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Enovis Corporation (ENOV)

Q2 2014 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 17, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Colfax Corporation Second 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 follow at that time. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now turn the call over to your host, Farand Pawlak. Please go ahead.

Farand Pawlak

Management

Thanks, Stephanie. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. My name is Farand Pawlak, and I am Colfax’s Director of Investor Relations. With me on the call today are Steve Simms, President and CEO; and Scott Brannan, our Chief Financial Officer. Our earnings release was issued this morning and is available in the Investors section of our website colfaxcorp.com. We’ll also be using a slide presentation to supplement today’s call, which can also be found on the Investors section of the Colfax website. Both the audio of this call and the slide presentation will be archived on the website later today, and will be available until the next quarterly call. During this call, we’ll be making some forward-looking statements about our beliefs and estimates regarding future events and results. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties including those set forth in our SEC filings. Actual results may differ materially from any forward-looking statements that we might make today. The forward-looking statements speak only as of today, and we do not assume any obligation or intend to update them except as required by law. With respect to any non-GAAP financial measures during the call today, the accompanying information required by SEC Regulation G related to those measures can be found in the earnings press release and supplemental Slide presentation under the Investors section of the Colfax website. In the interest of getting to everyone during Q&A, we’d ask that you limit yourself to one question and then one follow-up before reentering the queue. Now, I’d like to turn it over to Steve.

Steven E. Simms

Management

Good morning and thank you all for joining us today. We’re disappointed in our second quarter results, while most parts of Colfax performed well; earnings were below expectations due to soft demand in welding and pumping markets, as well as certain issues in fluid handling. On today’s call, Scott and I will take you through our customary review of the business and its operating environment, and will also address what we’re doing to improve the performance. As stated in our release this morning, we reported net sales of $1.2 billion for the quarter in the first – second quarter of 2014, an increase of 12% over the same period last year. This was driven by 18% growth from acquisitions, partially offset by a 5% organic decline and a 1% negative impact from foreign currency. Revenues for our Houttuin business were in line with expectations. However, we continue to see sluggish demand in our welding and pumping markets, which resulted in revenues below our expectations for the quarter. Adjusted operating margins decreased to 9.1% in the second quarter, or a 180 basis point decrease over the prior year, due to poor margin performance in our fluid handling business. Houttuin performed in line with expectations and a bright spot in the quarter was continued margin improvement at ESAB, both sequential and year-on-year despite lower revenue. We will discuss the issues at fluid handling in more detail later in the call. Finally, our various acquisitions continue to perform in line with expectation. Last year’s gas and fluid handling acquisitions are achieving their targets and integration proceeding well. Victor, which we closed on April 14, is off to a strong start. Revenues and margins for the quarter were in line with the expectations in numerous integration activities are underway. Now let’s turn to our…

C. Scott Brannan

Management

Thanks, Steve. Recapping the numbers for the quarter, sales for the second quarter were $1.2 billion, down 5% organically, compared to the 2013 quarter. Adjusted operating income was $109 million, representing an operating margin of 9.1%. Fabrication technology’s adjusted margins were 12.2% in line with expectation. Corporate and other costs were also in line with expectations at $13.6 million. Excluded from our adjusted operating income, our restructuring cost of $13.5 million incurred in connection with the cost reduction programs, as well as a large one-time non-cash tax benefit associated with the reversal, previously established valuation allowances against deferred tax assets and others related to fair value asset estimates made at the time of the Charter acquisition. As I introduced during the last quarter’s call, there are some one-off items, which are reflected within our adjusted operating income. Starting with fabrication technology, transaction costs and the reversal of fair value increases to acquired inventory at Victor technologies reduce the fabrication technology adjusted operating profit by $9 million. We also determined that the use of the CCAD2 exchange rates that translate our Venezuelan net assets into U.S. dollars was the most appropriate. While we have nearly no fab tech operations in Venezuela, the write-down of our net monetary assets in Venezuela resulted in a charge in this segment of approximately $5 million. These two one-off items reduced adjusted operating income by $14 million in the second quarter. Excluding these items, our adjusted margin in fabrication technology would have exceeded 14%. In the gas and fluid handling segment, one-off items included the following: we exited a small business line in fluid handling in April, which generated a pretax non-cash loss on dispositions of approximately $4 million. The use of the CCAD2 exchange rates resulted in a loss of approximately $1 million, related to…

Steven E. Simms

Management

Thanks, Scott. As we’ve noted throughout this morning’s overview, we are excited about the ongoing improvements occurring at both Howden and ESAB. These businesses continue to drive significant margin gains, while also making the right investments in people, products and services, which will clearly drive long-term sustained organic growth. In addition, they are an aggression of recently completed acquisition is on track versus expectation, while this was a disappointing quarter for fluid handling. Believe the issues experienced in this quarter are manageable and that the counter measures noted involve will improve our cost structure and ongoing margin performance. In addition to these actions we made two key additions for our fluid handling leadership team. First, on Tuesday, we announced that Darryl Mayhorn will be joining the company as the new President and CEO of our fluid handling business and Senior Vice President of Colfax. Darryl comes to us from Rexnord, where he was the President of the Rexnord Aerospace Group and the Chief Human Resource Officer of Rexnord Corporation. Prior to joining Rexnord, he was the Group President of the Aerospace and Defense Group at Danaher Corporation. Before that, he held several leadership positions within Eaton Corporation. We are pleased to have an individual with such a deep industrial background leading the teams coupled with his demonstrated ability to drive continues improvement and developed talents. Darryl will be an invaluable to the fluid handling business since we address their current performance. In addition, Ken Fairleigh joined our lubrication services business as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Ken is a proven business leader with a strong track record for delivering growth and commercial process excellence in industrial markets. Most recently Ken was President and CEO of Paragon Technology, a provider of capillary to the power industry. Prior to that, Ken honed his sales and marketing skills at top industrial companies such as Danaher, GE, Square D and Rexnord. In summary, while we are not happy with the quarter, we remained very positive about the long-term outlook for Colfax. Howden continues to meet its targets. ESAB continues to improve margins and strengthen the business and the structural and leadership team changes we are making in fluid handling position it well for success. In addition, we continue to focus on recruiting and developing talents, giving priority to key roles to drive performance. Likewise, we remain active on the M&A front and have a strong pipeline though our top priority remains as always, delivering strong performance from our core business. With that, I would like to open up the session for Q&A.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Walter Liptak with GHS. Your line is open. Walter Scott Liptak – Global Hunter Securities, LLC: Hi, thanks for that, good morning everyone.

Steven E. Simms

Management

Good morning. Walter Scott Liptak – Global Hunter Securities, LLC: I wanted to ask about FABTECH and just I understand the outlook as if, you are not expecting any inflection? What’s happened and do you think with the overall market for to be so weak, some of the macro numbers are getting better, may be the industrial economies better in the second half?

Steven E. Simms

Management

From our perspective we do believe that we’re seeing improvement in the overall fabrication technology industry. It’s been slow relative to the overall economic growth, because we believe that some of the pockets that are most important to our performance and well, they have been slower to rebound. So if we look at the different regions around the world we see very different trends. For us, in North America, we experienced steadily improving order rates really since the February timeframe, but we have yet to see positive growth resulting from the improvements. The most significant weakness that we’ve seen here has really been around in marine and offshore, railcar and off-road production has improved, pressure vessels were up slightly, but generally not enough to really reverse the declining trends we’ve seen in the past, improving but not a positive trend yet. In South America, we were down during the period and there we think that automotive has been weak as well as large component manufacturing which ties to the welding industry or the mining industry. So we believe that in South America those two verticals are what’s driving the sort of slower growth or no growth. In the European market, our business is down slightly from an organic standpoint. Then, again, most of the key end markets have shown slight improvements, but we’re not seeing growth at this point in time. For us in Russia, Eastern Europe, the trends have been very, very positive. In fact, Russia has continued to build the momentum and I think that’s tied to the investments in oil and gas that we’re seeing across that region. In the Middle East, we’ve also seen an improvement here. Again, we think oil and gas for our part of the business has helped to improve in these key regions. I guess the last one for us would be India. We’re starting to see some signs of growth here. There has been a renewed commitment to strength the infrastructure. So we think that industry in India will begin to improve with some of the renewed commitments to the market. Does that help to give you a sense of both the industry and where ESAB has fared on a region by region base? Walter Scott Liptak – Global Hunter Securities, LLC: Yes. Yes, thanks for the color. And given the outlook for no inflection, I think that in July you’re sort of seeing the same trends that you saw during the quarter.

Steven E. Simms

Management

Generally speaking, yes. Walter Scott Liptak – Global Hunter Securities, LLC: Okay. If I can ask just a quick second one, in your Power Gen business, the order is down. It sounds like it’s largely U.S. I wonder if you could break out what the U.S. orders? How much they were down and what do you think the timing is of that opportunity you alluded to?

Steven E. Simms

Management

The orders down are – the U.S. is certainly one of the contributors, but I think as Steve said in his remarks, that China is also an area where we saw areas in order decline. We’ve got to break the quarter’s information out by territory. Walter Scott Liptak – Global Hunter Securities, LLC: Okay. All right, I got that. What’s the timing of the churn in the U.S. or China?

C. Scott Brannan

Management

Well, we’ve talked at length in prior calls about China. The SCR order pattern is running its course over the balance of the year. Steve talked a little today and we talked previously about the projects that we think will increase demand in other areas to makeup to that. I think U.S. is much harder. I mean people are still digesting the call for regulations that haven’t even been published yet. So at this point it would be difficult to provide a precise answer when the segment will turn in the U.S.

Steven E. Simms

Management

What we’ve been thinking about it, Walter is that, as we’ve said on prior calls, if you look at China and SCR and new build activity for Howden, that’s coming to an end as Scott mentioned. We had anticipated that North America would over time continue to offset that. So we see a moderation of the decline in China by growth in the U.S. and that has happened exactly as hoped. In fact our share of that has probably greater than what we anticipate in terms of winning the opportunity. Now this new discussion around the CO2 emissions, which cause for a 30% reduction in the emissions below the 2005 levels, clearly that’s going to slow our stock investments in some of these smaller plants that are complying with SCR. However, in anticipation of that as you know from prior calls, we’re aggressively focusing on Southeast Asia where new power and new power generation construction is very high. And we’ve been also essentially focused on expanding our presence in the aftermarket. And so those two areas in particular are two examples of how we’re offsetting the anticipated slowdown in China and the slowdown here in North America. Walter Scott Liptak – Global Hunter Securities, LLC: Okay, got it. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Nathan Jones with Stifel. Your line is open. Nathan H. Jones – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Good morning, Steve, Scott, Farand.

Steven E. Simms

Management

Good morning.

C. Scott Brannan

Management

Good morning.

Farand Pawlak

Management

Good morning. Nathan H. Jones – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: If you could just go to fluid handling for a minute, obviously lower margins and lower organic revenue growth outlook. Can you talk about what changed from last quarter to this quarter in terms of your organic growth outlook? And then if you could elaborate just a bit more on the execution issues that you encountered during the quarter and what countermeasures you’re taking.

C. Scott Brannan

Management

I’ll take the organic growth outlook and I’ll let Steve comment on the execution issue with that. We continue to see a weakness in power generation. As we’ve discussed today and on some earlier calls, that the combined cycle power generation market is not strong and that’s affecting our pump orders and revenue. Secondly, as we’ve stated probably over the last – at least the last year, the oil and gas market, while there’s a lot of activity in terms of floating, a lot of activity continues to be deferred. So those are the two reasons we’re taking down the revenue outlook, given where we are in the year, assessing the backlog we have in hand, and we felt it was appropriate to revise our outlook on organic growth.

Steven E. Simms

Management

From an executional standpoint, Nathan the two key projects that were mentioned in the script were also tied to the executional issues from a manufacturing standpoint. This is a part of the business that we entered several years ago, and these were two early orders that were finally locked in 2013, early part of 2013 that really go all the way back to 2012. And these particular project orders were new to the company both in terms of complexity, size, and technical content. And as we went through the final assembly and production of the product, we really had a significant issue on a couple of our European operations relative to the costs. And so we think we’ve addressed that for the future part of the business and we believe that we’ve addressed both manufacturing and refocused those key areas of the project segment that we want to compete in based on our capability, and also based on the margin potential. So we’ve begun, sort of taken on a process that refocusing the resource that we put into the space, trying to concentrate on those projects where we have the greatest value, both in terms of technology and material content. Nathan H. Jones – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: So are they any similar projects, what that might be new to the company where you might have an execution issue here in the future, or is this a one-off kind of thing?

Steven E. Simms

Management

We’ve got a couple more of the projects but those projects have been incorporated into the forecast going forward. Nathan H. Jones – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Okay and – sorry go ahead.

Steven E. Simms

Management

We think we’ve addressed the project management system around as well as the quotation process as well. Nathan H. Jones – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Okay. So there may be execution issues but you’ve already reflected that in your guidance.

Steven E. Simms

Management

Yes we have, correct. Nathan H. Jones – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Okay. You didn’t say that you’re still expecting oil and gas order growth for 2014, given this soft first half and the fact that you are talking about these things continuing to be pushed to the right. Can you kind of give a little bit more color about how you get comfortable that you can still actually grow oil and gas orders overall for 2014?

Steven E. Simms

Management

Yes, I think there’s two reasons; one, the comparisons getting much easier, which makes it easier to accomplish given that does the market has this deferral situation is not recent. And then secondly, we’ve actually experienced some recent including early in July a couple of very large orders have been booked here between quarter end and the call here this morning, and a couple of others that we believe are close to execution. So we actually see a few bright spots, we try to be cover that in the comments that few of these bright spots will hopefully bring this up to a net positive, not a huge improvement, but at least it will hopefully reserve the trends we’ve seen over the last three or four quarters. Nathan H. Jones – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Okay. Thanks very much guys.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mark Douglass with Longbow Research. Your line is open. D. Mark Douglass – Longbow Research LLC: Hi good morning gentlemen.

Steven E. Simms

Management

Good morning. D. Mark Douglass – Longbow Research LLC: Scott, can you address fab tech operating margins, you said extra one-offs, so are you going to see that to some initial charges on inventory, right on Victor? But you be over 14% without those is that what you said?

C. Scott Brannan

Management

That’s correct. D. Mark Douglass – Longbow Research LLC: So what are you thinking in the back half, I mean just assuming fab tech kind of models along here similar type of run rate on quarterly sales. What are you thinking as far as margins, can we push it to over 14%, or do you see it following in the kind of 13% range?

C. Scott Brannan

Management

I think well as you know following the welding industry market the second quarter is typically the strongest quarter for welding. So, I think this may be the apex of the margins, but we certainly would expect to be able to be close to this for the balance of the year. D. Mark Douglass – Longbow Research LLC: Okay, great, that’s helpful. And then looking at the – I guess the sales and order volatility in the gas and fluid handling. Are you finding ways to improve your ability to forecast? I mean obviously, some of these big projects get pushed into other quarters. But is that part of your – how you’re addressing certainly some of the problems in fluid handling?

Steven E. Simms

Management

I think that clearly, we’re trying to dig into improvements in forecasting process, which we have done. the biggest challenge we had is really around oil and gas, where we’ve seen significant orders push out and they tend to be order – decisions reached fairly late in the process obviously, related to expectations. To give you an example, in Latin America, we start to push out from PDVSA, we’ve seen a shift from Hess in the Southeast Asia and Lukoil in Russia. So it’s been fairly broad based, what we’ve tried to do in managing our week-to-week opportunity funnels as a sales organization is to really dig into far greater detail by customer in terms of where we are in the decision-making process, but – and we think that we’ve reflected a more conservative, faster in the balance of the year in the forecast than we’ll see as we go forward. but we’ve driven and retrained all of our sales people across the company and with value selling concepts and also in managing simply around the oil and gas funnel. I would just add that the funnel continues to grow in overall size. The opportunities that are being awarded, Mark, we look at that and believe that we’re maintaining share of those orders that are being led, and we’re acted upon. So we don’t think if the case where we are losing share, we do know and recognize that we’ve got to get a lot better, a lot of closer and being able to forecast these push outs. D. Mark Douglass – Longbow Research LLC: Okay, thank you.

Steven E. Simms

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jeff Hammond with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open. Jeffrey D. Hammond – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Hey, good morning guys.

Steven E. Simms

Management

Good morning. Jeffrey D. Hammond – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Just to come back to the organic growth rates, I think coming into the year, you’re thinking 2% to 4% for fluid handling and down 1% to plus 2% for fab tech. Can you kind of give a sense on how you’re thinking about those now just to understand the order of magnitude?

Steven E. Simms

Management

Sure. For Howden, which was 4% to 6% that we have no gains, so as I said in the prepared remarks, Howden is performing. as expected, we have a very solid look at the balance of the year through the backlog and expect no change for the Howden business. The range we’ve put around both fluid handling and fabrication technology correlates to how they performed through the six months of the year and welding is down 3% and fluid handling is down something very, very close to that. So that’s sort of where we’ve put the range around for those two businesses. As I mentioned, FX is the small contributor to this decrease from the initial guidance that you’re trying to reconcile on the total number. Jeffrey D. Hammond – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Okay. And then you talked about some potential headwinds, and Howden around just the CO2 and uncertainty, and I guess some of the China new-build. how should we think about that in terms of the out year or the longer-term growth rate as some of those plays grew, and just visibility into next year?

C. Scott Brannan

Management

I think as Steve said, we feel very confident. we have a whole list of other areas that will make up for the expected roll off the SCR projects. Some of that U.S. business will undoubtedly get canceled, but a good portion of it will go ahead, it will probably just be deferred. but we think we have enough things in the pipeline to feel confidence where the wrong growth rate for Howden, and in 18 months, we don’t have visibility much beyond that, but we haven’t been able to change our – their view there. Jeffrey D. Hammond – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Okay. and then just last thing on similarly, I think, you said X items, your margin run rate in gas and fluid was 11%. So how should we think about building out the second half of the year relative to kind of that first half run rate?

C. Scott Brannan

Management

Well, that’s actually the non-cash items, some of the other items that Steve talked about the large diameter pump projects, as well as the systems businesses in Europe, including the one we took the impairment on those depressed margins in the second quarter. So we expect significantly better margins in that for the second half of the year. Jeffrey D. Hammond – KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.: Okay. thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Brian Konigsberg with Vertical Research Partners. Your line is open. Brian Konigsberg – Vertical Research Partners Inc.: Yes. hi, good morning.

Steven E. Simms

Management

Good morning.

C. Scott Brannan

Management

Good morning. Brian Konigsberg – Vertical Research Partners Inc.:

C. Scott Brannan

Management

I guess the best way to answer that would be that the CO2 rules may cause people to close class that there were other lot of planning, but SCR applications in. So as we’ve tried to say both in the remarks at and response to earlier questions, we believe a good portion of this U.S. market for the reason, you stated will still come to fruition, but people are being cautious of studying the CO2 issue, determining whether some of these smaller plants might need to be closed. and as Steve said, we expect that to have an impact on our shorter-term order rate in the business. Brian Konigsberg – Vertical Research Partners Inc.: Okay, I got you.

Steven E. Simms

Management

One of the things that we’ve talked about before is that with the – and I think that’s your point is that with the new legislation that’s pending, once that becomes law, we believe it will be a significant pump for our business at Howden. It’s been a question of whether or not that hits in 2015 or 2016. In the meantime, our challenge is to leverage the tremendous investment going into Southeast Asia, and new power facilities and also in the aftermarket, which is what we’ve been pretty successful and being able to do. Brian Konigsberg – Vertical Research Partners Inc.: Understood, thanks. And separately, can you maybe just talk about pricing, especially maybe within the oil and gas on fluid handling side. so you are seeing push outs. but generally, it seems some projects are starting to come to market, and you could see some more activity, but you also have a lot of competitors that are looking to, I guess absorb excess capacity. Maybe just talk about what trends you’re seeing and is that a concern and anything based on your guidance?

Steven E. Simms

Management

What I would say to you, looking at our margins in oil and gas without going into the detail of it, I can tell you that thinking up on your specific question, our margins in oil and gas have actually improved in the quarter, they’re up relative to the first quarter and up relative to the prior year. So we continue to benefit from some of the activities and manufacturing in a better process around oil and gas, or our margins have been hanging in there in fact that improve. Brian Konigsberg – Vertical Research Partners Inc.: Okay. thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Joe Ritchie with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Joseph A. Ritchie – Goldman Sachs & Co.: Hi, good morning, everyone.

Steven E. Simms

Management

Good morning.

C. Scott Brannan

Management

Good morning, Joe. Joseph A. Ritchie – Goldman Sachs & Co.: On the gas and fluids handling side, let me ask a question about margins, it was helpful to get the explanation that ask one off was roughly 11% for the quarter. But then Steve, you discussed clearly some other issues that occurred this quarter that impacted the margins, I mean, on a year-over-year basis that was still down 250 basis points. What I’m trying understand a little bit better is the quantification of some of those items and so perhaps, if there is any way to quantify how much the European project business execution issues impacted the quarter and also that the manufacturing inefficiencies that would be helpful?

Steven E. Simms

Management

I think that’s probably a level of detail that beyond, that we would discuss for competitive reasons competitive reasons. So I think we’ll leave it at those are far significant issues that are issues of the several million dollars each type of variety that I don’t believe we try to quantify them. Joseph A. Ritchie – Goldman Sachs & Co.: I guess maybe said in other way more broadly, would margins have been closed to flat, or potentially up this quarter, absent [those issues] (ph) or would margins still have been down on a year-over-year basis?

Steven E. Simms

Management

I think margins would have still been down on a year-over-year basis. We made some other comments about the pricing pressure in the marine business, as well as our services business well better than the first quarter was not strong as we hope. So margins would have still been down, but not significantly if you adjust it for the large project jobs and the European system business. Joseph A. Ritchie – Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay and then I guess one follow-up question. On the commentary that you made earlier regarding embedding potential, additional issues from other projects into your guidance for the remainder of the year, is it possible that some of these other projects will then spill into 2015, or is this an issue that you feel like you’ve got pretty well mitigated for the 2014 timeframe?

Steven E. Simms

Management

I think it’s all contained within 2014. Joseph A. Ritchie – Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay, great. Thanks for answering my questions.

Steven E. Simms

Management

You welcome.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Andrew Obin with Bank of America. Your line is open. Andrew Obin – Bank of America Merrill Lynch:

Steven E. Simms

Management

Again, when we try to explain to you is that, if we look at our ESAB business, we think the business is performing very, very well. We believe that the order rates although not showing positive growth year-on-year, we’re seeing signs of improvement in virtually every region around the world for the business. The integration of Victor, fairly large deal just completed is on track and certainly in line with what we had hope, leveraging that a business exactly on the path that we had communicated. So from an ESAB standpoint we believe that we are doing very well in fact, we’re very much on tract with the targeted long-term operating income goal of 13%. In fact, we feel very comfortable about delivering that on time or even a little early. So we believe the business is in very good shape. We also believe that with the new product commitment that we’ve made and what will begin to hit the market in the fourth quarter, early first quarter of 2015, hopefully, we’ll begin to see organic growth in the space. I’d also say that it’s difficult that it is, we can also look at our market share and we know that if we look at the history of ESAB we’ve gone from losing market share when we acquired the business, stabilizing, to now regaining loss market share particularly in the European arena. So we feel very good about the business, the team leading the business and just to comment on, as we look at the trends in Russia and Eastern Europe, we’re actually pleased with the way the business has performed and our ability to compete there, both as margin and top line growth, and being a key player and manufacturer there probably helps significantly, as well. So we are…

Steven E. Simms

Management

Sure. As I said in the comments, for us we track in this vertical market very carefully and closely all the orders that are irrelevant in the space that we’re competing in. And as I’ve said before, our funnels have generally been on the increase in terms of size, but the speed with which those opportunities are moving through the funnel have slowed significantly. And the awards, when they are made, we look at it on a project by project basis on every monthly operating review. Our batting average is very consistent with what we’ve seen in the past. So we don’t believe we’re losing share. We do believe that in our space within oil and gas we’ve seen very important orders shifting out.

C. Scott Brannan

Management

I think on the compressor side you would not get the kind of feedback from our peers there that you quoted for the flow side. There is continued deferral on the compressor side and that’s pretty consistent across the whole market. Andrew Obin – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jamie Sullivan with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Jamie Sullivan – RBC Capital Markets: Hi, good morning.

Steven E. Simms

Management

Good morning. Jamie Sullivan – RBC Capital Markets: A follow-up on the fluid handling business. The progress that you mentioned that are impacting the margins where you’ve had some challenges, are those complete or when do those get completed?

Steven E. Simms

Management

The projects that we recognize today were completed and shipped in the quarter. Jamie Sullivan – RBC Capital Markets: Okay.

Steven E. Simms

Management

As Scott mentioned, we have one or two others that have been included in the guidance then they should run their course by the end of this calendar year. Jamie Sullivan – RBC Capital Markets: Okay, thanks. And then, for the 4Q waiting you mentioned Houttuin and [Tushaco] (ph), the visibility there, what kind of confidence do you have that you’ll see that ramp going into the fourth quarter?

Steven E. Simms

Management

I think we have as high confidence as we possibly can, because we have new orders in hand in those businesses. So we have high confidence. Jamie Sullivan – RBC Capital Markets: Okay, great. That’s all I had. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from John Inch with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. John G. Inch – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.: Good morning, everyone. When did you see in Western Europe as a whole – could you give us a little bit of color perhaps in terms of how the quarter played out and what you’re seeing today?

Steven E. Simms

Management

Largely from the standpoint ESAB, our fabrication technology group? John G. Inch – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.: Yes, that’s fine. Yes.

Steven E. Simms

Management

Within ESAB, as we think about Europe and if would have focused specifically on Western Europe, we’ve seen the business – again, the level of decline is certainly moderated and overall it’s improved. And what we can see in Europe, as you know, we do have a chance to look at market share in that arena, at least a fairly good surrogate and we’ve seen market share gains that occurred in the fourth quarter and we are confident that that happened again at the end of the first quarter. So we believe that that’s improving. We think we’re gaining traction and we believe we’re in a position where hopefully in 2015 we’ll start to see that market rebound for ESAB and we’ll see growth. But you’re right. If you look at Western Europe where we’ve got the significant share, the trends are very different. That’s been down sort of in the low single-digits. We’ve seen that trend improved just slightly quarter-to- quarter, very different as you point out than what we see in Russia and the former Soviet Union, where to be honest, our growth there were up in the very high single-digits. In fact, John, it’s picked up momentum since the first quarter. John G. Inch – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.: It’s impressive. Did the market, Steve, for welding in Western Europe, do you think the market – you get pretty good share of data. Did it deteriorate in Europe throughout the quarter?

Steven E. Simms

Management

We don’t think the rate of decline deteriorated any further than we had seen in the recent past. John G. Inch – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.: All right, okay. So that’s sort of encouraging. I want to ask you just go back to – I think Andrew asked the question just about the cadence of M&A. I don’t know that I really understood the answer. My question is if you had a couple of operational issues, why wouldn’t it make more sense to simply focus internally off a little while and take a pause in M&A and then come back to M&A later just to get some of these internal things kind of cleaned up or fixed, or do you feel like you’ve got the bandwidth to do both simultaneously?

Steven E. Simms

Management

Sorry about the confusion to response, my apologies there. At the end of the day, we’ve got three very attractive areas for investment from an M&A standpoint and what I was trying to get across to, I believe was Andrew. John G. Inch – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.: Yes.

Steven E. Simms

Management

We’re in an outstanding position to continue acquisitions in Howden, as well as ESAB and we are focused on correcting some of the operational issues at fluid handling. But keep in mind, as I said, those issues from our perspective were fixed within a six to 12-month timeframe. So it’s not a moratorium on acquisitions for fluid handling, but they understand they need to get the core business under control that would really be an aggressive push here. John G. Inch – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.:

Steven E. Simms

Management

So I think that it really, that we really do deleverage the tools of CBS as shared in the example there. The other thing is that Clay Kiefaber and his team that leads the business have been unbelievably aggressive about cutting cost and overhead, where it did make sense and redeploying a portion of those savings into investing to the long-term growth, but also improving profitability. the guys are tracking in line, or as you can see ahead of schedule in terms of cost improvement. it’s not just SG&A. you’ll look at what we’ve been able to do on the procurement side, which we’ll share with you in September at the ESAB Day. I think you’d see that they’re making wonderful strives on many different front, freeing up waste, and being able to improve margins that way, and also putting it into top line growth, which you’ll see in the new product activity from Clay and Ken. John G. Inch – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.: That makes total sense. Thank you very much.

Steven E. Simms

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

I am showing no further questions. I would now turn the call back over to Farand Pawlak for closing remarks.

Farand Pawlak

Management

Great, thanks again, for joining us. and we look forward to updating you on the next call.

Operator

Operator