Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Apogee's Fiscal 2019 Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's conference maybe recorded. I would now like turn the call over to Mr. Jeff Huebschen. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Apogee Enterprises fiscal 2019 fourth quarter earnings call. With me today are Joe Puishys, Apogee's Chief Executive Officer; and Jim Porter, Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to remind everyone that there are slides to accompany today's remarks, which are available in the Investor Relations section of Apogee's website. During this call, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Definitions of these non-GAAP measures and the reconciliation to the nearest GAAP measures are provided in the earnings release we issued this morning which is also available on our website. Also, I'd like to remind everyone that our call will contain forward-looking statements reflecting management's expectations which are based on currently available information. Actual results may differ materially. More information about factors that could affect Apogee's business and financial results can be found in our SEC filings. And with that, I'll turn the call over to you Joe.

All right. Thanks, Jeff. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. By now, most of you have had a chance to read our press release. This morning, I'd like to review our fiscal 2019 and the progress we're making on our key strategies. We'll discuss the charge we recorded in the quarter of course, and highlight our outlook and long-term direction as well as comment on our favorable end markets. I'll turn it over to Jim for more details on the quarter and our guidance. For 2019, we made progress on many fronts despite a few challenges during the year. We delivered on another year of growth with revenue increasing to a record $1.4 billion. We continue to see solid demand for Apogee's products and services reflecting healthy end markets and the strength of Apogee's portfolio in the markets we serve. Full year orders for the entire company were up 12% compared to fiscal year 2018. We ended the year with higher backlogs driven by the long lead time parts of our business. In particular, our Architectural Services segment, which is our large curtainwall installation business, known as Harmon, continued to show great strength. Full year revenue grew 33%. Strong operating leverage, disciplined project selection, and impressive execution at the site led to record profitability. And we finished the year with a record backlog and a large slate of jobs about to enter backlog. In Architectural Glass, we made significant progress toward overcoming the challenges we faced earlier in the fiscal year. We saw order growth and began to recover some share in large projects. We hired and trained nearly 400 net new production employees during the year, an increase of over 20% in very tight labor markets. And we made strong progress to restore productivity, which is reflected in…

Thanks Joe and good morning everyone. I'll begin with our consolidated results, which you can see on page six of our earnings presentation. Total revenue was $346 million compared to $353 million in last year's fourth quarter. As Joe mentioned, we recorded pretax charges in the quarter. $42.6 million was related to increased project-related charges on the legacy EFCO contracts. This includes an increased estimate of the cost to complete the projects and claims related to project delays and other disputes. We also recorded a $3.1 million non-cash charge for the impairment of trade name intangibles related to EFCO. Including these charges, we had a fourth quarter operating loss of $14.8 million. Excluding these charges and the amortization of short-lived acquired intangibles, fourth quarter adjusted operating income was $31.2 million compared to $34.1 million in last year's fourth quarter. The decrease was primarily driven by reduced volumes and lower margins in Architectural Framing Systems which offset higher operating income in Architectural Services. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $42.4 million compared to $46.2 million in last year's fourth quarter. With the charges included, we had a net loss of $0.45 per share in the fourth quarter. On an adjusted basis earnings per share was $0.85, compared to $0.96 in the prior year period. As a reminder, last year's fourth quarter reported and adjusted earnings per share included a $0.13 per share benefit from implementation of the new tax reform law. During the fourth quarter, unusually severe winter weather impacted several of our business segments. This included production interruptions at our multiple manufacturing locations in the Midwest as well as disruption at some of our customers' job sites. In total, we estimate the severe weather reduced our fourth quarter earnings by $0.08 to $0.10 per share through a combination of some lost…

All right. Thanks, Jim. To wrap up I'd like to reiterate our confidence about Apogee's direction. Despite some challenges in F 2019 we're making continued progress on the strategy to strengthen our company and create shareholder value for the long-term. Our end markets remain healthy and solid as I've demonstrated today and the demand for Apogee's products and services also remain healthy. We have market leading businesses and numerous opportunities for organic growth and margin expansion. And finally, our financial position remains quite strong giving us significant flexibility to invest in profitable growth and also at the same time return capital to our shareholders. With that, Chelsea I'd like you to open up the call for questions please.

[Operator Instructions] Thank you. And our first question will come from the line of Chris Moore with CJS Securities. Your line is open.

Thanks. Good morning, guys.

Good morning.

Maybe we could -- good morning -- just start with framing. Obviously, EFCO's still struggling. Can you kind of talk a little bit about the core framing business versus EFCO in terms of the margin performance on the core framing?

Sure, Chris. This is Jim. I'll cover that. I mean our kind of core businesses, when we look at legacy businesses that have been in our portfolio for another -- for a long time I mean, we continued to see nice growth and margin expansion across those businesses in fiscal 2019 and see that going forward as well.

The -- it sounds like by Q3 of this year, most of the troubles -- troubled EFCO contracts will be completed. So reasonable to assume that -- I don't know from your remarks last quarter and then forward in terms of improved EFCO -- improved framing margins is reasonable?

Yeah. Chris, this is Joe. I also want to comment. EFCO is -- the core business of EFCO is performing better. We're starting to see productivity. I had mentioned orders were very strong. I put a new sales leader in place in the second half of last year. He was our -- one of our top guys here at Apogee. He has had experience at our Harmon installation business at our Wausau Window & Wall. And he is the fellow that I charged with creating and developing our retrofit business. We moved him down to join the team at EFCO. We're starting to see really good rewards from that. The orders have to come first. Q4 was strong on orders. Q1 has remained very strong. We're only 5.5 weeks into our new year but it's still important. And so, the core EFCO business is starting to look good. The overhang from these legacy projects, one in particular has been substantial and the distraction of that goes away. We're almost done with manufacturing the product and we're more than halfway through the installation. We should be substantially complete by August with the installation at the field site at the project site. And then after we get through that I can focus on some recovery efforts that I mentioned on the call.

And Chris within -- specifically within Framing Systems, that legacy work should really be through there in the first half of the year. So our expectation is to see that margin improvements really starting in Q3, carrying over into Q4, and knowing that we have a little bit of seasonality where Q3 is stronger than Q4 in Framing Systems.

Got it. That's helpful. Jim, you had mentioned anticipated increased corporate costs from higher legal and advisory. Can you maybe just talk to that a little bit?

Yeah. I mean, I think really the bottom line is on our corporate line we're probably estimating at this point about $2 million of increased costs in the corporate line. And it's a variety of legal expenses associated with various activities outside the core business as well as legal activities related to the legacy projects and the charges that we talked about and those types of things.

Got it. Let me jump back in line. Appreciate it guys.

Thanks, Chris.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Eric Stine with Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning, Eric.

Maybe just sticking with EFCO. I mean -- and this may be a tough question but any -- I mean, any thoughts on your confidence level regarding the ability whether it's insurance or legal to recover some of this? I mean, obviously, you've got a -- would seem to have a pretty good leg to stand on. And I know its part of a process. But just maybe thoughts on how you see that progressing?

Yeah. So Eric I -- let me be clear. And I kind of fumbled my -- my tongue was fumbling in the call. Any recoveries are not included in the charges, they're not included in the $3 and $3.20 guidance that Jim highlighted today. So, obviously, they are upside. I don't want to comment on anything and then lower our odds of success. I do feel confident that we have certain paths we can take. We, obviously, have insurance. We also have actions -- other actions we plan to take. I'm just going to be silent on those and hopefully deliver some good news in the future year or years, and I'll have to leave it at that Eric.

Got it. No understood. Well, and this question maybe in that same category, but just in terms of the investment in Glass. And it was -- thank you for quantifying that amount and I know you're not sharing a whole lot. But just from a high level, I mean is that -- should we think of that as new geography or just a new part of our market for you? If you're able to answer that.

Yes. No I appreciate the question. And I would have preferred to say nothing today. Eric, I don't want to gift-wrap a package to competitors, and I know you understand that. The shareholders would be upset and I would be distraught. But we had to say something because of the overhang. Glass is improving more than 150 basis points year-over-year. So we could not ignore that. We would have had more questions we'd go down a rat hole. And unfortunately, we'd be forced to mislead by not talking about it. That said, I believe by the end of the first quarter and certainly by some point in the second quarter we'll be able to talk more thoroughly about this effort. It's been well thought out. It is organic. I don't want anyone to believe we have an acquisition. And it is not related to further headcount adds in our existing facility. I thought that it was important to highlight that. But beyond that Eric I'm going to have to ask you to hold on.

Yes. No, that's helpful. Okay. Maybe last one for me. I'm interested Joe in your commentary, you talked about a large slate of jobs set to enter backlog in the Services business. And I know that you have that from time-to-time, but maybe if you could just talk about on top of the growth that you saw this quarter, how that large slate of jobs might compare to the typical quarter or maybe year-over-year some way to make a comparison there?

Yes. Our installation business has done an amazing job of project selection over the last several years. Actually their efforts on project selection began about seven years ago and it has been paying dividends. A field execution at the sites, I used the singular word earlier when I said site. I didn't mean to say that. At the construction sites, they've done a phenomenal job. So there's two parts of the company: The selection and the design engineering of the curtain wall solution and then the other half of the company is at the project site going up the side of the building. They've done a phenomenal job. Their backlog grew substantially in the fiscal year 2019. I'll go out on a limb and tell you I expect the first quarter backlog will expand again. And they just have an early substantial slate of job that they've been awarded, but we're not through the contracting process yet. So they’ll enter backlog late this quarter and into Q2. And there's a pretty large slate of projects that will be awarded to someone that we're active on, many of them that feel good about our chances on some core projects. So we believe the momentum will continue on an upward trajectory for that business. It is literally impossible in that world when your average win is in excess of $20 million, it's literally impossible to have the projects roll in so that your revenue stream is steady. We've tried to. But from the time you are verbally awarded a project to the time you actually start to revenue it, it's usually a year. And that lumpiness as projects get pushed out, it's literally impossible to have a smooth flow. If you look at that business kind of over a 24-month cycle, which frankly based on award to revenue flow, it's probably more appropriate, you can see the business performance has been steady as opposed to some of the year-over-year lumpiness. The pipeline also allows us to maintain that disciplined project selection. We don't get desperate to go after risky jobs because of a hole in the pipeline. So the pipeline is very strong. You'll see backlog increase in Q1. Beyond that I don't want to get into backlog projections. But as I mentioned, we've got more than $100 million in backlog in that business than we did a year ago. And that -- look what happened after the last -- after the year after that pipeline we had a record year. So you say, "Well, why isn't F 2020 going to be even better?" It's just because of the flow of work that we have. There's a lot more in the second year meaning F 2021 than there was in the second year just a year ago. We liked it. We liked the problem. And we obviously hope the business continues to outperform expectations.

Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Eric.

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Brent Thielman with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open.

Hey, great. Thanks. Good morning.

Hey Brent. Good morning. Joe or Jim on Glass, any sense how much the weather-related disruptions impacted margins? I know it was a challenging quarter from that perspective. And then should we -- understanding some of the headwinds to the year, should we see some sequential progress into the first quarter?

Yes. Let me give you -- Jim will give you the detail answer Brent. Let me just tell you that it was unprecedented what happened in February. The amount of -- I mean, there were a mandatory closure of the highways. It was bizarre. We here in Minneapolis had easy weather or relatively easy. Southern Minnesota one hour away highways were closed. The National Guard was trying to rescue people on the highway. I think we had seven days of weather-related production shutdowns mean, and I think we had about 14 shifts of production that we lost. Because it happened in February I didn't have a chance to make it up later in the quarter. That was the end of the quarter. It impacted our Large-Scale Optical factory as well. We don't call it out because the business is much smaller, but it impacted that business as well. So it was real. The basis points impact or the earnings per share impact is, I'll let Jim comment on it.

Yes, Joe, I'll take that. I mean, specifically, Brent, related to Architectural Glass, we estimate that in the quarter it had over 100 basis point drag on operating margins of that segment. And as Joe described it, I mean, it was probably kind of split between a little bit of loss of revenue, which really wasn't material. But not just the plant shutdowns, but having many days where we had staffing storages because employees couldn't get to the factory just led to productivity challenges in the business. So in the quarter, as I said, it's a little over 100 basis points, and that should -- that goes away.

Yes. Okay. And then you guys are projecting 7% margins in that segment this year. Understand some of these investments are going to weigh on margins a little bit as we go through the year. Is it your expectation to get back to double-digits in this business as those costs kind of go away?

Absolutely. As we continue to improve our productivity, get this project launched that will give us some head -- tailwinds on revenue growth and margin expansion. Without question this business has to get back to double-digits.

And as we have been saying our expectation is as we get to the end of the second quarter we expect to be at that run rate. So we expect the second half of the year to be at that double-digit operating margin level.

Got it. The installation business great. I mean, obviously, a really great year. Joe, I want to get your thoughts. I know you want to manage kind of how large that business gets the piece of the whole pie. But does this year's performance change at all kind of your thresholds for how large you want the business to get?

Yes. We don't want this to be a $500 million part of our portfolio as a public company. It is obviously a bit of a challenge. For my seven and half, almost eight years I've been here we've never operated differently just because we're a public company, but it's a headache clearly. The business has continued on an upward trajectory for all these eight years. I – we still have room for growth. We're not going to add another, let's call it shift of project managers and engineers, because that would be problematic when a slowdown happens. So we can continue to grow the business. I think the revenue of approximately $300 million are where I'd like to be at – in the – as we approach the top of the cycle and maybe in the low 200s, at the bottom end of a cycle at lowest. But I think our – my expectations on operating margin, Brent admittedly are now higher. The business has performed better in all aspects project selection and execution. I'm very proud of the team. We talk about F 2020 as a return to really great results. F 2020 is going to be at historically high levels for that business. And we shouldn't talk about it in any other manner. It just won't be as powerful as the F 2019 results, but the backlog is better as I mentioned than a year ago. I hope the projects in backlog will prove to be better than the margin that we just experienced. Jim mentioned maturity, that's a key factor. The age of our projects is younger in F 2020 than it was in F 2019 and that's important. As we close out projects, we tend to take good news later in the projects for obvious reasons. If we ever have bad news, we take it immediately. But as we execute well, you see a little bit more margin pickup as projects progress to the end of the installation. Our F 2020 maturity is a little bit lower, so we've been little conservative on our expectation there. I think the business will continue to perform extremely well. And I would say, my margin expectations of a stretch goal of getting to 10% someday are no longer a stretch goal. I believe that that can be more of our norm than at the peak markets.

Got it. Last one, if I could. Just sticking with that segment, Joe. I understand the long lead times kind of associated with it and obviously factored that into the outlook. Does seem like a really strong market right now. I mean, would you agree there is still opportunities to kind of fill in some holes through the year or is that just work you don't really necessarily want to pursue?

Well, they can still win projects that will have beginning revenue flows in F 2020. It – as we get to this point in the calendar, its most projects that they get awarded will have very little revenue flow some design engineering. So they can fill on a few holes, but it's – everything we're booking now will be for F 2021 and beyond. Projects do slip out, sometimes they pull forward. So our confidence in our forecast for that business is pretty solid. Filling in more holes would be a challenge at this point in the calendar year.

Okay. Great. Thank you. I'll turn it over.

Thanks, Brent.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our next question will come from the line of Julio Romero with Sidoti & Company. Your line is open. Q – Julio Romero: Hey good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to ask about the retrofit initiative. Nice job growing that about $50 million for the year. Can you just give us a refresher on what the margins look like for that work? And what would be a fair expectation for retrofit revenues for the upcoming year? A – Joe Puishys: Yes the margins are generally reflective of our existing businesses. All the revenues do go through our current segments. But this is business we would not have had without this initiative. It is what we call a make market. You're convincing customers you're working with customers kind of on a project basis. There's often not competition. You're a partner, the project either goes forward or it doesn't. I believe when I came here I brought this initiative. We had a massive effort in this in the industry I came from which was on the inside of buildings. It tends to be anti-cyclical at times. I want to point out the $50 million were awards or orders. The revenue stream follows that. I still believe we can get to $100 million as an annual impact. We have added to the team. We're working on further expanding our footprint across the geography of the U.S. with this initiative. We've hired energy engineers and sales people for this. They collaborate with our Framing Systems businesses. And it usually involves pulling through our own Glass. It's typically not the installation target market for us, so we're usually using regional installers, but it does use our glass, our window and wall systems, our finishing capability. And I'll continue to push this initiative going forward. And as I said, I hope to see $100 million a year before I retire. Q – Julio Romero: Okay, very good. And just on the CapEx, $60 million to $65 million, how much of that would be maintenance versus growth? A – Jim Porter: About $25 million -- kind of roughly $25 million is maintenance capital. Q – Julio Romero: Okay, very good. I’ll hop back in the queue. Thanks very much. A – Joe Puishys: Okay. Chelsea, can you see if there are any more questions from any of the listeners?

I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I'll now turn the call back to Mr. Joe Puishys for closing remarks.

Okay, thank you, Chelsea and to all of our investors and analysts, thank you for listening today. I'll be meeting with many folks over the next week on the road. Jim and I are available and Jeff to follow up phone calls. I know we had a lot on the table today. The good news is I believe our fiscal '20 guidance is extremely realistic and we look forward to delivering on the guidance we provided today. And look forward to our next call with all of you. Thank you. Have a great day.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This does conclude the program and you may all disconnect. Everyone have a great day.