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Emerson Electric Co. (EMR)

Q1 2012 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 7, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Emerson's Investor Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This conference is being recorded today, Tuesday, February 7, 2012. Emerson's commentary and responses to your question may contain forward-looking statements, including the company's outlook for the remainder of the year. Information on factors that can cause actual results to differ very materially from those discussed today is available at Emerson's most recent annual report on the Form 10-K as filed with the SEC. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Patrick Fitzgerald, Director of Investor Relations at Emerson. Please go ahead.

Patrick Fitzgerald

Analyst · Emerson's most recent annual report on the Form 10-K as filed with the SEC. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Patrick Fitzgerald, Director of Investor Relations at Emerson. Please go ahead

Thank you, Luke. I am joined today by David Farr, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Emerson; and Frank Dellaquila, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Today's call will summarize Emerson's first quarter 2012 results. A conference call slide presentation will accompany my comments and is available in the Investor Relations section of Emerson's website at emerson.com. A replay of this conference call will be available on the website after the call for the next 3 months. I will start with the highlights of the quarter as shown on Page 2 of the conference call presentation. Fourth quarter sales were down 4% to $5.3 billion, caused by several near-term challenges. Our supply chain disruption caused by the Thailand flooding impacted results by approximately $300 million. U.S. telecommunications carriers deferred investments, awaiting the outcome of potential industry consolidation. HVAC OEMs in the U.S. and China pushed inventories very low on economic uncertainty, and there was broad European economic weakness. Operating profit margin declined 220 basis points from the prior year quarter to 13.2%, which is primarily driven by volume deleverage. Earnings per share of $0.50 was down 21% from the prior year quarter. Operating cash flow increased 4% versus the prior year quarter to $334 million. Our balance sheet strength continues to enable us to invest in growth opportunities. Despite the pressure on Q1 from numerous near-term headwinds, our outlook for 2012 remains favorable. Next slide, the P&L summary. Net and underlying sales were down 4%, with negligible impact from currency, acquisitions and divestitures. Operating profit declined 18% as the magnitude of sales declined and resulting unfavorable mix drove substantial volume deleverage. Net earnings were down 23%. We repurchased 4.8 million shares for $226 million and EPS declined 21% in the quarter. Next slide, underlying sales by geography. Gross performance…

David N. Farr

Analyst · Emerson's most recent annual report on the Form 10-K as filed with the SEC. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Patrick Fitzgerald, Director of Investor Relations at Emerson. Please go ahead

Thank you very much, Pat, and welcome, everybody, this morning. I thank you for joining us. I truly really appreciate it. Yes, we had a very challenging quarter, and as we discussed in December, there's a lot of moving parts. And we still expect a record year in sales, profit margins, net earnings, cash flow, free cash flow and a 20-plus percent return on total capital. The management team, the organization, the people across this company clearly know we have created a huge hole that we have to dig out of in the rest of this year. But we feel confident that we can do it, and we reviewed the detailed plan with the board this morning, a lot of discussions on this issue. And we're focused on getting the job done. Today, I want to do something a little bit different. We have a very unusual situation with this abrupt start in the first quarter. So I want to go through them. I'm actually going to take you through slides, which you'll be able to see if you have your computer up. I will talk through the slides. They're not hard copies out there, but you'll be able to see it. We finished the year very strongly in 2011. Fourth quarter was up to $6.5 billion in sales. It was up 12% quarter-over-quarter. The whole year, the underlying sales were 11% and the fourth quarter was 9%. But clearly, as we moved into this first quarter, we had some sudden challenges, extremely unusual external environment that hit us very quickly. I'm not here about complaining. I just want to give you some insights to what was really going on, just a little more transparency so you have a better understanding what's going on when we talk next week in…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question today comes from the line of Jeff Sprague of Vertical Research.

Jeffrey T. Sprague - Vertical Research Partners Inc.

Analyst · Vertical Research

So just a question first on Process, the idea of kind of deleveraging and everything, I understand you spent some additional money running around, right? But your sales in the Process are actually flat. And so maybe a little more color on how you had such a large profit decline on flat sales. And is the profit in backlog now somehow hindered by what you had to do to kind of get through this?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Vertical Research

I think, Jeff, that's a good question. It's not easy to understand. The businesses that we couldn't ship on are businesses that are very profitable for us, they have very high GPs. So we ran the facilities, we kept people online, even though we couldn't book sales. So clearly, I'm not worried about the profitability in the backlog. I personally believe that we will talk about this next week. But we will have record levels of profitability across Process, even with a difficult first quarter. The key issue there is when you continue to maintain the build, you're not shipping some of your most profitable businesses or products and you're continuing to invest in that technology and stuff, you actually have a significant deleverage. And the numbers make sense from our standpoint, and so I don't see anything unusual there. I do expect them to leverage nicely and come back and deliver record levels of profitability for the remaining parts of 2012.

Jeffrey T. Sprague - Vertical Research Partners Inc.

Analyst · Vertical Research

And could you also just spend an additional minute or so on what's going on in the embedded businesses competitively and from a price standpoint, where you are on kind of your restructure of those businesses?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Vertical Research

Yes. I'm going to give you -- the Network Power segment, this next Tuesday, we'll have -- it will be the biggest segment in talk. As I look at the process strategies, some of those strategies are pretty tight. And we know we're going to be able to give you a quick update. But the Network Power business, I'm going to break it down into the 3 pieces that we look at in this business. The systems business is doing pretty well. We had some disruption in relative to delivery because of the end customers couldn't get everything, so they pushed off some slowdown. The telco business was greatly disrupted with what was going on with the AT&T potential acquisition of T-Mobile. And in embedded, we saw a dramatic impact relative to the customers not able to build approximately, just stop ordering the product, and we saw a dramatic dropoff in profitability and deleverage. And we're going through a very, very aggressive repositioning right now within that business to recover that profitability because I personally do not believe that business is going to come back much. I don't see the underlying growth expectation of those customers as all that robust. So I'm planning a year right now that I think we're going to see -- we'll recover some of the growth, but overall, that I think we've potentially got down sales growth in that segment, and we have to get this profitability back to where it should go. So we're going through a very aggressive restructuring at this point in time. And you'll see our restructuring numbers start picking back up a little bit faster here in the second quarter. We will spend somewhere between $125 million and $135 million of restructuring, primarily driven around Europe and also the work we're doing in embedded and embedded power business. We'll talk a little bit more about this and the whole evaluation we're going through right now, Jeff, the next Tuesday. But there's a lot of action going on in that business right now to recover what we really fell behind in those 3 months.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mike Wood of Macquarie Capital.

Mike Wood - Macquarie Research

Analyst · Mike Wood of Macquarie Capital

Can you provide an update on Chloride and where you are in the restructuring, cost synergies and how that's tracking to plan after seeing the softness in telecom, data center and just Europe in general?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Mike Wood of Macquarie Capital

The overall Chloride integration is going, I would say, very well. We have a lot of restructuring underway this year. We did what I would call the general sales and the overhead last year. And now we're actually getting into the infrastructure part. I will show you next week that from a performance standpoint, we are ahead, slightly ahead of our savings and performance. I'm very pleased with the Chloride integration at this point in time. Yes, we had a little bit of slowdown in the marketplace. That happens at any time, but overall, the integration and the effort underway, I'm very pleased with. And I would say both on Chloride and Avocent we are ahead. The one issue we did get hit real hard on in this quarter, in the first quarter, was Avocent. Avocent's into the server marketplace, which really got hit hard in the fourth calendar quarter, our first quarter. And Avocent sales really got -- came down extremely hard in the fourth quarter, and they deleveraged quite significantly. They have actually started seeing improvement already in orders and shipments in the month of January as people got back online to start buying again. So overall, we're very happy with Chloride and Avocent. The pace is good, and they're getting the job done.

Mike Wood - Macquarie Research

Analyst · Mike Wood of Macquarie Capital

Okay. And on the residential side, we've been seeing some early signs of a potential recovery in the U.S. residential construction market. Where would that impact your business? Where might that positively surprise you versus your expectations?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Mike Wood of Macquarie Capital

I think that we're going to have in what we call the Tools and Storage business, you're going to see they had a pretty good first quarter. The order pace is pretty good right now. They've had good order pace. I think that will be the continued positive, which we see that is in the -- primarily, the repair. We've seen a good recovery in the repair, upgrade marketplace in North America. On the Copeland side, our Climate Technologies side, we'll start seeing that later this year as the construction and then also the people move into the cooling season. So I would expect that to be more in the second half. Right now, we are banking on some recovery, but not much a recovery. And with the level of inventories where they are right now, that could be the one upside we see in the second half. I think we'll continue to see momentum and positive performance in the Tools and Storage business because of residential. I agree the recovery in residential is underway. And I think you're going to see probably 5% to 7% underlying residential GFI growth in the United States this year.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Steven Winoker of Sanford Bernstein. Steven E. Winoker - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., LLC., Research Division: Those slides were very helpful. So just Industrial Automation, the margin side, I know you called it out. We've got revenue up and margins down. And you talked about cost containment in relative to pricing and additional investment for growth. Can you maybe provide a little more color here so that I can sort of think about what the leverage was here, and was it not enough profitable [ph] mix or...

David N. Farr

Analyst · Steven Winoker of Sanford Bernstein

Yes, there's 2 things. One of the big issues on material is, when our price increases come through -- and it's been a fairly high net material inflation area -- time period. We've got the prices to cover the material costs, but it dilutes our margin. And so this in initial phase right here, upfront what happens is, the price is going through and we get that margin dilution relative to -- because we don't cover margin, we just cover net material costs, that hurts us quite a bit. So from the standpoint overall as a company, we had positive green price costs for the whole company, and we are almost -- we're approximately $20 million, about $18 million positive. So this is the first quarter after 4 quarters of being negative, we've got the price cost coverage, but we don't make margin on the high inflationary time periods. It's not something we build into our contracts. That hurt us from that standpoint. The other area in Industrial Automation is, with a dropoff, in particular, continued dropoff in solar and wind, we've seen a significant deleverage. We had a lot of restructuring going on in that way because we do not see that market coming back. Industrial Automation had a record level of profitability last year. I believe they will set another record level of profitability this year because the cost actions are underway. We will absorb this price cost as we go forward here, and we get our productivity going. So I feel very good about Industrial Automation. Some of the markets will be good, some of the markets will not be good. And again, we'll give you a little bit more insight to that next week, Steve. Steven E. Winoker - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., LLC., Research Division: Okay. And just back to that first question on Process. When you're filling out the backlog now, your capacity utilization and the plans as you go forward, how are you thinking about that backlog fitting in? Are you just scaling that thing up all across-the-board and running full out 80%...

David N. Farr

Analyst · Steven Winoker of Sanford Bernstein

If you had noticed that one chart, we actually built a lot of inventory in the first quarter. So right now, from automations -- process automation standpoint, we're going to spend around $700 million of capital this year, and we're going to have -- a big chunk of that is going to be going to Process. We are going to have to invest in capacity. I mean, we're driving towards an $8 billion Process Management business this year. And our orders are very strong and we need to increase our global capacity. And so you're going to see us having to continue to spend money in Process and capital. Right now, we are okay because we made the decision, even though with the disruption, to go ahead and build inventory. So we have control valves out there without the electronics in. We have pressure transmitters, we have flow devices. And so we have actually built the product that's sitting in warehouses, and now we're going to come back later and put the assembly in there. If we hadn't done that, we would never be able to get this caught up this year. So we made a decision to go ahead and spend the money, costs extra money, inventory -- because we know that with the orders sitting where they are and the backlog sitting where it is, we have the capability of shipping that stuff, assuming we get the electronic boards in. Steven E. Winoker - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., LLC., Research Division: Okay. And Dave, again how much inventory did you build for that?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Steven Winoker of Sanford Bernstein

We built -- in the Process, where I had the chart there, I'm going to give you the exact number. I had it broken out... Steven E. Winoker - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., LLC., Research Division: You flipped it too fast for me, I couldn't write it down.

David N. Farr

Analyst · Steven Winoker of Sanford Bernstein

I'm sorry. I'm really sorry, Steve. We built $130 million, so we had inventory at year end around -- I'll give you $575 million and we're now over -- we're over $700 million. That's a lot of inventory.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Shannon O'Callaghan of Nomura.

Shannon O'Callaghan - Nomura Securities Co. Ltd., Research Division

Analyst · Shannon O'Callaghan of Nomura

So just on the electronics pieces, I guess, do you now have the components you need? I mean, when do you think you can resume shipping instruments with electronics out of Process? I mean, is this all going to come back in a hurry? Is it going to kind of spread out through the year? How do you see it happening?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Shannon O'Callaghan of Nomura

We are already starting to see the shipments. I mean, in the month of January, I know the sales in January. We saw the shipments in some of the instrumentation actually come on, so we're seeing that in the simpler product, the instrumentation product, the flow devices, the pressure, the temperature devices. The larger devices were -- I would say, the control valves were more complicated. That's going to take 6, 8 months. So we are starting to get a flow of electronic boards. We are allocating where the boards are going. They're not all the same boards. We are allocating based on our customer pressure points, and we're dealing with that issue right now. So you're going to see a continuing improvement. You'll see our second quarter sales in Process go up unless we have another shock somewhere. I really don't need another shock. And then you're going to start seeing the second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter sequentially getting better, and as we move out, so it's not -- they're not all going to show up at one time. We're staging them out because that's the only we can deal with it. But they're starting to flow already. I saw the benefit already in January in some of the more easier products to get into.

Shannon O'Callaghan - Nomura Securities Co. Ltd., Research Division

Analyst · Shannon O'Callaghan of Nomura

Okay, great. And then on the restructuring of embedded power, I mean, some of this is tire-related stuff, too, but it sounds like you're -- do you see more of a permanent change? I mean, could you talk about some of the nature of the restructuring you're going after and what the payback period is like?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Shannon O'Callaghan of Nomura

The restructuring, we're going to start getting payback this year, and it's going to be within a 12-month period starting right now. This is a very near-term, short-term thing we're doing. I'm just making a call on there. I listen to a lot of our customers on their conference calls. Some of them said that the recovery, everything was going to come flying back, some of them said not. I am of the opinion right now, given the slowdown in Europe, the slowdown in Japan, the slowdown in Asia and in the marketplace, the dynamics going across the marketplace with some this customer base, I think the market will be a lot slower for some of this, what I'd call core electronic market space in 2012. And I think a little bit of inventory had been built with the Japanese issue we just had 6 months earlier. And so I think a lot of that got washed out, so I don't see all of it coming back. So if I look at -- we lost about $100 million, in what I would say $100 million to $150 million in certain parts of these businesses, I would say we'd probably get half of that back and that's it. That is just my call right now, knowing the space that I know.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Deane Dray of Citi Investment Research.

Deane M. Dray - Citigroup Inc, Research Division

Analyst · Deane Dray of Citi Investment Research

Dave, I was hoping you could take us through Europe and a little bit more color regarding the individual businesses. Because you were flat for the quarter, you're speaking as though you still could get positive growth. Process and Industrial Automation both had better quarters in Europe. So just take us through what the tone is of the customers and your visibility that still gives you a sense that you will outperform the market.

David N. Farr

Analyst · Deane Dray of Citi Investment Research

I mean, the Process business did have a decent quarter. I think they have a high level of backlog. That business will continue to start shipping when they get the components, so I think Process will do pretty well. I am concerned about the underlying industrial business of Industrial Automation. I think Industrial Automation Europe is going to struggle this year. I think that business will weaken as the year goes on. Within the last 2 months, we have actually started seeing the stability in the Climate Technologies business in Europe. They're the early indicator. They went down last year, so they had a couple of tough quarters last year. The first quarter was tough. I'm seeing some stability in that order pace. And based on the fact that Germany is still doing reasonably well, we're still seeing that improvement, and I think Climate Technologies will have a better, better year as it progresses. The other area is our Tools and Storage. And we're continuing to see some investments going on within the European business, and that space is not big. But I think Process will be good. I think Climate Technologies will start to recover. I think the Tools and Storage business, we do well. I think the industrial part of Industrial Automation is not going to do well. I think some parts of Industrial Automation, their export out of Europe will do okay. But overall, I mean, you've got to remember, Europe last year for us was 11% underlying growth. This year, I think we're probably somewhere around that 0%, 1%, 2% type of growth. So it's not going to be pure negative, but it's definitely -- we've got the backlog to show we'll have some growth there. That's they way I look at it and feel it right now.

Deane M. Dray - Citigroup Inc, Research Division

Analyst · Deane Dray of Citi Investment Research

Got it. And then just -- I might have missed this. But on the impact of Thailand, originally, it was a $300 million to $400 million hit. And it looks like it came in towards the lower end of that. Was that just being conservative? Or how did that actually play out?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Deane Dray of Citi Investment Research

I've made a commitment -- and Frank's here with me, we made a commitment to the audit committee that we would not just throw everything in the big catch-all, and say, "Hey, s***, it's Thailand." And I'm not supposed to swear, but I did anyway. But what we made is we looked very carefully what type of products we're not able to ship in that. And our best estimate right now and the best that we're going to do is $300 million. The other parts, we believe, from the climate standpoint and the recession slowdown -- so we went through and we categorized it for the audit committees because they wanted to make sure that we weren't playing games. Let's be honest. They wanted to make sure that we know what we're doing here and not just use this as a big cop out. So we did the best we could relative to the products, the customers. And we clearly mapped out between the Network Power, the Process business basically what we could see coming out of from our standpoint on Thailand. And it worked. And so that's where we are right now, it's around $300 million, plus or minus $10 million, $15 million, and the rest came out of just the other activities. That's why I mapped out that one matrix, where we saw the various piece of the impact around the world. That's how it is.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Julian Mitchell of Credit Suisse. Julian Mitchell - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: I guess, my first question was, obviously, you've had a lot of sort of strange issues as you say in your fiscal Q1. And if we look at the gross margin, though, that's been down year-on-year for kind of 3 or 4 quarters in a row. And I guess, if I look at your guidance for the year of an 18% margin, we assume that SG&A grows about 3% for the year as it did in Q1. That implies for the balance of the year, your gross margin has to go up maybe 70, 80 basis points. And so I guess, given that it fell when revenues were up 6, 9 months ago, and given that it fell when revenues were down in the December quarter, what is it you think that's really swinging on the gross margin that gets it growing again year-on-year from this point?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Julian Mitchell of Credit Suisse

The biggest issue is price cost. Last year, we had a very negative price cost that really hurt our GP margin in a big way. Even though the first quarter was tough, our GP was not that bad relative to what we lost overall. So I would say the big issue for us is price cost. We were green in the first quarter, that makes a big difference for us. We expect to be green next year, which will help us relative to our recovery of GP. And so that's the #1 issue, Julian, that we are tracking internally. If we can deliver that, then our GP margin will go towards that 40% GP, and we'll have that recovery. Last year, we got hit very, very hard at that level and that really hurt us. So that's the #1 issue, being green right now. And we got obviously 3 more quarters, that's the key issue for us. #1, 2, 3 and 4, that's the issues. Julian Mitchell - Crédit Suisse AG, Research Division: Okay. And then on your cost base generally. I mean, looking at your CapEx guidance and what you spent in Q1, that's about flat year-on-year for the next 3 quarters. What's going on with -- your restructuring's going up a little bit, I think, $30 million versus the previous guidance. And your OpEx, the SG&A, as I say, that was up in Q1 even with down revenues. So what's happening on the SG&A line? I mean, is that going to stay at this sort of $1.3 billion, $1.4 billion? Or are you going to try and take some of that out?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Julian Mitchell of Credit Suisse

We, I mean, the SG&A, from the standpoint of spending, we start curtailing spending and we will continue to curtail spending. I expect our SG&A to be on a percent of sales slightly down when the year finishes as we get the growth coming back. On the capital standpoint -- but there's not going to be -- we are being very careful, we are taking some cutbacks, I would say, overall in spending right now because of our concern of the slowdown, particularly in Europe and some slowdown spending in Asia. But overall, nothing dramatic because our cost structure is in pretty good shape. It's just that we're going to be very careful of where we increase it. And for the businesses that are struggling right now, there will be very significant cutbacks, the Climate Technologies, the embedded power computing, those businesses will have significant cuts relative to their overall spending because their business is not right -- is not there right now. Relative to capital, we're going to spend around $700 million. We actually cut it back a little bit. In some of the businesses that are struggling, I don't see the growth rate, then we've cut back their underlying growth rate. So we're going to be taking some capacity out that we had planned in originally except for Process, which is going to need it. So there's a little shifting going around relative to capacity. So I would expect us to spend less capital than I thought we're going to spend 3 months ago. But we're going to be spending around $700 million, which is still under 3% of our total sales. So overall, the cost structure of the company is in pretty good shape, though we're going to trim, and the capital plans are going to be cut back a little bit. But overall, I think we're in pretty good shape.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Nigel Coe of Morgan Stanley.

Nigel Coe - Morgan Stanley, Research Division

Analyst · Nigel Coe of Morgan Stanley

Dave, so you mentioned early on that you still think that this will be a record year for Process Management profitability. Does that still mean that you think even though you've got a tough 1Q that you can still do 20-plus margins this year?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Nigel Coe of Morgan Stanley

Yes.

Nigel Coe - Morgan Stanley, Research Division

Analyst · Nigel Coe of Morgan Stanley

Awesome, great. And any way of scaling what the impact of the Thai floods was? Because if you just look at the sales and the deleverage on the sales, you get to about $0.15. But it sounds like there are other costs as well. I mean, do you have that number to mind?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Nigel Coe of Morgan Stanley

No. I have not gone and spent a lot of time on having the guys track what we had to spend to meet with customers, to redirect stuff, airship stuff. I mean, right now, that business is in a crisis mode. So we have a global leader, and I told the guys, "Spend what it takes to get this business back on track, back up in line." That's far more important to us. With bookings, orders coming in on 15%, 18% and we're expecting to drive towards an $8 billion number this year, we need to figure out how to get the shipments going again. So they did a lot of extra spending, and I'm not -- I have a lot of confidence that management team that they don't waste and they got the job done because it's important for us to take care of that customer base.

Nigel Coe - Morgan Stanley, Research Division

Analyst · Nigel Coe of Morgan Stanley

Sure. And then we spent a lot of time talking about Climates and Network Power, but we haven't spent so much time talking about Industrial Automation. And we did see a big dropoff from 4Q to 1Q. And you talked about solar, wind, and I think, hermetics as the big drive to downside. But can you maybe just talk a bit more about that, Dave? How much of this is inventory? How much is CapEx?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Nigel Coe of Morgan Stanley

I mean, from our standpoint, the hermetics business is obviously tied to our compressor business being dropped off that hard. The big issue for us that we're seeing in Industrial Automation is the slowdown we're seeing in Europe right now in the underlying -- what they call the pure industrial, the industrial motors and drive touch [ph] that we're seeing some slowdown in that area in the core business. We're also seeing a slowdown, we actually saw a slowdown in China in the first quarter. As China really -- it started dialing back on spending money, we saw the industrial marketplace really slow down a little bit. I do expect that to pick back up because that's going to be an area, I think, the Chinese government will focus their money relative to the stimulus they're going to put in place. I'm a little bit positive -- less positive about the housing and residential and the light commercial. But I think in industrial, as companies continue to spend to go after that growth as that stimulus comes in, I think you're going to see that money spending there. But the overall industrial marketplace both in Europe and in Asia, we saw weaken in that first quarter, but we're seeing some signs of picking back up. So I feel okay. There are segments in there that are struggling, but those segments will do very well. So it's going to be a mixed bag this year, very lower growth. But I believe as we'll talk about next week, they'll be setting record levels of profitability.

Nigel Coe - Morgan Stanley, Research Division

Analyst · Nigel Coe of Morgan Stanley

But quickly, finally, on the shale gas. Your exposure there is quite low, right?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Nigel Coe of Morgan Stanley

Pretty low. We sell into the shale gas market. We sell a lot of equipment to the shale -- when it comes to -- anything to do with natural gas around the world, we are a player relative to equipment and measurement and custody transfer. So we have a lot of money being spent in that area.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs.

Terry Darling - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs

I wanted to come back to the Process Management margin discussion with regards to the implications for the longer-term from what you're saying. And I think the implications are that you're going to be kind of 50% incrementals for the balance of the year. And there was this earlier discussion, "Hey, as you get deeper into the cycle, you'll shift more to solutions that dampens the incrementals." We've got a lot of investment to do to make sure we're in position for the long-term there. As we think about the 2013, '14 picture for Process margins, what are the implications of the kind of profile that's really implied by this last 3 quarter guidance on Process? Is it that you're just seeing the underlying as stronger, you're doing a better job on productivity than you thought, pricing's a little stronger and that can carry forward? Or how would you like us to think about that?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs

I think there's one thing that's going, the price cost is turning so that's helping us right now. So that's a slight positive, even for Process. I wouldn't say we can say we're executing better because we just had a really challenging quarter here, so I wouldn't say we are executing better from that standpoint from our productivities. We have not seen a shift yet into the big projects, which will eventually kick in probably '13, '14 relative to some of the dilution on the overall P&L structure, as some of these big projects start shipping. We have seen a continuing, I would say, upgrading of spending, what we call brownfield-type expansions. And brownfields are less competitive market space than greenfields, which are extremely competitive. So right now, the mix is still going our way, and I think that's what's going to help us in the second half of this year. And we'll see how that order book goes in the second half of this year and that will tell me, Terry, how that's going to look as we go into '13. But this right now, I see no fundamental reason why we can't maintain fairly high levels of profitability and continue to make the investments we need. But I don't see any reason why we can't do that yet, but that mix could change in the second half of this year relative to orders. We've got to wait for those orders to come in.

Terry Darling - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs

Okay. And then I guess, the next question is trying to get a feel for the key levers in your mind between the new high end and low end of EPS guidance range for the year. And from the standpoint of organic growth around that question, it sounds like with the January up 7% orders and some of your commentary to earlier questions, that the organic pattern, if you will, over the next 3 quarters you're seeing is relatively the same. 6%, 7%, 8%, I guess, is what you need to get the high end of the 4% to 6%. Have we got that about right?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs

Yes, you do. I mean, the key issue, you're going to see -- the key issue for us is, unfortunately, we ran loaded this year. And that is not something I like from a growth standpoint. The key lever for us right now, Terry, is underlying growth. If I -- from a cost structure, we are driving to get the cost structure in line. We're taking the actions we need to. And from my standpoint, as we can get that 5-plus percent underlying growth, then we'll be at the high end. If we start going -- if underlying growth starts slipping down, we will be fighting down towards that low end in EPS. It's going to be underlying growth. This company knows how to deliver profitability and getting the costs in line. It's going to be that underlying growth. After the first quarter, the price cost was in good shape. If I can deliver another positive price cost in the second quarter, I'll take that one off the table. So right now, I would say, can we continue the positive green price cost and then underlying growth. Those are the 2 levers that I'm watching and tracking extremely closely right now to relative to this company.

Terry Darling - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs

Okay. And then lastly, maybe give Frank some airtime here and save Pat a bunch of time later on. Frank, can you give us any thoughts on the segment corporate line for the year, how you're thinking about that? And anything on interest expense as it relates to use of free cash and so forth through the year that you can talk about as well?

Frank J. Dellaquila

Analyst · Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs

Segment corporate line?

Terry Darling - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs

Relative to the $80 million you did in the first quarter. Typically, it comes off as you move into the last 3 quarters. But any other commentary would be helpful.

Frank J. Dellaquila

Analyst · Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs

Yes, the first quarter is actually a bit favorable so that $80 million is not a good run rate. You need to bump that a little bit for the balance of the year. And interest expense...

Terry Darling - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs

How much -- relative to last year, what kind of line is it going to be, plus or minus? Where are you going to be?

Frank J. Dellaquila

Analyst · Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs

No, we're going to be up a little bit. A little bit versus last year.

Terry Darling - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs

But that's relative to $220 million?

Frank J. Dellaquila

Analyst · Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs

We're up a little bit versus last year. And I'm talking about the noninterest expense, the other corporate, which is mainly incentive comp. And in interest expense, we should be a little bit better than last year.

Terry Darling - Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs

But just to be clear, the corporate number you just referenced, you're talking about the $129 million? Or are you talking about the $80 million from the first quarter?

Frank J. Dellaquila

Analyst · Terry Darling with Goldman Sachs

I'm talking about the $80 million from the first quarter.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Rich Kwas of Wells Fargo Securities.

Richard M. Kwas - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Rich Kwas of Wells Fargo Securities

A follow-up from the December call regarding Europe. In December, I think you talked about market share gains in Network Power in Europe. You didn't mention that in one of the earlier questions. I just wanted to get your thoughts there.

David N. Farr

Analyst · Rich Kwas of Wells Fargo Securities

I don't remember saying that. But very unusual when we talk about market share on a quarterly phone call. But I have to be honest, Rich, I don't know if I said that or not, so I have to check in. You can talk to Pat on that. I don't know. Coming off the top of my head, I don't remember that conversation.

Richard M. Kwas - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Rich Kwas of Wells Fargo Securities

Okay, I'll follow with Pat, but I thought you said there will be some gains in the business in Europe in 2012. But I'll follow up.

David N. Farr

Analyst · Rich Kwas of Wells Fargo Securities

We'll go back and look at what I said and try to make sure. If I messed up, he'll go back and clarify it. But we'll go back and look at the transcript and see what I said, and then I want you to follow up with Pat on that one because I don't want you to leave that out there.

Richard M. Kwas - Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Rich Kwas of Wells Fargo Securities

And then just on M&A, what are your thoughts here? You had another -- we're 45 days past our last update with you. What are your thoughts there between share repurchases and then bolt-on M&A?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Rich Kwas of Wells Fargo Securities

We'll be talking about that in detail next Tuesday. Let's leave it until then. But I'm going to give my thoughts on the capital structure, where we're going to spend our money and how we're going to shift it, and I have some different thoughts on that. So I'd rather talk in the session next week.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Tusa of JPMorgan. C. Stephen Tusa - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: I know you don't give quarterly guidance. But obviously, the last 3 months, quarterly guidance has kind of been a key sticking point here. And I think maybe just move beyond the focus on that, is there any way you can kind of give us a little bit of color on how we should think about the second quarter, given all of these -- the multitude of moving parts? I think that normal seasonality, I guess, if you adjust the first quarter would get you something in the $0.80 range. I mean, can you give us any kind of an over-under on that? Or just any color on the second quarter would be, I think, helpful for people.

David N. Farr

Analyst · Steve Tusa of JPMorgan

Steve, I think the key issue for us is the recovery in sales. As I think I said to Terry, I think the key issue for us is the recovery of what our underlying growth is and starting to get after some of that backlog. We are expecting our sales to be up for the quarter. And right now, I think from the standpoint of -- the question is how fast that recovery happens, and that's going to be the key issue. And just for that, it's hard for me to say what our earnings per share is. And again, unfortunately, we're going to be ran loaded this year because of the recovery of the sales and the backlog. And that's going to be a very difficult thing. And I'm going to have to keep my board updated on a month-by-month basis from that standpoint. But all I can tell you right now is all are going to be coming off of our sales pace. And if we get a good sales pace, then we should start seeing a recovery in our OP margin, and then we're going to see an increase in restructuring. But you should start seeing a recovery in our earnings, and I expect a positive, obviously positive growth in earnings to positive growth in sales. But it's not going to get back to the pace that we need to get that second half done. And so I'm hoping we can do a better job here, but that's the best I can give you right now. C. Stephen Tusa - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: And I guess, that just kind of leads me to my next question, which is just the visibility you have. I mean, you went through a bunch of fundamental, I guess, macro issues, whatever you want to call them in the quarter. But despite kind of the January order comment, whether it's telecom, whether it's Climate -- Process, I think is its own animal, which you guys are -- that's kind of understandable. Whether it's Industrial Automation, it still has pretty tough comps in the second half of the year. It's just unclear to me how you guys envision this kind of ramp in second half sales. A lot of the telco guys are talking about things not coming back until later in 2012. So I'm just wondering how do we kind of get to that -- what are you watching for? Europe, you said, was going to remain tough. I mean, is it China that we're really banking on here? What is the -- is the U.S. economy? It's just unclear to me what really comes back in the second half of the year.

David N. Farr

Analyst · Steve Tusa of JPMorgan

Well, I'm not banking on much of a telco recovery. I'm not banking on much of the Climate Technologies recovery, although I am banking of some recovery in Climate Technologies. We're expecting recovery plus some growth from the Process guys. I am banking on some recovery in the Industrial Automation, in particular, in Asia Pacific and some of the other markets stabilizing and improving. So I do have a little bit of recovery coming on there in Industrial Automation. I'm expecting an improved performance out of our Tools and Storage business better than we have been running there, so I expect that to be positive. But definitely, I don't see much telco. I also expect some recovery in the embedded power and computing and we're seeing that, but we're not going to recover back everything we lost. So that's how we see it right now. There's clearly a lot of moving parts in this thing, and that's why, as I said to somebody earlier, how we deal with that range. If our underlying growth rate starts slipping down, then I will be at a lower range of that EPS clearly. But I think that if the order pace keeps coming by the segments as we saw in January and we see that again in February and March, then we're going to see that visibility we need. But right now, the ball is around execution, getting that backlog down and getting some recovery pace in, I would say, North America residential and a continuing strong pace in nonres in North America. C. Stephen Tusa - JP Morgan Chase & Co, Research Division: And then one last quick question, just on the Process side. I think Jeff asked a good question around the margin being down despite the flat sales. You talked about mix a little bit. But CapEx in that business was running at about 2% of sales, basically for the entire cycle last cycle. It bumped up to 2.8% of sales last year, and now you're saying it's going to be -- it's a pretty significant part of the healthy increase you're seeing in the first quarter and maybe throughout the year. Does this kind of get to the point that -- 20%-plus margin is great this year. I agree, I think you have to do that to update your guidance. But does this get to the point where like you have to kind of begin to throw more investment and money at this business, given the competitive landscape is just a lot different than it was last cycle? Or why are we throwing so much more money at the business early this cycle than we were last cycle?

David N. Farr

Analyst · Steve Tusa of JPMorgan

Because the last cycle, I took capacity offline -- I took it offline and I did not redeploy it. I took it offline because I wanted to move it into where the growth is going to be. And so now that growth is starting to happen and I'm starting to redeploy that capacity and where that growth's going to come from, Middle East, India, Asia, China, and parts of Latin America, that's the issue. We took capacity offline and we did not redeploy it. I used the capacity I had to mount that, and now I'm putting capacity in. I don't see that we have to have some extraordinary amount of higher levels of capital spending. I mean, I think the Process guys are probably going to be around that 3% level. It could run down to 2%, but it's not going to be an extraordinary number here.

Operator

Operator

Your final question comes from the line of John Inch of Bank of America.

John G. Inch - BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division

Analyst · Bank of America

Dave, just based on your relatively upbeat comments towards nonresi or towards resi construction and then sort of some of what the Tools business is seeing on the nonresi side, isn't this sort of a -- aren't there sort of decent lead indicators for Climate that, all else equal, you could perhaps argue that actually had a cycle bottom? The business almost seems to be locked and loaded. I'm just curious on your thoughts.

David N. Farr

Analyst · Bank of America

If you look at the leading indicators, you look at all the numbers, your statement is 110% correct. Now we've got to see it happen. And the other issues, there's a lot of capacity and there's a lot of product that's been taken offline right now, and we are taking our capacity down at this point in time. We're taking plants down because the orders are not there. And so in order to protect our deleverage the best we can, we are actually taking out cost at this point in time, and we're putting and turning lights out. And so our customer base expect us to be able to turn on a dime and hire 500,000 people or whatever it takes. They better be thinking about that. That's all I can tell them, because I'm furloughing my plants right now. So they've been warned.

John G. Inch - BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division

Analyst · Bank of America

So does that -- I was wondering about that actually as it pertains to the rest of the channel. I mean, does that, to a degree, give you leverage, whether it be on pricing or otherwise when the cycle actually turns? I mean, there's a bit of a compounding effect that you don't necessarily need big turns to these end markets to actually get a big profit contributions for this business.

David N. Farr

Analyst · Bank of America

Well, if we actually get the orders and the shipments, the answer is yes because there's not going to be a pricing standpoint because we lock up agreements with them for a 12-, 18-month time period. So it's just a function of they're playing us so tight right now that they're expecting a large compressor plant that's fairly sophisticated to turn on and get going. And so my warning to all the customers out there in this area is they've got to be very careful because I am furloughing my plants right now because their demand has dropped off so dramatically that I have no reason to keep my workers in the plant working, period. They have been warned.

John G. Inch - BofA Merrill Lynch, Research Division

Analyst · Bank of America

I'm also just wondering sort of big picture with respect to lessons learned perhaps from Thailand. Are there implications as you look out -- as the CEO of Emerson and your global operations, you're clearly a very well-entrenched company in all these different emerging markets. Are there implications for perhaps other, call it, geographic supply chain concentrations that you're going to be trying to work through? Or is really Thailand just an isolated event that you're going to...

David N. Farr

Analyst · Bank of America

I don't think it's isolated. I think that we looked at a couple of things happen. One, we shouldn't allow a major supplier in a floodplain, which had -- that was one thing, that was one flag. We don't allow our plants to be built in floodplains. And so why allow one of our major suppliers have a plant on a floodplain is beyond me, it's my fault. I would say, John, that we are taking a look at across all the major suppliers and seeing -- going through with a backup plan. Are the plants in a risky spot? We don't locate plans in an earthquake zone. We're going through right now, this is a wake-up call for us. We've had 2 whacks here. We've got one whack upside the head in Japan, then we got a whack up with Thailand. So now okay, I'm not going to go for the third one because the third strike and I should be out type of situation. So I'm looking at right now from a supply chain, are we setting ourselves up in a situation where we're asking for more problems? Or we're looking at that from a standpoint of just safety from an environmental standpoint, a concentration and backup. So we're stressing a lot of places around here because I'm trying to learn from both of these events. And I never can foresee everything, but I want to mitigate this because this was a very damaging thing. And it's not just us, the whole electronics industry that got hit by it pretty hard. And so we, as an industry, need to think about that. Thank you, everybody. Again, I want to thank everybody today. It was a different approach. I wanted to give you a little more insight to what's happened in the last 3 or 4 months. I hope that helps you. I want that off the table, so we got into next week. I'm looking forward to talk about strategy, looking forward to talk about what I see out there right now from the standpoint of our end markets and how we're going to attack differently. We are going to have to make some different moves from a strategy standpoint, and we'll talk about those. And then we'll give you some quick insights relative to the various business, some of the businesses are just a matter of executing some of our stuff. Some are a little bit more obviously insights that we're going to have to spend some time on. So we're looking forward to it, looking forward to seeing everybody both from an investor standpoint and the sell side standpoint. I appreciate with all the patience. And again, I want to thank all the employees around the world working their way through this very challenging time for the company because we intend to recover and have a record year in 2012. Thank you very much. Bye.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call for today. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect your lines.