Earnings Labs

Minerals Technologies Inc. (MTX)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Fri, Oct 23, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Q3 2015 Minerals Technologies Conference Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we’ll conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rick Honey. Please go ahead.

Rick Honey

Analyst

Good morning. Welcome to our third quarter 2015 earnings conference call. Before we begin the call today I’d like to point out that today is the 23rd anniversary of Minerals Technologies and over those 23 years the company has generated nearly 10% compound annual growth rate in earnings. So today our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Joe Muscari will provide some insights into MTIs performance and then he will turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Doug Dietrich, who will give you a detailed report on our financial results for the quarter. But before we begin, I need to remind you that on Page 8 of our 2014 10-K, we list the various factors and conditions that may affect future results. Statements related to future performance by members of our management are subject to these cautionary remarks and conditions. Now, I’ll turn the call over to Joe Muscari. Joe.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Thanks Rick. Good morning everyone. And Rick, that’s a great note to mention the 23rd anniversary, that’s a great note to start this call off with. Today, we are going to deviate a bit from the normal focus and format of my remarks during these calls and spend a few minutes discussing some areas that have surfaced as concerns from a number of you. Over the last three or four weeks, Doug Dietrich, Rick Honey and I have met with over 30 of our top institutional investors, representing nearly 40% of our shareholder base. The concerns and questions that were raised centered primarily around China and MTI’s growth initiatives there. The oil and gas industry and its impact on our energy services businesses, as well as the steel industry’s outlook with its further potential impact on our Refractories business were other areas of concern and questions. To start with, let me first say that MTI’s fundamentals have not changed and the growth potential for the company as reflected in our 2020 targets presented at our June 30 Analyst Day conference remained basically intact. The acquisition integration synergies continue to remain on an accelerated track. Our market positions and our key growth areas are holding or improving. Transformation process of the former AMCOL to becoming one company with MTI continues to go very well. The additional acquisition growth opportunities created by the merger are still in place and our R&D new product pipeline remains very strong. We certainly have our challenges at the moment, but as I said, we don’t see them having much of an impact on our ability to grow. The China slowdown for instance has given rise to concern over our longer term prospects there. However, our two major growth trajectories in China are centered in Paper PCC…

Doug Dietrich

Analyst

Thanks Joe. Good morning everyone. Now let’s go deeper into our third quarter consolidated end business segment results. Through the remainder of the call I’ll highlight the key elements of our results in each of our five segments. I’ll update you on the progress we are with making synergies, cash flow and debt repayment. We saw some significant areas of growth over the last year, particularly in Asia. Sales for our combined business in China grew 20% over the last year, driven by a 52% increase in Paper PCC and a 6% increase in sales and performance materials, driven by higher sales of fabric care products, which increased 148% over the last year. Outside of Asia we saw strong growth in processed minerals products which increased 5% over the last year and pet care and personal care products which increased 15% and 32% respectively. Operating income excluding special items was $63 million and represented 14% of sales. Four of our five business segments delivered double digit operating margins in the quarter. Year-to-date our operating margin is 14.5%, which is 9% higher than the 13.3% we achieved year-to-date in 2014. I’d also like to highlight that our minerals based businesses continue on a strong track with significant margin improvement over the last year. In perspective, combined margins for these three segments have improved nearly 30% over the last year on a pro forma basis. On the lower right hand side of this slide you can see a chart that I’ve added, which shows our consolidated actual and pro forma sales and operating income by quarter for the past three years. Besides that is a chart that shows pro forma operating margins for the combined company before the acquisition compared to this year. You can see the significant improvement in profitability that…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Ivan Marcuse from KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

Ivan Marcuse

Analyst

Great, thanks for taking my questions. Real quick, when you talk about in the PCC business $220 million in sales target by 2020, is that all? If you were to breakdown that $220 million of sales, how much is just sort of the straight PCC penetration versus the new yield of Fulfill and other new products add onto that or would those be two separate buckets?

Doug Dietrich

Analyst

Yes, there’s kind of two pieces to that, because sort of the new yield is also PCC. So of the $220 million, I’m going to say about $75 million to $80 million is straight PCC. You’ve got another about $100 million in new yield, but new yield comes in a couple of different forms. We have our first form and then two subsequent forms of new technologies with new yield and then the rest of it is also PCC into packaging. The balance will be the PCC and packaging, so that may not be a coating product, the packaging coating product.

Ivan Marcuse

Analyst

Okay, thanks. And then you gave some discussion on the energy business. So, I don’t know, it looks like you’ll make $15 million or so in OI [ph] this year. And then if you were to hold sort of this business – how to think about it as – you talked about offset of well testing. Should you have – should the core business be lower next year and then you’ll get the benefit of $8 million so you’ll have – earnings might be higher or lower per yield. How are the moving parts going I guess is the basic question, in terms of the cost savings versus what the core business is doing, at least for what you could tell at this point.

Doug Dietrich

Analyst

Hey, right now obviously a little bit hard to forecast as Joe mentioned in his comments. It’s really driven by how the oil industry goes. What we’re expecting, at least in the early part of the year it’s going to be pretty similar to how it is now. We’re probably looking at similar operating income next year depending on how some of the drilling activity offshore holds up. We will get the benefit of some of the savings from coiled tubing, so that will help us. But I think it really depends on how that will be offshore and international locations hold up. We should see some improvement in operating income if they continue along the line that they are now, but that, it’s just a little bit hard to forecast at this point.

Ivan Marcuse

Analyst

Great. And then I guess [indiscernible] your term in the fourth quarter, I think you’ve talked about free cash flow being sort of in the $300 million range or $200 million and $300 million range. Is that still sort of in the cards and so you would anticipate a pretty strong cash flow, another very strong cash flow in the fourth quarter. Was there any anomaly for last year, because I think the fourth quarter of last year is also very strong? Was that sort of how to think about the business going forward?

Doug Dietrich

Analyst

Yes, I think you’re referring to operating cash flow. We had kind of forecasted $300 million in operating cash flow, not free cash flow.

Ivan Marcuse

Analyst

Right, sorry, excuse me.

Doug Dietrich

Analyst

That’s all right. So we’re kind of close to $300 million. We’re at $195 million right now; fourth quarters typically strong for us. So we should be around that number and with the free cash flow we’re expecting CapEx to come in around the $85 million to $95 million range. So we should have a strong free cash flow year. We did have an anomaly last year, so it probably won’t be as strong as the last fourth quarter. We had a significant tax refund from filing after a post acquisition that we used for debt repayment, so I wouldn’t use the last fourth quarter as a comparison, but it typically is a strong quarter for us from a cash flow standpoint.

Ivan Marcuse

Analyst

Great. And you’re generating a lot of cash. Again your debt ratio is down pretty quickly and you’ve I guess you put out a release and you’ve talked about this $150 million buyback a couple of times in this past release and presentation. So you had $150 million buyback, but you never really used it all that much the last when you have. So is the strategy going to change at all in terms of how you’re going to look at buybacks going forward or is just this letting people know you have this out there and it’ll probably be used for roughly the same as it was last time.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Ivan, the strategy hasn’t changed. We’ve always taken a balanced approach pre-acquisition and now we’ll be, this is post-acquisition to how we use the cash. We do have some current restrictions that I’ll let Doug give you a little more detail on that we’ve got to get ourselves below, about 2.5 from a ratio standpoint. But from a going forward standpoint we’re going to continue to as we look at opportunities that we have. First priorities will be around reducing the debt. However also we’ll look at opportunistic type of things that make sense for the company, where we do have the capacity to buy companies and to the extent those don’t materialize within nearer term horizons, then the potential for buybacks is there, but it’s not – we’re pretty much focused right now as I mentioned in my remarks to reduce debt and support the strong organic growth we have and the requirements for capital there. Doug, you want to add a little bit to that please?

Doug Dietrich

Analyst

Yes I guess. And the restrictions – I think we’ve spoken about them before is below three times some of these restrictions lighten up from a credit agreement, and they go away completely below 2.5 times. So we are able to buy back some stock now, those you know to be able to fully execute our share repurchase program would be below 2.5 times. But as Joe mentioned, we are focus on reducing debt as the primary focus and opportunistically look to distribute capital when it makes sense to share repurchase.

Ivan Marcuse

Analyst

To that end, why are you targeting a lower debt repayment in the fourth quarter if it’s your strongest cash flow quarter and from where your balance sheet is it looks like you are pretty – you’re fairly flush with liquidity. So why wouldn’t you increase the debt pay down or is there something preventing that.

Doug Dietrich

Analyst

First off, the cash on the balance sheet, we used most of our U.S. cash to service our debt and right now we pay trading a lot of funds, so some of that balance sheet cash that you are seeing is offshore. We do bring it home, but we look for opportunities where we don’t have the tax impact, significant tax impact to do so. So we are funding with U.S. cash. It could be a little bit higher than that Ivan. I’m just giving you the $40 million right now is what we are pre-setting the target.

Ivan Marcuse

Analyst

Great. Nice quarter. Thanks a lot.

Doug Dietrich

Analyst

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Daniel Moore from CJS Securities. Please go ahead.

Daniel Moore

Analyst

Yes, good morning. I want to focus a little on construction technologies and maybe you can break it out between environmental products and building materials. Just talk about the pipeline of opportunities, maybe both for Q4, but as we look out into the begging of fiscal ’16?

Joe Muscari

Analyst

A question around just the robustness of the pipeline or what – in particular.

Daniel Moore

Analyst

Precisely. Bidding activity, your expectations for growth be it at Q4 or into early next year.

Doug Dietrich

Analyst

Sure. So the challenge with Q4 and Q1 is really is the seasonal low periods. So you are going to see Q2, Q3 the seasonally highest periods. So right now construction activity lines up and certainly breaking ground on some environmental remediation landfill products. It doesn’t happen too much in these quarters. However, the pipeline as I mentioned is pretty robust. We are pursuing a number of different projects around the world. Really targeting as I mentioned in my comments, the higher margin technically differentiated products like Resistex and Coflex in building materials. Resistex is environmental products and those are focused on your major construction areas and major land fields for very touch environments like red mud from aluminum production and pole ash from power generation. You know the regulations that have just come out on coal ash are going to create some opportunities for us. We are just now completing a coal ash land filed with Duke Power. That was one of the projects that was in Q3 and straddled over into Q4 as I mentioned last month. And so we think that’s going to be a big area of focus for us going forward. The pipeline of that is pretty robust, though it takes a long time to secure some of these big projects that’s why it’s difficult to forecast when they are coming up.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

And one of the things we look at is the rate of new opportunities that construction technologies develop in the environmental products area, and actually the trend line for that has been on an uptick for the last, I’d say six to eight weeks. So these typically when we look at the incoming opportunities, you are typically looking at things that are six to 12 months out. But right now we are seeing some positive movement there. I’m going to let Patrick Carpenter give us a little more around that, if you would Patrick, please.

Patrick Carpenter

Analyst

Thank you, Joe. Yes Dan, we see in major construction around the world, still a lot of market growth for the below grade water proofing where we are specialized in major infrastructure water proofing and tunnel water proofing. Also we have seen an actually uptick in the amount of remediation work, river bed remediation and the use of our specialized [Indiscernible]. So we track these opportunities as they increase and it was – we were branching away from being typically a Northern hemisphere company and developing markets in places in the Southern hemisphere so we can smooth out that quarter-to-quarter revenue. But overall as Joe said, we are seeing a much more increase in opportunity creation and gives us a good projection going forward.

Daniel Moore

Analyst

Very helpful, and then switching gears a little bit. Any additional color you might be able to provide at this stage regarding the potential impact of the decision type or so and Domtar to reduce production or capacity.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Sure. The Domtar announcement was made a lot earlier this year I believe, but it’s really a conversion of a paper machine to fluff pulp, so that’s going to impact some of our volumes and I think that conversion is going to start in the first quarter, so I mentioned that. From Versaille though, those are two mills Jay and Windcliff [ph] idling machines. That’s going to start in the fourth quarter. The fully impact will probably be – probably about 50,000 tons will be the full impact if they remain idle in the first quarter. They’ve asked us to keep our PCC Satellite there and in tacked. They are looking to sell that mill. We’ve had that happen before in France with an M-real facility that was solid and that actually ended up coming back in France. So we are keeping our satellite there, but right now we are anticipating that that volume will come out in the fourth quarter and a full impact in the first.

Daniel Moore

Analyst

Okay, very helpful. And then just lastly in terms of obviously the decision to exit coil tubing, you have change in leadership just announced recently in energy services. Any additional color around strategic moves there, where they were at – any other pieces of the business that you are considering existing or are you sort of at a run rate of where you want to be post that exit of coil tubing.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Thanks for that question. It gives me an opportunity to talk a little bit about it and Andy Jones, he’s actually here on the call as well with us. Andy comes to us with a very strong background in the energy services arena. He had 20-plus years at Schlumberger; very deep and broad in the international scene for oil and gas and as we look out, as you look out at deep well drilling and activity today and where the opportunities are for us, that is a key strength of Andy, although he is in around many places in his career. But Andy does give us good strength from an international standpoint and that’s something that will be adding in terms of the emphasis we are putting on the business which is the filtration businesses with well testing being a forerunner lead in to filtration business, and as we’ve said earlier, we are basically reshaping the business to concentrate on the filtration business and that also is an area that Andy is strong in. Mike Johnson left. Mike in an entrepreneur. He helped develop the business and Mike wanted to go off and do something else from an entrepreneurial standpoint. So we wish Mike well and we are delighted that we had Andy inside the company and could promote him into the position and happy to have him here.

Daniel Moore

Analyst

Okay, excellent. Lastly Joe, M&A since you sort of mentioned it proactively, obviously you are still focused on paying down debt, but what does the environment look like if the balance sheet were closer to two times leverage. There are other opportunities that you are seeing today and what type of multiples are you seeing out there.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Well, the environment is good. In terms of activity going on right now and some of the areas that we kindle things that we are looking at, but if we just look around us in terms of what’s happening, it’s quite active today. Multiples, it ranges depending on the end market segment that the companies are in, that we are looking at. Rather than give you a number, I’ll just tell you, it’s kind of different. They have come off a little bit from where they were and I think in part that’s due to just the general economic outlook around the world with the impact that the China slowing is having on things. So we are seeing a little bit of downward pressure from the multiple standpoint as we look out.

Daniel Moore

Analyst

Understood. Thanks.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

John you want to add anything to that. John Hastings or M&A head.

John Hastings

Analyst

No I would echo the same. Again, we have a portfolio that we continue to look at, small and large geographically dispersed and certainly focused on technology and innovation where we can drive our minerals to market strategy. But as far as multiples are concerned, I think Joe hit it. We see them coming off of some of the highs, but we’ve seen them in recent times and we’ll keep you posted as opportunities develop.

Daniel Moore

Analyst

Okay, thanks for the color.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Hey Dan, one quick clarification. That Versaille 50,000 tons I gave you, that’s an annualized number. That’s annualized okay, that’s not the first quarter number.

Daniel Moore

Analyst

Right, understood. Okay, thank you again.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Jeff Zekauskas from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Jeff Zekauskas

Analyst

Hi Joe.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Hi.

Jeff Zekauskas

Analyst

I have a question regarding the PCC operations. So you said your PCC volumes were up 3% year-over-year and if I look at total PCC sales, though they were down 6% and presumably currency – like it seems hard to believe that currency was a 9% headwind. So was wondering whether there was a price mix shift?

Joe Muscari

Analyst

No, there’s some of the – the total PCC includes both Paper PCC and Specialty PCC paper. My comments were referring to Paper PCC volumes. Specialty PCC had some decline and those are particularly specifically in Europe for the most part.

Jeff Zekauskas

Analyst

Great, and in terms of the gross margin performance, sounds like there was very good gross margin performance in the first half of the year and then things are now more flattish to down. Is that simply sort of a price issue, is it a volume issue, a currency issue. I was wondering if you can kind of just shed more light on that.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Any particular segment or just on the company in total.

Jeff Zekauskas

Analyst

Just for the company as a whole.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Yes, I think there is some foreign exchange impacts that you are seeing year-over-year in some of those numbers. Especially in Refractories we do buy our magnesium oxide and energy services as well as you’ve seen the declines for energy services. We had a lot of fixed operating costs in this quarter in coil tubing. We’ve had to remove both overhead and get the operating cost up. So there has been some uncovered, both overhead and operating expenses in this quarter. So those are probably two of the main factors.

Jeff Zekauskas

Analyst

Okay, and lastly what was your headcount at the end of the third quarter?

Doug Dietrich

Analyst

It was roughly around 4,100.

Jeff Zekauskas

Analyst

Do you expect that to be lower by the end of next year?

Doug Dietrich

Analyst

Well, as we’ve touched on before, we are continuing to deploy the Oracle ERP system and as we go through the year towards the end of 2016, there will be further reductions and not major, but we also have offsetting that, we are adding new satellites to the company. So we are bringing new people on and we’ve added staff, staffing technical personnel, managerial personnel to Asia. So when you net that out, we could be at the same place or very possibly higher.

Jeff Zekauskas

Analyst

Okay. Thanks very much. I’ll get back.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Rosemarie Morbelli from Gabelli & Company.

Rosemarie Morbelli

Analyst

Good morning everyone.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Good morning.

Rosemarie Morbelli

Analyst

And congratulations on the great quarter and the 23rd year, on the 23rd.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Thank you, Rosemarie.

Rosemarie Morbelli

Analyst

There is one area in terms of Paper PCC that you have not touched upon and it is India. Is the development in India slowing? Are they done with – is paper no longer growing there? Are they no longer increasing the PCC content in their paper? Can you give us a sense of what is going in that region?

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Yes. Actually India is still on a very good track Rosemarie. We continue to do well there. We are actually – there are some additional satellite opportunities for us that we are pursuing. Fulfill further deployment there is still something that we have going. So I’d say, no, the India paper business is strong, continuing to track on a very good growth rate. I’m going to ask Rand to kind of share a little more perspective around that. Rand.

Rand Mendez

Analyst

Yes, I think the two highlights for India for our Paper PCC business is the expanding technology of Fulfill. Our team has grown there in India. It’s becoming very confident, both technically and from an operational standpoint and Fulfill, the full technology is expanding there. We also have a couple of satellites that are in our pipeline and we are pretty optimistic about those.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

The other thing I’d add Rosemarie is that India today for us has a very well developed management team, strong leadership and we’ve set up a lead team that really coordinates and provides critical mass leadership for all the businesses that are in India. Today, we have besides PCC, we have our Refractories business there, our wire businesses there, performance materials is there, construction technologies is there. We are looking to have performance minerals there. So for India – India for us is really a – we’re right in the middle of our radar screen as is China for the further growth opportunities, and most of those areas are tracking very well for us right now.

Rosemarie Morbelli

Analyst

Okay thanks. And in terms of the M&A you have touched upon it, but from small to large would you mind defining the optimum size of the bolt-on that you might be looking at let’s say by 2017.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Well, that’s hard to predict. I’ll share with you; we are looking at companies and size from, some are as small as $20 million, let’s say $20 million to $50 million; others are in excess of $700 million and the potential is even greater than that. But I’d say we are dealing within that range and it’s hard to predict today exactly the sizes of the companies that we will be buying in that timeframe. But it’s quite a broad array of different sizes and also different types of businesses relative to some of the end markets. But what is common about the target portfolio today, it is all minerals based with a strong technology differentiating factor in terms of how the companies do business. So it’s something we work as you know from having followed us for some time. These things don’t happen overnight. It’s something that you will continue to work overtime, which is what we have rekindled over the summer as we are coming to the end phases of our integration of the former AMCOL. John Hastings who has led the integration has moved to increasing, let’s say what he does on a day-to-day basis with a higher percentage of the acquisition. So that’s sort of just trying to give you a picture of what’s happening right now.

Rosemarie Morbelli

Analyst

Sure. And if I look, however if I look at your positions, before you bought AMCOL you were on a net cash situation type of balance sheet. By the time you start looking at something else you will be at about, let’s call it 2.4 times net leverage. So how much higher and you went up to four and change. How much higher can you get in terms of net debt, net leverage with the $700 million type, revenue type of acquisition.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Right, when we bought AMCOL, if I remember right we were about 4.4, 4.5 leverage ratio right. So again, depending on the acquisition, the risk, the ability to accrete quickly, immediately, what we can do with it after acquisition in terms of synergies, those are all factors that go into what we are willing to take on. I’m going to ask Doug to kind of just share some of his perspectives of this as well.

Doug Dietrich

Analyst

Well, I think Rosemarie we’ve certainly demonstrated that we can go to 4.5 times and manage that down very quickly. Going down to 2.2 to 2 times in that leverage opens up significant amount of borrowing, just on our existing $400 million-ish EBITDA, right. So it really depends on the target and the cash flows of the combined entities and the amount of EBITDA from the target and what we can do with it, and how it fits into the strategy and opportunities. So I think at 2.5 times to 2 times we could probably afford a pretty sizable acquisition. That’s not necessarily what’s completely on our target list. We have some smaller ones that we could do with just pure cash right now and we could do in very small efforts that’s in our strategy. So I think it really depends on the target.

Rosemarie Morbelli

Analyst

That is very helpful, thank you. And if I may ask one last question, could you talk about the competition on your environmental type of operations. Is it I mean companies offering similar type of lining or is it something totally different.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Yes, there are companies with similar linings. We are out now – as we’ve mentioned, we do have some higher performing liner products that came out of product development, that do differentiate from the competition today. Typical companies in this arena Patrice would be what? Companies like that we are great control in terms of building materials by companies. Maybe Patrick, you can give us a little more perspective around this.

Patrick Carpenter

Analyst

Yes. When we look at our traditional water proofing business, we’ve got a couple out there that Joe had mentioned, W.R. Grace, those companies that we compete with in Europe, Sika. When you look at the traditional GCI business there is a couple here in the States. GCE is one and then throughout Europe we’ve got a pretty big competitor in Norway, Fazer Technique [ph]. The majority of these companies concentrate on multiple lining systems and don’t necessary specialize in the function of geosynthetic clay liners and that’s the advantage of our – our technology is to meet that challenge in demand. But overall we seem to have a lager portfolio in the market places with water proofing and specialty containment that may only be singular when we look at our competition.

Rosemarie Morbelli

Analyst

Okay, thank you. And just quickly, is CapEx about – if I heard you properly Doug, $89 million to $95 million for 2015. What are your expectations for 2016?

Doug Dietrich

Analyst

It’s going to be about the same level, really driven by – we built three satellites. It’s really driven by Paper PCC growth at least this year in China. We have three satellites coming on next year in China of similar size. So it should be around the same level Rosemarie.

Rosemarie Morbelli

Analyst

Okay, thank you very much. Good luck.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Our next question comes from Al Kaschalk from Wedbush Securities. Please go ahead.

Al Kaschalk

Analyst

Good morning everybody.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Hi Al.

Al Kaschalk

Analyst

Joe, it wasn’t clear, but it sounds like people want you to do some M&A, is that fair?

Joe Muscari

Analyst

You think so.

Al Kaschalk

Analyst

On a more serious note or more questions that I have, could you just talk maybe about whether given the multiples would come off a little bit, does that change or accelerate or maybe I should use the word, increase the intensity of what you look at transactions.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

I think what allows – I mean a couple of things are allowing us, are enabling us to increase the – let’s say the intensity of how we are looking at it. One is the fact that we were able to integrate, integrate and achieve our synergies faster than we originally targeted, number one. Two, that we’ve been able to pay our debt down quite aggressively, right, to better position ourselves going forward. And when you put those together in terms of the company’s ability to actually buy something, let’s say a reasonable size and also do a good job in the integration relative to what’s involved in the – given the magnitude of the acquisition we just did and many people involved in this, it took a tremendous amount of coordination. So it’s now being ready as I mentioned moving towards the end of that integration phase, that also enables us to actually bring more companies in, so that by itself. And given that there were more opportunities brought to us by the acquisition of AMCOL has opened up more. The bentonite arena or related to bentonite from the mineral standpoint in terms of end markets. That consumer market, which as you recall is an area, although you may not have been involved with this, there are others on the call who know that we were focused on increasing our profile in the consumer products arena and so that area still has opportunities from an acquisition standpoint. That’s why I used the term companies with specific end markets that they are participating in and that also plays a part into how fast we move on some things as opportunities are developed on a going forward basis. Does that help?

Al Kaschalk

Analyst

Yes. No, it does. Just as a follow-on to that, given the sort of six quarters or five quarters since AMCOL and then as you take a step back, one of the tenants, at least on our constructive view on what you did was the potential commercialization of some new opportunities. So could you give us maybe just an update from your standpoint; the new product pipeline or internal development of product and the commercial ramp on the near term?

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Yes, I’d say in general this is still somewhat relatively early, but if we think about the combined company rate of product development and that clearly through the direction of the technology lead team, I’d say that the total pipeline of the company is moving at a faster rate. If we’re talking about the opportunities that have been developed because the two companies have been put together, I’d say that also now is an area where we have a number of project areas that are advancing and I’m going to let John Hastings kind of walk us through that. John.

John Hastings

Analyst

Hi Al.

Al Kaschalk

Analyst

Good morning John.

John Hastings

Analyst

A couple of things to point out. As Joe highlighted and we’ve talked before, we’ve had the innovation retreats. These have been designed to bring our technical and our commercial teams together, focused on specific opportunities where we see the combined technologies could actually provide some value in the marketplace and we’ve had some of them now. We have had some introductions with products. The first one we highlighted previously was in the adhesives and sealants. We had a product called Calafort [ph] that has been introduced in Europe. We are on pace to sell about $1 million to $1.5 million this year. We’ve also introduced some new products in pet care. So not only with the light weight litter that Gary highlighted earlier, but we’ve also introduced some products that are blends of bentonite and also calcium carbonate and we’re on pace to sell about $10 million to $15 million within the impact of probably about $1 million to $2 million bottom line. So again, we continue to expand the portfolio of opportunities. Just in the past few years we’ve highlighted and we’ve commercialized more than 80 products with an impact greater than $300 million potential revenue. We’ve got another 90 plus products in the pipeline in various stages of our stage gate development program. So a couple of different thoughts for you there regarding the performance, its very robust and we think as we continue to accelerate for commercialization, we’ll have more impact going forward.

Al Kaschalk

Analyst

That’s very helpful. My final question if I may. I noticed on the performance materials slide that or at least in the report that operating income slid from Q2 to Q3. From what I recall, that business or that’s probably an abnormality and if you look back into ’13 it’s certainly the case and certainly in ’14. Can you maybe articulate what the – I know its only $3 million sequential decline, but from a business standpoint maybe what am I missing and what is in that analysis.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

I don’t think you’re missing anything significant Al. I think one of the difference between Q2 and Q3 were two things. One, as I mentioned, just the agricultural sector in the U.S. has been pretty weak. We’ve also seen some of the oil and gas – foundry products of oil and gas and I think particularly into the transportation and rail has also been -- had some impact. And then we had in August really over – the third quarter in China was lower, but that was really due to a really slow August and then sales came back in September, but there were a lot of outages in China. So I think that we kind of saw that coming. So I indicated on the last call that operating income will be a little bit lower in the third and those are the main factors that contributed to it. But again, we still see a pretty healthy business here in North America and we’ve mentioned our comments on China going forward. Gary, do you want to add anything to that?

GaryCastagna

Analyst

Just Al that even in North America the metal casting business you saw that – if you look at it sequentially and what you are maybe referring to in the past, I think we had probably a bit more of a July slowdown than what we normally see from the automotive related foundries as well, which then picked up more towards the end of the quarter. But the bigger point there like Doug mentioned is, China definitely is seeing some headwinds and that’s also improved as the quarter has gone along and not detracted at all from our strategy there. But at the end of it all we have a bit of a lower sales in the third quarter than we had in the past and as well the markets and the basic minerals, drilling products particularly also have been a slowdown there as well.

Al Kaschalk

Analyst

Thank you for the color.

Operator

Operator

I am showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Rick Honey for any further closing remarks.

Rick Honey

Analyst

This concludes today’s call and we thank you for your interest in Minerals Technologies and have a good day. Thank you.

Joe Muscari

Analyst

Thank you.