R. Trumbull
Analyst · KeyBanc
Thank you, Patrick. We're pleased to report third quarter earnings per share after, non-GAAP adjustments, of $0.92, an increase of 12% compared to the prior year and a record for any third quarter in the company's history. Additionally, our operating income after non-GAAP adjustments was $33.7 million, a solid increase of 17% versus the third quarter of 2011.
Our consolidated operating income margins, after non-GAAP adjustments, improved by 130 basis points compared to the record third quarter that we reported last year. We attribute much of the margin improvement to productivity gains in our manufacturing facilities, which resulted in reducing third quarter direct labor and burden costs as a percentage of sales by 70 basis points compared to the prior year. This equated to a little over half of our operating income margin improvement.
Our margins also benefited from leverage on organic sales growth, led by our Fueling and Water businesses in developing regions.
Our consolidated sales increased by 6% compared to the third quarter last year, in spite of foreign exchange translation effects, which reduced our sales growth rate by almost 600 basis points.
Our organic sales growth during the quarter, excluding both acquisitions and foreign exchange, was 6%.
Turning to a review of our Water Systems businesses, our water systems team in Latin America turned in an outstanding sales performance during the quarter. Our Latin American Water Systems sales represent about 12% of our consolidated sales, and increased organically by about 26% compared to the third quarter prior year.
An important contributor to this growth was the rapid market acceptance of our recently-launched groundwater pump and motor product line in Brazil.
We also enjoyed sales gains in Mexico as ongoing dry weather increased the demand for irrigation pumping systems.
In addition, we are benefiting from our new distribution center in Chile. We are planning to open additional new distribution centers elsewhere in Latin America.
Our Asia Pacific water systems team also turned in a strong quarter. Our Asia Pacific Water Systems sales represent about 6% of our consolidated sales and increased organically by 13%, compared to the third quarter last year.
Over the past 2 years, we've invested in expanding our sales and distribution network across this region, with particular emphasis on the ASEAN countries.
Improved product availability from our new distribution center in Singapore is helping us to increase our sales rapidly across this region.
We're also planning to open additional new distribution centers elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific arena.
Our Water Systems sales in the U.S. and Canada represents about 43% of our consolidated sales and grew by 12% during the quarter. Excluding acquisitions and the impact of foreign currency translation, U.S./Canada sales were flat compared to the third quarter 2011.
Sales of groundwater pumping equipment grew at a high-single-digit rate as we continued to gain share and benefit from strength in the agricultural irrigation market. However, our growth in the groundwater market was offset by a decline in residential wastewater pump sales. We are aware, from trade association data, that the entire residential wastewater pump market in the U.S. and Canada has declined by 34% through the second quarter this year.
Last year was a particularly strong year for residential wastewater sales due to the wet weather conditions in the Midwest and Northeast, and 2012 has been particularly dry. While our residential wastewater sales have not declined nearly as much as the overall market, we have nevertheless been caught in the downdraft.
It is reasonable to assume there will be a recovery of the residential wastewater pump market next year, with a return to more normal weather conditions.
Sales of mobile pumping systems were modestly below our expectations in the quarter due to the slowdown in drilling activity associated with low natural gas prices.
Our U.S./Canada sales of water systems drives and controls continued to grow at a double-digit rate during the quarter. As the cost of manufacturing electronic drives has come down and the performance has improved, more and more of our customers are including drive and control packages in their pumping systems installations. These packages protect the system from failure, reduce electricity consumption and provide for controlling key system performance parameters, such as pressure and flow.
Franklin is a leader in providing customized drive and control systems to the pumping markets that we serve. Our focus up to now has been on lower horsepower applications, up to around 5 horsepower.
During the third quarter, we announced the acquisition of Cerus Industrial, a rapidly growing manufacturer of higher horsepower drives and control packages for fluid transfer applications.
High horsepower water systems pumps and motors represent about 30% of our consolidated sales, and nearly every one of them is installed with a drive or control package that is provided by someone else. With Cerus, we're now in a position to supply these products ourselves and offer our customers an optimized motor pump and control solution.
The benefits we will offer our customers include reducing installation costs, reducing operating costs, increasing reliability and improved warranty protection.
The benefit for Franklin, when we sell a control package with our pump and motor, it usually doubles our revenue per installation.
Our Water Systems sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa represents about 18% of our consolidated sales, with about half in Europe and half in the Middle East and Africa. Our sales in this region declined organically by about 1% due principally to the weak economic conditions in Europe, which offset double-digit sales growth in the Gulf region and North Africa.
Our Fueling Systems business represents about 20% of consolidated sales and grew organically by 10% during the quarter. Our fueling sales were up across all of our global regions except Europe, achieving double-digit growth in Latin America, Asia Pacific and the Middle East and Africa.
Sales of our fuel pumping product line grew rapidly in these markets, as station owners throughout the developing world continue the conversion from suction pumping systems to Franklin's pressure pumping systems.
I should point out that while 97% of the stations in North America have converted to Franklin's pressure pumping technology, less than 25% of the stations in the rest of the world have changed to pressure pumping. But the conversion is ongoing.
Our fueling sales in the U.S. and Canada were up about 6% during the quarter while our fueling sales in Europe declined organically by about 2% compared to the third quarter last year.
As we look forward to the fourth quarter, we continue to be cognizant of the weak economic conditions in Europe and the negative impact that foreign currency translation is having on our reported sales and earnings. Nevertheless, we expect that during the fourth quarter, our Water Systems sales will grow by 6% to 9% and our Water Systems operating income, after non-GAAP adjustments, will grow by 9% to 12%.
We are anticipating that our Fueling Systems sales will grow by 6% to 9% compared to the fourth quarter prior year and that our fueling operating income will grow by 10% to 13%.
Overall, we believe that our EPS, after non-GAAP adjustments, will increase by 9% to 12% compared to the fourth quarter 2011.
Thank you, and I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, John Haines.