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Griffon Corporation (GFF)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Sun, Aug 2, 2015

$91.57

-2.94%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Griffon Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call conference over to Mr. Doug Wetmore, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir. Doug Wetmore Thank you, Tracy. Good afternoon everyone. With me on the call is Ron Kramer, our Chief Executive Officer and will also join by Brian Harris. Who will be soon in responsibilities as Griffon Chief Financial officer effective August 1st, following my retirement on July 31st? Before we get it in details, there are certain matters that I want to bring your attention. First the call is being recorded and will be available for playback the details of which are in our press release issued earlier today and details are also available on our website. Second during the call we may make certain forward-looking statements about the company’s performance. Such statements are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed and for additional information concerning risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from those discussed in our forward-looking statements, you should refer to the cautionary statements contained in our press release as well as the risk factors discussed in our various filings with the SEC. Finally, some of today’s prepared remarks will adjust for those items that affect comparability between reporting periods. These items are laid out in the non-GAAP reconciliations, which are included in our press release. Now I will turn the call over to Ron.

Ron Kramer

Management

Thanks sir, good afternoon everyone. Griffon strong third quarter results continue to build on a strong first half of the year. Home & Building Products again drove our performance, reflecting the improvement in the U.S. housing market, the benefit of recent acquisitions and continued benefits from our strategic initiatives. We anticipate that we will continue to gain momentum as we complete our fiscal year and we are optimistic about 2016. Consolidated revenue of 512 million increase 5% over prior year excluding the impact of currency earnings per share for the quarter of $0.23 represents a 19% increase over last year's adjusted results and segment EBITDA of 55.2 million increased by 11% over the prior year of record quarter for us. The impact of currency was not material to earnings per share or EBITDA in the quarter. Let me give you an overview of our segments and then Doug will provide more detail. Home and Building Products continue to grow through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions. Revenues climb 7% over the prior year quarter reaching 272 million, our AMES business include the Cyclone garden and tools business acquired in May 2014. The segment benefited 3% from the Cyclone acquisition increase wheelbarrow sales as well as improved door volume in our favorable mix. The underlying trends for Home and Building Products remains positive. We are encouraged to see momentum in a multi-year housing recovery with improvements in both residential construction and repairing our model and these trends are positive for both the door business and our tools businesses. For Telephonics, well there is limited visibility with respect to defense budgets, our third quarter revenue was up 13% to 115 million, notwithstanding the current quarter we continue to expect some quarter to quarter volatility as the outlook for defense spending remains…

Doug Wetmore

Management

Thank you Ron, third quarter consolidated revenue as was mentioned totaled 512 million of representing a 1% increase over the prior year quarter and foreign currency substantially impacted our Plastic's revenue and to a lesser extend Home and Building Products. Absent an unfavorable impact of currency revenue would have increased 5% in comparison to the 2014 quarter. Home and Building Products revenue reached $272 million an increase of 7% compared to the prior year quarter. AMES revenue increased 6% resulting from a 6% contribution from the Cyclone acquisition which was completed in May of 2014 and increased wheelbarrow sales. And that was partially offset by an unfavorable 4% foreign currency impact. In our door's business favorable trends continued in the third quarter and sales increased 8% over the prior year quarter, driven by a 5% increase in volume with the balance of the growth primarily due to favorable mix. Foreign currency for door's was 1% unfavorable. Home and Building Products segment adjusted EBITDA increased 30% to $25.4 million driven by the AMES operational efficiency improvement and cost control measures, a contribution from AMES acquisition of 10% and increase volume and favorable mix at doors. This improvement was despite a 4% unfavorable headwind from foreign currency translation. Segment EBITDA margin expanded 160 basis points to 9.3% of segment sales. We've now owned both Northcote and Cyclone for over a year and therefore the contribution to growth from acquisitions that we witnessed in the first three quarters of fiscal 2015 will not recur in our fourth fiscal quarter this year. In our Telephonis segment revenue increased 13% to $115 million with much of that increase due to timing of work performed on Multi-Mode Radar systems. Telephonics segment adjusted EBITDA increased $600,000 from the year ago quarter and it reached $15.7 million for…

Ron Kramer

Management

Thanks. With just one quarter left in our year we are pleased with our performance and we are confident on our ability to achieve our targets, there have been some micro challenges impacting us our affords to make our company strong and more efficient and few yield in impressive benefits. With restructuring costs substantially behind U.S., we are beginning to the operating leverage in each of our segments. Looking forward, we have ample resources to invest in each of our segments to support their growth and are optimistic about their prospects. We are committed to shareholder value creation and are confident that we can make investments for organic growth, pursue additional acquisitions and return value to our shareholders via quarterly dividend and share repurchases. I am very pleased with the progress we have made and I am confident about our future. With that, operator we would like to open it up for questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, [Operator Instructions] and we will go first to Bob Labick from CJS Securities.

Bob Labick

Analyst

Okay, and I'll just start, can talk a little about -- I know the restructuring is now done at AMES and that’s gone very well and we can see it in our results. Can you talk about some of the ongoing revenue driving initiatives there the brand awareness in the skews, the line reviews and things like that and what initiatives you have under way there?

Ron Kramer

Management

We've spent a tremendous amount of time and in setting the strategy and investing in the business and the team at AMES led by Mike Sarrica has done just a fabulous job of working through the branding around AMES, around True Temper, around Jackson and around Razor-Back. So we've called the list of brands that are available down and we have taken our sku count down from something over 3000 to something closer to 1000. And the business that we've positioned our self is the world branded consumer products company and we've really tried to position ourselves for both value and quality to be the preferred provider for long handle tools and landscaping products, pots and planners in the United States, in Canada through our [grand] business and through this terrific acquisition that we have been able to accomplish and integrate well in Australia under the NorthCote management team led by Simon Hupfeld. So we really have terrific platform for growth in both the North American business and in Australia and the key for us now with the brands as well defined as we are-- in both product its mentioned in the U.S. and geographic expansion which was very optimistic about our prospects for the AMES business.

Bob Labick

Analyst

Okay great thank you. And this been some private transactions in both of your Home and Building Products space and your defense electronic spaces in the areas, is there any information about you can provide on that as relates to you businesses or those industries?

Ron Kramer

Management

First roll it to Home and Building Products, competitor about CHI was purchased by KKR recently for what we understand to be 12 times EBITDA and we couldn't be happier to see businesses that we view positively we know the outlook for own garage door business has improved significantly Clopay is by far the dominant garage door manufacturer in the United States, were exclusive through Home Depot and through our dealer network and it’s a business that has benefited substantially by both the grow through big boxes, Home Depots and [indiscernible] and our dealer business and one that we see continued expansion. The prices being paid in the market for comparable assets are obviously the things that we view very positively. In the defense space just we are very pleased to see the potential that [indiscernible] is going to be part of Lockheed and as you know we're supplier of radar systems on those platforms having that integrated ownership we view very positively for Telephonics in their future to be able to grow with the international sales effort that Lockheed is likely to be able do around that asset. So our business it continues to be quiet strong we like bit positioning of Home and Building Products and we see assets getting priced at very attractive levels relative to the value of our own businesses which someone makes it harder for us to buy those assets and our plan has been and continues to be we are going to run our businesses make them efficiency or profitable then we pick this housing recovery is real sustainable and people are going to be pleasantly surprised with the upside.

Bob Labick

Analyst

Okay great and you kind of went towards my next question there too, obliviously you are positioned well right now for some organic growth but you also over time would like to go through additional acquisitions can you talk a little bit about the environment if it's tough to find anything or if there is still tuck-ins available in various areas or how -- what you are seeing and how you are thinking about it?

Ron Kramer

Management

Yes, our primary focus has been and will continue to be operational efficiency and making the businesses we already own. Continue profitable from these levels and we think we are well on the path to doing that. Part of what's starts to become more opportunistic for us is the strength we believe we have within each of our businesses and the management teams that we have and our ability to integrate other people's businesses into our platform so tuck-ins particularly around the Home and Building Product segment remain the most interesting part of growth for us We really see the geographic story becoming stronger for us our Australian acquisitions have gone very well and that’s in spite of taking some dramatic currency heads. We are still ahead of our own internal forecast, so that speaks to our ability to integrate businesses we think that we can continue to add tuck-ins in Australia as a result of both the strength of management and the currency advantage that we have in terms of the U.S. dollar. Similar story in Canada and the ability for us to openly look at growing our products into European markets is things that are very topical for us. That might happen through acquisition and might happen through organic growth. But the ability to find the next acquisition really comes from the strength of our running the businesses we already have.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] and we go next to Justin Bergner from Gabelli & Company.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

It looks like a pretty good quarter, I was wondering given your short of tricky in a little bit better on your EBITDA then plus 5% for the year to date in this last quarter was sort of plus 11%, should think that there is upside of that 5% EBITDA growth, grow that you have for the fiscal year is kind of looking into next year?

Doug Wetmore

Management

Justin, it was a good quarter and we are very pleased about the performance and the positioning of the company. You let me just comment about guidance. We give guidance for credit investors in order to be able to make it easy to deal with rating agencies then to have a sense direction. From an equity holders standpoint we view the intrinsic earning powers of our business as being part of the long term strategy, so the guidance we try to do once a year when we set our year end results which will be in November we still have two months left in the this fiscal year so we are not going to take up guidance, we simply saying that we are confirming what we said last November as our outlook for the year and we are added above that and we are very confident about what we see going on, going into 2016 and we will put some guidance out for again for credit investors. From an equity holders stand point we been in an aggressive buyer of our stock which a sign of our view of the intrinsic earning that power and value that remains in our shares.

Ron Kramer

Management

And Justin, I’ll just repeat, I said 200 million or better and 5% were better so I think we answered your question in our comments since various potential upside from that but for that reason there is another risk factors that we enumerate our-- especially every call and whether currency in resin are all big factors and they can fluctuate fairly quickly and fairly dramatically as we have seen, so we think it's prudent to continue to maintain the guidance and in reference we are updating it because we are continuing to reformed that guidance.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

Okay great, with respect to your Telephonics business you have the backlog is that-- I guess the lowest level of since the first quarter of fiscal year 14', at what level does the backlog become constraining in terms of revenue growth and on to the margin [indiscernible] or in improvement of margin in the Telephonics business?

Ron Kramer

Management

It's always in have been flow and you like to be linear but the defense business particularly in this budgetary environment is not as linear as we would like it to be. But again we feel very confident about the balance of this year for Telephonics and that backlog gives us very good comfort in terms of where we stand for the first six, arguably even nine months of next year. We always like to have the backlog as big as possible but at some point in time you do have to continue to work on developing new business and as I mention again in some of my comments, some of the international business that Telephonics is targeting, due you take a little bit longer to develop than strictly a U.S. base business, so again as Ron said just very confident on long term value of the Telephonics business and we are very confident they will continue to enter that backlog.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

Okay. Great that’s helpful. Now on the share re-purchase from, what cause you to sort of do the authorization today versus waiting until your existing authorization ran out?

Ron Kramer

Management

Our fiscal end is a September 30, and at the end of July we have only 21 million remaining in that authorization and based on our view of our optimistic view of the company we thought was prudent to add to it now, and to have our tank full and you never know when the market is going to present an opportunity.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

Great, if you were to buyback more of the Goldman shares which I guess you have an option or sort of right of first refusal on, is that considered part of that share re-purchase authorization?

Ron Kramer

Management

It's not considered part of that, this is open market purchases. That is not our contemplation.

Justin Bergner

Analyst

Okay so you wouldn’t need the authorization to go forward on that?

Ron Kramer

Management

Correct, that’s correct.

Operator

Operator

And it appears there are no further questions at this time. I like to turn the conference back to Ron Kramer for any additional or closing remarks.

Ron Kramer

Management

Thank you, we are going to work very hard to finish the year successfully and we are very optimistic about where the company is, so we will look forward to speaking to you in November. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

This does concludes today's conference we thank you for your participation.