Earnings Labs

Cooper-Standard Holdings Inc. (CPS)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 24, 2015

$28.79

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the Cooper-Standard Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2014 Earnings Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded this morning and the webcast will be available for replay later today. I would now like to turn the call over to Glenn Dong, Vice President and Treasurer. Please go ahead.

Glenn Dong

Analyst

Thank you and good morning. Please note, that certain information in this call may be forward-looking and contains statements based on current plans, expectations, events, and market trends that may affect the company’s future operating results and financial position. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that cannot be predicted or quantified and that may cause future activities and results of operations to -- differ materially from those discussed. For additional information, we ask that you to refer to the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This call is intended to be compliant with Reg FD and is open to institutional investors, security analysts, media representatives and other interested parties. A reconciliation of certain non-GAAP financial measures used during this call can be found in the appendix of this presentation. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Jeff Edwards, Cooper-Standard’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Jeff Edwards

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead

Okay. Thank you, Glenn, and good morning, everyone. Turning to page four, I would like to start with a summary of our 2014 performance. Cooper-Standard’s sales continued to grow year-over-year in 2014 with a 5% increase more than one and a half times the market. We aggressively addressed operational challenges which resulted in improved adjusted EBIT DA margins by 200 basis points in the fourth quarter 2014. We also made good progress on improving margins in our sealing business with the objective of better aligning margins in this product line to our overall global standard. A major strategic event in 2014 was our agreement to purchase an additional 47.5% of Huayu-Cooper Standard Sealing Systems Company. This transaction is expected to close at the end of this month and upon completion, we will become the 95% equity owner of the largest Chinese automotive sealing manufacturer. Early in the year we successfully entered into a $750 million term loan to refinance our senior notes. The term loan was entered into with longer maturity, added flexibility and at favorable interest rates. Page five provides business and operational highlights from 2014, we introduced four innovations including Ultra Galfan, coating for fuel and brake lines, which opens up the Japanese OEM market in our Fuel and Brake business. We've already sold this product in our in-production. Our new Quick Connect technology with improved connections and added sensor capability resulted in book orders during 2014 as well. The company's ArmorHose compound is a breakthrough innovation that eliminates the need for protective sleeves on hoses, which reduces weight and enhances performance. We've also booked orders on ArmorHose. And finally, our New Fourtrax material revolutionizes sealing and hose products. This material reduces weight and in the case of sealing provides greater fit and finish is demanded by today's…

Allen Campbell

Analyst

Thanks Jeff. On slide nine, we show our fourth quarter and full-year 2014 revenue by region as compared to previous year. For the quarter, Cooper Standard generated sales of $767.9 million, down 3.3% when compared to same quarter in the previous year, significantly affected by unfavorable foreign exchange of approximately $31.5 million. For the full year, sales increased by $153.4 million or 5% to $3.244 billion compared to $3.091 billion in the previous year, driven by 3% increase in global production volume, share gains in Europe and Asia Pacific and sales from our Jyco acquisition. These were partially offset by approximately $31.3 million, a negative foreign exchange, customer price concessions and the sale of our thermal and emissions product line. Our North America operations reported sales of $400.5 million for the quarter, down 6.1% from the prior year quarter, impacted significantly by vehicle mix, especially in the Ford F-150, the sale of our thermal and emissions product line, and unfavorable foreign exchange of $6.1 million. This was predominantly driven by a stronger U.S. dollar versus Canadian dollar. I will discuss the impact of the F-150 in the next slide. For the quarter, our European operations generated sales of $259.3 million. On adjusting for $22.7 million of unfavorable foreign exchange, our sales increased 4.5% from the prior year quarter as we gained market share in a relative soft market. In Asia Pacific, we continued to perform nicely, with sales up 19.2% in the quarter. In Brazil, we generated $36.4 million of sales, down 3.6% from the previous year quarter. With $1.7 million unfavorable foreign exchange, our sales were relatively flat, despite a 7.4% decline in vehicle production in the region. Sales from our non-consolidated joint ventures generated sales in the quarter of $128 million, up 17.3% from the prior year. On…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Dan Dolev with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Dan Dolev

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead

Hi, thanks for taking my question. On revenue, what you are guiding today versus what you guided in January, is it really just FX that’s the -- causing the difference between two numbers -- between the 3.4 to 3.5 and then 3.3 to 3.4 makes sense, just wanted to confirm?

Jeff Edwards

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead

Yes, that’s exactly, right. That’s the only difference.

Dan Dolev

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead

Okay. Thank you. So your outlook of the overall production globally has remained unchanged?

Jeff Edwards

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead

That’s correct.

Dan Dolev

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead

Okay. Great. And then, your EBITDA margin at 9.6 for the year that as said on the call that’s a little bit light of what you expected and you had some explanations for that. What makes you think you can actually accelerate EBITDA growth in so from 30 basis points year-over-year in '14 to 50 to 75? Can you maybe quantify some of the moving parts you think you can get there?

Jeff Edwards

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead

Yeah. I think, Dam, this is Jeff. I think the first thing is from an operations perspective, we’ve really stabilized our business in North America. There are no surprises there. So I think that’s the first thing. Secondly, as Allen mentioned, the F-series is very important to us. We’ve been basically from October through really what will be our -- the end of our first quarter, you can figure that’s about 50% of the volume given how they launched the business from October through the end of March. So from April on, we will have a 100% of the F-series volume, which we expect to be very good by all indications. And we also provide you additional detail, the content per vehicle that we have on F-series which is very strong for us. So that’s’ -- those are two big reasons. The third one I would tell is our launch, the heavy complicated launch is that we went through really the last year and half or so, although we have a number of launches, I wouldn’t put them in that category for 2015. So I think the risk associated with launch like we had last year turned out in Europe, we feel a lot more confident. And then finally, the point Allen made is related to our manufacturing operations. We have launched our best business practice tool, which will allow us very easily to track the performance of our plants in terms of material, labor variable and fixed overhead and really transfer best practices much easier from plant to plant and allow a -- we think a much more aggressive approach to getting the money of our shop floor and into our packet frankly as it relates to those key cost drivers. So those are all I think the reasons why we’re as confident as we are heading into 2015.

Dan Dolev

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead

Okay. And then maybe just like lastly like a very longer term question in the work that we’ve done in our -- learning about your company. The one thing that kind of stood out is that the significant efficiency versus your peers and I just wanted to -- our view was that this is not something that’s structural, that something that’s flexible. Maybe you can, do you have a view of where you could be in terms of efficiency versus your peers, two, three, four years down the road. Is there -- do you think it’s structural, do you think there is something that can be done there?

Jeff Edwards

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead

Dan, I think we’re poised with the investments that we’ve made. The leadership that we brought into the company in Europe and in Asia strengthened the team in North America. We are in very good shape from the standpoint of leadership and the experience in their ability to manage all aspects of the business. That’s probably not where we were couple of years ago frankly, so that’s an improvement and gives us confidence moving forward. I think some of the operating issues that we’ve spoken very transparently about were a result of launching some new technology within the sealing business that drove some performance issues within the company. We believe we’ve got our arms around those at least technically. There is still certainly some pricing challenges but we’ve been able to overcome some of that. And I think it’s a much more sustainable platform that we have now heading forward. So I think what we’re trying to do here is give guidance on the margin expansion that we see in 2015. Certainly there is a lot of runway there as we keep going. And I’m confident that we’ll continue to meet and exceed expectations in regard to margin expansion.

Dan Dolev

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead

Okay. Thank you very much.

Jeff Edwards

Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead

Sure.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instruction] There are no further questions in queue at this time. This concludes our conference call. You may now disconnect.