Earnings Labs

AstroNova, Inc. (ALOT)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Mar 18, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Astro-Med Q4 Fiscal Year 2015 conference. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to David Calusdian. Please go ahead.

David Calusdian

Management

Thank you, and good morning everyone. Hosting this morning’s call are Greg Woods, Astro-Med’s President and CEO, and Joe O’Connell, Senior Vice President and CFO. Greg will begin today’s call by reviewing the company’s operating highlights and business outlook. Joe will take you through the financials. Greg will make some concluding remarks and then management will be happy to take your questions. By now, you should have received a copy of the news release which was issued earlier today. If you have not received a copy, please go to the investor section of the company’s website, www.astro-medinc.com. Please note that statements made during this call that are not statements of historical fact are considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions that could involve risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, actual results could differ materially. Such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date made. Except as required by law, the company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. For further information regarding the forward-looking statements and the factors that may cause differences, please see the company’s risk factors in the company’s annual report on Form 10-K and other filings Astro-Med makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission. During this morning’s call, management will make references to non-GAAP income from continuing operations and non-GAAP net income from continuing operations per diluted share. The company believes that the inclusion of these non-GAAP financial measures in this press release helps investors gain a meaningful understanding of changes in the company’s core operating results and can also help investors who wish to make comparisons between Astro-Med and other companies on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. For more information, please see the GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation table in this morning’s new release. The tables have more details about the GAAP financial measures that are most directly comparable to non-GAAP financial measures and related reconciliations between those financials measures. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Greg Woods.

Greg Woods

Management

Thank you, David, and good morning everyone. This morning we reported full year fiscal 2015 revenue of $88.3 million, exceeding our guidance of the $80 million to $85 million and beating last year’s revenue by 28.8%. On the bottom line, the company earned $0.60 per diluted share, coming in at the top end of our EPS forecast of $0.55 to $0.60. Astro-Med continues to make significant strides in each of the themes we have discussed with you during the past year: new products, geographic expansion, and manufacturing efficiencies. In addition, through focused investments in technology, marketing and personnel, we continue to build a solid foundation to generate sustained margin improvement and profitable growth. I’ll discuss those investments in more detail shortly, but first let’s turn to the highlights of the fourth quarter which saw net sales increase by 24.5% to $22.1 million on strong growth in both of our segments. Looking first at our QuickLabel Systems segment, revenue increased approximately 15% from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014 to $14.8 million while for the full year sales were up 22% to $59.8 million. The performance of our QLS segment was led by strong demand for our family of six high performance digital inkjet color label printers. Each of these products addresses a unique need for an on-demand label printing solution that is fast, efficient, affordable and delivers quality that rivals flexographic printing. Customers in dozens of industries are increasingly relying on our colored digital imaging solutions for their packaging needs. For competitive reasons, we don’t provide a breakout of unit sales, but what we can say is that for the fiscal year ended January 31, our overall printer unit volume is up a very healthy 68%. There are a number of factors driving the growth at QLS. One factor is…

Greg Woods

Management

Thank you, Joe. To summarize this morning’s call, Astro-Med is putting the strategic pieces in place to generate sustained margin improvement and profitable growth. As we did last year, Joe and I will provide revenue and earnings guidance for fiscal 2016 during our Q1 call in May. With that, we’re happy to take your questions. Operator?

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] We’ll take our first question from Evan Greenberg.

Evan Greenberg

Analyst

Yes, Evan Greenberg - the K is silent. How are you guys?

Greg Woods

Management

Morning Evan.

Evan Greenberg

Analyst

Hey, how are you? I wanted to know what the [indiscernible] because you didn’t break that cost down on the ERP system, and why you didn’t put that in the pro forma number. Joe O’Connell: Well a lot of that, Evan, is capitalized. We have some expenses but it’s more activity-related expenses. As you might--as you know, most of those dollars related to the hardware and software product that we bought is capitalized and amortized over the life of the system.

Evan Greenberg

Analyst

Okay, all right. So it wasn’t material for the quarter, the expense was material but not in terms of the earnings report? Joe O’Connell: Right, it was material but it was not relative to the earnings, that’s correct.

Greg Woods

Management

I’ll just chime in there for a second, Evan. There’s a lot of unquantifiable numbers in there too, right, so all the time we spend training all the employees. There’s no way to really quantify that. Joe O’Connell: Right.

Evan Greenberg

Analyst

Yeah, I mean, I’ve got to believe it was at least $250,000 to $300,000 impact minimum. Just trying to get a handle on--. So let me ask you another question - the gross margin numbers, you’d figure with the increased revenue that even with the mix improvement, you’d probably pick up--you might not pick up some gross margin points but it will at least be somewhat stable. Why was the gross margin down so much year-over-year? Joe O’Connell: We did incur some costs associated, as you say, with the relocation of activities to get ready for some of the lean initiatives. We also had some promotional programs during the quarter, Evan, that actually lowered a little bit the ASP. So a combination of factors, I think, were really the primary reasons behind the lower gross margins.

Evan Greenberg

Analyst

Okay. All right, thanks a lot, and keep up the good work. You guys are turning into a growth company.

Greg Woods

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

We’ll go next to Joe Furst at Furst Associates.

Joe Furst

Analyst

Good morning, gentlemen. Congratulations - doing a good job. I’m curious about over the next year or two, from which segments of the business do you expect the most growth?

Greg Woods

Management

The most growth is kind of a difficult question to ask, because both areas are doing fairly well, so it’s really based on timing and specific orders. We think they’re both double-digit growth potential businesses. They’ve proven that so far and we expect that to continue; but exactly who is going to be in the lead, it’s kind of a bit of a horse race.

Joe Furst

Analyst

Okay, thank you. One other question, if I could ask. Your printing business seems to be going very well. Is it the fact that there just aren’t good competitive printers out there, or are you sort of alone in some of these areas? What is it that makes your printers seem to be selling so very well?

Greg Woods

Management

Well I, and I guess all our sales people wish that was the case, but it’s not. Yeah, it’s fairly competitive, to be honest with you, but we believe we deliver the best value. So there are a number of competitors out there, but for the areas that we’re targeting, certainly we believe and many of our customers do that we have the best solution for them. So that’s--and again, if we just had the best product and we could just sit on our laurels, we wouldn’t have introduced four new products in Q4, so it is the type of thing where you’ve got to stay ahead of the pack. We think we’re doing that, and not only from the product but also from our customer support and service and the salespeople we have out there. We feel by far we have the best team out there, so that does give us an edge.

Joe Furst

Analyst

Good, and are you still looking at potential acquisitions?

Greg Woods

Management

Yes, we are. Nothing that we can talk about today, but it’s an active part of our business.

Joe Furst

Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

As a reminder, that is star, one if you would like to ask a question. We’ll go next to Tom Spiro at Spiro Capital.

Tom Spiro

Analyst

Good morning.

Greg Woods

Management

Morning Tom.

Tom Spiro

Analyst

I’m new to the story, so a couple of basic questions. On the ruggedized printers, can you give me a sense either for your own business or perhaps for the industry, if you’re more comfortable, how that business breaks down between the commercial military and everybody else in terms of sales?

Greg Woods

Management

Yeah, we really don’t break that out. So we are in really three segments - it’s commercial--we break it into three, anyway, commercial, military, and business and regional jets. We participate in all three of those segments. I guess the only thing I would say is that the military is not growing nearly as fast as the other segments, and it’s not as big of a segment, so the majority of it is coming from the commercial and business and regional jets.

Tom Spiro

Analyst

I see. As I look at the sales numbers reported for the year, that’s a combination of both what I’d call your core business and the Miltope, if I pronounced that correctly, the Miltope business you picked up about a year ago. In the quarter just ended, what were Miltope’s sales roughly?

Greg Woods

Management

We don’t actually break that out independently.

Tom Spiro

Analyst

We actually have in the last several Qs. Joe O’Connell: Well Tom, the difficulty is that we’re actually moving some of those products over to Astro-Med products, so it gets somewhat muddled, if you will, in terms of the revenues. I think the expectations for the year, we have totaled in the past of roughly $8 million annually, and I think we haven’t been disappointed. But I think the difficulty would be to cull that out in the future.

Tom Spiro

Analyst

Okay, if I use--I’m sorry?

Greg Woods

Management

No, I was just going to comment on that, is that to amplify what Joe said, a lot of the customers--I shouldn’t say a lot, many customers that we have from the Miltope acquisition have looked at some of the Astro-Med products, and some of those have already converted over to Astro-Med products, so it gets very hard to sort out which is a Miltope customer versus an Astro-Med customer.

Tom Spiro

Analyst

I see. If I used 8 as just kind of a ballpark number, that would suggest that apart from Miltope, the test and measurement sales grew at a modest rate this past year, something in the 5% or 6% kind of a range, if I’m doing my math right. I think you’ve described it as kind of a double-digit grower, so maybe my math is wrong and you could correct me, or maybe there’s something else we need to be thinking about.

Greg Woods

Management

No, that’s just a matter of timing. So the way the aircraft business works is you get contracts--I can reference one that we got a few years ago for the Boeing 787. So really, what will happen is once you win the contract, you’ve got that business typically for the life of the air frame, but the actual orders are a bit erratic. If you look at the 787, for example, we had the issue with their lithium batteries where production almost stopped and then it ramped up again, so the exact timing is a little bit difficult to predict. We think overall it will certainly be in that range.

Tom Spiro

Analyst

And within the T&M, you’ve also got, I believe you call it your data acquisition products. I don’t really understand what’s growing that and how you’ll continue to grow it. Can you give me just a little bit of color on that?

Greg Woods

Management

Sure, so the data acquisition products, they are used in a wide range of industries but transportation is probably the dominant segment there, which includes aviation, rail and auto. Really, what happens is we have kind of a high end product in that space, so more the high end users of those products, and that’s everything from airlines, like Airbus and Boeing for example, to auto manufacturers are looking at exactly how they can enhance their products. They use our products to validate their own testing. It’s also used in the energy business quite a bit, whether it’s nuclear power plants or other types of power plants. There are federal requirements, other countries have similar requirements where they have to take independent measurements of those operations, and that’s what they use our equipment for. It’s traceable back to the National Bureau of Standards, so we have a very high reputation in the business.

Tom Spiro

Analyst

I see. Just a few of the macro variables, maybe you could comment on how they may be affecting you folks. Currency - the dollar is up, what that portends for you overseas. I would think those are challenges. Sluggishness in Europe, number two; and energy, I don’t know if you sell much into the energy sector. It sounds like your data acquisition products really don’t go there, so I’m guessing it’s not much of an issue, but if you could just comment on those three variables.

Greg Woods

Management

Yeah, in energy you’re fairly right. We do have energy components in there, but it’s nothing significant; so for example, the slowdown in drilling doesn’t really affect us. Europe does affect us in a couple ways. As far as the economies, we do fairly well in Europe. We don’t really focus much in southern Europe. Most of our business is in northern Europe, and you may or not be aware but we have direct facilities in the U.K., France and Germany, and we have dealers in the rest of Europe. So the northern European market for us is doing very well, and we sell in local currencies so yes, we are subject to the issues with the euro dropping. I think Joe highlighted that in his comments. Joe O’Connell: And Canada, also.

Greg Woods

Management

Yeah, and Canada is also an area for us that we have some currency impact.

Tom Spiro

Analyst

Lastly on the new IT system, you mentioned you went online a couple of weeks ago, but how long until you think the new IT system is sort of a net positive - you know, you’ve integrated it, everyone is used to it, it’s helpful rather than a hindrance? Joe O’Connell: Well actually, that’s a good question, Tom. It’s not really so much a hindrance. It’s a little bit of a learning curve right now, but I think--I would say we’re probably talking six months. As Greg mentioned earlier, it’s going to be a terrific platform for us to also integrate a lot of our other applications that we have. We have a brand-new PLM application, we also have a CRM application that we’ll also be able to integrate it, so probably this year will be an important transition year in terms of really bulking up the capabilities and really seeing some dramatic improvements in terms of the capabilities the system will bring us.

Tom Spiro

Analyst

Well thanks much.

Greg Woods

Management

Sure.

Operator

Operator

That does conclude today’s question and answer session. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference back over to Greg Woods for any closing remarks.

Greg Woods

Management

Great. Thank you for joining us this morning everyone. We look forward to keeping you updated on our progress, and have a great day. A - Joe O’Connell: Bye now.

Operator

Operator

That does conclude today’s conference. Again, thank you for your participation.