Lorie Tekorius
Analyst · Stephens. Please go ahead
Thank you, Grey. Good morning, everyone and welcome to Greenbrier’s fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2015 conference call. On today’s call, I am joined by our Chairman and CEO, Bill Furman and CFO, Mark Rittenbaum. We will discuss our results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended August 31, as well as provide an outlook for 2016. After that, we will open up the call for questions. In addition to the press release issued this morning, which includes supplemental data, more financial information and key metrics can be found in the presentation 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 2016 and beyond to differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements made by or on behalf of Greenbrier. Greenbrier had a successful year. In financial terms, we had record quarter and year end revenue, net earnings, diluted EPS and adjusted EBITDA. In operational terms, we achieved record levels of new orders, production and delivery, and we exited the year with strong backlog. Highlights for the quarter include continued margin expansion to 22.8% with margins in each of our segments up sequentially, adjusted EBITDA of $147.6 million and earnings of $66.9 million or $2.02 per diluted share, on a record fourth quarter revenue of $765.5 million. Orders for the quarter totaled 2,900 new railcars valued at $470 million, and we ended our year with the diverse backlog of 41,300 units valued at $4.7 billion, at an average unit sales price of $114,000 per unit. This backlog, a portion of which is priced with attractive margins. We also announced that 33% increase in our quarterly dividend, raising it to $0.20 per share and the board authorized $100 million increase to our share repurchase program bringing cumulative authorization to $225 million. To date, we have repurchased $2.6 million shares or an 8% reduction in share count over two years. Since October 2013, we’ve returned nearly $145 million to shareholders in dividends and share repurchases. Now I will turn it over to Bill.