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Titan International, Inc. (TWI)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Fri, May 1, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Titan International, Inc. First Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. During this session, all lines will be muted until the question-and-answer portion of the call. Any statements made in the course of the conference call that state the company's or management's intentions, hopes, beliefs, expectations, or predictions for the future are considered forward-looking statements. Please note that the Safe Harbor statements contained in the company's latest Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission extend to this conference call. And any forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties as detailed therein. At this time, I would like to introduce Titan Chairman and CEO, Maurice Taylor. Please go ahead, sir. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. And you'd be on the call, you've already seen the press release and 10-Q is out there. Let's back up a little bit. It was two months ago. I was on the year-end earnings call for 2014, which was not a good year. But every company has to have a year of adjustments if it is to grow, and I believe that was our year last year. This first quarter, our sales were down but 60% of that drop was due to the currency adjustments, not a lot you can do about that. But otherwise, you look at what's happened, our gross profit percentage, even with the sales drop, was up, which tells you that, number one, we – in this market then we have been doing a pretty good job. But if you turned around and you looked at the machining numbers that came out on the retail side for big equipment in the farm side you'll will find that North America, the first quarter was down 48%…

Paul George Reitz - President

Management

Yeah. Sounds good, Morry. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. As you've seen in our results and already heard from Morry this morning, our Q1 was a very solid, respectable quarter for us. You look at the backdrop of significant softening in the ag demand in really all the major global markets, especially large ag, as we've already discussed this morning. Our team really has done a good job in executing this quarter. And that resulted in increase in operating income compared to last year at this time. Let's face it, these aren't easy times with the sectors we operate in and it doesn't appear to be getting any easier; may not be getting worse, but we haven't seen that uptick to get easier yet. So it takes a lot of sweat equity really day in, day out to make good, difficult decisions in times like this. And the first place you have to start is managing the operating cost base. We have been and we will continue to be aggressive in managing our head count to keeping aligned with the volume fluctuations. Our global head count is down well over 1,500 people or just under a 20% reduction from last year at this time. These adjustments have been accomplished without sacrificing output efficiency levels when you look at it at the output per man-hour level. Clearly, our plants aren't as efficient with lower volume, but when you look at it at the per man level, we have been able to maintain and, in some cases, increase our efficiency levels. Along with effectively managing the head count, we reduced our operating expenses over $12 million from last year's Q1. This process isn't about just simply slashing people and expenses; we're also finding other significant ways to improve our business while reducing…

John R. Hrudicka - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thanks, Paul. Good morning, everyone. Well, relatively speaking as both Morry and Paul indicated, this was a very good quarter for us. While we were down significantly in sales to prior year to the tune of $137 million, we did turn a profit and showed improvement to last year at a net income level. While we did not provide guidance, we did beat our internal operating plan relative to profitability. From an EBITDA perspective, we also beat both prior year and budget on significantly less sales. This is a testament to the diligent actions we took last year. The change initiatives we've driven continue to drive that are now materializing in our results. So let's begin by talking about revenue sales for the quarter. We're at $402 million, so it's down $137 million or 25% from prior year. The quarter-over-quarter decrease was driven almost entirely by reductions, and our ag segment as mentioned earlier in currency comprising $132 million or 96% of the variance. More specifically of our ag variance, the majority portion is attributable to North America. I reference currency, this drove a reduction in sales of $50 million in the quarter versus prior year. This impact was felt across all our international locations, our global undercarriage business, Russia, Latin America, Europe, and Australia. The most significant movements represented by the ruble and real. If you adjust for the currency impacts, sales declined 16.2% versus the reported 25.4%. So let's discuss the ag market. I don't know if there's a lot to say here that isn't already known or has been talked about previously. From our perspective, sales have deteriorated more than we planned internally. The OEM market continues to be sluggish as our large ag equipment customers have cut production commensurate with lower demand. All the same negative…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Our first question comes today from Ian Zaffino with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, good morning, Ian. Ian A. Zaffino - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Hey. Good morning. How are you? Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: You're the first one to call on before we answer – ask your question, I'm in this great apple of yours. So if anybody wants to have me come over and chitchat, I'll be more than happy to do, and I'll be here till noon tomorrow. Ian A. Zaffino - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): All right. Yeah, that sounds good. Let me – we'll talk offline and go through it all, go through the details. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah, call. John will set up everything, but otherwise I just it screw up, you know that. Ian A. Zaffino - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): All right. Good, good. The question would be, you obviously earned a profit this quarter and, Paul, I know you talked sort of about being obviously undersized maybe in Latin America, but not really having all the components in Latin America, not having all the components in Europe. And getting to the point where you have to kind of decide what to do with those businesses, whether to make them bigger or maybe exit them. But it seems like you've embarked on a pretty successful cost-cutting strategy that's working. Are you now okay with not sort of having all the pieces of the puzzle in those two markets? Or are you thinking otherwise, sort of where is your head?

Paul George Reitz - President

Management

Well, no, I'd say we're not okay with not having all those components. You look at our long-term strategy of who we are and what really makes Titan unique is being able to do wheels and tires and deliver those assemblies and you see what we're doing with LSW with the great innovation that's been. We need to be able to do wheels and tires in the major agriculture markets around the world. We've got to be able to cover the CIS, Europe, North America, and South America. And so that's what Morry was referencing in the call today. We are looking at some assets for wheel business in Brazil. It would be an entry point. That would be successful in getting us delivering assemblies to the OEMs and that's really our target market to begin with. And it wouldn't require a lot of investment. It require a lot of really of Titan's ingenuity and experience that we would bring to the table to take a good little operation and turn it into something that is of Titan's standard. And so, Morry referenced that. We are in the early stages of that and certainly we will keep everybody up-to-date on that. But our goal is to be able to do the wheels and tires and deliver them in the major markets around the world. So no, I don't see us backing off of that, Ian. We're comfortable with our balance sheet and really moving forward with that plan. Ian A. Zaffino - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Okay. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: I'd like to just show in there, Ian, that number one, as Paul mentioned, we're moving around the water and more going on water to Russia. We did not decide to move staff…

Paul George Reitz - President

Management

Thanks, Jeff.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Schon Williams with BB&T Capital. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Hi. Good morning. C. Schon Williams - BB&T Capital Markets: Good morning, sir. I wonder if maybe we could just get an update on where we are with the EVA implementation, maybe, John, can just talk about what inning we are with that and kind of what milestones we should be looking for over the next kind of 6 months to 12 months.

John R. Hrudicka - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Sure. So we've grounded our capital committee process into EVA, actually our template, our financial template that we fill out and is used to propose and justify a capital appropriation is EVA grounded. We are currently in the midst of developing our three-year plan, strategic plan grounded in EVA. This is, obviously, a new approach for us as it would be many companies. So we're a little bit slower going through the process as the company learns and adopts EVA. It is our intent to actually present that plan to the board in June, and this three-year plan grounded in EVA will actually be correlated to a share price target for the company. So that's where we're at. The active engagement, the seeking of learning and better understanding EVA is rampant across the leadership team, and this will continue to percolate and evolve over the next six months to 12 months. Now with the culmination of that plan, that sets into the motion a very rigorous monitoring of the execution of the initiatives that are required to execute against that three-year plan and achieve our share price target. C. Schon Williams - BB&T Capital Markets: And is there any discussion going on around having some of this plan tied to management compensation? I'm just trying to get a sense of, is this more of a development tool, or is this something that potentially will be used to kind of measure management somewhere down the road and hence compensation would be tied to that?

John R. Hrudicka - Chief Financial Officer

Management

We have not had active discussions in that regard. I think our first step is to get the plan in front of the board and get them indoctrinated with EVA in the approach. But certainly if you adopt EVA and you become an EVA company, you're not all in, so to speak, unless that is grounded in your incentive compensation, just – and so the very well-run, well-managed EVA companies all have that common element as part of their incentive compensation system. So I would expect that to be a goal for us as well. C. Schon Williams - BB&T Capital Markets: Okay. That's helpful and then I wonder if we could just maybe dive into the Latin American market a bit. There seems to be some very kind of challenging economies in that region, particularly Brazil. There seems to be some question about maybe where the economy (46:18) rates go over the next couple of months here. Can you maybe just talk about – I think you described it as challenging, but I mean, is there any reason to think that it gets better or it gets worst from where we are right now? Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, from my point, Schon, the ag down there is always going to be going. You've got challenging parts down there with their currency going, you've got the political situation, but the great thing about South America is that 90% of those countries down there, they suffer the same fate. Just look south of them at Argentina. So we have been expanding the capacity from the tire range and the tire sizes, and most people don't understand that what's happened in South America is that they get new equipment, but they don't get new wheels and…

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Larry De Maria with William Blair. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Hi, Larry. Larry T. De Maria - William Blair & Co. LLC: Hey, Morry. How you're doing? Thanks. A couple of questions, first off, any update to the EBITDA targets for the year, Morry? Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: You guys just keep wanting to discuss with me, you know? I mean, what are you, shocked, I get the first one? That's the shock. No, when I tell you it's positive, I'll know more after what the guidance on the board and everything, what they want to go, most of the stuff that's in the works, it's like I said I got, what was it, calipers or whatever, think you ought just with everybody. That might be good if you're in the high tech stuff, but long term, a lot of the stuff we've planned, we've been for planning years. I don't know. The good news that we got to tell everybody about is in our mining sector. We now have gotten approvals that a number of mines for our big loader tires, and we're really excited about that, and we are excited about our partner up in the oil sands. So if everybody – you're an analyst, you know that if you turn around and you produce anywhere from 7,000 to 10,000 is the max you could ever produce out of Bryan, well, you would run that plant at a full capacity. So we are still making super giants, and we have some success with some good areas around the haul trucks, but our whole concentration has been to go into going after the loader market. And if we – this will be the defining…

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Alex Blanton with Clear Harbor Asset Management.

Alex M. Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management LLC

Management

Good morning. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning, Alex.

Alex M. Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management LLC

Management

Good news there, Morry. Thank you. You mentioned something about a trip in June. Could you give us the details on that? I don't know about that. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: The annual shareholders meeting, is in Union City, Tennessee at the old Goodyear facility, has 2.2 million square feet. We'll probably have carts to take people on. But we'll take you around and you can see what we bought. All right?

Alex M. Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management LLC

Management

And when you bought for $9 million? Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah.

Alex M. Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management LLC

Management

Yeah. And how many...? Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: And you'll see what we're doing. You'll see what we're planning to do. You'll see what we have and what we're doing. It's like when I tell people that you don't go – but I will come in. What we want to do, well, you see there's – maybe I need two welders, there's two in-lines there, two welders, probably two tractors, but I'll make the new DC welders. We make our own equipment. And then I'll take those welders out that are in Quincy out, and I put the new DC welders and take the other welders down there. I'll do the same with the tractors. So if we have to build or buy a piece of new equipment, it stays in the U.S., and then we take the U.S. equipment. We'll move it down to South America. So we're not going to spend a lot of money.

Alex M. Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management LLC

Management

What's the date of that meeting? Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: June 4.

Alex M. Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management LLC

Management

June 4. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: 11 o'clock. You get a plant tour, everything. You guys come to the Shareholders' Meeting. Shareholders' Meeting is like about – it's not like Warren Buffett. I'm not trying to sell you stuff. But as you know, it lasts for about five minutes, and then the plant tour and you get a chance to ask the board any question you want to ask them. Because you're all there.

Alex M. Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management LLC

Management

Is that the plant that you bought a bunch of equipment that was worth $90 million or something? Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I never put a price tag on it. So I'm not going say it to you now. It was for the equipment. It still is for the equipment. Certain of the equipment we are using, which we – came under our deal, most of this equipment – well, Goodyear wants us to scrap it, but scrap stinks, so why would you waste your time now? And I don't need the space. When I need the space then I'll do it so.

Alex M. Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management LLC

Management

You also... Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: If Goodyear wants the equipment, they pay me a set price then – but I don't think they want the equipment.

Alex M. Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management LLC

Management

Is that the one where you were able to rehire the people without the union being in and then you... Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: I did not do that. Okay? What we did, all right, is – what have you got – Leo Gerard from Steelworkers sitting next to you? What we did is we gave people that have an entrepreneur want/wish that we allowed them – we rent the equipment to them and when they sell stuff, they do it at a certain price for us. And then when they go to the outside and sell mixed stock or they sell fabric or they sell the steel-coated stuff, then we share in the profit.

Alex M. Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management LLC

Management

So you've got a bunch of small businesses within that plant that are... Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Most of them are LLCs and there's probably six or seven of them, yeah. And then, we have a mining facility. That's all our people. Okay?

Alex M. Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management LLC

Management

Okay. Second question is this, you mentioned you have some adjustments to make in Europe and the plan is in place, but I don't think you gave any details on what that is. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, because I'd get in trouble if I was telling you everything. Okay?

Alex M. Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management LLC

Management

Yeah, okay. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: And everybody will start shooting at me. But, yeah, if I told you we got adjustments, I'm telling you that we know what we got to do and but the first thing we had to do was correct the ones that we're really having a miss, which was Brazil, Russia and we had a few things we had to do here in the States, okay?

Alex M. Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management LLC

Management

Yeah. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Now, John, because he's from the finance, he was quite on it, but he was over there. He turned around and he came back with his idea. Paul was over there. He came back with his ideas, and Paul's going back in another week or something, and we have a plan. And what our plan is is to turn around and increase their profitability. And it's the way how you do it. You have to move. You see, I don't need a two-year plan to move out of one factory into another in Italy. So now, that is being moved up much, much faster. We got approval. We took 80 people out and it's very hard to take employees out over there. Hopefully, by the time we get that done, we'll pull their head out of their rear end and figure it out – the government. But we got the same thing at a couple other little locations, and there's some things to do – for them to do to improve their margins, which don't include taking people out. It includes making some changes and getting it done.

Alex M. Blanton - Clear Harbor Asset Management LLC

Management

Sounds good. Thank you. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Joe Gomes with William Smith.

Joseph Gomes - Wm Smith Securities, Inc.

Management

Good morning. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning, Joe.

Joseph Gomes - Wm Smith Securities, Inc.

Management

Most of my questions have been answered here already, but just trying to get some clarity on the Tire Reclamation project. If I heard you correctly, you were saying that that business could bring in roughly $100 million of ancillary business, so to speak, not business that has to do or revenues that have to do with the actual reclamation, but just additional products and services that you could sell to the companies up there. Did I hear that correctly? Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: You heard that real well.

Joseph Gomes - Wm Smith Securities, Inc.

Management

Okay. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: In other words, what it is is that – we are the only ones – we've gotten our permits up there. We're the only ones – and we haven't hired so many engineering consultants to make sure that it's not smoking the field. I'm not pulling a David Copperfield. (01:07:00) So they know it's for real. And so what we did is they're oil companies, and they all have 50 times more lawyers than us. So everything is in a contract. So what we talked to them about was that, hey, we don't have a problem taking care of this and everything else. And, yes, there's strong margins in it. But you're dealing a problem – you're solving one big environment problem for them. So, therefore, since we make wheels, tires, track, and we invested all that money into service trucks, everything else, and what I didn't know is that all that oil sand is pushed on to conveyor belts that run on chain, that goes on similar chain to a big used bulldozer. Just for sake, we'll use Cat because I know Cat's numbers (01:08:12), which are Intertractor (01:08:18) makes so we don't sell it to them. So I could sell – I'm going to take their big belts that they had coiled up for 1970s, trying to figure out what to do with them, and we can run those through, too. So I should be able to sell them the chain and when we got them negotiating, they agree. They agreed with everything I just told you. So we just start adding it up. It gets big quick. So we have the space now up there. There's two buildings on the space we got at the Voyager site and it's going to be chock-full. And that's real good for us. Currently today, they buy it from a distributor and most of that's done. So that's not too hard to compete with.

Joseph Gomes - Wm Smith Securities, Inc.

Management

Okay. Okay. And the CapEx number, I think in the fourth quarter you guys are saying for the year should be roughly $65 million. Is that still a good number? Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: As far as I know. Our decision to go for the real business down there – you got to remember, we – I'm going to have transportation and installation cost, but most of the equipment, we have bought – the only thing we would have to buy is probably a freight system down there which we'd have to buy in Brazil anyway. But most everything else – we have the presses, we have everything. So I think that'd be good.

John R. Hrudicka - Chief Financial Officer

Management

I'll make another comment on capital. So when we plan the capital number that you just referred to, that was part of our 2014 budget process. So that's what we plan for. We were very specific to the business units to let them know that while we plan for that, that's not approved capital spending. I mentioned the new capital committee process that we go through in the rigor of EVA that screens each capital request. So realistically – while we don't have a forecast for capital, realistically, I expect that probably will be something lower than the $65 million we talked in Q4, just because of the rigor relative to EVA that we'll screen the projects with.

Joseph Gomes - Wm Smith Securities, Inc.

Management

Okay. Great. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: And to add to that, I signed them all, and they know I refused to sign quite a few. They're nuts, okay? So and it's all part of the learning process. When you run through all the acquisitions that we did in the couple years leading up to the crunch time. So I agree with exactly what John just said. Your $65 million, I don't think it's going to be spent, and it should be considerably lower. But if they can come under the new formula and show where it's going to pay back, we will spend it.

Joseph Gomes - Wm Smith Securities, Inc.

Management

Okay. Great. Thank you. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Bob Franklin with Prudential Financial.

Robert M. Franklin - Prudential Investment Management, Inc.

Management

Hi. John, did you say what's in the $8 million other income, or could you tell us?

John R. Hrudicka - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Primarily, that's the FX gain that I spoke about. And if you remember my comments and the reason why I emphasized it is because a lot of the I guess articles that were being written about Titan and the concern being expressed, the currency relative to our intercompany loans and balances was cited. Specifically, we lost $32 million on that in 2014. So we actually turned a $6 million gain in Q1, so that makes up the bulk of what you just referred to. But more importantly, we did something very proactive to drive that gain. $4.5 million of that $6 million was the result of hedge positions we took with the sterling pound and the euro. And as I've said on the call, we're continuing to explore more additional strategies relative to mitigating risk relative to currency.

Robert M. Franklin - Prudential Investment Management, Inc.

Management

Okay. So that $8 million or $6 million, the whole thing I guess would be part of your EBITDA calculation, right?

John R. Hrudicka - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yes.

Robert M. Franklin - Prudential Investment Management, Inc.

Management

Right. And if currencies stay where they are and you don't do anything else, would we expect to see that continue?

John R. Hrudicka - Chief Financial Officer

Management

No. You're not going to see a $6 million gain if currencies – every quarter if currencies stay stable. In fact, we're continuing to evolve that strategy. We actually lifted the position because of some restructuring that we did that was probably causing a little bit more risk with one of the positions that we had. So we'll continue to adapt. But if currency stays stable, we should be in a pretty good position this year relative to FX on our intercompany loans and balances.

Robert M. Franklin - Prudential Investment Management, Inc.

Management

Okay. That's terrific. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Seth Crystall with R.W. Pressprich. Seth H. Crystall - R.W. Pressprich & Co., Inc.: Yes. Thank you for taking my call. Good morning. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning. Seth H. Crystall - R.W. Pressprich & Co., Inc.: You talked about a Brazilian acquisition, but you didn't mention any kind of cost. I'm assuming you're not going to share that kind of cost with us this morning? Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: I think I got to share it with the guys who we're dealing with, okay? We went down there, and we've located – let's just call them A, B and C, all right? And the parameters are the same. We will buy 70%, let them keep 30%, and then we'll take their 30% out over a period of time. So we're in negotiations, and if A agrees, then we present that to the board. We're not going to just give them one choice but to tell you on a public, worldwide here what/where would not do Titan's interest any good. Seth H. Crystall - R.W. Pressprich & Co., Inc.: No, I appreciate that. John, just in terms of liquidity, I mean the company has $191 million in cash. I think I saw in the 10-Q availability on the revolver about $106 million. So you've got plenty of liquidity from my perspective. If the company wanted to go out and make a bigger acquisition and maybe what's going on in Brazil because maybe an opportunity arises, could you give us an idea how much, based on the covenants and the senior notes, you might be able to borrow in addition to what you already have available on the revolver and the cash?

John R. Hrudicka - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Well, Seth, and I know there's been some conversation about this. You heard a lot on this call in terms of the efforts we're making to improve profitability. What I would say is I would just point you to the bond indenture and our credit agreement. It's not something we're currently contemplating and, therefore, we've not done the due diligence necessary to really answer your question. And I believe there's also specific calculations that apply to this that just has simply not been performed. As I've said, we've not contemplated this. Seth H. Crystall - R.W. Pressprich & Co., Inc.: Okay. So I guess it's... Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: There's so much cheap money out. You can go buy whatever the hell you want, and they'll cut it to you. So money is not the object. That whole thing that that blog wrote out there, philosophying, well, it's probably because he has a buddy that wanted to short the bonds and driving down bond. And now they're very happy. I'm mad. I didn't find out about it quick enough, I would have bought them. Seth H. Crystall - R.W. Pressprich & Co., Inc.: Yeah. Okay. John, maybe you could also help me again and maybe Paul also. In terms of the international business, when I look through the guarantor and the non-guarantor operations that you provide in the Q, it looks like the international was very inefficient, and even the allocation of how debt is allocated there. I know you have a intercompany loan, but might there be some point in time where you take out European debt or maybe Brazilian debt or something along those lines and bring cash back to the U.S. to repay the U.S. loan? Is that something you've discussed in terms of that? I mean I know you've talked about – Morry's talked about European adjustments you have to make. And I'm assuming that's to make those operations more efficient, so if you look through the Q, they look pretty inefficient. So anything you could tell me about what might be going on there?

John R. Hrudicka - Chief Financial Officer

Management

I guess the only thing – and I don't know – I mean the question could have many perspectives. If you're talking about from a standpoint of reducing currency exposure, I've talked about the reclassification of certain loans to minimize that exposure, but at this point we haven't had any in-depth conversations, but I will tell you, we actively talk about our intercompany loan structure and our debt to manage that more efficiently and reduce our interest costs and mitigate the currency exposure. Seth H. Crystall - R.W. Pressprich & Co., Inc.: Okay. Two other quick questions, so free cash flow, you said you'd hope to be somewhat positive this year. I mean working capital is a part of the free cash flow. I mean is that going to be a contributor to free cash flow this year?

John R. Hrudicka - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yes, it should be, not near to the extent that it was last year. Last year if I recall, it was upwards of $50 million in contribution. You saw receivables go up significantly on the quarter, which is typical of what will happen. That will stabilize, and we'll start to see some cash from that as that evolves over the year. But I've talked about – we continue to actively manage our working capital. Our inventory actually went down in Q1, which is atypical. It normally would go up on a Q1 coming off of Q4 where we really bring the balances way down. So, yes, I do expect some generation, not to the extent that we achieved in 2014. Seth H. Crystall - R.W. Pressprich & Co., Inc.: Okay. And then just the last question, just a curiosity, Exhibit 10.1 of the 10-Q was a trademark license agreement you have with Goodyear. Is that just more administrative to put that out there, or is there something I should read into it? I haven't read it yet. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I think what they're talking about is that – when we bought the South American facility, what we did is we also took – and that was a prepayment of all the royalties, both in South America and in North America. So there's probably about three more years. I think it goes through 2017 and so all that money was paid. So when you look at the income statement and you see that royalties, $3 million or whatever it is, that money's already really been paid. You want to see in your P&L but then over on your balance sheet, you watch your prepaid that you have over there, that gets reduced.

Paul George Reitz - President

Management

Yeah. Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: So that's really – now they can speak up, John or Paul.

Paul George Reitz - President

Management

To answer your question, the Exhibit 10.1 that was filed under Item 6 is really just a small technical/legal issue. That's nothing to do with business or operations or really any functional change in the relationship between Goodyear and our South American operations. It was a minor legal issue that we had to update, so not really any business issues associated with it. Seth H. Crystall - R.W. Pressprich & Co., Inc.: Got it, okay. Thanks. I appreciate it. Okay, great. Thanks a lot for taking my questions.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over... Maurice Manning Taylor - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: So we just say good-bye. And like I said, call Todd if you want to put me on the griddle or whatever, if you want to know some other, I'd be happy. I have the rest of the day and up to noon tomorrow. Oh, lunch time, I'm tied up but that's all. I'll let you all go. Thank you, everybody. Appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.