Gregory Q. Brown
Analyst · Jefferies & Company
Thanks, Ed. In Government, our sales for the quarter were $1.5 billion, up 6% over Q4 2010. Profitability for the business also improved with operating earnings of 19.8% of sales this quarter compared to 15.2% in Q4 of last year. Our growth in the Government business of 6% for the quarter and 6% for the full year demonstrates that mission critical communications remain a priority for our public safety customers and the communities they serve. We had a strong finish to a very good year in North America Government with full year sales growth of almost 6% in the region. Consistent with historical trends, growth in Asia and Latin America was also very good. EMEA saw a modest decline for the quarter and the year driven primarily by the divestiture of the Modules business. There are many common demand drivers across all geographies as public safety users seek improved capability and coverage enhanced features from digital and interoperability. In ASTRO, our market-leading P25 compliant radio system, we won several new large awards including St. Louis County for $65 million to design and build one of the largest local radio systems in the Midwest; and Washington State Patrol for $25 million, which will integrate with the existing Department of Justice P25 trunked system in the state. The state of Tennessee chose us to implement Phase 1 of a statewide radio system to replace a decades-old system. The $29 million upgrade will improve communications across public safety agencies and includes new safety enhancements such as emergency man-down notification and GPS capabilities along with improved coverage and multi-agency interoperability. We also won ASTRO awards with several counties in Florida, including St. Johns for $26 million, Seminole for $15 million, Osceola for $11 million. In Latin America, we won a $20 million contract with the National Police of Ecuador to expand their P25 system and an ASTRO system with the Mexico Federal Electric Commission. We won a 5-year, $22 million contract to build a digital radio network for Western Australia's emergency services, upgrading the existing Police Metropolitan Radio Network. The project, when complete, will mark the first time 3 public safety agencies in Western Australia will share the same network. We expanded our ASTRO APX line up of radios to include an APX 4000 portable radio for public works, utilities and rural public safety. APX now represents the first complete portfolio of P25 Phase 2 TDMA two-way portable radios in the industry. Our portfolio extends beyond voice communications into other areas core to public safety, such as dispatching in the operations center. This past quarter, we were selected by the city of Atlanta to integrate their surveillance camera systems, which will enable Atlanta Police Department to observe incidents real time and deploy law enforcement personnel more efficiently. Douglas County, Nebraska recently chose our PremierOne computer-aided dispatch application to serve their needs in adjoining counties. The Douglas County project represents the first installation of our PremierOne software into a customer-managed virtualized environment and will result in more efficient use of the county's mission critical IT hardware resources. We continue to invest in our next-generation public safety LTE solutions and achieved another milestone this quarter with the first commercial shipment of our public safety LTE devices. We also were awarded a $4 million LTE contract with Irving, Texas as part of a larger voice communications system. Our LTE solution gives public safety agencies the ability to immediately prioritize users, most critical to serving an incident and allocate network resources when disaster strikes. In addition, our solution is interoperable with public carrier LTE networks, providing a way for public safety agencies to extend their coverage through roaming agreements. Growth in our professional and commercial radio portfolio continued this quarter driven by customers replacing analog systems with digital using our MOTOTRBO platform. This trend drove solid double-digit sales growth for the portfolio and was evident in mature markets as well as growth markets. For example in Q4, we won major deals in Russia, Afghanistan and in Nigeria, where we sold 25,000 MOTOTRBO radios to the Ministry of the Interior in the biggest MOTOTRBO project to date in the EMEA region. Moving on to our Enterprise business, sales in the Enterprise was $753 million, an increase of 3% from Q4 of 2010. This included a $37 million decline in the iDEN business and solid demand for the rest of the Enterprise portfolio. Operating earnings expanded to 18.2% of sales from 17.1% last year. For the full year, 11% growth in Enterprise was driven by demand for our enterprise mobile computing, advanced data capture and WLAN infrastructure products. Each of these product portfolios grew at double-digit rates. Demand remains strong in our largest enterprise vertical of retail. The traditional retail landscape is rapidly incorporating new technologies around mobility that influence consumer buying behavior. Our solutions in enterprise mobile computing devices and WLAN infrastructure help retailers meet consumer expectations for service and convenience, from stocking to customer service and checkout. Shoppers Drug Mart, a leading Canadian provider of pharmacy products and services, is installing our micro kiosks for price checking in most of their 1,200 locations. And retail customers continue to invest in our compelling RFID solutions like Lord & Taylor, who's deploying handheld RFID readers in their stores to maintain accurate inventory levels and prevent out-of-stock situations, thereby improving customer service and sales. In transportation and logistics, we saw a continued momentum during the quarter including projects with Italian post and a Dutch company specialized in logistics services. In addition, UPS recently awarded us a new contract for WLAN products that provide advanced WiFi for mobile computing. This WLAN infrastructure will support UPS's next generation package scanning solution at its sorting facilities, utilizing our wireless terminals and imagers. Growth in Enterprise was in part driven by this category, expanding devices like the ES400, which appeals to a customer base that requires a ruggedized device in a smaller form factor. The ES400 has proven to be a beneficial portfolio addition, particularly in EMEA where it's seen adoption by field mobility workers who make use of productivity and location applications running on the device. Another win with Iron Mountain demonstrates continued moment with enterprise mobile computing for field mobility. Iron Mountain is currently deploying MC9590 dual WAN enabled mobile computing devices with a proof of delivery application providing accurate tracking and real-time status updates. This quarter, we introduced the MC2100 industrial series, addressing the need for a smaller rugged enterprise mobile computer that expands the range of solutions available for large enterprises and small and medium businesses. The lightweight and ergonomic MC2100 is ideal for inventory management, stock replenishment, price marking and labeling. It is also the first value-tier rugged handheld in the industry to support HTML5 via the RhoElements application framework that we announced last quarter. Turning now to a regional view for the company. For the quarter, North America sales grew 6% while EMEA grew 4% driven by continued strength in Enterprise, growth in Asia was 7% and Latin America grew 2% due to the planned decline in iDEN. For the full year, our regional sales performance included healthy growth in every region including North America, 5%; EMEA, 9%; Asia Pac, 14%; and Latin America, 10%. We also continue to scale our global services team and build advanced services offerings around our core Enterprise and Government portfolio. An example of the depth of the team is that we signed recently a new $134 million agreement with the state of Victoria in Australia to support the Metropolitan Mobile Radio ASTRO system, a contract that began in 2004 to design, build and manage the network for emergency services organizations. And recently, we reached an agreement to take over the Norwegian nationwide TETRA network from Nokia Siemens Networks. Upon closing of this transaction, we'll broaden our scope from a sub-supplier of core TETRA radio infrastructure to become the prime contractor, including all managed services for the rollout and implementation of the mission-critical systems serving emergency and public safety services in Norway. Every day, our solutions are helping people be their best in the moments that matter. This past year, there were numerous examples where customers and communities experienced natural disasters and emergency incidents. Our communication systems are relied upon during these difficult moments and our long-term commitment to this marketplace is exemplified as we help with rebuilding and recovery efforts. In closing, our Q4 results were a terrific finish to an outstanding year. We exceeded our financial performance goals in 2011 while executing on our capital allocation plans, which included a $1.2 billion of capital returned in the form of share repurchase and dividends. I'd also like to thank our people and partners for their outstanding accomplishments throughout the entire year. They continue to respond to the needs of our customers and partners in each business and region where we do business. Given our leadership position and market-leading innovation, I look forward to continued growth as we provide best-in-class solutions to both our Government and Enterprise customers.