Clifton Pemble
Analyst · Raymond James. Your line is open
Thank you, Kerri, and good morning, everyone. As announced earlier this morning, Garmin reported solid first quarter revenue and margin performance. Consolidated revenue was flat year-over-year, and what is typically a seasonally weak quarter. Revenue from aviation, fitness, marine, and outdoor grew 9% on a combined basis. These segments contributed 63% of total revenue and 80% of the operating profit in the first quarter. Gross margins improved year-over-year to 59% while operating margin came in at 19%. Slight reduction in the operating margin from the prior year reflects continued investments in advertising and R&D. The stronger U.S. dollars created a headwind for most businesses including ours. We estimate that recent currency movements reduced our revenue by approximately $38 million and operating income was reduced by approximately $11 million. As everyone can appreciate, these are meaningful amounts that would have otherwise resulted in growth for our business. Please note that our pro forma calculations do not account for these factors, but we wanted to mention it for clarity. Strong margins combined with the lower effective tax rate resulted in $0.55 of pro forma EPS in the quarter which is flat on a year-over-year basis. We are maintaining the guidance we issued earlier in the year as our performance thus far is consistent with our expectations. Doug will discuss our financial results in greater detail in a few minutes, but first I will walk through a few highlights for each business segment. Beginning with the fitness segment, revenue grew 31% on a year-over-year basis with strong contributions from activity trackers, multi-sport and cycling products. We delivered gross and operating margins of 63% and 26% respectively. Operating margin was lower on a year-over-year basis, reflecting an increase in R&D and advertising investments during the quarter as planned. As you are aware, the fitness market is highly competitive and thus requires additional R&D investments in order to bring innovations to market faster. In addition, we are deliberately investing in our point-of-sale presence as we roll out new products and prepare the way for our spring advertising campaign. In cycling, we announced the Vector 2 and Vector 2S, our latest pedal-based power solutions. These new vectors, simplify the installation process and deliver advanced cycling metrics that are useful for improving cycling efficiency. Fitness has been an exciting growth driver for our business in recent quarters, and we believe there are more opportunities to capture. We are well positioned with our current product breadth and depth, and we'll continue to invest for future growth and expansion. Looking at outdoor, revenues declined 10% which fell short of our expectations as the currency situation disproportionately impacted both fitness and outdoor, due to the geographic revenue profile of these segments. Additionally, we experienced some supply constraints which affected our results. Despite these headwinds, growth in operating margins remain strong in the segment at 66% and 31% respectively, allowing us to deliver operating income growth on lower revenue. Finally in outdoor, we announced the VIRB X and XE in all new family of action cameras. These cameras deliver a unique and massive experience through G-Metrix which adds insightful context to any video. In addition, our updated VIRB mobile application provides the ability to create, edit and publish videos on the go. We're excited about the capabilities of these new cameras and believe they offer unique differentiators on which we can grow in the category. Turning next to aviation, we posted revenue growth of 2% as we faced some more challenging comparable from Q1 2014, when the segment grew 19%, while growth in operating margins remain strong, operating profit declined on a year-over-year basis due to R&D growth, supporting future revenue opportunities. During the quarter, we announced enhancements to our ADS-B product offerings. Our current lineup offers the most comprehensive set of solutions across a range of price points in aircraft categories. We believe we are well positioned to capitalize on modernization mandates around the globe, which are rapidly approaching. We continue to support numerous OEM partners in the development and certification of multiple aircraft and helicopter platforms, which will result in future growth opportunities, when these platforms reach the market. Looking next, the marine revenue grew 7% in the quarter driven by the recent acquisition of Fusion. Our organic business was relatively flat on a year-over-year basis as we started delivering our new products in the latter part of quarter. Profitability improved in the first quarter, which resulted in operating income growth of 20% for the segment. While industry activity remains below historical levels, we've recognized the innovation is essential to deliver long-term improvements in market share and profitability. We will continue to invest in the category to deliver compelling innovation to recreational marine market. In our auto segment revenues were down 11% in the quarter with PND industry volumes declining in line with expectations. On a year-over-year basis, amortized revenue declined creating a headwind is not correlated to the underlying business. As we have mentioned before, the segment delivered solid profitability as we continue to experience gains in global market share on the strength of our product portfolio. As indicated in our February guidance, we expect the market to decline 10% to 15% on a global basis during the year. We will focus on growth opportunities in OEM, trucks, RVs, dash cameras and other specialty automotive products to partially offset lower consumer PND volumes. Finally, I want to highlight the recent introduction of Nüvicam, which is the first PND to offer advanced alerts such as Forward Collision and Lane Departure Warnings. Nüvicam also includes an integrated dash camera that saves video images whenever a crash or user initiated event occurs. We are excited to deliver these advanced features to the PND market and we anticipate offering similar products to OEM customers in the future. So that concludes my remarks for the morning. Doug will now walk us through our Q1 financials in more detail. Doug.