Earnings Labs

EnPro Industries, Inc. (NPO)

Q2 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 1, 2013

$280.19

-2.71%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-0.15%

1 Week

+0.75%

1 Month

-2.54%

vs S&P

+1.13%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Steve and I will be the operator on this conference today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the EnPro Industries’ Second Quarter 2013 Earnings Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers remarks there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). Thank you. Mr. Don Washington, Director of Investor Relations for EnPro Industries, you may begin your conference call.

Don Washington

Management

Thank you, Steve. And good morning everyone. Welcome to our quarterly earnings conference call. I remind you that our call is also being webcasted in enproindustries.com, and you can find the website link and the slides accompanying the call in the Investor Relations section of our website. In a moment Alex Pease, our Senior Vice President and CFO will review the results for the second quarter of 2013. Steve Macadam, our President and CEO who is usually on these calls is chosen to attend GST’s Asbestos Liability Estimation Trial Today. And so he won’t be with us. Before we begin, I will point out to you that you may hear statements during the course of this call that express the belief, expectation or intension as well as those that are not historical fact. These statements are forward-looking and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual events and results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties are referenced in the Safe Harbor statement included in our press release and are described in more detail along with other risks and uncertainties in our filings with the SEC including the Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2012 and the Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2013. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements made on this conference call to reflect any change in management’s expectations or any change in assumptions or circumstances on of which such statements are based. You should also note that EnPro owns a number of direct and indirect subsidiaries. From time to time, we may refer collectively to EnPro and one or more of its subsidiaries as we, or to the businesses, assets and debts or affairs of EnPro or a subsidiary as ours. These and similar references are for convenience only, and should not be construed to change the fact that EnPro and each subsidiary is an independent entity, with separate management, operations, obligations and affairs. I want to remind you that to our financial results reflect the deconsolidation of Garlock Sealing Technologies LLC and Garrison Litigation Management and their subsidiaries, effective June 5, 2010. The results of these entities will remain deconsolidated during the pendency of the Chapter 11 legal proceedings to resolve asbestos claims against GST. We refer to this as you know as the Asbestos Claims Resolution Process or ACRP. GST’s summary results are presented separately in our earnings release. Now I’ll turn the call over to Alex.

Alex Pease

Management

Thanks Don. Thanks to everyone who has joined us on the call this morning. As Don mentioned, Steve is attending GST’s Asbestos Liability Estimation Trial today. As I’m sure most of you know that trail began last week and is scheduled to conclude at the end of next week. Because the trials in progress it’s not appropriate for us to make any comment about it beyond our continued confidence in the arguments GST has presented to the core. We believe that GST’s argument show a couple of important points, first its products were not cause of asbestos related disease. And secondly its settlements in the NEW York leading up to Chapter 11 to filing in 2010 reflected increased cost of defense and higher trial cost – higher trial risk caused by Tort system abuses including the depression of evidence and we’re not representative of any true legal liability. Although portions of the trial are being held under a confidentiality order from the court the order does not prevent GST from presenting these arguments and evidence supporting them in full during the trial. We appreciate your understanding of our reasons for not commenting further on the trial or on when or how the case may be resolved. Well it remains possible that a settlement maybe the ultimate outcome of the ACRP we have no assurance that this will be the case nor can we anticipate what if any value of GST might be preserved. Now let’s look at our second quarter performance. Sales in the quarter in the second quarter were up $306 million were $306 million up $4.1 million from the second quarter of last year, more than half of the increase or about $2.3 million came from the benefit of two extra weeks to Motorwheel sales in the year’s…

Don Washington

Management

Well Steve, we’re ready.

Operator

Operator

Absolutely. (Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from the line of Ian Zaffino from Oppenheimer. And I’m sorry if I pronounced that wrong. Your line is open. Tom Narayan – Oppenheimer: Hi, it’s actually Tom Narayan for Ian. The EBIT margin for Garlock the 31.4%, does that include the $13 million asbestos expense?

Don Washington

Management

No, that excludes asbestos related expense that’s an EBITDA. Tom Narayan – Oppenheimer: Okay, I see, I see. And could you talk about just organically maybe why outside of that why margins were better?

Alex Pease

Management

And for Garlock or across the board? Tom Narayan – Oppenheimer: Yeah, for Garlock.

Alex Pease

Management

For Garlock. Yeah I mean Garlock has been very proactive in terms of its pricing, pricing discipline so we’ve been able to get a lot of value or communicate a lot of the value proposition of the Garlock line of products which has enabled to pass on price. We’ve also been very proactive on the cost side for the equation and we benefited from the fact that PTFE prices have come down fairly substantially. So we’re at a level of PTFE pricing that we haven’t seen in the past 20 months or so and of course PTFE is the largest driver of raw material cost in that business. Tom Narayan – Oppenheimer: Okay, thanks. That’s all from me.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Hammond from KeyBanc Capital Market. Your line is open. Jeff Hammond – KeyBanc Capital Market: Hey, good morning guys.

Alex Pease

Management

Hey Jeff. Jeff Hammond – KeyBanc Capital Market: So, just kind of going back to the margin improvement I mean clearly a lot of improvement relative to flat sales dynamic. As we look into the second half I guess two questions, one if you can kind of give us a better sense of what you think was just within your control benefits from restructuring and the likelihood that carries forward. And then how much is kind of the profit improvement was just kind of mix price. And then as you look into second half how sustainable is some of these favorable profit drivers?

Alex Pease

Management

Let me – it’s probably easiest if I tackle that kind of division by division. Jeff Hammond – KeyBanc Capital Market: Sure.

Alex Pease

Management

I just talked about the Garlock situation I think that’s probably quite sustainable. Always the second sort of first and second quarter tend to be the strongest for Garlock because the way the turnaround season materializes and then the third and fourth tend to be a little bit softer from a volume standpoint. But all of that the cost discipline the pricing improvements, the lower raw material cost I think will continue to benefit Garlock. So I’m pretty optimistic that those margin levels are fairly sustainable. Technetics, we talked about is highly exposed to the semiconductor market and so we sort of struggled down the volume side. On a margin side the thing we’re concerned about is the nuclear mix so as we look out at the nuclear sales we see a little bit of a softer backlog which would have a downward pressure on margins although margins for the – for that division weren’t great this quarter anyway. So I think it’s probably in line to recent slight headwinds depending on what goes on in semiconductor. STEMCO we saw just a very, very strong quarter particularly in the aftermarket field side which carrier really, really high margins. So their margins were substantially higher than they were a year ago. So I do see some headwinds there particularly because the second half of the year tends to be dominated more by the break business and also by the OEM business. So I think that there is some headwinds there relative to last year. We’ve seen some pretty substantial improvement so last year Rome was struggling with a lot of the integration work that they were doing and this year they’re performing on the low double-digits based on all the operational improvement. So, I do think there is a little bit…

Alex Pease

Management

No, I think that, that I mean seasonally the business does tend to slow but I think that will probably be offset by the ongoing improvement at CPI. Jeff Hammond – KeyBanc Capital Market: Okay, great. And then Engine…

Alex Pease

Management

I was looking to add. The European market for GGB likely appears to be reasonably stable. So I don’t anticipate much more softening there. Jeff Hammond – KeyBanc Capital Market: Okay. And then last question, Engine Products, I think last quarter you were talking about it down 15, do you change that language to down more than 10. So is that ultimately less bad or should we still think about down 15?

Alex Pease

Management

No, I think there has been a couple of developments, first of all the environmental upgrades sales have been substantially stronger obviously last year we didn’t sell any of them so that’s been stronger than we probably anticipated. We also as I mentioned in the script we had the sales of these Colombian Commercial Engine which is a really big deal so that’s five engines that will be delivered next year and of course under percentage of completion accounting the bulk of the work will be done this year. So that’s a very positive development. On the negative side of the equation this quarter I think we’re slightly less optimistic on the outlook for the aftermarket than we were last quarter which of course have a bit of a margin effect. Jeff Hammond – KeyBanc Capital Market: Okay, great. Thanks Alex.

Alex Pease

Management

Yep.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Your next question comes from the line of Joe Mondale from Sidoti & Company. Your line is open. Joe Mondale – Sidoti & Company: Good morning guys.

Alex Pease

Management

Hi, Joe. Joe Mondale – Sidoti & Company: Just wanted to clarify just on last question regarding Engine. So you’re getting a benefit from the Colombian Commercial businesses that you just got on the environmental upgrades as well. Could you just help us get a little bit of better idea in terms of what your margin expectations are given, you’re expecting aftermarket to come down but what kind of margin profile are we looking at with the Colombian Commercial in an environmental upgrades, it sounds like maybe margin comes down a little bit in the back half compared to what we saw in the second quarter?

Alex Pease

Management

No, I would actually anticipate that it improves a little bit because remember we had in the second quarter we had a $1.9 million and… Joe Mondale – Sidoti & Company: Well, I’m saying the 18 excluding the $1.9 million looking at 18.

Alex Pease

Management

Okay, okay, yeah, yeah. So if you’re looking at it a 18% relative to where we think we’ll end the year I think we’ll end the year a little bit softer than that. The first half of course was much lower than we would traditionally expect because of these restructuring expenses the cost associated with the commercial contract in Canada and so forth. So the second half will be substantially stronger than the first half and then I anticipate we end the year kind of a couple of points maybe lower than where we were last year. Joe Mondale – Sidoti & Company: Okay, great. And then CPI, I may have missed I think I lost here little bit when you were talking about that part of the business. Directionally I guess last call you said that profits were the best and I think it was third quarter of 2011 or whatever it was, did profits directionally continue to improve in the second quarter. And if you could just talk I guess maybe a little specifically on the specific markets that you sell to in that business, how that’s trending?

Alex Pease

Management

Yeah. Okay, so let me talk about the profitability situation first and then I’ll I talk about the individual market dynamics. So the profitability for the year has really improved dramatically over the course of the year, I would say that if you were to compare the first quarter with the second quarter of the year it’s basically flat. Although in June we saw the strongest June – June was the strongest month from a profitability standpoint that we’ve had all year. So, I’m optimistic that the trend continues to improve and I think the trend will continue to improve through the end of the year. So that sort of aid on the profitability picture. On the market picture you really sort of have to draw a little bit of metrics on the X axis to the metrics you’d have North America and Europe and then on the Y you’d have refining and kind of all other. So, in Europe the story is actually much more positive than it was last year. The European businesses which are predominantly refining and process industries really performed well, we had a number of wins on the OEM side and the profitability over there is quite strong. In North America the refining business hasn’t been quite as strong as what we would hope and obviously we’ve got the National Gas side of the business which is up in Canada which is been quite a bit weaker than what we thought. So, I don’t know does that give you some color on the market picture, do you want me to talk on it. Joe Mondale – Sidoti & Company: Yeah, no, no that’s good enough. I appreciate that. And then just my last question on it was just – I guess I have two questions, first of all on Technetics, it obviously sounds like it’s a challenge with that business especially with the semiconductor exposure. I guess I’m just trying to wonder where we are sort of your feeling on sort of where we are in the cycle, do you expect directionally from where we are now that we continue to sort of lead a little bit into the back half and then hopefully sort of stabilize or do you think sort of we’ve seen huge decline already in we sort of maybe hit bottom.

Alex Pease

Management

Yeah, let me just adjusting your language because I don’t want anybody on the call to think that we’re struggling in Technetics, that business is performing exceptionally well. So, you’ll recall when we completed the Tara acquisition really the strategic intend of that acquisition was to expand the business from really just a Specialty Seal business to an entire Engineered System Components business. We basically bought the things that go around the seals (inaudible) and so forth to go around the seals. That strategy is coming together very, very well. We have just recently last quarter was a (inaudible) Show and the level of discussion there was significantly more sophisticated than it was even just a year ago. So where we have huge amount of optimism for the future of that business, now the trick is obviously if you’re selling products in the aerospace for example those are long lead long sales cycle things, you don’t just sort of confirm a sale and then deliver it next quarter that takes a year or 18 months to develop. But in general we feel really, really good about that pipeline and to some extent the softness in semiconductor has been a bit above blessing because that’s enabled us to forced us to really double down our efforts on both the aerospace side and the down hole oil and gas side where we’re seeing some successes as well. So, from a market development standpoint, the business is performing really well. And then from an operational standpoint the business is also performing really well, the beauty of the acquisition of Tara is those guys really understood how to operate in the semiconductor environment so they’re very good at gearing the operations to these very rapid cyclical downturns and so they’re highly responsive, they –…

Alex Pease

Management

You’re killing me Joe, 30% isn’t good enough for you? Joe Mondale – Sidoti & Company: No, I’m just wondering, I couldn’t even believe that it could get the size so I’m just sort of wondering.

Alex Pease

Management

I’m teasing you. The business is exceptionally disciplined on cost, they’ve being doing a lot of work on their commercial excellence programs obviously we do have some benefit from the reduction in PTFE prices which PTFE is a huge percentage of their raw material cost and you’ll remember last year PTFE prices really spiked. So, I think that they’re just doing a great job on all fronts. Now I will mention that Q2 in particular tends to be dominated by some seasonal factors related to primarily process industry turnarounds. So we did have the benefit of that which likely won’t continue. There is also some softness in our mining and the construction segment. So I think there is probably more headwinds than there are tailwinds I don’t want to mislead anybody but it was a very strong quarter for them. Joe Mondale – Sidoti & Company: All right, great. Thanks a lot for the information, very helpful.

Alex Pease

Management

You’re welcome.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. Presenters, I turn the call back to you.

Don Washington

Management

Thank you Steve. And thanks everybody for dialing in today. As usual if you any follow-up questions, feel free to contact me on my direct line its 704-731-1527. And we look forward to talking to you again next quarter. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

And this concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.