Steve Kaniewski
Analyst · William Blair. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Renee. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, I would like to begin by sharing some opening comments and then provide a brief overview of the quarter. Before I do that, I want to take a moment to recognize the contributions of Walter Scott Jr. He serves on our board for more than 40 years and passed away late last month. While there was an incredible individual, his wisdom and leadership are critical to Valmont's success over the years. His losses fell deeply by those who knew him and the entire Omaha community. Walter's council, kindness and mentorship will truly be missed by all of us at Valmont. Moving on to the business. Our strong performance this quarter once again demonstrated the solid demand across our businesses and the consistent execution of our growth strategy, even amid a challenging global environment. Like most others, we have faced the impacts of broad based inflation, the COVID-19 Delta variant and labor and supply chain disruptions. Government mandated lockdowns in Australia and workforce quarantines in North America, including Mexico and the Southeast United States impacted certain utility and Coatings facilities. Supply chain disruptions affect the timing of some shipments in our irrigation and solar business. Despite this, we've delivered a strong quarter of growth and profitability. Our commercial and operations teams are managing exceptionally well. So these unique dynamics, the focus of perseverance, while continuing to prioritize employee safety and serve our customers. I'm extremely proud of our team's execution throughout this year. Now, let me move to a brief overview of our third quarter summarized on slide four of the presentation. Record third quarter sales of $868.8 million increase more than 18% compared to last year. Sales growth is realized in all segment, led by higher pricing and strong broad based market demand with particularly substantial sales growth and irrigation. Moving to the segments and starting with Utility. Sales of $276.5 million were slightly compared to last year, a significantly higher pricing and higher volumes were mostly offset by renewable energy projects that did not repeat, or that were pushed into future quarters due to customers supply chain disruptions. With marking utilities have been increasing their planned investments transmission and distribution projects, even exceeding recent years of higher capital spending. Further proposed capacity additions in the renewable energy sector are favorable demand drivers across our utility business. We see strong demand continuing as both utilities and developers have been increasing their forecasts of additional projects over the next several years to comply with mandates to increase renewable energy generation. Moving to engineered support structure. Sales of $281.1 million, increase 10% year-over-year, led by favorable pricing in all markets, and sales growth of more than 25% in wireless communication products and components. Pricing improvements across all product lines continued this quarter. And international markets are benefiting from higher stimulus and infrastructure investments, especially in Australia. 5G build outs and significant investments by the major carriers are driving demand in our wireless communications business, providing a good line of sight into 2022. Turning to Coatings. Sales of $96.7 million, grew 10% year-over-year, driven by higher pricing, improved general end market demand and sales from our new Greenfield facility in Pittsburgh. Moving to irrigation, global sales of $240.3 million, or more than 72% year-over-year, with sales growth in all regions and higher sales of technology solutions. In North America, sales grew nearly 55%, a strong market fundamentals and improved net farm income projections continue to positively impact farmer sense, generating very strong order flow. International sales doubled year-over-year, led by solid demand in the Middle East and Africa, including the ongoing deliveries of the Egypt project, and another record quarter of sales in Brazil. Last quarter, we highlighted our acquisition of Prospera Technologies. Integration is going well and we are making substantial progress building on our new strategy to grow recurring revenue services. We are on track to meet the financial targets that we shared last quarter, and look forward to sharing progress towards these goals in the future. In irrigation, we have a unique market advantage due to our global footprint and highly differentiated AI solutions, both critical components of our growth strategy. Over the past year, we have been increasing opportunities for local manufacturing in the markets we serve, especially in light of the challenging supply chain environment, labor availability, and higher freight costs. For example, we recently localize some of our electronics assembly and our device assembly, and are increasing the total capacity in our Brazil factory by 50%. Positioning us for long-term international market growth. While we continue enhancing service to our dealers and customers. We are also very pleased that our irrigation backlog at the end of third quarter was $388 million, up 26% year-over-year. Turning to Slide 5. As we've said before, ESG is embedded into the core of our company's purpose. And there are many ways of our products and services, conserve resources, and improve life. One recent example of this is using solar solutions to transform the Sudan desert into a prosperous and sustainable region for agricultural production. Sudan is the third largest country on the African continent. Agriculture is quickly becoming its primary economic driver, accounting for 40% of the nation's GDP, and employing close to 80% of the local workforce. But our conditions and a lack of direct access to electricity in the region are hindering its expansion. To help overcome these challenges, our Valmont Solar team recently installed a PV plant to bring power to center pivots. Sunlight is captured and transformed immediately into electricity, eliminating the need for a battery or secondary energy source. We're proud to have initiated this project powering pivots by solar energy 100% independence from the grid. Our innovative solutions are leading the way for precision agriculture and Sudan, opening doors to other solutions that will enhance productivity. Empower local communities to solve through security issues, and help build a more sustainable world. With that, I will now turn the call over to Avner for our third quarter financial review and 2021 outlook.