Earnings Labs

Generac Holdings Inc. (GNRC)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 16, 2016

$252.92

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-0.24%

1 Week

+5.77%

1 Month

+16.15%

vs S&P

+8.33%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Generac Holdings Incorporated Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2015 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. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I would like to introduce your host for today's conference call, York Ragen, Chief Financial Officer. You may begin.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2015 earnings call. I'd like to thank everyone for joining us this morning. With me today is Aaron Jagdfeld, our President and Chief Executive Officer. We'll begin our call today by commenting on forward-looking statements. Certain statements made during this presentation as well as other information provided from time to time by Generac or its employees may contain forward-looking statements and involve risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in these forward-looking statements. Please see our earnings release or our SEC filings for a list of words or expressions that identify such statements and the associated risk factors. In addition, we will make reference to certain non-GAAP measures during today's call. Additional information regarding these measures, including reconciliation to comparable U.S. GAAP measures, is available in our earnings release and SEC filings. I will now turn the call over to Aaron. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, York. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Our overall financial performance for the fourth quarter exceeded our most recent guidance expectations, with net sales and margins continuing the strong seasonal performance experienced during the second half of 2015. Despite the persistent very low power outage environment in the quarter, higher-than-expected shipments of residential products improved organically on a sequential basis and helped to largely offset additional weakness within our Commercial & Industrial products, driven by lower-than-expected shipments of mobile products as a result of the further weakening in energy prices. Also, shipments to telecom national account customers were higher than expected due to some year-end budget-related spending. We generated a record level of free cash flow during the quarter of $101 million which was largely…

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thanks, Aaron. Net sales for the fourth quarter of 2015 were $357.8 million as compared to $404 million in the fourth quarter of 2014. Sequentially, net sales in the current quarter were approximately flat as compared to $359.3 million in the third quarter of 2015, continuing our seasonally strong performance. Looking at net sales by product class, residential product sales during the fourth quarter of 2015 increased to $198.5 million as compared to $194.9 million in the prior year quarter. Contributions from the Country Home Products acquisition and, to a lesser extent, an increase in shipments of portable generators were mostly offset by a decline in shipments of home standby generators. On an organic basis, residential product sales declined approximately 5% compared to prior year. The softness in home standby shipments was primarily driven by very low levels of power outage severity during the current year. Also, recall that prior year fourth quarter saw record levels of activation rates as a result of the two-year anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, homeowners being more proactive after the polar vortex winter in the previous year, and heightened levels of localized outage activity within the Midwest and Canada during 2014. However, as Aaron mentioned, shipments of home standby generators did outperform our expectations in the quarter as home standby installation activity remained strong and improved sequentially from the third quarter. Lastly, shipments of portable generators increased modestly during the fourth quarter as compared to the prior year due to cross-selling synergies achieved from the Powermate acquisition, new product introductions and some incremental demand driven by potential outage threats. Looking at our Commercial & Industrial products, net sales for the fourth quarter of 2015 were $131.9 million as compared to $185 million for the comparable period in 2014. The decline was primarily due to a…

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thanks, Aaron. In 2016, we expect interest expense to be in the range of $47.5 million to $48.5 million, which represents an increase compared to $42.8 million for the prior year due to several factors. The primary drivers of the increase are the full year impact of the 25 basis point spread increase with our term loan credit facility, our assumption that LIBOR rates modestly increase beginning the second half of 2016, and the addition of interest expense from debt assumed with the Pramac acquisition. The forecast for interest expense includes $42 million to $43 million of cash for debt service costs, plus approximately $5.5 million for deferred financing cost and original issue discount amortization for our credit facility. This interest expense guidance assumes no additional debt prepayments during 2016 and our existing interest rate swap contracts remain in place. In terms of sensitivity of our interest expense guidance to changes in interest rates, it's relevant to note that for every 25 basis point increase in LIBOR rates above the 75 basis point LIBOR floor, interest expense would increase by approximately $2 million on an annualized basis. Based on our guidance provided for 2016, our cash income taxes for the year are expected to be approximately $17 million to $19 million, which translates into an anticipated full year 2016 cash income tax rate of approximately 10%. This represents a notable increase as compared to $6.1 million for cash income taxes in 2015 or a 4.9% rate. The projected higher cash income tax rate is a function of the expected increase in pre-tax profitability levels as each incremental dollar of pre-tax profits over our tax shield is taxed at the expected GAAP income tax rate of 36%. As a reminder, our favorable tax shield through annual intangible amortization in our tax…

Operator

Operator

Our first question comes from Mike Halloran of Robert Baird. Mike P. Halloran - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Morning, guys. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Mike.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Good morning, Mike. Mike P. Halloran - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Could you help with a few more details on the acquisition? What percent ownership stake did you guys take? Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, the ownership arrangement, Mike, is a 65%/35% arrangement. Mike P. Halloran - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): And is the idea to increase that over time depending on how it performs or anything set in stone on that side? Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We have an agreement in place that allows for us to acquire the remaining 35% over a period of time based on not necessarily performance of the business, but based on a series of different things that could occur. So, not to get into too much detail, but it does allow for that and that is the anticipated end game. Mike P. Halloran - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): And then what kind of profitability levels are we thinking about relative to the current portfolio? Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Gross margins are very similar to our industrial products. I mean, I think what that business has is quite a bit more op expense as a result of having a pretty far reach globally. So they've got – to support a global footprint, just takes more OpEx. So, the EBITDA margins are lower – on the lower end than what we would see historically so or traditionally. So, there's some opportunities there to realize, as we said in the prepared remarks, some pretty nice cost synergies. This puts us in a very good position to explore that with our component suppliers of major components or those types of products. We also intend to better leverage the OpEx of Pramac through the combination of two companies and some of the cross-selling synergies that we talked about should help us do that. We think that there's an opportunity here to double the EBITDA margin of the business over a period of time. So that's kind of our – that's our goal as we kind of laid out our plan here, and has been pretty consistent with other acquisitions that we've done so we feel pretty comfortable that that's a reasonable thing to achieve. Mike P. Halloran - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): That makes sense. And then on the residential side, maybe if we could just talk about what the inventory levels look like through the quarter but then more importantly, what you're seeing from all the initiatives you put in place. What kind of information are you getting back on closure rates, things like that to the PowerPlay app and all the other stuff? Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah, Mike. This is York. On the inventory side, our inventory – as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we did a very good job of rightsizing the inventory levels and working capital levels and monetize, like I said, $50 million of working capital in the quarter. So, we believe our inventories are about in line with where they need to be coming into 2016. If you're talking of field inventories, they're maybe a little bit higher than where they were at this time last year coming into the year. Activations are actually lower in the fourth quarter of 2015 versus 2014 so on a days basis, field inventory days are higher. So we've – those part of our calculus in coming up with our first quarter guidance so we think we've properly reflected that in our commentary on the outlook. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And then, Mike, to answer your question on some of the initiatives that we're focused on in home standby and kind of what we saw as successes or lack thereof in 2015. I would say that the PowerPlay application, the infomercial that we continue to run, the marketing that we're doing in those categories are, I think, having a pretty notable impact on offsetting the really weak power outage environment. I mean, it's amazing to me that we sit here today more than several years removed after any major events, three seasons without a hurricane, without any kind of major outage events, and yet, we're still activating home standby generators at a rate that if you'd told me that five years ago where we'd be today versus where we'd probably should be if we weren't taking into consideration our historical perspective on a lack of outages. We're doing –…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jeff Hammond with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Jeffrey D. Hammond - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets

Hey, guys.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Hey, Jeff.

Jeffrey D. Hammond - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets

Just to go back right here on Pramac a little bit. Can you give us a sense of geographic mix and any kind of quantification of how you're thinking about that cost synergy number? Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So, Jeff, we're not going to quantify the cost synergy number quite yet. We've got a lot of work to do on that front to get oriented around where we think – we know there's some good opportunity there; we just – we're not going to put a number on it quite yet today. As that develops and becomes I think something we have a better line of sight to, we'll be more comfortable talking to that in these quarters ahead. As far as the footprint geographically and where the sales are, as we said in the prepared remarks, we sell over 150 countries, but there's no country – there's no single country that exceeds 15% and, frankly, the rest of them are all below 10%. So, as you can imagine, I mean, there's a fairer concentration of sales in Europe because that's – it's an Italian company and that's where a good part of their sales are. But they've got factories worldwide. They've got factories in Europe, in Italy and Spain but also a factory in Brazil and also a factory in China. And there are 14 sales branches located across the globe; some of those in Europe, but a lot of them outside of Europe So, we're really pleased that this gives us – for us to try and build this organically would really be difficult, but it would take a long time. It's taken Pramac since 1966 to get to this point. I think they've done a remarkable job as a family-owned business kind of expanding into other parts of the globe here. And we're going to be able to take some of the things that we do really well, some of the things that they do really well and the combination of that is going to put us in a very good position in terms of becoming a major player globally for power gen. We were already a major player in North America, but this elevates our game to a whole new level globally.

Jeffrey D. Hammond - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay. That's helpful. Just on the residential business, you took a little bit different tack on the storm front and how you're thinking about that. If we're just going to have normal outages versus this kind of low level, what do you think the sensitivity is for the residential versus I think you're saying flat? And then, can we also get an updated dealer count? Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. And, Jeff, we played this game I don't know many years, right? We've tried to take a reasonable approach to guidance and say, of course, outages at some point will revert to the mean so we issued guidance in that respect over the last several years. This year, given the low backdrop and just what really transpired over the last several years, we said, look, we're not going to anticipate outages increase. So, I think if we return to the normal baseline, they'll go up. If we get a major event, they'll go up. To put quantification around that, I'm not going to do that at this stage. I think it's fair to say though that I think one of the really interesting things here is that a lot of the things that we've been working on in the residential standby market are all new since Sandy. So, the infomercial of PowerPlay, the further expansion of our dealer base, the training that we've done, the tools that we've given them, the focus on installation cost, these are all relatively new initiatives. And what I'm excited about is the fact that activations have remained fairly resilient in a kind of poor outage environment. And we haven't really pressure tested all these new initiatives in a return to the normal or even beyond normal outage environment. So, I think it could be something that is going to be very interesting to see how it plays out. I know it will go up. A question of how far depends on the location of where the outages occur, the frequency, duration of those outages. I mean, there's so many factors. I think we just took the prudent approach this year of kind of saying we weren't going to offer that up.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Run rate to low level. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Right.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

And then the dealer count. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Oh, I am sorry. The dealer count, roughly flat year-over-year which for us I think we wanted to grow. We always want to grow dealer count. But I won't say we're disappointed because when you have outages down year-over-year, something like – I think we were down 38% in outage activity year-over-year, severity as we track it, we have to remain neutral on the dealer count. We felt pretty good about that at the end of the day.

Jeffrey D. Hammond - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay. I'll get back in queue. Thanks, guys.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thanks, Jeff.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Chip Moore with Canaccord.

Chip Moore - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Analyst · Canaccord

Hey. Thanks. Can you talk a little bit about where leverage shakes up post deal? What's the goal, I guess, of getting that down and what's the capital allocation thoughts, buyback, dry powder for M&A, et cetera?

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah. So, we're at 3.5 times coming into 2016. Leverage may pick up just a tiny bit as a result of the deal. So, we've talked about in our prepared comments that our interest expense guidance didn't anticipate any further paydowns of term loan principal. We don't have an excess cash flow sweep requirement this year that's been satisfied by past prepayments of term loan. So, when you talk about capital allocation, then you start thinking about M&A and share buyback before anything else then. So, those are the priorities of capital that we've been talking through since we've been public and I think we demonstrated that last year and will continue to.

Chip Moore - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Analyst · Canaccord

Okay. And maybe just one more on international, I think you talked about Latin America. Maybe you can just give us a little more color on some of the other geographies. Thanks. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I mean for us, for the year, Chip, as we said, Latin America was actually pretty flat as the way it ended out. It started out the year with a little bit more bigger than that, in particular, because we're so exposed to Mexico as the peso devalued through the back half of the year and kind of accelerated here in the fourth quarter. It's been a bit softer more towards the back half of the year in terms of trajectory. Europe for us, which up until the Pramac acquisition, is really – we're talking about our Tower Light entity which we've renamed Generac Mobile Products part of the tradename impairment that we talked about this morning actually in terms of our branding strategy. But Europe for us is – they actually did quite well. They had a good year despite of really exciting kind of currency headwinds all year long. So it was a – we were pretty pleased with the performance of that business. It's actually great business. It's run really well and that we're really looking forward to combining that business more aggressively with the Pramac entity and I think there's a lot of opportunities with the combination of those two businesses, not only in Europe but also in some of the other areas that Tower Light serves, which Africa was a decent market for us. The Middle East was up year-over-year for that business so – and that was offset by some weakness in Russia and some further weakness in – we actually have some products that we sell into the Australia and New Zealand markets which continue to kind of – the air continues to kind of come out of that with mining. So, those products are used almost directly in the mining and energy businesses in those parts of the world.

Chip Moore - Canaccord Genuity, Inc.

Analyst · Canaccord

Great. Thanks.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Chip, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Charley Brady with SunTrust Robinson.

Patrick Wu - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson

Hi, guys. This is actually Patrick Wu sitting in for Charley. Thanks for taking my question.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Good morning.

Patrick Wu - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson

Good morning. Good morning. I just wanted I guess touch a little bit on the C&I side and what is the percentage of sales in the quarter that was through rental channel? And so can you quantify how that much was down year-over-year?

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah. This is York. So, I'd say probably a little over – I mean, if you're talking about consolidated sales, when we do about $1.3 billion in sales, I'd say maybe a little over 10% was tied to the rental side and that's both domestically and internationally. So, you've got our former Magnum and MAC businesses, which is our Mobile Products business in North America and then you've got our Tower Light business, which is our Mobile Products business in Europe. So, when you look at those businesses and you bounce it off to total sales, it's about 10%. And so, when you think about that business, that rental channel is very much tied into oil and gas either directly or indirectly. When you have a direct exposure to oil and gas, when you're renting equipment into the oil patches, obviously that capital or that – the utilization of that equipment is down significantly and, therefore, that's spilling over into the gen rents market because they're just not buying equipment because it's just holistically underutilized. So, when you think about our oil and gas business, I mean the direct business tied to oil and gas is probably down 45% this year so, it's major impact to our result. It was even down harder in the fourth quarter because we were shipping a lot of product in the fourth quarter last year into oil and gas applications... Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: 2014, yeah.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

In Q4 of 2014. So, 2015 though was a tough year for oil and gas. It's going to continue to be a tough year for oil and gas. We project probably oil and gas will be down another 35%, 40% in 2016 over 2015 as well, so that's all reflected in our guidance.

Patrick Wu - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust Robinson

Okay. That's great color. Thanks. And I guess just going – moving over to the PowerPlay dealer adoption and also just the total cost ownership, I know you guys mentioned it a little bit briefly, but is there a way to maybe take a stab at quantifying total cost of ownership for customers? How is that tracking for you guys? Are you guys seeing as more dealers adopt to that platform, are you guys seeing much better numbers coming from cost of ownership perspective? Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. We're working on a number of initiatives to target exactly that because we think there's a great opportunity. We've done a number of sensitivity studies to understand the elasticity of demand around lower price point. We know kind of what we're targeting there and we've got a number of initiatives. We basically started a lot of those initiatives in 2015. A lot of that resulted in a great deal of research around how to bring that TCO down, that total cost of ownership down. It's been tracking in a relatively kind of tight range. Some of that due to the product mix and we've introduced some higher kW nodes, which kind of – when you look, you kind of have to peel the covers back. And we're not going to give too much detail on the call here, but we think there's some really good opportunities within that to reduce that. It's really going to come from two areas. The first is what we've – through all the research we've done, we've gone out on hundreds and hundreds of installs alongside dealers to understand just the best practices that exist in installing these products. I mean, it's remarkable the variation between two dealers in a…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jerry Revich with Goldman Sachs. Jerry Revich - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Hi. Good morning. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning, Jerry.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Good morning, Jerry. Jerry Revich - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Aaron, can you talk about how long you anticipate it'll take to integrate the supply chain into Pramac? I guess, we saw the sweet spot of the new product introductions from Magnum, I think, two to three years out. Is that the type of timeframe we should be thinking about? And then just to take a step back about the point about cross-selling, I guess how much commonality is there in terms of the key components for serviceability in other regions for core Generac products that you would be cross-selling through Pramac distribution? Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. It's a great question, Jerry. As you pointed out with Magnum, it took us a couple of years, two to three years, before we really kind of getting the full impact run rate of the benefit of those cost synergies. As managers of the business, we always want to be optimistic about how quickly we can move with respect to synergies, but the real – the reality of it always ends up being that it's a lot more complicated than that. And as you know, I mean these are – we're going to be making some pretty big decisions, some meaningful decisions and long-term decisions about supply chain partnerships, both on the engine side but also there's some of the other major components like alternators that – where we don't produce alternators today above 500 kilowatts. There's going to be decisions made around that. And also the rationalization, if you will, of manufacturing footprint, how do we best leverage our combined footprints. It doesn't really – frankly, probably doesn't make sense to have two plants in Brazil. It probably doesn't make sense because we have one…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Drab with William Blair. Brian P. Drab - William Blair & Co. LLC: Good morning.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Good morning, Brian. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hey, Brian. Brian P. Drab - William Blair & Co. LLC: On the organic revenue growth, I'm just curious, what is your expectation for, I should say, organic revenue decline? What's your expectation for first half organic revenue versus second half?

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Well, we didn't get in that level of detail. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

I mean, what we did say in the commentary is first quarter would be in that $270 million to $280 million range, which would obviously result in being down year-over-year what has reported inorganically. So, I mean we didn't give that level of detail in terms of the acquisition. I guess the acquisitions probably have – maybe the best way to answer it is it's probably similar seasonality in terms of how it would model out. Brian P. Drab - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

But being on C&I business, the Pramac business, it's a little bit more consistent seasonally as opposed to the resi business that's more back-end... Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Our seasonal patterns are very much driven by – as a company, very much driven by the residential side of the business.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So that's why you see the margin expansion that we have in second half versus first half as well is because of that mix.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah. But Pramac's type of C&I business is more – maybe probably more equal – more level loaded throughout the year. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Right. Right. Brian P. Drab - William Blair & Co. LLC: Okay. That's helpful. I just wanted to give you a chance to address kind of the back-end loaded nature of the forecast given we're seeing that from a lot of different industrial companies, not all of them, with the seasonal drivers that... Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Brian P. Drab - William Blair & Co. LLC: But that makes sense. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I think that that's the big difference here, right? I mean, Brian, a lot of our back-halfedness, if you want to – if I can make up a word there, is really we demonstrated that over the last several years. When you look at our residential products, as we said, I mean they're – it's a seasonal category and seasonal shipments of those products is just stronger in second half than in the first half. And that's really what drives that bus in terms of just overall impact on our 2H versus 1H top line.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah. But the main challenge here will be Q1 and then from there from a growth standpoint. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. Yeah.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Stanley Elliott with Stifel. Stanley Elliott - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Hey. Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking me in. Quick question. On the oil and gas guidance in 2016 was down 35% to 40%. Was that just oil and gas or was that rental channel and how should we think about that?

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Good clarification. That was more just oil gas. Now, there are some spillover in the gen rents, but in terms of the number that I was quoting, that's 35% to 40%. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. It's really the oil and gas exposure...

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

That was more the direct exposure to oil and gas. But you could argue that rental number, at least the domestic rental number that I was quoting, could have some spillover to gen rents. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: But again, we've reflected that I think appropriately in the guidance we issued today.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah. Stanley Elliott - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: And kind of focus more on the gen rent side, one of the large players in the space said – talk about being cautious on CapEx in Q1, but possibly accelerating that as the year progresses. Is that factored into your guidance and kind of what are your thoughts that maybe things like the highway bill or general non-res construction, something like that, might actually cause the gen rent piece to be a little bit better than you'd expect? Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. I mean, we obviously – we have a lot of conversations with national account customers and we've served that group of customers for a long time. And they are very important in their views, obviously, in terms of the way the market buys and the kind of cadence at which they buy, right? And so, that's one of the reasons why we've called out certainly in Q1 not all the (01:01:25) impact and kind of the pullback in oil prices, but also some of the early guidance issued by some of our national account customers around CapEx spending. We're also seeing a bit of a similar type of – not to get off topic, but a little bit of a similar trend with large national account customers in telecom space as well. So, I think it just – what it feels like is a little bit of a slow start to the year in terms of industrial CapEx, whether you're talking about rental CapEx or other industrial CapEx. I think back to your more direct question, Stanley, about the rental side, it's interesting because we get a pretty good look at the book of business that is on national accounts and…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Feniger with Bank of America.

Michael J. Feniger - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America

Hey, guys. I was just curious, who are your major competitors, guys, when we think about the Pramac acquisition? Can you give us any idea of who like the major competitors you're competing against going to be in that space? And how has that business – their business trended over the last 6 to 12 months? Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So, the competitive landscape there is – it looks a lot like our competitive landscape on the industrial side. So Caterpillar and Cummins. You've got some of the larger Indian genset manufacturers that sell on a global basis. There's a couple of other European manufacturers that sell on a global basis. So, the competitive set is very similar to what we would see for Generac's industrial products. So, there's really no major surprises there. I think we get to go a little bit further in being toe to toe with them in terms of our scale and our ability to compete more globally with those guys. In terms of trend in the business, the Pramac business, they performed well. They were coming out of a pretty tough economic situation back in 2011 and 2012. The business ran at round on some of the things that they were working on in the alternative energy space. So, unfortunately, they kind of wrapped up in some of the financial difficulties of solar and wind and some of those alternative energy plays that put the company in a very difficult position and it had to go through basically a restructuring. And so, sales dipped down to a pretty low level back in 2011, 2012 and it's been growing kind of back – it's returning back to kind of the pre-restructuring levels, if you wanted to use the term, in more recent periods here. So, performance has been very strong.

Michael J. Feniger - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America

Great. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jeff Hammond with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Jeffrey D. Hammond - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets

Hey, guys. Just wanted to come back on the margins here a little bit. So, it looks like your margin guidance is down about 50 basis points, and I just want to understand a little bit better the moving pieces. So, it seems like D&A up a little bit and then the offset would be mix from this Pramac deal.

York A. Ragen - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Yeah. I can get you the pieces there, Jeff, because there are a lot of moving parts. So, if you look at the pieces, gross margin, we did talk about it in the comments, so that would be up about, call it, 175 basis points to 200 basis points. A large part of that is cost tailwinds. So starting to realize the lower level of commodities where we're at, starting to realize the strength in U.S. dollar from our global sourcing, continued efforts on our sourcing – strategic global sourcing team and our new product introduction teams to take costs out, continue to work on logistics and freight costs. We all saw – I think, if you recall throughout 2015, more particularly the first half, we talked a lot about some excess cost of goods sold variances with West Coast port, some things like that. That won't repeat. So, when you think of the cost side, a large part of that, 175 basis point to 200 basis point improvement is going to be on the cost side. And then partially offsetting that is to the tune of 75 bps is the impact of the combined Pramac and CHP acquisitions rolling in. So, that would probably be relative to Pramac being more of a C&I business. They have seen a good C&I margin. It's just that relative to our average, that would take our overall average gross margins down. Those are probably the two biggest pieces. Mix, mix actually is probably – just organic mix is a small impact. Price is a small impact. So costs, tailwinds and then the impact from Pramac and CHP would offset that. And then on the OpEx side, if you're talking like all the way down to EBITDA, Pramac and CHP do have a higher OpEx infrastructure. So, on average, that would probably increase OpEx as a percentage of sales by maybe 100 bps. And then the rest is really just reduced leverage on fixed SG&A on the lower organic sales base. So you put that – and so OpEx, we expect to be about, as a percentage of sales, up 250 bps. And then, that's how you get to EBITDA being down roughly 50 bps overall year-over-year.

Jeffrey D. Hammond - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

And I'm not showing any further question at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Aaron for closing comments. Aaron P. Jagdfeld - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We want to thank everyone for joining us this morning. We look forward to our first quarter 2016 earnings release, which we anticipate will be sometime in late April. With that, we'll conclude the call this morning. Thank you for joining us.