Scott Robinson
Analyst · William Blair. Brian, your line is open
Thanks, Tod. Good morning, everyone. Sales grew 2% last quarter, including a 4% headwind from currency. As expected, the impact from FX was higher than what we've seen so far this year and we do think the pressure will lessen in fourth quarter. That dynamic was one reason we modeled the sequential step up in Q3 to be more muted than Q4 which is consistent with what I said at Investor Day. Of course, the sharp drop in backlogs late in the third quarter changes expectations, I'll discuss that later. We generated EPS of $0.58 in the third quarter, which was up 9% from last year due primarily to taxes. Benefits from a lower corporate rate in the U.S. combined with stock option activity and other discrete items resulted in a tax rate nearly five points below last year. Based on Q3, our full year tax rate is now forecasted between 24.4% and 25.4%. In terms of business performance, third quarter operating margin declined 20 basis points to 14%. I want to remind everyone that we adopted the revenue recognition accounting standard in fiscal '19, which effectively diluted third quarter operating margin by 10 basis points. Gross margin was also impacted by revenue recognition. Third quarter gross margin declined 40 basis points to 33.8% with half of the decline coming from the accounting change. We are still experiencing higher raw material and supply chain costs which we mostly offset with 150 basis points of benefits from pricing. Broadly speaking, the year-over-year and sequential trends in gross margin were favorable, and our third quarter performance was in line with forecast. Our operating expense rate was 30 basis points favorable to last year due to lower incentive compensation. In our segments, Engine's profit rate grew 40 basis points to 14.6%, that's 50 basis points without the revenue recognition impact. Third quarter was our strongest performance for Engine profit this year, and an incremental margin in the mid-20% range was the best in two years. Pricing added 1.7% to Engine in the third quarter, helping to get gross margin modestly up from 2018. While pricing is a never-ending activity, we feel good about the practices we're developing and the results we're getting. We also had some expense favorability in Engine, including severance from lower incentive compensation. The profit rate in our Industrial segment was down 50 basis points from last year or 40 basis points without revenue recognition. The decline was driven by a higher expense rate reflecting investments in businesses like process filtration and connected solutions. We offset a small amount of the expense rate pressure with higher gross margin, reflecting strong GTS performance and a little pricing and better mix. While gross margins in both segments was up modestly, the consolidated rate was down a bit due to unallocated corporate cost and mix between segments. Third quarter capital expenditures increased to $45 million from $27 million last year due to capacity expansion projects. New production for PowerCore, fuel and process filtration are big drivers, and we are expanding our footprint in every major region. Based on our progress, we now plan to invest about $150 million in CapEx this year. We did a small amount of share repurchase last quarter. Year-to-date, we have repurchased 1.6% of outstanding shares and we're on-track to hit 2% in fiscal '19. We paid dividends of $24 million last quarter, and last Friday we announced a 10.5% increase to our quarterly dividend. The larger than typical dividend increase comes after two years of record profits, with adjusted earnings up 18% last year and 13% so far this year. So we felt the move supported our long-term yield. We have paid a dividend for more than 60 years and in 2016, we were proud to have been added to the high yield Dividend Aristocrats Index for 20 consecutive years of dividend increases. I think that's an impressive trend and last week's announcement demonstrates our commitment to the dividend and our confidence in the future of Donaldson. We also announced a new share repurchase program which replaces the prior authorization. Like the last program, we have capacity to repurchase upto 10% of our outstanding shares, signaling our continued commitment to share repurchases as another means of returning value to shareholders. I want to switch gears now and cover the key changes to our forecast. Full year sales are now expected to grow between 3.5% and 4.5%, reflecting updated sales projection for off-road, aftermarket and IFS. Sales of off-road are now expected to decline in the mid-single digit. This guide implies fourth quarter sales will be down in the mid-teens, reflecting a sharp drop in backlog from a few of our largest customers. Aftermarket sales are expected to grow in the mid-single digits for fiscal '19. We expect a modest increase in fourth quarter, which includes a 2% headwind from FX. Once again, large OEs drove most of the change. We still expect On-Road will grow in the mid-teens and Aerospace and Defense will be up in the mid-single digits. Altogether, we project Engine sales will grow between 3.5% and 4.5% this year or 6.5% to 7.5% without currency. The other notable change to our sales forecast was IFS. We now expect sales to grow in the high single-digits reflecting lower sales for new dust collection equipment. Excluding BOFA, fourth quarter sales of IFS are still projected to grow. There were no changes to the GTS or special applications forecast, which were year-over-year declines in the high-single and low-single digits, respectively. Our new forecast for the industrial sales growth is 4% to 5% or 7% to 8% without currency. Fiscal '19 operating margin is projected between 13.8% and 14.2%. Excluding the impact from revenue recognition, we expect an increase of 10 basis points to 50 basis points from last year. The change from our prior forecast was driven by reduced operating expense leverage on a lower base of sales. Our full year gross margin forecast did not change, we still expect a year-over-year decline of about 50 basis points or 30 basis points above revenue recognition. Please note, that our forecast does not include any tariff on imports from Mexico. Although the U.S. is a net exporter for us, we do import a small percent of our cost of goods from Mexico. Like all of you, we are evaluating the details as they emerge. Turning back to the FY '19 forecast; our full year EPS is now projected between $2.20 and $2.24, at the midpoint that's $0.12 below the prior forecast. Breaking that down, $0.02 came from Q3. Business performance was $0.04 short and the tax rate gave $0.02 back. The remaining $0.10 came out of the fourth quarter driven by lower sales. While we don't typically provide this level of detail, there is some unique dynamics between the quarters, which I touched on at Investor Day. In the 60 days since that presentation, changes to our customers' behavior have clearly impacted our perspective. What hasn't changed is our urgency related to gross margin improvement, and that work is in-flight. New capacity gives us a chance to reset our supply chain, and we are seeing success for managing the price-cost relationship. Longer term, we can mix the company up by growing sales of higher margin products, like replacement parts, process filtration, hi-tech membranes and Venting Solutions. Between operational cost takeout and business performance, we plan to grow our gross margin and deliver all-time high operating margins by the end of fiscal '21; that's consistent with what we laid out at Investor Day. And I also want to remind you the story I shared that day. Recall that Tod and I went on a world tour last year to review budgets. Well, we're doing that again this year. We are very early in the overall process. But I want to share one item for 2020 that we have already identified. As we reset the annual plan, which we do every year, we estimate a headwind from incentive compensation of about $10 million in 2020. We'll be working to offset that amount during our detailed budget reviews. At a high level, our goal for the 2020 plan is that we have a reasonable growth projections that balance expense discipline, with continued investments in our Advance and Accelerate businesses. As I frequently say, we are committed to delivering higher levels of profit on increasing sales and our entire team is aligned around that commitment. I'm excited to begin the deep dive into our 2020 plan and I look forward to sharing the details in a few months. I'll now turn the call back to Tod. Tod?