William P. Donnelly - Chief Financial Officer
Analyst · Peter Lawson with Thomas Weisel Partners
Thanks, Robert and hello everybody. As you heard from Robert, we had a great quarter, and are very pleased with the results. Let me begin with adjusted earnings per share, which came in at $1.40, a 28% over the prior year amount of $1.09. For the quarter, adjusted EPS excludes purchased intangible amortization expense. On the last page of our press release, we have a table that details the calculation of adjusted EPS. Let me provide you with more details beginning with sales, which were $515.6 million in the quarter, an increase of 11% organically in local currency. On a U.S. dollar basis, sales increased by 20% in the quarter, which included 9% currency benefit. I know I have said this before, but given a strong impact of currency on our results, I want to highlight the impact of currency. Although we do have a cosmetic benefit to the top line due to the weaker dollar, it is local currency sales growth that drives our operating profit growth. This is because we relatively naturally hedged with our non-dollar sales approximated on a non-dollar cost. The net impact of currency and operating profit and earnings per share tends to be relatively small. Breaking down sales by geographic destination, and all these percentages are in local currency, we are very pleased with the 10% local currency growth we reached in Europe. We had good growth in the quarter in almost all product lines. For the first six months of the year, sales were up by 7% in Europe. Sales growth in the Americas increased by 7% on an organic basis. We had very growth in lab and in food retailing, industrial was up as well with strong growth in product inspection, offset by reduction in one of our OEM customers. Year-to-date sales were up 4% on an organic basis in the Americas. Sales in Asia, rest of world increased by 22% in the quarter, with all product line showing very good growth; year-to-date of sales in Asia, rest of world are up by 20%. Now turning around and looking at it by product area, we had 11% organic growth in laboratory, with good growth in almost all product lines. For the first six months, laboratory sales were up 10% and on an organic basis. Industrial sales also grew by 10% in the quarter, with strong growth in both core industrial product and the product inspections side; and for the first six months, industrial sales were up by 8%. Finally, retail was up by 16% in the quarter with good growth both in Europe and in the U.S. Year-to-date sales are up by 3% in retail. I've kept my remarks here brief as Olivier will provide additional insight and sales by product category. Now let's look at gross profit margins. They increased by 20 basis points in the quarter to 50.2%. We drove 150 basis point margin expansion in the quarter on a constant currency basis. There were few items that came together to give us this strong result. This includes the impact of price increases and access of our material cost increases as well as the impact of leverage. Mix was relatively neutral in the quarter; currencies did decrease gross margins by about 130 basis points. This goes back to the impact of the weaker dollar, which I described before. Let me make some additional comments on raw material prices as I know it's an area of focus for many of you. Steel is an important raw material category for us as we use in a most product lines, but especially in our industrial products. We continue to be successful in limiting the impact of cost increases through procurement initiatives. These initiatives include using more low cost country suppliers and further consolidating the supply base. Our material price index, which is how we track year-over-year material cost inflation, is up about 50 basis points this year. We are also making supplemental price increases over and above our normal increases in those product areas, where product lines are particularly impacted by steel prices. In summary, we're more than offsetting our material inflation as evidenced by our strong margin expansion. R&D amounted to $26.7 million or 5.2% of sales, a 7% increase in local currency, while SG&A was $157.1 million, an increase of 11% in local currency. Let me break this down a bit more. Of course with the top line growth of 11%, we have higher sales, commissions and associated sales related expenses, our incentive compensation also increased during the period because of the strong performance. Beyond that, we also had increased investments in sales and marketing, especially in emerging markets. The net sum of all these P&L items is the result in a strong operating income. Adjusted operating income increased by 18% to $75.2 million as compared to $63.8 million a year ago. On a constant currency basis, our operating margins grew by 100 basis points in the quarter. Now continuing down the rest of the P&L, amortization amounted to $2.7 million in the quarter, while interest expense was $6 million; other expense amounted to $0.5 million. Our tax rate was 26% and we expected to remain at that level. Now for the share repurchase plan; during the quarter, we repurchased 585,400 shares for a total amount $58.3 million. Fully diluted shares for the quarter were $35.3 million and at the end of the quarter, we are at 35 million shares even. Our share count is currently 8% lower than at this time last year. Finally, earnings per share on a reported basis was $1.38 in the quarter. This compares to $1.07 in the prior year. Adjusted earnings per share were $1.40, which is a 28% increase over the prior year amount of $1.09. For the first six months, adjusted earnings per share was $2.41, a 28% increase over the prior year amount of $1.88. Now, let me turn and take you through cash flow. Free cash flow for the quarter was $64.4 million as compared to $55.3 million a year ago. This results in free cash flow per share of $1.82, which is a 26% increase over the prior year amount of $1.44. We are obviously very pleased with this growth. Our DSO was at 44 days in the quarter, a two day improvement over a year ago. And as I said on previous occasions, we're really pleased with the absolute level of DSO. ITO came in slightly lower than last year. That covers the quarter; but let me now take you through our guidance. As you see with our Q2 results, momentum remains very solid in our business. At the same time, we continue to be alert for any potential slow down in the global academy. We want to be positioned to react quickly if it's necessary. Now let me give you some additional color for the rest of the year. Let's start with Q3. We would expect local currency organic sales growth for the quarter to be in the range of 6% to 8%. This is higher than we had previously communicated to you. We are starting the quarter with a very solid backlog and if that seems slowdown in our markets today. This sales growth should translate into an adjusted earnings per share growth of $1.33 to $1.35, an increase of 16% to 17%. For the full year, we would expect adjusted earnings per share to be in the range of 553 to 563 per share, which represents the growth of 17% to 19% over 2007. This compares to our previous guidance, which had assumed a growth rate of 15% to 17%. For clarification purposes, I just want to remind you that adjusted EPS excludes the $0.07 expense related to purchase and tangible amortization and $0.07 per share gain for discreet items tax items that we had in the first quarter. One piece of background information I want to share is that we've assumed a refinancing of our existing debt in Q3. We have decided to refinance now as we were approaching a full utilization of our credit facility, the combination of the new facility as well as some longer term financing will provide higher interest cost in the short term, but we've already built this into the guidance we just provided you. Okay, that's it from my side and I will turn it over to Olivier, who will provide some commentary on the quarter.