Joseph Puishys
Analyst · Sidoti. Your line is now open
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Apogee’s conference call. With our second quarter performance, we had outstanding results; revenues growing 16%, gross margin up 240 basis points to 26%, operating margin up 260 basis points to 11.9% and earnings per share up 54% to $0.77. I’m also pleased that our Lean initiative is paying dividends, and I’ll talk more about that in a few minutes. In addition, with our operating income up 47%, we’ve delivered 20 straight quarters of substantial double-digit operating income growth, bringing us to corporate records for revenue, profit and margins and more to come. Building on our strong performance year-to-date and expectations that this level of performance will continue in what is a healthy commercial construction market I’ll discuss that in a few moments, we are once again increasing our full-year EPS outlook to $2.80 to $2.90 per share, up from $2.70 to $2.85 per share in the prior guidance. We’ve narrowed the range and raised both ends of the guidance. The strength we’ve been seeing in all of our non-residential construction end markets is evident in the results from our Architectural segments. All three segments in architectural grew revenues and operating income, with operating margins all increasing at least 200 basis points and topline growth rates ranging from 7% to 49%. Turning to the backlog. Backlog grew sequentially and year-on-year in Architectural Glass and Framing Systems. The decline in the consolidated backlog resulted from the inconsistent timing of committed Architectural Services segment projects progressing to signed contracts, at which point they enter our backlog. This business continues to have an impressive pipeline of active bids and awards. As Jim reminds you every quarter, the Architectural Services projects business has lumpy quarter-to-quarter revenues and backlog. This trend was evident as services revenues were up 49% in the quarter when no significant projects entered the backlog. I, too, would like to see revenues and earnings here more level, but this is not the project’s world. A challenge for a public company, yes. Although lumpy results are challenged, this business remains a gem and is our highest ROIC segment, and we manage this business for the long-term. Our services installation business is operating at the desired capacity as we somewhat tempered growth to focus on margin enhancement. Operating margin in the quarter was up 500 basis points to 8%. In year-to-date, it’s up 450 basis points to 6.7%. This year-to-date margin level is three times better than the operating margin for the full-year in fiscal 2014, just 2.5 years ago. I’m proud of this improvement as we are doing what we said we would do in the installation business. I’ll make a few comments now on the other segments before turning to the outlook for the balance of the year. In Architectural Glass, strong U.S. volume and improved mix drove 7% topline growth. Operating income was up 43% and operating margin expanded 240 basis points to 9.7%, an approximate level we expect to see for the full-year. In spite of the declines in international, that would be our Brazilian business, and exports from the U.S. due to the strength of the dollar, our U.S. business achieved solid growth. The Architectural Framing segment had 14% topline growth with increased volume in all four segment businesses, along with improved pricing and mix. The margin for this segment expanded over 200 basis points to 14.1%. We have gained share through our NPI, that’s new product introduction, and geographic expansion and coupled that with best-in-class service and quality to gain this share. The Large-Scale Optical segment continues to operate well, although revenues and operating income were down in the quarter compared to the prior year period on the timing of custom orders as well as new market investments. We project both top and bottom line growth in the Large-Scale Optical segment in the second half of the year. We also continue to develop new markets to leverage our core intellectual property and new products in this segment. Now let me cover our outlook for fiscal 2017. Our backlog level supports our growth outlook for fiscal 2017 and beyond, and we feel bullish about our end-market commercial construction market as we did at the end of the first quarter. Nothing has changed in terms of bidding activity in architectural businesses. We continue to expect mid-single-digit growth in U.S. commercial construction market for fiscal 2017 as market activity. The Architectural Billing Index, office employment and office vacancy rates all show positive momentum. Specifically, the ABI has been at 50 or better for 21 over the last 24 months, indicating reliable, manageable, sustainable growth in architectural activity. There have now been almost 80 straight months of private sector job growth in the United States. The U.S. office vacancy rates, as reported by CBRE, continued to decline in the second calendar quarter, and we’re now down to 13%, the lowest level for vacancy in several years. The Dodge Momentum Index, a monthly measure of the first or initial report for non-residential building projects in planning grew 1.3% in August, making it the fifth consecutive month that the momentum index has increased, marking the longest sub-streak since the end of 2012. The momentum index is currently 16% above the same month a year ago. Reflecting this growth by major sector, institutional planning up 22% and commercial planning up 11%. And according to Dodge, both sectors are showing such improved - improvement and suggests that developers are shrugging off sluggish economic data and uncertainty surrounding the elections and moving ahead with plans for new projects. As I highlighted earlier, we are increasing our earnings per share outlook for fiscal 2017 to $2.80 to $2.90 a share, up from $2.70 to $2.85, as a result of continued market strength as well as our solid operational performance and productivity, driven by our Lean efforts. We are maintaining our outlook for approximately 10% revenue growth this fiscal year. With our internal market visibility and external metrics moving in the right direction, we see U.S. non-residential market growth that leads through fiscal 2020. We are reaffirming our longer-term outlook that we have provided for fiscal 2018. We are expecting revenues of $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion and an operating margin of 12% to 13% in fiscal 2018. We have been doing what we said we would do, and I am optimistic about Apogee’s stated growth outlook for fiscal years 2017, 2018 and beyond. Jim will now cover the financials.