Lorie Tekorius
Analyst · J.B. Groh from D.A. Davidson. Sir your line is now open
Thank you very much, Mickey. Good morning, everyone and welcome to Greenbrier’s third quarter fiscal 2015 conference call. On today’s call, I am joined by our Chairman and CEO, Bill Furman and CFO, Mark Rittenbaum. Today, we will discuss the results for the quarter ended May 31, 2015 and comment on our outlook for the remainder of 2015. After that, we will open up the call for questions. And in addition to the press release issued this morning, which includes supplemental data, more financial information and key metrics can be found in our earnings deck posted today on the IR section of our website. As always, matters discussed on this conference call include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Throughout our discussion today, we will describe some of the important factors that could cause Greenbrier’s actual results in 2015 and beyond to differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements made by or on behalf of Greenbrier. The highlights for our third quarter includes record revenue, adjusted EBITDA, deliveries and the value of our backlog. Aggregate gross margin of 20.9% was the new quarterly record and was driven by performance from our manufacturing and lease syndication businesses. Orders during the period totaled 5,300 new railcars, valued at $640 million. Our diversified backlog remains a robust 45,100 units with an estimated value of $4.86 billion. While our revenue and EBITDA this quarter were both all-time highs, diluted EPS missed Street expectations by $0.30 per share. Let me take a minute to bridge that gap. First, we had non-recurring cost of approximately $5.2 million after-tax or $0.16 per share for professional fees and other transaction costs associated with the potential acquisitions, for which discussions terminated in June and our advocacy of new tank car safety regulations. Second, a $100 per ton decline in scrap metal prices in a single month adversely affected our wheel services business by $1.1 million after-tax, or $0.03 per share. And third, net earnings attributable to non-controlling interest, better known to some of us as minority interest, was higher in the third quarter than for the first half of 2015. This increase is due to a higher proportion of our deliveries, about 45% being built at our 50-50 joint venture, GIMSA. As many of you know for accounting purposes, we consolidate 100% of GIMSA’s revenue and gross margin. The line items, net earnings attributable to non-controlling interest represents our partner’s 50% share of the GIMSA results, which has to be deducted in determining Greenbrier’s earnings per share. So, the more high margin units delivered in any given quarter from our GIMSA facility, the higher the minority interest line item will be. For the fourth quarter, we expect this line item to be at least similar to the third quarter. Now, I will turn it over to Bill.