Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Titan International Corporation First Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Any statements made in the course of the conference call that state the company's or management's intentions, hopes, beliefs, expectations or predictions for the future are considered forward-looking statements. Please note of the Safe Harbor statements contained in the company's latest Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission extend to this conference call, and any forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties as detailed therein. At this time, I'd like to introduce Titan's Chairman and CEO, Maurice Taylor. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. I expect that everybody that is on the conference call has already seen the press releases. The first thing I'd like to do is explain -- we'll cover this past quarter and what we see. There is no question there was a softness in the large size of ag. There's probably a number of reasons for that. Construction has slowed and mining is still just sitting there, popping around, not doing too much. The dealers are moving, and they have had this last month, a fairly significant amount of used equipment, all of the equipment dealers over the last few years have watched their inventory of used equipment go up. And I think they're really concentrating on moving that down. And of course, that's not -- unless it's older than 4 or 5 years, that doesn't help much with the tire side. As of now -- this past, well, let's say, 30 days, I've been out in the Midwest pretty heavy. I believe that there's going to be record yields on the crops. So everybody's seeing all of commodity crops have all dropped in pricing. But the farmers are not going to be hit too bad because the pricing is dropping, but the yields are going to be, as I just mentioned, close to records, we believe. Now there are some, actually, some real, real good things going on. Number one, the program of our large farms, and what we've been doing the last few years, is starting to show some real pickup. The major OEs now in the farm are offering our LSW as options in the farming side. Our LSW, which we call the low sidewall, has -- reduces the power hop for the farmer and road lope. This is the first time this has…

Sounds good. Thanks, Morry, and good morning, everyone. It's been quite a ride for this company that was started from a deserted plant in Quincy, Illinois over 30 years ago. And if you look back just 5 years ago, we were a company with 5 plants in the U.S. 2 years ago, we had those U.S. plants plus one more in Brazil. Today, we operate in over 20 locations, covering nearly all parts of the world. With that global growth, you can see the outline of the solid foundation we've built with our assets and operations, but it also illustrates the significant amount of change our company has experienced. And if you look at our end markets, as Morry was talking about in ag, mining and construction, or if you look at our products with wheel, tires or track, it's apparent we operate in a world that has changed swiftly from a competitive standpoint in recent years. These challenges are illustrated with our recent financial performance. So the bottom line is that we need to drive change within the walls of our company to keep pace with these challenging global markets we operate in. Then from there, we need to keep on consistently changing and evolving as the world around us does. Now when I use the word change, I want to make it clear, that's one area at our company -- there's one area at our company that's off-limits and that's our culture. And you guys would see it, if you've been to our plants or you spent some time talking to our employees. From my first day at Titan, I've seen it live within our powerful can-do spirited culture. It's in our DNA and it makes us who we are. And as the saying goes, culture isn't important,…

Thanks, Paul. Good morning, everyone. Well, needless to say, Q2 is disappointing in terms of performance, continuing against the backdrop of price reduction, mining downturn and the decline of ag, specifically large ag equipment. Related to mining, we recorded an asset impairment of $23.2 million on machinery equipment molds used to produce giant mining tires. In addition, we recorded an inventory write-down of $11.6 million to adjust the value of mining product inventory to estimated market value. So let's begin by breaking down our revenue to understand the drivers. Quarter sales were at $524 million, this was down nearly 12% from Q2 of last year and up 3% from first quarter. The 12% year-over-year decrease was driven primarily by reductions in North American large ag and North American earthmoving and construction, primarily mining. So let's talk about the ag market. We are experiencing a correction that is occurring in large farm equipment sales after multiple years of significant growth. In North America, large ag equipment sales declined in June. Dealers' inventories are still considered high. Four-wheel drive tractor sales are down 24% from prior year; combine sales, down 25%; and row crop tractor sales are down 16%. Put this together with lower crop prices and across-the-board increases in production input costs, with the exception of fertilizer, and it is a perfect storm for lower profitability, and as a consequence, negatively impacting new equipment sales. Specifically, our large ag equipment sales were down $37 million from previous year Q2. Ag in total was down nearly $40 million. Inherent in these variances are price concessions due to raw material decreases related primarily to rubber, for which we are contractually obligated to pass these along. Our other markets, Europe and Brazil, have also experienced the negative effects of the lower ag demand. Growth…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Ian Zaffino with Oppenheimer. Ian A. Zaffino - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division: Can you just talk about some of the implementation -- or ease, I would say, the implementation of what you're going to be implementing when you talk about the EVA and some of the other initiatives. What sort of timeframe -- are we going to see any pushback from spike, what should we expect there?

When you're asking about what we're going to implement, explain what you're... Ian A. Zaffino - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division: Well, I know Paul mentioned implementing some EVA metrics as different ways to judge a performance of sort of shop floor and what's going on there as far as your operations. So when you talk about that, what type of timeframe are we looking at, what's the ease of implementation there? Are we going to, again, hear stories about some [indiscernible] employees who are giving you too much pushback?

No, no. It's -- Ian, what we're driving towards is just making better daily decisions. And what we're implementing is a framework to accomplish that. Using EVA gives us a metric and a way to judge the performance that we can drive down into the plants, we can drive to the divisions, looking at it from our company level. And we really don't have that tool in place right now. And again, it's not about a massive cultural overhaul or a massive system change. We've met with the EVA company that will help us implement the system and it's something you can get put in place in a matter of few months. What I'm more interested in what it does for us again, on the ability to make good solid, fundamental decisions and how we can ensure that's happening consistently around the world. And so this isn't an ERP, this isn't something -- a CRM, this isn't going that direction. For us, it's the start of, again, just driving some changes within our 4 walls. What John will elaborate on in the future, and again, if you do want to learn more about it, he's done this at LK before he came to Titan. And that's get in to the integrated performance management program. And that goes into another level that will certainly take us more time. But the EVA, that program is going to be -- we're going to get it kicked off next quarter and then kind of get it fundamentally pushed out to the rest of the company, therefore, after that.

And Ian, if I could just add a couple of things. So we're actually going to embark on a one-year pilot program. And EVA was introduced well over 20 years ago. And I will tell you, when it was introduced, I think, in its form, it was difficult to use. You couldn't trace EVA back to performance drivers. It was difficult to implement. Really, it was not practical, it was just a dollar measure. And it's tedious and manual to maintain. There's no software solutions for this. Best practice EVA introduced around April of last year has a much higher level of application and benefit. You can deconstruct EVA back to its performance drivers and make this pervasive across your company in terms of people who will participate and impact and grow EVA. There's an introduction of a new ratio framework that again allows you to deconstruct to the performance drivers in the forms of EVA margin and momentum. And there is, now, a very good software that will automate these calculations and tracking for management purposes. So we're very excited about moving forward with this concept. And this concept, more than anything, is really about culture. It's about shaping culture and a mindset in our company. Ian A. Zaffino - Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., Research Division: Okay. And then I don't know if you have this granularity. But on the ag side, can you give us an idea of what was aftermarket versus OE? And how much did that shift? And I guess, I'm assuming, you had a shift towards aftermarket. What did that contribute in terms of margin, I guess, accretion if you could think of it that way. Because I guess the theory is always, that aftermarket is higher margin and when things slow down, you'll get like a favorable mix shift towards aftermarket. Is that the case? And if it is the case, what was sort of the contribution if you have that granularity?

Well, before they give you a number, the -- it's a known fact that the OE is about 35% of the market. Okay? And we at our -- try to run at a 50-50. And the reason being is because we mount so many wheels in this market. And as this market turns down, the situation that's running in the aftermarket is the aftermarket is being a drag out there because number one, the newer big tires, generally, a large farm tractor, in most places in the country, run a 4- to 5-year lifecycle. And so that is where the margins are. So that is why we have concentrated at the OE level. And we are going into the smaller, but there has been -- pricing is dropping all over in that. So we're banking on 2 things. Once the options are at the OE level, the fellow who bought the same tractor now, he has to turn around and he looks whether it's a Case, whether it's a Deere, whether it's an Agco. His ex-model, he's got these tires on there, but he can't go real fast because it starts bouncing out in the field. He takes those tires up, puts ours on, he can run up to the new stuff at 10 miles an hour. And you're not bouncing. We're setting that up, a system, so we can turn around and capture that business. And that's got big margins. So that's what we're looking for in 2015. Go ahead, whoever, Paul or John, on this other part of his question.

OK, are you good Ian? Yes, I think Morry got to the crux of it of how we look at the aftermarket versus the OEMs splits. I mean, we clearly run a different than the competition that focuses on either wheels or tires and our mounting business is a key driver for us as we move into the future. To answer your question, we haven't seen much changes between the splits that's been anything significant over Q2 versus Q1.

Our next question comes from Larry De Maria with William Blair. Lawrence T. De Maria - William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division: A couple of questions. You guys took a charge for Bryan. How do we think about the likelihood of a charge for the European business at this point, given that obviously, the markets are challenged like you referenced. And can you update us now on the covenants and how the write-downs maybe affect the covenants going forward, please?

Well, let me just jump in on the write down, Larry. The reason, get to the heart of the fact and to the board, when we built that, as you know, we -- and I have stated, our maximum capacity, mainly because of the big super giants, was between $500 million and $600 million. That's having the cost situation where it is, with the same amount of material costs. Well, when we made the statement that we were not going to in the big super giants, the pricing is coming down like a rocket. So we're switching that facility. We're going to program that. What we said was that we're to look at that facility at a $250 million and what margins we can earn on that. And we can do very well. Well, that puts it all into a specialized. And we've got everything there, which we've told everybody, we're going out for the various loader tires. We still have the capabilities. We still have everything for the super giants. That hasn't really gone away. But when you redo that, this write-down is strictly a paper situation. I will not be able to tell the IRS, if I buy, I make all this -- doesn't affect us on the tax rates. So that's why we did it. Europe, I don't see, at this stage, where anything would come into it. Now in the covenants, John or Paul can jump in on that.

Right, Larry, I'm not aware that this would have any effect on covenants relative to our debt structure. And Europe, Europe was not part of this analysis nor were there -- was there a triggering event. Australia was part of this analysis -- in the testing Australia was a very minor portion of the overall impairment. In fact, there was just a slight write-down of inventory. We did test both goodwill and intangibles, it passed. So that comprises the impairment and write-downs that we recorded in Q2. Lawrence T. De Maria - William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division: Okay. That's helpful. And then you guys talked a lot about, obviously, a lot of new initiatives that you have been putting in place. You also talked about how complex the business is getting in terms of factors going from, I think, it's 5 to 20 globally. Is there a comprehensive view or comprehensive plan on what the right footprint is and how to consolidate production and running the enterprise more efficiently from a global production standpoint. Are we anywhere near that, given that, obviously, things have been a lot more complex in the last few years.

We're doing that, Larry. And Paul and them are working on it. In reference to components, it's so simple that when you look at, let's take the wheel side. The wheel side in our construction, we had exactly, I think, 7 different suppliers on the same part around the world. So they went and everybody has their own choice, for whatever reason. Well, now, that is down to 2 suppliers, and we will save considerably, joining everybody's volume and going to those 2 sources. So there are items in reference to the situation on the wheel side. On the tire side, you have a whole different problem. Number one, freight. There are certain -- when you have natural rubber keep dropping and if natural rubber gets down into the $0.60, $0.50, well when you have a competitor that is coming into the U.S., his problem is the freight he has to put on is greater than our labor cost. Because as you know, tires get to be even on the ag side, they're pretty big. So you can't squash them all down and send them in that way. So certain competitors of ours will start having bigger problems competing over here. The same thing is true in Europe. And we -- because of the Goodyear situation, which we announced, that the last year, 1.5 years, we lost a lot of tire business at the OE level because the major OEs thought that Goodyear for the European section handled almost close to 122 countries, and so that hit us real hard from the standpoint of producing a Goodyear brand and shipping it to the OEs in America that ship product overseas. We think that, that problem will be rectified in the next few months. So that will turn around and again, as you mentioned, dictate where we produce certain tires.

And Larry, what Morry has referred to, with the sourcing of our components, that's part of the profit optimization program where we were sourcing from 7 different sources, and then you throw in there, we were doing even more expensive manufacturing of some of those components ourselves. And so we're streamlining it, becoming a global company when it comes to sourcing, and it will drive a significant impact to the bottom line. The other part of the strategy, though, I want to comment on that just for a second. I mean, if you look at the performance in North America over the years with Titan, this is our core, and we've been extremely successful on both sides of the fence, when you look at wheels and tires over the years, and what we can do with assemblies. And when we look at our strategy moving forward, yes, we've added a number of locations that have added this complexity to the business. But the simplicity of our business is that we're the only guys that can do wheels and tires in North America the way we can and our strategy is that simple to be able to do that in the key locations around the world. And so you look in Brazil, we got tires, you look in Europe, we have wheels and you look in the CIS, we have tires. A key component of our strategy is being able to do both wheels and tires in those areas around the world. And so as we've gotten more complex to really leverage our locations and be able to utilize an infrastructure efficiently, and like you said produce in the right spot, reduce costs. I do believe that we need to finish our strategic footprint by building it out where we do have wheels and tires in the critical areas that we operate. And also where our customers are located, that's the key thing. Like Morry was saying, these products don't ship very well. Our geographical locations is a huge advantage for us. Lawrence T. De Maria - William Blair & Company L.L.C., Research Division: Okay, that's really helpful. And it brings up a good point, Paul. The -- for the strategic plan of building out, obviously, wheel tire assembly globally, you have a new board member. And I think you've had some meetings now. Has there been any shift or friction or change in strategy coming from -- with change on the board or is it business as usual? And then I'll hang up.

Well, we have actually 3 new board members besides you're referring to, who I call the Doc. He's the youngest one. But Peter McNitt, his deal is -- Peter's always came through for the banking side. We got Gary Cowger, who come out of GM and his is manufacturing. So we're very honored and lucky to have all 3 of them. I think as we look, go through, we have a plan. They know what our plan is, and they know the positives of what we can do. And know the risk. So they're going to manage -- they're going to look at the risk and from a board standpoint, I think they all agree on the strategy that it will be how much they look at it and that's up to the management team to present it to them and be able to actually show the risk -- risk-reward. That's the decision they'll make. But there's no -- we have a board that's very, very good at, and there's not going to be a -- any one that is shouting, "This is what you're going to do." I don't believe that.

Our next question comes from Peter Cross of LM Cohen [ph].

Morry, it's Peter Cross [ph] here. Over the last few months, you've had 2 13Ds filed by companies where they feel there's a great value in the company, and the company is selling at substantially less than the true value. Has the company considered using this discount, especially that's happening today to possibly buy back some of its own stock and creating better value?

Well, it's always been my decision not to ever get myself, get this company where you, on money that you went out borrowed with your bonds to make acquisitions, to turn around and just by your stock. That's a board decision. And up to this point, no one on the board has even mentioned that. So that's all I can say on that, Peter.

Well, I would encourage you to possibly to discuss it at your next board meeting.

I will -- I'll mention it.

Next question comes from Bob Franklin of Prudential Financial.

First, a quick question for John. Did you give you an EBITDA number? I think you said $35 million? Did I hear that right?

$35 million, yes.

Okay. And are you adding anything back there besides the stuff that was laid out in the income statement?

No.

Okay. Second, with all the work you're doing, is there any kind of guidance you want to give us for what CapEx is going to be this year?

CapEx should be anywhere between $70 million and $80 million, and that's really predicated on the progress we made -- we make with the TVR project.

Okay. And then, I guess, finally, with the new steps you're implementing here, do you have a sense of, say, at current levels of revenue, how many more -- how much more margin you can get out of this out of your business?

Well, I think it'd be probably too premature to project something like that. But I do believe that it can be significant. And the timeframe by which we would realize that is ahead of us in terms -- begin planning that as we get into the implementation of EVA. But all can say is I do believe I have a great deal of passion that we have a significant growth ahead of us in profitability.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from John Rosenberg of Loughlin Water Partners.

You spoke a lot on the call or one of you, I'm sorry, spoke a lot about culture and not changing the culture but then went on to talk about a lot of changes that actually have to be made, and -- which I applaud and I wish you luck with. But I wonder, you guys have grown so quickly. Are you one ERP systems or several enterprise systems right now? And is that -- if you are on several, is there any thought to integrating that to improve your purchasing abilities and management?

Yes, that's part of our journey. We operate under a very similar platform or a similar company when it comes to our systems. But we do not all operate on the same version of that particular system. And so we do have some disconnects when you talk about the various locations. We've embarked on a plan that started in our Bryan, Ohio location to roll out the latest version so that our company will operate on under the same version under that platform that I mentioned. It's all produced by the same company. We've rolled it out in Brazil. We're next going to move into our major wheel facility in North America, and we'll continue down the road in doing that. It is a journey, along with the other initiatives that we're rolling out. And I think it's an important part of it that will certainly streamline our operations and our ability to make effective decisions. But at this point, it is definitely going to be a journey versus something that will be here soon and quick.

Let me just add, when you talk about -- and Paul, and everyone talks about, and John talked about the culture. Your question is, yes, we have gotten an awful lot of cultures referenced on the tire side, but prior to that, in the wheel side, we turned around and we ended up with -- worldwide, with many different cultures. And we developed our own culture in the wheel business, which allowed us, of course, to become the largest in the world, bar none in what we do. And we're very proficient in what we do. Customers have begun that where they used to have to order and wheels back in the early '80s. We take your order one year in advance to get your wheel. We can get you a you wheel today in 24 hours, a little bit like the cat [ph] system. So that's the culture of Titan, of our wheel side. Now what we're trying to do is take that culture, and you'll have the Goodyear culture, we've got the Continental General, we've got the Armstrong Pirelli culture and then you start moving overseas. So that is, as Paul said, a journey. And what they're trying to do is not just run around and wipe out everybody's culture. But if there's something that they do better, we're going to adopt that across the company. But there is a situation where you have to turn around and maintain the entrepreneur and the drive from the Titan culture, and that's what we're trying to do.

That is actually -- that is quite helpful. And additionally, on the point about the ERP systems, that is good to hear that it's actually several versions of one company's systems. And I realized that in the field, in the real world, implementing that stuff amongst your many facilities does take time and a lot of managerial effort and attention. So good luck.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn it over to Maurice Taylor.

Thanks, everybody. Have a great weekend and a great summer. And we'll talk to you on the next quarter. Goodbye.