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ITT Inc. (ITT)

Q4 2011 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 29, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the ITT Corporation Fourth Quarter 2011 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Melissa Trombetta, Director of Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.

Melissa Trombetta

Analyst

Thank you, Laurie. Good morning, and welcome to ITT's Fourth Quarter 2011 Investor Review. Presenting this morning are ITT's Chief Executive Officer and President, Denise Ramos; and ITT's Chief Financial Officer, Tom Scalera. I'd like to highlight that this morning's presentations, press release and reconciliations of GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures can be found on our website at itt.com/ir. Please note that all historical data is unaudited and any remarks we make about future expectations, plans, prospects and other circumstances set out in our Safe Harbor statement constitutes forward-looking statements for purposes of the Safe Harbor provision. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in ITT's Form 10-K, as well as our other public SEC filings. Let's now turn to Slide 3, where Denise will discuss our results.

Denise L. Ramos

Analyst · Janney Capital Markets

Thank you, Melissa and welcome, everyone. I appreciate you joining us as we announce our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2011 and provide 2012 guidance. I'm particularly excited since this will be the first time we are sharing financial performance since we completed the spinoff. And I think you'll see we are already delivering on the long-term premier metrics we announced at our inaugural Investor Day. At the same time, let me acknowledge that we understand there is a lot of information to absorb, and that this is the first time we are sharing our results as a stand-alone company. But we're confident that as the nuances of our position and our advantages become clearer, you will be just as excited as we are about our capability to drive profitable growth and create value. So with that, let me turn to the results. In 2011, we delivered solid revenue and order growth, as well as strong full year earnings, even as we executed the strategic transformation of our company. For the full year 2011, organic revenues were up 9%, reflecting market share gains in the chemical, oil and gas, power and transportation market. Organic orders were up 13% and we had a record backlog at year end. Adjusted pro forma earnings per share were up 23%, based on strong revenue growth and solid segment operating margin expansion. And in addition, we ended the year with a strong balance sheet. We have $690 million in cash, we have no long-term debt and we have investment-grade credit ratings from all 3 agencies. So this provides us a very strong foundation from which to drive future profitable growth. I'm very pleased that in 2011, we really saw the investments we've made over the past several years drive strategic wins…

Thomas Scalera

Analyst · Janney Capital Markets

Thanks, Denise. Now let's turn to Slide 5. In 2011, we delivered strong organic revenue growth of 9%, that was driven by emerging market strength, oil and gas expansion and significant market share gains in industrial processing and automotive. Market conditions in the commercial aerospace industry remained strong, and our ability to expand our aftermarket foothold in key segments also had a positive impact on growth. This growth is partially offset by declines in the connectors communications market. 2011 adjusted segment operating income increased 20% to $279 million, and adjusted segment operating margins improved by 100 basis points. This was driven by $50 million of operating productivity gains and approximately $40 million of supply chain actions that more than offset material cost increases. For the year, our adjusted pro forma EPS of $1.60 increased 23% from 2010. The strong full year performance was driven by solid operational improvements that reflected the 20% increase in adjusted segment operating income. Adjusted pro forma EPS is defined in detail in the appendix, but generally excludes special tax items, asbestos and pro forma net interest attributable to the transformation. And lastly, I'd like to highlight that our organic orders were up 13%, reflecting double-digit growth in 3 out of 4 segments. The biggest driver for the year was the intensifying global demand in our late cycle Industrial Process segment, where organic orders grew 25%, generating record backlog. Turning to Slide 6. In the fourth quarter, we delivered organic revenue growth of 10%. Market share gains in North American chemical, oil and gas and power market and emerging market gains in oil and gas contributed to this growth. We also delivered gains in the European automotive market and expansion in the aftermarket. As previously mentioned, this was partially offset by connector declines in communication applications.…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Jim Lucas of Janney Capital Markets.

James C. Lucas - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Janney Capital Markets

First question. Wanted to delve a little bit more into the backlog number. Just to get a little better clarity of, what is the timing of -- is that a 6-month, a 12-month, a multiyear backlog, and as well as how that ties into Industrial Process with more of these OEM business, what your outlook for the margin in that segment is for '12?

Thomas Scalera

Analyst · Janney Capital Markets

Sure. Thanks, Jim. The backlog has grown from the prior year significantly. Certainly, at the Industrial Process business, we've seen about a 50% increase year-over-year. They do have the lion's share of the backlog based on the large project wins we've had in oil and gas and mining as of late. That's really a reflection of our improving capabilities and technologies in those markets. That backlog gives pretty good visibility into the revenue expectations for Industrial Process for the year, but a lot of that backlog is more weighted towards the second half than in the first half. We would also say that in our other businesses, we have pretty much the normal backlog entering the year. The other 3 segments typically have a quarter’s worth of visibility and we've actually seen that exiting 2011 to be pretty consistent with prior years. So real big strength in our Industrial Process backlog for sure, driving off chemical as well, oil and gas and mining activity and the other 3 businesses in line with what we’ve historically seen.

James C. Lucas - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Janney Capital Markets

And then with regards to, with these larger projects shipping, does that imply that margins within Industrial Process likely not to see as much expansion in '12?

Thomas Scalera

Analyst · Janney Capital Markets

Correct. There are 2 pressure points on margins in the Industrial Process business in 2012. One is they have the lion's share of the stand-alone post-spin cost going through their segment, about $10 million of incremental costs year-over-year go through the Industrial Process business. So that will cause some additional incremental margin pressure for that segment as we've been discussing. As the year progresses, one of the key levers in their margin performance is the mix of large projects versus aftermarket content. As we phase those through the year, their margins are expected to improve sequentially as we progress through 2012. So they will start lower in Q1, where we do see a number of very large projects. The weighting of large projects in Q1 is actually up about 10 points from what we saw in Q1 of the prior year. So we do have a significant increase in our mix of large projects in Q1. But as the year progresses, we would expect the IP, Industrial Process margins to improve.

Denise L. Ramos

Analyst · Janney Capital Markets

And part of the business model that we have in IP is we're now going after the oil and gas and mining segment of an end market here. And that when you do that, you’ve got to seed these projects, you have to get them in place, and then what happens is you then get the aftermarket that comes after that. So aftermarket is a key strategy for us as a company to be able to get those security revenue streams as we go forward. In fact, when you look at IP and what we're expecting in terms of the aftermarket for them in 2012 versus 2011, we're expecting it to be up about 12%. So as we see these projects particularly in some of these fast growth markets out there, in the Middle East and in other locations, we're going to see the benefits of that aftermarket.

Thomas Scalera

Analyst · Janney Capital Markets

And that also follows up on really strong aftermarket growth in 2011 at Industrial Process as well, where they were up 17%. So that strength in aftermarket is just being outpaced by significant strength in our large project business at this time.

James C. Lucas - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Janney Capital Markets

Okay. And then just switching gears on -- any update you can provide on asbestos with where you stand on the liability and also in your free cash flow projection for 2012, how much of asbestos cash payment do you have included in there?

Denise L. Ramos

Analyst · Janney Capital Markets

First, let me just comment on the asbestos and then Tom can comment on the cash flow piece of it. But in terms of asbestos, there's no change, nothing new than what we've talked about before. And so, every year, we look at it, we look at it on a quarterly basis, we do our reviews of it and there's been no significant change that's occurred up to this point.

Thomas Scalera

Analyst · Janney Capital Markets

And we look into the 2012 cash flow expectations, our 5-year expected average outflow after-tax for asbestos is in the $10 million to $20 million range. Any year-to-year cycle, you could see some variation in the timing of insurance recoveries, but on average, our range of $10 million to $20 million is what we're projecting for the next 5 years and that largely remains unchanged from how we looked at it several months ago.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Summerville of KeyBanc.

Matt J. Summerville - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Matt Summerville of KeyBanc

Just a couple of questions. Wanted to follow up on Jim's. Can you give us an idea of what the mix was in Industrial Process in '10, maybe '11 and what you're thinking about '12 for projects versus aftermarket. I know you said, Tom, in Q1 it's going to be about a 10-point swing, but can you give us some additional, more precise historical framework, I should say.

Thomas Scalera

Analyst · Matt Summerville of KeyBanc

Yes. We've been certainly seeing the increase in the last 2 years on the large project side of our business. So the very strong growth there has definitely outpaced the good growth we've seen in the aftermarket. When we look into 2012, we're seeing the weighting in large projects increase versus 2011 by about 7 points. So we are seeing a mix shift, most notably in 2012. We saw a similar shift in '11, probably not quite as pronounced, it was probably about a 4-point movement year-over-year in '11, where we've had our percent weighting of projects increase by about 4 points relative to the prior year. So this is a reflection of the real strong growth in the late cycle business of Industrial Process and our ability to really go after some bigger, more complex global initiatives because we have a more expanded portfolio of products that are allowing us to go into emerging markets and global opportunities in oil and gas and mining, and that obviously is the right place to be now from a growth perspective. So we will see that continued shift. Obviously, what we like about these markets is the aftermarket cycle for oil and gas and mining in particular tends to get kickstarted a little bit faster and we progress into the aftermarket cycle more rapidly than in some of our other core products. So while we are growing this base, as Denise articulated, our focus is to capture the aftermarket, which in these markets does cascade faster than in some other end markets.

James C. Lucas - Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, Research Division

Analyst · Matt Summerville of KeyBanc

With regards to Motion, just focusing on the automotive side of the thing. If you look at new platforms in 2012 versus 2011, what kind of growth are you seeing there versus whatever you're anticipating in your base business? And then, I guess, as a percent of sales in Motion, how much is currently represented by new platforms? I think you gave the figure. I may have missed it.

Thomas Scalera

Analyst · Matt Summerville of KeyBanc

Yes. In 2011, about 22% of our revenue was tied to new platform wins. So those would normalize into 2012 on a full run rate basis. We've been continuing to take really strong market share in our core market and also making good expansions in China and North America. We are seeing some of the same phenomenon play through where as we're winning new platforms, we're increasing our OE content, which is weighting a little bit more towards the OEM margin versus the aftermarket margin. So we're seeing a little bit of downward pressure there but that's a reflection of our global expansion. So now that we're able to grow in China and North America, that's an OE play for the most part at this stage and that comes at a slightly lower margin. But the bottom line too from the aftermarket perspective, a good 45% to 50% of our revenue in the Motion Technology segment is still in the aftermarket and that gives us some really good stability and visibility, even through some difficulties that are expected in Europe.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mike Halloran of Baird. Michael Halloran - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: So first, just on seasonality. Could you just talk about what a seasonal progression looks like for you guys both on the top line and then also maybe on the earnings line, if you could. And then it sounds to me that if you look at a lot of the end markets that you're talking about, you're back-end loading, not dissimilar to what a lot of companies are doing now, but back-end loading your guidance for this year. So maybe could you also talk about the normal seasonality in the context of this guidance as well?

Denise L. Ramos

Analyst · Mike Halloran of Baird

Let me just talk at -- from an ITT perspective as we think about the seasonality for the year. When you look at the top line and you look at revenues, we're pretty well balanced as we go throughout the year in terms of our revenues. Now it will fluctuate by business. In our Motion Technologies business, seasonality tends to have those volumes more in the first half than you do in the second half. But then we are expecting the Connectors business to improve as we go from -- as we go throughout the year from the first half to the second half. Now that is the benefit that you get with a very diversified portfolio that we have here. When you now transition and you talk about the bottom line and what's happening from an income perspective, we do expect to see margins improving as we go from the first half to the second half. Now part of that is because when we talk about IP and we talk about the large projects, we're going to have more of those projects in the first half of the year coming through than when we get into the back half of the year. Also, we have expected with the Connectors business, that we're going to see improvement and there's quite a bit of leverage that you get in the Connectors business when your top line increases. And so we're going to see some of that benefit flowing through also in the back half of the year. And then in Motion Technologies, we've got -- we're looking at -- we've got some -- in our KONI business, we're working through some operational issues that we've had there and we believe that we've got a successful path with that. And we're going to see just from an operational perspective, that they're going to get better as we improve into the back half of the year. Now remember, with Motion Technologies, you do have that seasonality. So from a top line perspective, you do have lower revenues in the third quarter with that business. Michael Halloran - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: Great. And then on the 4Q order trends and what that looks like now. Obviously, the industrial side was -- the Industrial Process side was very strong, the other 3 divisions saw some contraction. Could you just talk about what were the predominant factors there? Was it market weakness, Europe specifically destocking, timing, things like that? And have you seen any of those trends normalize as we work through the first quarter here?

Denise L. Ramos

Analyst · Mike Halloran of Baird

As we look into January, really, January has been very much in line with the expectations that we've had there. We've seen some really good order growth rate on the IP side and in the Motion Technologies side of it. And as expected, we saw that our Connectors business would be lower in the first half as some of the -- an early cycle business associated with that. But the orders are basically what we projected and what we thought when we went into the year. Michael Halloran - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: Great. And then on Europe specifically and the build rates, you just mentioned that you saw reasonable Motion orders in the first quarter here or so, so far through January. In the outlook, the 0% to 2% auto was driven in part by lower build rates in Europe on the newer platform side. Could you just kind of rectify whether that's something you're seeing now or if that's just expectations to see lower overall cars built this year?

Denise L. Ramos

Analyst · Mike Halloran of Baird

When you look at it from a global perspective. From a global perspective, we do expect that the automotive market is going to be up mid-single digit. There are some very big differences between what's expected in Europe and then what's expected in North America and in China. And so in Europe, it is expected to be down but we've been taking share. And when we were back in the economic downturn that happened back in '08 and '09, we saw that we were able to offset some of that downturn because of the strong position that we have there, and we were able to gain share associated with that. Saying that, though, we do expect that Europe is going to be an impact to us, relative to the other geographical locations in the U.S. and China, where the U.S. is expected to grow about 7% to 8%, China still -- again the #1 automotive market, that's expected to grow probably close to double digit this year.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Ajay Kejriwal of FBR Capital Markets. Ajay Kejriwal - FBR Capital Markets & Co., Research Division: So first, maybe just on the 2012 EPS walk, the $0.14 in dis-synergy, sounds like that's recurring. Maybe any color on the strategic investments, how much of that’s onetime versus recurring?

Thomas Scalera

Analyst · Ajay Kejriwal of FBR Capital Markets

Yes. The strategic investments that we're really focusing on for 2012 are around 3 main areas. Our expansion of our China automotive facilities in Wuxi. We're building an R&D facility to be able to address local automotive requirements and we're also building expanded production. That production is going to serve not only the local market needs but our hope is that we'll use that facility to export production into North America as we grow share in North America as well. There will certainly be start-up costs in 2012 for the Wuxi facility, as we migrate to production. And the reason why we see that in our industries and we'll see that same phenomenon in our Korean expansion, where we're expanding our facility there to service the global oil and gas markets, we do have start-up costs anticipated there in 2012. Given the unique and highly technical nature of what we produce, there are longer start-up times required as we build new facilities. We need to have our factories and our procedures and processes kind of certified to be compliant with the regulations of our industries that we're serving. So that adds to longer start-up costs. Effectively, in the future, they’ll be absorbed into the production. So I don't consider those start-up recurring costs per se, but they will be part of our long-term cost structure. And then one other area that we're really focused on, maybe 2 other, is our premier customer initiatives, where we're very focused on improving our order configuration capabilities, improving our on-time delivery and rationalizing our supply chain process to make sure that in our fastest-growing market that we're able to maintain good quality performance and timely delivery. So those initiatives go from the front-end configuration through the supply chain into production. Again, some of those would be, I think, onetime costs just to get those initiatives up and running. But we see a lot of long-term value in those initiatives, not only from a cost and customer service perspective, but we think it also will help our cash flow velocity as we run more efficiently from order to delivery.

Denise L. Ramos

Analyst · Ajay Kejriwal of FBR Capital Markets

What you're really seeing here is that we see that there is a lot of value that can be created in this company by investing organically. So we have great businesses and we're going to take these businesses and we're going to invest in them to be able to create new products, to be able to create new geographical locations for them, and we just see a lot of opportunity for us to be able to drive this business organically. So these investments that Tom is talking about fit very nicely into how we think about these businesses.

Thomas Scalera

Analyst · Ajay Kejriwal of FBR Capital Markets

And as we kind of progress through the year, managing a lot of uncertain conditions primarily in Europe, we always look to make sure that we pace in sequence our investments in these areas. Obviously, some of the key areas we're all in and we're moving forward because we know we need to grow in China in automotive and in oil and gas. But other initiatives, we would regulate based on the pacing of the economic activity this year.

Denise L. Ramos

Analyst · Ajay Kejriwal of FBR Capital Markets

Now the 2 investments that Tom talked about, the infrastructure investments within our IP business in Korea and then in Wuxi with our Motion Technologies business, those are the 2 businesses that have had just phenomenal growth over the past couple of years. And in fact, those are situations where they have capacity constraints right now because they've had so much growth and so those facilities are just really going to play nicely into the future for those 2 companies. Ajay Kejriwal - FBR Capital Markets & Co., Research Division: To clarify those investments expenses, that would show up in the segments or at the corporate level?

Thomas Scalera

Analyst · Ajay Kejriwal of FBR Capital Markets

Correct. The majority of those expenses would be at the segment level, and those are incorporated in the segment operating margin guidance. About 80 basis point impact on the segment margins. Ajay Kejriwal - FBR Capital Markets & Co., Research Division: Got it. And then, Denise, you talked about new products in R&D and the Goulds Heavy Duty Slurry Pump. Any thoughts on frac-ing and frac and pumps, any new products you think in there?

Denise L. Ramos

Analyst · Ajay Kejriwal of FBR Capital Markets

Yes. We don't really play much in the frac-ing side of things, we're involved more on the ancillary services associated with that. So what I mean by that is when you got to transport the water that comes out of that to where it's going to be treated, we're involved in the pumps that would be associated with that. We're also involved is when you have to pump water into the container to have it treated, we're involved in that. So we're involved more on the ancillary side, but we're not directly involved in the frac-ing side. Ajay Kejriwal - FBR Capital Markets & Co., Research Division: Yes. I know you're not doing the frac-ing side, my thought was Goulds has just such a good technology in pumps and frac-ing, there was just such a growth market. If there was something in the pipeline in terms of a solution or a product. But...

Denise L. Ramos

Analyst · Ajay Kejriwal of FBR Capital Markets

Not at this point. But we've been building out the IP product line for a couple of years now. And so it's always something that we're looking at. We're always looking at building new products, particularly when you think about the upstream side of things and what's happening there and the growth that we're seeing in the upstream side. Because historically, IP has been more on the downstream side of things. And not only with oil and gas but on the mining side. I did mention the slurry pumps and the valves that we've developed for the mining side of the business and we see that that's going to be a big growth area for us also.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jim Krapfel of Morningstar.

James Krapfel - Morningstar Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Jim Krapfel of Morningstar

Can you provide some EPS sensitivity around foreign currency, and what are your key currency assumptions included in your guidance for foreign currency to be a 2% revenue headwind in 2012?

Thomas Scalera

Analyst · Jim Krapfel of Morningstar

Sure, Jim. So our assumption on the euro is $1.35. We actually picked that rate when we started our budgeting process back in November and interestingly, it seems to be the right rate at this moment. So we're very well calibrated around the rate that we have in our guidance slides. That's about a $0.04 EPS impact to us. Generally speaking, we're certainly a very global company. So we're dealing with a number of different currencies and different dynamics. But as a generality, we typically see about a $0.01 impact for each $0.01 movement in the euro-dollar exchange rate.

James Krapfel - Morningstar Inc., Research Division

Analyst · Jim Krapfel of Morningstar

Okay. What would be the next largest currency that would impact your bottom line?

Thomas Scalera

Analyst · Jim Krapfel of Morningstar

We do -- we have a lot of production in Mexico and production in Korea. Those centers are used to produce and export globally. So those facilities create some transactional FX impact and then our European automotive business and rail business is also exposed to translation FX impact because they typically produce and sell in Europe. So we do see more translation out of those businesses and more transaction exposures in Korea and Mexico, and that's how we have our footprint laid out.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is a follow-up from Matt Summerville of KeyBanc.

Matt J. Summerville - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division

Analyst · KeyBanc

I just wanted to make sure I had some math right here. So you have $690 million roughly in net cash on the balance sheet. You're going to get net $35 million from the taxes less remaining cash costs on the spin, and then you generate somewhere between $150 million and $175 million based on your EPS and free cash guidance. So that would put you almost at $900 million at the end of 2012, unless my math is incorrect. I mean, what's sort of the optimal amount of cash for this company to have? And have you formalized a dividend policy yet?

Thomas Scalera

Analyst · KeyBanc

Yes, Matt, so a couple of comments there. We did discuss our intention to turn the share repurchase program on to offset the stock option dilution activity we've seen recently. And that is one of the transformation-related activities. It's not in the $65 million. But we ended up with a large number of options that converted as a result of the mechanics behind the spin and how the distribution agreement decisions were made. So we ended up with a significant number of options and we have seen a lot of activity there. So one use of our cash will certainly be to offset those options through the share repurchases. We would also look at some potential pension pre-funding activities on a discretionary basis. We do have some contributions that are required over the next 2 years of about $20 million per year. Obviously, our dividend at this point, we recently announced, is at $0.091 per share and we still maintain that that's a good reasonable place for us to be, as we get calibrated and move forward. But we certainly appreciate the fact that we have a strong position on our balance sheet right now, that's going to allow us to really start to grow these businesses. I mentioned our pipeline of acquisition opportunities that we're building in our sweet spot. We're making some larger investments in CapEx this year and next year, as we kind of catch up some capacity constraints based on our recent growth. So we have a very detailed growth plan that we're executing over a number of years and that's our primary focus. But I mentioned some of the other areas we'll be deploying in as well.

Matt J. Summerville - KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc., Research Division

Analyst · KeyBanc

How much has the board authorized for share repurchase?

Thomas Scalera

Analyst · KeyBanc

Yes. So we have an existing program from the legacy ITT days and it was a $1 billion program. There's probably about $550 million of capacity remaining. But that program was calibrated around the old ITT structure, size, share count, what have you. So that's not rightsized for the new ITT, but it is in fact still an effective authorization at this point.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

Denise L. Ramos

Analyst · Janney Capital Markets

All right. Well, let me just say, I'd like to thank each of you for joining us today and for your interest in ITT. Before we conclude the call, I’d just like to again share our team's excitement about the opportunities we have to grow this company. We are truly uniquely positioned. We have a clear and focused strategy, we have a talented and committed team, and we are laser-focused on execution. Across our businesses, our teams are focused on exactly those things that they can do to power our growth, whether it's helping us lead with technology, differentiate with customers or optimize our operations. So when I see all of that engagement and commitment, I couldn't be more excited about our potential and our ability to drive profitable growth and deliver value to our stakeholders. In the days ahead, we'll have more accomplishments to share and you'll be hearing more from us about how we are performing and where we are taking this company. So thank you again, and I look forward to our next call.

Operator

Operator

That does conclude today's ITT Corporation Fourth Quarter 2011 Earnings Conference Call. You may now disconnect.