Randall Hogan
Analyst · UBS
Thanks, Sara, and welcome, everyone. Let me begin with Q2 results as shown on Slide 2. Pentair delivered a strong second quarter, with sales up 14%, margin expansion of 70 basis points, and EPS growth of 23%. Underpinning these results are successful investments, a growing international presence and strong execution across the board. First, investments in more energy-efficient sustainable product offerings and added global sales coverage continued to yield positive topline results, as evidenced in our Q2 performance. Water sales were up 15% or up 7%, adjusting to exclude Clean Process Technologies, or CPT, and the 2010 Gulf Intracoastal Waterway or GIWW project sales. At the same time, Technical Products grew 13% on top of prior year's 19% growth in Q2. Second, fast-growth regions are meaningfully contributing to Pentair's growth, approaching 20% of our total sales mix in 2011 compared to less than 15% just 1 year ago. In the quarter, fast growth region sales were up 26%, excluding the benefit from the CPT acquisition, and 55% including CPT. Third, we continue to drive meaningful margin expansion through continuous cost structure improvements and strong execution of lean deployment across Pentair, with margins up 70 basis points. And finally, CPT is off to a great start with good top line momentum and plenty of growth opportunities for the combined businesses. On earnings, we delivered adjusted EPS of $0.75 compared to $0.61 in Q2 last year. The margin performance of both Water and Technical Products, along with lower taxes from a more favorable geographic mix, drove adjusted EPS $0.03 above the high end of the guidance we provided in April. As a result, we're raising the full year outlook to reflect the Q2 beat, and some added CPT benefits we see in the second half, which John will cover in more detail later. On free cash flow, we generated nearly $180 million in the quarter, putting us on track to deliver more than $250 million for the full year. Overall, we had a solid quarter and a very good first half. We believe we are well positioned to deliver record-adjusted earnings in 2011, all without a notable U.S. residential recovery. Now let's turn to Slide 3 for a review of our Water business. Water revenues grew 15% in the quarter with good growth across most of the businesses and regions. Global expansion, distribution gains and innovation led to higher recurring volumes, which were up 4%. Pricing is solid across all of Water, up over 100 basis points. Largely, though masked by timing of growth rebates. Currency and the CPT acquisition contributed the remaining 13 points of growth. We continue to make excellent progress on fast-growth region expansion, with sales up 26% in the quarter excluding CPT. Like Global Business Unit or GBU, residential flow sales were up 7% in the quarter, including 4 points of FX benefit. U.S. residential sales grew slightly, helped by greater penetration related to new products and improved service delivery and quality, all evidence of lean enterprise progress. Pump sales in Europe were up double digits, benefiting from a stronger flood season, as well as expanded distribution. Our agricultural vertical sales, including irrigation pumps and cross-spray product was up 14%. Residential Filtration sales grew 12% in the quarter, with FX contributing 4 points. We continue to roll out a more efficient water softeners that will boost from OEM sales, enabled by improved lead times in service, helped offset what continues to be a relatively flat U.S. market. Fast growth regions in Residential Filtration continue to grow at a rapid pace, up over 45%. China grew an impressive 44% in the quarter as we leverage the innovative in-country for-country product offerings like Pentair Fresh, along with increased distribution coverage. Continuing at this pace, we expect over half of the sales from this GBU to come from outside the U.S. by year end. Pool GBU sales were up 7% on top of the 31% growth in the prior year. While pool permits increased modestly off of a very low base, we continue to attract new dealers through leading innovation around energy efficiency and sustainability. This continues to be supported by a growing number of utility-funded rebate programs across the U.S. including a new one, a $600 utility rebate in Florida. With less than a 10% penetration, the opportunity for Pentair's IntelliFlo variable speed pump is enormous as we move beyond traditional replacements and new pool of construction demands. With a lot of tailwinds, this business continues to post excellent sales growth. The Engineered Flow GBU sales decreased 7% in the quarter. Excluding the $7 million of GIWW sales that we had in this quarter in 2010, revenue grew a modest 1%. Robust commercial and industrial sales helped offset a decline in larger new municipal project sales in the quarter. In commercial, we're encouraged with the progress we're making to grow the HVAC and fire pump verticals outside the U.S., with good gains in the Middle East in particular. Within Industrial, demand remains strong for reciprocating and centrifugal pumps in the oil and gas sector. The U.S. municipal remains sluggish though and in the near term, based on funding concerns. But longer term, we believe municipalities will have to resume repairing and upgrading their water infrastructure, given the stresses in the U.S. The Filtration Solutions sales were up 7% x CPT, including 2 points of currency, reflecting broad-based strength across key markets including Foodservice and Desalination. We continue to be encouraged by the positive movements in desal, and resulting CodeLine demand. In Foodservice, we continue to grow our presence outside of the U.S., with sales up 60% in China. We also grew in the Industrial, Medical and Energy verticals. Filtration Solutions continue to fire at all cylinders, and CPT is the right catalyst for even greater growth. The right half of the page shows Q2 Water operating profits and margin. Water operating margins were 14.2% in the quarter. This reflects an outstanding base margin performance of over the 15%, offset slightly by CPT, adding to a 40 basis point improvement year-over-year. Price material came in as we expected. We're making meaningful progress on lean enterprise in Water, and it is reading out in numbers with lower cost of quality and improved on-time delivery across our GBUs. CPT margin pressures are seasonal and temporary, with sequential margin improvement expected as we drive volume leverage and productivity. Overall, I'm very pleased with our Water performance this quarter, and excited about its future. Now let's move to Slide 4 for a review of Technical Products. Technical Products sales were up 13% and up 9% excluding currency, reflecting broad-based growth across most end markets we serve. Industrial, General Electronics and Energy all posted strong double-digit growth. Communications is down in the quarter, a trend we expect to continue in the second half based on lumpiness of some of the telecom programs we serve. Infrastructure, a growing part of Technical Products portfolio, was up 10%. And notably, we recently won a $4 million order to provide cabinets for another charging station project in the emerging electric vehicle charging market. Technical Products grew a solid 29% in fast-growth regions led by China, up 33% and Eastern Europe, up over 50% in the quarter. We're investing to drive this growth, building our distributor base and adding selling and marketing resources in more key markets like Russia, the Middle East and Mexico. I'm particularly pleased with Technical Products' operating margin performance, posting another quarter of 17-plus percent margins, while investing in growth initiatives. Through every cycle, Technical Products' earnings power has increased. And 2011 is no different, as we expect to advance margins in another roughly 170 basis points to 17% for the full year. We expect the breadth and depth of our product portfolio, brand, strength and global capabilities to enable us to capture more and more growth opportunities as we move forward in Technical Products. Please turn to Slide 5, as I cover the market trends and key assumptions for the balance of the year. Clearly, we had a strong start with first half sales up 13%, segment margin expansion of 170 basis points, and over 30% earnings growth, putting us in a good position as we enter the second half. On the top line, CPT is tracking slightly ahead of expectations, with an additional $190 million in sales expected in the second half. Of course, the $47 million in second half 2010 revenue related to the GIWW project provides a difficult comparison. Adjusting to exclude both CPT and GIWW, we expect our recurring base business sales to grow in the 8% to 10% range for the full year. We expect those things that helped us in the first half to continue like global capital spending tailwinds, strength in fast-growth regions and investments in innovation and expanded distribution. In Technical Products, however, we do anticipate industrial growth rates to moderate, reflecting more normal tech product growth in the second half of this year. For our market view in Water, we see no near-term improvement in U.S. residential markets. Still, we have a significant install base to serve with over 80% of residential revenues generated from repair, replacement and upgrade. And we continue to capitalize on the secular trends around energy efficiency and sustainability. We expect municipal spending to remain under pressure, negatively impacting our large pump project business. As a result, Engineered Flow is expected to be down roughly 25% in the back half, reflecting a difficult GIWW lap, and down around 5% x GIWW because of U.S. municipal weakness. Outside the U.S. and across both segments, we expect a mixed Europe with some growth in Germany and Eastern Europe, offset by smaller pockets of weakness in other parts of Western Europe. In fast-growth regions like China, Brazil and India, we anticipate continued robust growth. On the margin line, price and productivity should still offset inflation. Despite the back half of the year with incremental deal integration costs and amortization, along with increased investments, we continue to expect margin expansion of roughly 100 basis points for the full year, which should be quite an achievement. So despite all of the headlines, our view of served markets and the opportunities there remains unchanged since our last update with you in April. We believe we're well on track to deliver greater than 20% earnings growth on record sales of nearly $3.5 billion. Beyond the numbers, we continue to rapidly advance our strategy to expand globally, innovate and drive PIMS across our business, as outlined on Slide 6. In fast-growth regions, sales were up 20% year-to-date and with this growing, comes scale to drive better operating leverage. We're just beginning, we believe, to see the benefits of our investments we've made over the past several years. We've added manufacturing capabilities, global lean enterprise deployment, local engineering and channel development in key markets like China, Latin America and India. These investments are beginning to pay dividends in the form of top line growth and margin improvements. We have now turned our focus to drive added distribution, penetration and coverage. In the quarter, we had a strong Pentair presence, including CPT at the Aquatech show in Shanghai. And we're looking forward to the upcoming show in Amsterdam in November. We also opened up our first flagship showroom in Shanghai in partnership with a large distributor, another means to increase brand awareness with consumers in China. And we're relentless in our pursuit of in-country for-country products with a new wall-mounted RO filtration system called Pentair Zero [ph] as an example that was designed and manufactured in India, specifically for the Indian market. Turning to innovation. Our investments in sustainability, energy efficiency, automation and safety are driving demand for our products. In the quarter, for example, our energy-efficient Eco-Select product suite contributed nearly 40% of our Q2 pool sales compared to just around 30% last year. In addition, we launched our new standardized global RO systems platform for low brackish water, won the Best Green Product Award for Pentair's Rain Switch in Malaysia, and continue to be a key player in providing protective enclosures and cooling solutions for recharging stations in the emerging electric vehicle market, just to name a few. Another growth accelerator is our Pentair Integrated Management System or PIMS. We continue to serve our global customers better every day by improving product quality, on-time delivery, workplace safety and delivering cost and cash to boot, as evidenced by our year-to-date gross margin improvement of 120 basis points with strong cash flow generation. And on the strength of excellent on-time delivery rates and rapid sales growth, Pentair was recently recognized as True Value's 2010 Partner of the Year, a title that is awarded to only one of its 1,800 vendors across all categories annually. We're very excited about the new CPT acquisition, which advances our strategy in every aspect. We expect CPT will add over $140 million in annual revenues in fast-growth markets, add leading innovative and a highly valued filtration technologies including ultra filtration, nano filtration and membrane bioreactors, and provides us an opportunity to leverage lean enterprise to drive greater profit. CPT is a clear fit and high-impact acquisition that we believe creates a stronger, more global growth profile company in Pentair. In sum, we are committed to our long-term growth agenda and continue to make good progress. Now let's turn to Slide 7 for a more in-depth update on the recent CPT acquisition. The business is performing exceptionally well as CPT grew sales double digits and won nearly $20 million in new systems and projects just since we closed. This growing installed system space will help support compelling and recurring revenues going forward from replacement components and services. And we continue to leverage our strong technologies portfolio, now extending it into anaerobic membrane bioreactor systems, for example, to improve excellent [ph] Lower discharge cost and raise biogas yields to not only provide water reuse, but also an energy source for a number of different industries. This all uses our proprietary side stream ultra filtration solution, which is simplist to maintain. The integration work is on track and going well. We're in the process of providing product offerings across all verticals, especially Desalination and beverage. We're also developing plans for a more optimal combined go-to-market approach in key regions, with the goal of selling more together. A good example of that is the CPT team just recently secured a CodeLine sale with a customer in Brazil that prior to this, we have never made sales to. That's the kind of thing we expect to happen more and more as we work together. All critical ongoing activities are successfully complete and trained to consolidating financials. We're rapidly moving forward in the application of lean enterprise and rollout of the PIMS toolkit, with early in sourcing and combined global procurement opportunities already identified. Simply put, CPT is off to a great start. Now let's turn to Slide 8. For our standard work, details of free cash flow are on the left of the slide, and a summary of our debt levels, including the recent $500 million acquisition related public debt. Free cash flow is strong in the quarter, reflecting a solid Q2 performance. Year-to-date, we've generated $117 million of free cash flow, and we believe we're on track to deliver greater than $250 million for the year. We returned approximately $20 million to shareholders through dividends in the quarter, with an annual dividend of $0.80 per share. Our ROIC, which is shown in the bottom right section of the slide, we continue to make progress on this important commitment, adding another 90 basis points for a return on invested capital of 9%. Our goal continues to be to drive ROIC into double digits. With that, let me turn it over to John to review in greater detail the Q2 performance and 2011 guidance. John?