Thomas J. Felmer
Analyst · CJS Securities
Thanks, Frank. And good morning, everyone. I'll flow to Slide 4 to give some clarity around our underlying business results. Outlined on this page are the major items impacting comparability. First, we incurred a pretax restructuring charge of approximately $15.6 million, or $0.22 per share, in the fourth quarter. Second, we incurred pretax noncash impairment charges of $204.4 million, or $3.71 per share, related to the write-down of certain long-lived assets in Asia-Pacific region, the write-down of goodwill on our Workplace Safety business in the Americas and the write-down of certain other intangible assets. Third, during the quarter ended July 31, 2013, we also recorded a noncash tax charge related to the funding of the PDC acquisition and noncash tax valuation allowances totaling $4 million, or $0.08 per share. And lastly, we realized a pretax benefit of $4.2 million in the quarter, or $0.05 per share, related to the reversal of restricted stock expense as we do not anticipate that the associated performance criteria will be met. As you can see, if you exclude these items, our EPS was $0.53 in the fourth quarter. Moving on to Slide 5. Sales from continuing operations were up 14.9% to $309.1 million in the fourth quarter. Acquisitions, net of divestitures, added 16.9% to sales, foreign currency translation added another 3/10 of 1% and organic revenues were down 2.3%. By business platform, Organic revenues were up 2.1% and Identification Solutions is down 8.6% in Workplace Safety. Our fourth quarter gross profit margin finished at 50.8%, down from the 54.8% gross profit margin in last year's fourth quarter. SG&A expense was 34.6% of sales in the fourth quarter of this year compared to 37.3% of sales in the fourth quarter of last year. EPS from continuing operations was a loss of $3.41 per share in the quarter due to the restructuring and noncash charges I just mentioned. On a non-GAAP basis, EPS from continuing operations was $0.53 in the fourth quarter, compared to the prior year's non-GAAP EPS of $0.56. Slide #6 introduces our continuing operation guidance for fiscal 2014. We anticipate organic sales to range from a slight contraction to low single-digit growth with organic sales strongest in our Identification Solutions business. We also expect organic sales to be down in the first half of the year and restructuring -- and returning to positive organic sales in the second half of fiscal 2014 as our initiatives to improve our Workplace Safety business begin to produce results. For fiscal 2014, we expect earnings from continuing operations per diluted Class A nonvoting common share of between $1.80 and $2, exclusive of restructuring charges and other nonroutine items. Included in this guidance is an incremental $0.08 of benefit from the acquisition of PDC, approximately $0.40 of benefit from the business simplification activities net of certain reinvestments, approximately $0.20 of costs related to investments in our Workplace Safety business, half of which are digital-related investments, and approximately $0.25 of incremental expenses due to increased incentive composition. The anticipated return of incentive compensation to a more normal level in fiscal 2014 is because we paid minimal bonus in fiscal 2013 and we also reported a $4.2 million benefit in fiscal 2013 that will not recur in fiscal 2014, due to the restricted stock expense reversal that I just mentioned. To put this in perspective, even with this increase in incentive compensation, our anticipated fiscal 2014 incentive payout will still be less than half of what they were in fiscal 2011. This guidance is based on current exchange rates, the full year income tax rate in the mid to upper 20% range, capital expenditures of approximately $40 million and depreciation and amortization of approximately $50 million. We're also anticipating restructuring charges of approximately $30 million in 2014 due primarily to facility consolidation activities. We do not anticipate much in the way of benefit from the facility consolidation activities in fiscal 2014, but we do anticipate pretax savings of approximately $10 million in 2015. Moving on to Slide 7. This is a summary of our quarterly sales trends. Revenues were up 14.9% in the quarter to $309.1 million. Moving along to Slide #8. You can see the trending of our gross profit margins. Our fourth quarter gross profit margin is 50.8%. If we exclude the impact of PDC, our fourth quarter gross profit margins would have been 52.3%. We continue to focus on driving gross profit improvements through lean strategic sourcing and the reorganization activities that Frank described. However, in recent declines in organic sales volumes, combined with the lower gross profit margins from acquisitions, has resulted in lower -- in reduced gross profit margin when compared to the 54.8% incurred in last year's fourth quarter. On the right-hand side of the slide, you can see that the trend -- you can see the trending of our SG&A expenses. SG&A expense was up $100.3 million in Q4 of fiscal 2012 to $106.9 million in Q4 of fiscal 2013. The primarily reason for this increase in the SG&A is the addition of $13 million of SG&A from PDC. SG&A expenses in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014 were positively impacted by the $4.2 million of reversal of restricted stock expense that I mentioned earlier. Moving on to Slide 9. You can see that our diluted EPS from continuing operations, excluding certain items, was $0.53, which compares to $0.56 generated in the fourth quarter of last year. We've summarized our Q4 and full year cash generation on Slide 10. During the quarter, we generated $53.9 million of cash from operating activities, returned $9.9 million to our shareholders in the form of dividends and repaid $26.6 million of debt, all resulting in a $14.1 million increase in cash this quarter and a cash balance of $91.1 million at July 31, 2013. Brady continues to demonstrate strong cash generation as we generated a healthy $144 million of cash flow from operating activities during the year end of July 31, 2013. On Slide 11, you can see that our balance sheet remains strong. Even after completing the largest acquisition in Brady's history in the second quarter, our gross debt-to-EBITDA remains at approximately $1.7 million inclusive of the trailing 12 months of PDC's EBITDA. Having a strong balance sheet and such a strong cash generating business puts us in solid financial position to fund future organic and inorganic growth opportunities. I'd now like to turn the call over to our Presidents for a review of our global business platforms. Let's start with Matt Williamson, President of ID Solutions. Matt?