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Somnigroup International Inc (SGI)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 29, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Tempur Sealy Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I'd like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Barry Hytinen, Chief Financial Officer. Sir, please begin. Barry A. Hytinen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thanks, Vince. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's call. Joining me in our Lexington headquarters is Scott Thompson, Chairman, President and CEO. After prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A. Forward-looking statements that we make during this call are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned forward-looking statements including the company's expectations regarding sales, earnings or adjusted net income and anticipated fourth quarter performance involve uncertainties. Actual results may differ due to a variety of factors that could adversely affect the company's business. The factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those identified include economic, regulatory, competitive, operating and other factors discussed in the press release issued today. These factors are also discussed in the company's SEC filings, including but not limited to annual reports on Form 10-K and the company's quarterly reports on Form 10-Q under the headings Special Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements and/or Risk Factors, as well as the company's press releases. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made, and the company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. This morning's commentary will include non-GAAP financial measures. The press release contains reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly…

Operator

Operator

Yes sir. Thank you. Our first question is from Brad Thomas of KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open, sir.

Bradley B. Thomas - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Yes, hi good morning, Scott, Barry and Mark and Scott welcome to the company. Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you.

Bradley B. Thomas - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

To ask my one question here, I wanted to follow-up on a comment that you made, Scott, where you said that execution is where most of the value creation often occurs. You did reference how Sealy and the international segment didn't live up to expectations this quarter. But with 50 days under your belt, could you maybe talk about the main areas within the company that you see the biggest opportunity to improve execution? Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: You probably hit on a couple of them pretty quickly. As I mentioned before, the Sealy margins are not meeting our internal targets. The team's on it. It's a significant opportunity, but it's also a journey that will take more than a month, probably take more than a quarter or two, but there is significant opportunity in the Sealy manufacturing. We're just not where we need to be from that standpoint. We've done some great work on the supplier side, but we need to do some more work on the labor side, primarily. Turning to international, look, international had a solid quarter, when you look at it on a constant currency basis, but were we expecting more? Yes, we were expecting more. The Sealy brands had growth in the quarter, but the Sealy launch hasn't gone as well as we would have liked in Europe. Tempur, primarily in Europe, underperformed our expectation. And I'd tell you that when you looked at the overhead of both, it would be internationally or domestically, but if calling out internationally, the overhead in international is a little heavy and the team is taking care of that issue. But as far as opportunity long-term, international looks like a very good opportunity long-term. It won't be an easy road. That's a tough execution when you're working internationally and there'll be bumps in the road going forward, but long-term internationally is something I'm certainly very excited about.

Bradley B. Thomas - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Great. Thank you so much, Scott.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Seth Basham with Wedbush Securities. Your line is open.

Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Good morning and thank you. Congrats on a good quarter. My question really revolves around Sealy. It seems like you guys are facing some pretty easy comparisons on Sealy margins this quarter. I was expecting to see a little bit better improvement there as you start tackling some of the manufacturing issues. Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: That was odd.

Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Can you talk to what fell short of expectations on your end and what the action plan is in the near-term to improve it? Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. I think I've called that out, and first of all, you're spot on. The Sealy margins did not perform the way we expected them to. Some of that's merchandizing mix and that we certainly were affected from a merchandizing mix standpoint and that's fully explainable. And that will turn when we launched the new Stearns & Foster product, but that doesn't explain it all. We've still got work to do in the area. We've got a team on it. They're very engaged. In fact I think they were here at seven o'clock this morning meeting. So, the action plans in place and we expect that we're going to be able to report progress in that area.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Budd Bugatch of Raymond James. Your line is open. Bobby K. Griffin - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Good morning. This is Bobby actually filling in for Budd. Thank you for taking my questions and congrats on another solid quarter. Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Bobby. Barry A. Hytinen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thanks, Bobby. Bobby K. Griffin - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: My question's really around the Sealy rollout there in Europe. Just looking for maybe a little bit more detail if has the strategy changed a little bit, has the timing of the size changed? If so, what's kind of changed and if not, you've mentioned it earlier, but how is it progressing and kind of what's the surprises and what's going better or worse than you originally communicated with us a year or so ago? Barry A. Hytinen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Good question, Bobby. From a standpoint of in the third quarter, our Sealy International Europe, Japan that piece is about consistent from a sales and EBIT drag basis as we were seeing in the first and the second quarter. So high single digit million and a very small drag on EBIT. From standpoint of as we look at what's going on as you know we had some supplier issues earlier in the year, those are fully behind us. But going back in and essentially refocusing sales advocacy at the store level, that's an effort and as Scott mentioned, we see the international opportunity as being a very large one over time, but it's going to take some time. And so, I know the team is very focused going forward into 2016 to increase both the distribution of our new Sealy and Stearns & Foster products there and we've got a positive outlook, but it's going to take some time.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from John Baugh of Stifel. Your line is open. John Baugh - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Thank you. Good morning. I appreciate you taking my question. So I'm just curious, Scott, culturally you've come in from the outside and only 50 days, I understand it, but I'm just curious as to your observations of the Tempur versus the Sealy, whether you still see that within the organization; whether that's a hindrance maybe near-term to getting some of the Sealy margin improvements you're talking about. And whether you have the right people in place in the Sealy operations to execute the plan of improvement? Thank you. Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Sure. A great question. First of all, you asked about the cultural – kind of a cultural question about Tempur and Sealy. From my perspective, there is only Tempur Sealy. And I don't feel any cultural issues related to what I'll call a Sealy people or a Tempur people. This is not dissimilar from when I joined Dollar Thrifty and in case if you're not familiar with the rental car industry, there was a Dollar and there was a Thrifty. And they put them together and called them Dollar Thrifty. But, when I got there, the way I operate and the way I think about it, there really is only Tempur Sealy and I've got to tell you that I think the leadership team here thinks the same way. We've got some great people that came over in the Sealy acquisition that are key members of this organization and we have clearly some key executives from Tempur and I think everybody is working together. All the goals are aligned. And so, I don't think we have any cultural barriers to our future success. So, I think that would be the first part of your question. Second part of your question was – do I have the right horses or the right team in place to fix the Sealy margin issue and drive Sealy's performance. And the answer to that is, yes. I think we've got the right team. They probably underestimated the challenge from a guy dropping in for 50 days. They probably underestimated the challenge when they started the journey. But, are they doing the right things? Without question they're doing the right things. Are they the right people? They're the people. Are they working hard? They're working hard. And I've got a lot of confidence in the team that we've got on the job.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Peter Keith of Piper Jaffray. Your line is open. Peter Jacob Keith - Piper Jaffray & Co (Broker): Hi. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Scott, just following up on maybe some of the topics in the earlier questions. With regard to the Project 650 goal, that would be a bit above what the prior management team had outlined at the beginning of the year looking at whether it'd be 50 basis points of annual EBIT improvement or I think the internal goal was 100 basis points. It seems like that that goal would be above the 100 basis point target. With you coming in, where do you think you see the specific areas of opportunity relative to those origin goals? Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. Great question. First of all, I'm going to call it the aspirational plan because I don't really think if it as the 650 plan. I think our job is to make as much money as we possibly can. And so, whether it's 650 or 750 or 350, I don't know what the numbers are, so I don't think really think of it necessarily the 650 plan. It's an aspirational plan designed to reward management for aspirational performance, but look, it's out there. It's a heavy lift. But it's certainly a great plan that's got all the management team focused and it's been very good for pulling together the team in a common goal. I did not spend a lot of time looking at what previous management had put together and presented to the Street all their internal documents. I started kind of with a clean sheet of paper and I've asked everybody to start with a clean sheet of paper and do zero budget going forward. And the kind of meeting we're having isn't what we tell people before the kind of meetings we're having, what's possible. Think out of the box. What could we do? What could we do different? How could we do things better? And so I can't really reconcile you to whatever has been presented previous, but quite frankly, I didn't spend any time looking at it. But I think there are a lot of opportunities in this business. We can do some things in areas better than we've done it before and I think we've got some pretty strong competitive advantages in the marketplace that we can take advantage of. So I hope that helps address your question.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Keith Hughes of SunTrust. Your line is open, sir.

Keith Hughes - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you. You brought up when you were discussing Sealy and some of the potential changes advertising, more advertising dollars towards Sealy and so it's been a dynamic year, where there's been national ads in the Tempur brand and more of the co-op spend at the Sealy brand, Sealy, Stearns & Foster brand. So, I guess, my question, if you're committing more advertising dollars, which direction would that go in the future in your view? Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: I think you're asking which bucket it would come out of and I think the answer is we want more effective advertising from the co-op dollars we spend, and then we need to spend some more money from a direct advertising standpoint. So, I'd call it, it's going to come from both bucket.

Keith Hughes - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

And would that change – I assume that wouldn't change your commitment to the Tempur brand in its ad spend, is that correct? Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: No, no, without question. You spend advertising dollars investing in brand and product that you think you're going to have a real high return on. And so we don't have a cap on advertising and then do trade-offs between the two brands. We'll spend the amount of money that we think we need to support the product, support our retailers and drive our operations.

Keith Hughes - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Jason Smith of Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.

Jason Smith - Cantor Fitzgerald Securities

Analyst

How are you doing guys? Thank you for taking my question. Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning.

Jason Smith - Cantor Fitzgerald Securities

Analyst

Just kind of wanted to piggyback on some of the things we've discussed here, as far as the margin expansion opportunity. I know you've kind of addressed the long-term opportunity, but could you kind of discuss or give us a little more color around what you see as sort of the low hanging fruit, I mean where can we see changes quickly here? Barry A. Hytinen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well. I mean, I would say – good question. I would say that we continue to see very strong gross margin out of the Tempur U.S. business and that has been driven off of operational improvements, sourcing, supply chain, plan improvements and pricing. We see those continuing and further opportunity. From a Sealy gross margin perspective, Scott's addressed that we're really getting after that, and driving performance. Internationally, we've addressed that, but I would say that there is continued opportunity as we leverage that portion of the business and then to the earlier point of streamlining the overhead of the business is going to drive near-term performance. Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. I'd only add one thing to the list that Barry just outlined. The other thing that we're doing and I think this happens in our all businesses. Look we're closely looking at all of our sales and making sure that we're doing profitable sales. And we're doing deep dives into customer profitability and to the extent if we have business that's not profitable for us, we'll have to work with people in that area and make sure that we've got a good healthy long-term relationship for them and for us. And so there may be some opportunity in that area.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We have a follow-up from Keith Hughes of SunTrust. Your line is open.

Keith Hughes - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you. Just going back to the Sealy question on the – from a cost perspective. It was highlighted in the last Investor Day, some of the cost initiatives around distribution, sales force consolidation, things like that between the Tempur and Sealy. In your view, are those not complete, or are there things in addition to that that you think you could be doing? Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: The distribution is going well. Wouldn't you say Barry, is that fair? Barry A. Hytinen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Absolutely. Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: I'd say distribution is going well, but I'd also say like always you want more improvement every quarter. But I'd say distribution is going well. In the consolidation of the sales force in our recent actions, there was quite a bit of activity in that area. And I would say, now we've pretty much got the sales force exactly where it needs to be, and we are through in the U.S. on activities when it comes to personnel.

Keith Hughes - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thanks. Our next question is from Curtis Nagle of Merrill Lynch. Your line is open. Curtis S. Nagle - Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc.: Great. Thanks very much for taking the call. So, Scott, I'm just curious, I guess, I know, it's early, but how are you thinking about capital return over the coming years particularly as leverage is set to go below three times? Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Great, great question. I called it out when I originally looked at the business. One of the things I really liked about this business was free cash flow attributes are very strong. And in some of my previous lives, I've been in organizations where you had lots of GAAP earnings, but quite frankly, you didn't produce any cash because the CapEx requirements were so big to keep the engine running that there never really was some free cash, so when I looked at this business, I was thrilled with the cash flow attributes. I then looked at the leverage to see kind of where the company was from a leverage standpoint before getting involved in it and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the company was deleveraging very quickly and unless you do something else with the cash that it is going to deleverage probably below any reasonable rate. So, as Barry called out in his prepared remarks, I've asked him to go work with the senior bank group and to see what we can do in that area relating to covenants and they're working on that. But let me just talk in general about the way I think about capital structure. I think, what we need to do and what we are doing is the first thing you…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Seth Basham of Wedbush Securities. Your line is open.

Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks. Just a couple housekeeping questions. For the quarter, what was your advertising dollar spend? Barry A. Hytinen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: That was about $103 million.

Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Got you. And you expect the run rate to persist in the fourth quarter? Barry A. Hytinen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. It'd be give or take, Seth, yeah, on a percent of sales.

Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Exactly. And then as it relates to FX, what is your FX outlook for the fourth quarter? Barry A. Hytinen - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, for the full year, our guidance has been that we'd have about a $0.30, rounded off $0.30 EPS hit, and we're taking, I think about $0.22 through the first three quarters and so be $0.05 to $0.08 something in that vicinity.

Seth M. Basham - Wedbush Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thanks. Our next question is from Brad Thomas of KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open, sir.

Bradley B. Thomas - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Yes, hi. Just circling back on a few housekeeping items myself. I was hoping that you could talk a little bit more about the cadence of business in North America in the quarter and maybe anything in particular about Texas that you're able to say in light of some of the data points that we've gotten from other retailers. And then, perhaps, Barry if you could give us an update on input costs, how much did they benefit you? And directionally should that be getting to be a bigger benefit, as we move forward or is that leveling off? Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. Let me take some of that and then I'll give the hard stuff to Barry. Just in general, we'll report the fourth quarter when we report the fourth quarter. I can tell you whatever trends we're experiencing have been fully dialed into the guidance, but I just generally don't comment too much about trends within the quarter. So, just assume that it's been dialed into the guidance. On Texas, so I think, I do owe you some comments because clearly there has been some weather down there. And there has been a little bit of chatter in the marketplace about Texas and how oil prices might impact that area. I can tell you that when we look at the what I call, oil concentrated states, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana and we compare our performance in those states with the rest of the nation, those markets in the third quarter actually outperformed the rest of the nation. So, through the third quarter, I would say not only, we're not seeing no impact from falling oil prices, I'd like to say they actually outperformed. Now I'm from Texas, so I've been through…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time, there's no other questions in queue. I'd like to turn it back to Mr. Thompson for any closing remarks. Scott L. Thompson - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, operator. To the 7,000 employees worldwide, thank you for what you do every day and make this company successful. To our retail partners, thank you for your outstanding representation of our brands. To our shareholders and lenders, thank you for your confidence in Tempur Sealy, its leadership team and the board of directors. Operator, this ends our call. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes your program. You may now disconnect. Everyone have a great day.