeing the geographic growth being quite attractive. So that’s kind of a long answer to say, I am getting more convinced that we can get to our strategic, stay in our strategic aspiration, most of the time organically. I’m always going to be a little soft and try and say, I’m sure of that, but growth rates are climbing and my confidence in our ability is climbing.

Mark Tobin

Analyst

Okay, that’s helpful. And then one quick housekeeping on the balance sheet, for Mark. Can you give us an idea of what your post refinance, your debt balance is? Is it in the $470 million range, is that the right number to use?

A. Zeffiro

Management

Yes, basically if you go to subsequent events that you’ll see in the Q that comes out today, basically we put the cost of the refinance so to speak on the revolver, which is about an up-tick of about $40 million.

Mark Tobin

Analyst

Okay and the $14 million cash cost reduction, is that on an equal debt level basis or does that also consider the increased debt level.

A. Zeffiro

Management

That’s on a pro forma basis of the current year, so I assume it’s the same basic performance levels.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Steve Barger with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Steve Barger

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Dave, I wanted to go back to your comment about things being on hold till the election. It is consistent with what we are hearing from other companies around destocking this quarter. Which if your segments, if any, might be seeing some destocking or selling or purchasing or said another way, which of the segments might see some pent-up demand unlocked post-election, if this is actually occurring?

David Wathen

Management

I heard that in Packaging, I heard that in Norris, I heard it for sure in Cequent, so that’s the places I heard it, and we all struggle with knowing how true it is and we’ll see, is the answer. But there is some rationale for that. There is plenty of things to be concerned about, coming at us, regardless of how the election turns out.

Steve Barger

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Right, which kind of goes to the next question, just making a quick run at the employed guidance for 4Q. It seems like revenue will be up year-over-year, but you don’t really expect that much operating income growth. Does that go back to that mix issue with more of the revenue growth coming from acquired or from acquisitions, or is that more a comment on end market and margin pressure that comes from that, or how are you thinking about that?

David Wathen

Management

Yes, there is some effect from that acquisition mix for sure. The growth tends to be at lower margins until it settles in at where it ought to be. But I mean, demand is still choppy for sure. I’m pessimistic about Europe. And we’ve got the cost of the acquisition integrations that we -- I only want to get those done faster and faster all the time, and so we’ll drill those costs. But it’s my general concern about Europe, ups and downs in Asia. We’ve got a couple of business units that have some price actions and sometimes we see being ordering ahead in those kinds of times, sometimes you don’t. My style is to not count it until we can see it actually happen, and so we’re holding back on counting on any of those things.

Steve Barger

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Right, now I know there’s always pricing actions that you are taking and which your vendors are taking against you. Is there anything unusual, just broadly speaking, given the environment. Does it seem like that’s accelerating or is it fairly normal.

David Wathen

Management

I would say it’s fairly normal, if anything. I mean we have to have a very powerful story about price, to be able to raise price. Rising cost, fuel cost, things like that have to be. I mean other than that, you don’t have much chance of it. We of course have some of that and so we do raise prices where we have good justification.

Steve Barger

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Okay. And Mark, the force in the tailwind that you mentioned for 4Q, that presumably wasn’t in the prior guidance. So by maintaining the guidance, does that just give you a little bit of a cushion against some of the end market puts and takes of the acquisition ramping costs that you were talking about?

A. Zeffiro

Management

Yes.

Steve Barger

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Okay and one last -- I guess 2 more. Over the last couple years, free cash flow has exceeded net income pretty consistently. It’s going to be maybe half this year it looks like. Is it your expectation that that goes back towards a 100% or better, whether it’s 2013, 2014, is that a target that you are striving to get back to.

David Wathen

Management

Yes, of course, like everybody we are working on 2013 right now. I use the term accelerated growth programs, and accelerating productivity programs. I’m in the mode of being willing to spend a little more CapEx, kind of on the high end of our range, partly because we are seeing great opportunity for machines that improve yield and all that. Partly because, industrial equipment is kind of still a burden. Demand is low and the suppliers are aggressive and it’s a good time to buy equipment, and so we will capitalize on that some. So I would say 2013, I’m not ready to say it, but my mindset is, let’s make some big improvements in the underlying business.

Steve Barger

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Got it, okay and last one and I’ll get back in line. The mix that you talked about in the energy business, I think it was on the build out or something. Is that going to persist or is that more temporary in nature? I guess the question is should we think about 3Q as kind of the run rate margin going forward for a while?

David Wathen

Management

No, Steve the real effect really is the acquisition at CIFAL. Operating profits would have been up absent the acquisition purchase accounting, as well as those related costs within that segment itself. So if you look at that, you’d see a more normalized margin rate.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We go now to Scott Graham with Jefferies.

R. Scott Graham

Analyst

So I was hoping you could, I know it’s a small number, this $3 million in FX, but if you could kind of split that between the segments that would be helpful. Additionally kind of another housekeeper to the same end. I’m coming up a little short of the acquisition revenues. I’m sure I’m just missing something and if you can kind of tell me outside of Packaging, kind of what the acquisition contribution were for the couple segments involved, Cequent in particular.

David Wathen

Management

Certainly. Energy, CIFAL, a little more than $1 million. Cequent Asia Pacific was called about $4 million and Cequent America is less than $1 million. Now the FX is obviously effective really just in 2 major segments, that being the Rieke packaging segment and Cequent Asia Pacific.

R. Scott Graham

Analyst

Okay. And that would be more heavily toward Rieke, right.

David Wathen

Management

Yes.

R. Scott Graham

Analyst

Okay. If we could just sort of maybe ask of, kind of sort of a similar question that I think has been asked here. You guys have a business model where there’s a lot of self-help involved. Where you generate productivity and then you turn around and spend a lot of that on sales growth initiatives and you refinance your debt. So you look into 2013. That gives obviously some earnings visibility on some potential growth. I was just wondering 2 things; first, David you could maybe give us an idea for 2013. I know in the absence of guidance, which I’m not asking for, but when you say you can check off each of the boxes, are you saying that you are expecting both sales and earnings to grow in 2013.

David Wathen

Management

Oh, yes.

R. Scott Graham

Analyst

Okay, and then secondly, the margin weakness in the quarter. I know it had a lot to do with some of these extraneous expenses that you will get a return on. But maybe what do you more proactively doing in some of these markets where there are more competitive pressures that you are seeing. Is it with small competitors, is it with larger competitors? If it’s a small ones, in particular, is there a way to kind of bleed them out over a bit or is this going to continue. I just kind of want to know what you guys are doing proactively on those fronts.

David Wathen

Management

Specifically that’s one of the reasons I’m more likely to invest in capital equipment, it takes cost down. And we have been -- we’ve got a lot of factories -- I’ve spent my career in factories. We got a lot of factories that have quite a bit of older equipment. It does just fine, but yield rates aren’t where they can be. I saw a bank of machine tools in one of the businesses. One machine center replaces 4 steps, 4 separate operations in the past, and you can imagine what that does for quality and yield and because every time you move from one, from trucking one and truck to the next, you got a chance of missing a dimension and we have more of those kinds of opportunities. That takes cost out and what am I saying, is it always like those kinds of projects, because there’s all internal and you tend to get to keep the cost out as opposed to sometimes you want to redesign for a cost out, you wind up leaving to share some of it with your customer. So we are going after quite a few of those cost outs, specially where we -- and the best ones are where we need it the most because of competitive pressures, and it causes the prioritization and into those businesses.

R. Scott Graham

Analyst

Understood. I guess my last question would be, Mark, what should we assume for tax rate going forward? The first couple of quarters this year have been a little bit up and down, so what shall we use?

David Wathen

Management

Who’s going to win the elections? Sorry, I promised not to talk election.

R. Scott Graham

Analyst

Yes, well.

David Wathen

Management

Yes, I know, I know.

R. Scott Graham

Analyst

I think that’s kind of a scary question. Is there none of the above, you know what I mean. I don’t think there is a spot for none of the above, anyway.

David Wathen

Management

To the question Scott, the declining rate that we are running to is between 31% and 32%.

Operator

Operator

Now we take a question from Gregory Macosko with Lord, Abbett.

Gregory Macosko

Analyst

Most have been answered, but just with regard to the Cequent in Asia, you talked about the margin impact there. I guess it was a 180 basis points year-over-year. Do you see that recovery pretty quick? Within -- I assume that’s where the pressure has been. And then…

David Wathen

Management

I was going to say, yes, fairly quick. Now they are months not years, and because you can imagine, the sales are up 40%, and we saw a lot of it coming and we ordered new, we added capacity, we ordered new equipment. At the same time we are consolidating 2 factories into 1, and it’s really just a convergence of the inefficiencies of running 24/7, literally, 24/7 in the factories and also going through a plant move. And the new machines aren’t quite perfect and all that kind of thing. So yes, now again you don’t fix all that in a month, but you do fix it in a couple of quarters.

Gregory Macosko

Analyst

And do you see the -- I mean it was 12% plus in the past in guess. Do you see that given the higher sales or a lot of higher sales level, that those margins will be higher than they have historically been?

David Wathen

Management

Yes, I mean it’s very attractive, higher margin, higher return on capital business and yes, they will come back to those markets.

Gregory Macosko

Analyst

Come back, but not exceed.

David Wathen

Management

Well, that’s going to be the balance of the growth rate and for example how fast do we choose to try to grow in South Africa. South Africa is an attractive market, but it takes a while to come up to full margins. The underlying business will come back to its margins and improve its own, because of the new factory.

Gregory Macosko

Analyst

That’s great. So that was the investment piece that we had in the new factory, right.

David Wathen

Management

The question is how fast, what levers do we pull on choosing to grow faster in some other markets and how long does it take to ramp-up. Believe me, I wouldn’t begin to make a choice to grow someplace like South Africa if we didn’t see the end game, I mean exactly right. But I also recognize, I’ve got to be, I have to recognize the ramp-up costs.

Gregory Macosko

Analyst

Right, understand, okay. So and if we just look at Cequent then, I mean, as a vision it appears that we are committed here and this is a part of the company on a longer term basis.

David Wathen

Management

Yes, it’s our most improved business, which is the past and I can see a nice path for more improvement going on.

Gregory Macosko

Analyst

With regard to North America, margins were down a little bit on modest growth, but that business is, shall we say, stable.

David Wathen

Management

It’s maybe normally better than stable, because there’s some -- we continue to see competitors being kind of weak and we have to take advantage on those there.

A. Zeffiro

Management

And Greg, I would add that within the quarter we also absorbed, obviously, buy an opportunity in Brazil, which obviously effected margins within the period. So obviously the underlying business still is showing nice performance.

Gregory Macosko

Analyst

Okay, that’s true, that’s America’s, that total figure.

A. Zeffiro

Management

And if you think about Cequent America sales in the quarter up 7%, that’s clearly taking share from somebody. This is a business has shown more like GDP growth. So the business itself is doing a really fine job in terms of taking their spots.

Gregory Macosko

Analyst

Okay, and then my last question is really regard just to the sales growth guidance. It basically almost doubled from the beginning of the year to now. If I look at core growth within that and you’ve talked 7 high single digits as your goal, what is the core portion of that? I mean, clearly a lot of that is from acquisitions expected for the year. What’s the kind of the core growth piece of that total? How has that changed over that same period?

A. Zeffiro

Management

Yes, Greg one of the things that we do and we don’t forecast obviously acquisitions when we enter a year. So the doubling effect in terms of that growth profile is largely the acquisitions. Year-to-date, our balance of that growth and which is, let’s call it 18% growth, about half of its come through organic means and about half of it through acquisitions. So from my perspective, very well balanced.

David Wathen

Management

Which goes back to my comment that I’m getting more confident we can generate that kind of growth organically.

Gregory Macosko

Analyst

Okay, so the point is organic growth has pretty much remained on track from your original expectations.

A. Zeffiro

Management

That’s correct. We haven’t, if you will, compensated through just buying companies to get to our target.

Operator

Operator

Now we’ll take another question from Scott Graham with Jefferies.

R. Scott Graham

Analyst

As you were answering questions I just went through come numbers in my model and another question sprung up. So the Packaging number, the organic number, was a pretty good number, reversed a couple of quarters of declines, and I know you talked a little bit about industrial closures in Europe being, I think you said down 20. I want to see that the Packaging business, your organic in North America had to be a pretty good. Now I was just wondering is my math right A, and B, what would have driven that?

David Wathen

Management

I would call it product driven. There is no doubt that Arminak -- my sense is we were a little behind in our product development portfolio. You heard me say to do it all over we cut too deep back in ’09. Arminak got us a hitch. We went from being behind to being ahead and in my comments I said we were accelerating some others. There is now some other new product programs for the future that we are going to aggressively pursue. So that’s an answer that says the organic growth rate in Packaging is mighty attractive.

A. Zeffiro

Management

I would add one course of new products. I would add one just for perspective and that is related our Asia sales since the ramp-up of those new product wins has actually helped the company a reasonable amount, and it’s been a fair time coming in that context.

David Wathen

Management

And that really is new business, that’s in Japan, that’s its markets that we were not pursuing.

R. Scott Graham

Analyst

Okay, so a lot of this is long time coming stuff that you have been working on, but there does seem to be a little bit of benefit that you are getting from the sort of sales synergies from acquisitions, would you agree?

David Wathen

Management

Absolutely.

Operator

Operator

And there are no other questions in the queue. I would like to turn the conference back over to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks.

David Wathen

Management

Thank you, everybody. We really appreciate the attention. We take this seriously, as you know, and we intend to keep improving. Some of you have helped us through this refinancing. There is one more check the box item. Again, we are committed to driving value and you will see us keeping that. Thank you for the support.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today’s conference. Again, thank you everyone for participating.