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Zurn Elkay Water Solutions Corporation (ZWS)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, May 19, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Rexnord Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2016 Earnings Results Conference Call with Todd Adams, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Peterson, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Rob McCarthy, Vice President of Investor Relations for Rexnord. This call is being recorded and will be available on replay for a period of two weeks. The phone numbers for the replay can be found in the earnings release that company filed and an 8-K with the SEC yesterday, May 18, and are also posted on the company's website at investors.rexnord.com. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I'll turn the call over to Rob McCarthy.

Robert McCarthy

Management

Thank you. Good morning and welcome everyone. Before we get started, I need to remind you that this call contains certain forward-looking statements that are subject to the Safe Harbor and cautionary language contained in the press release that we issued yesterday, as well as in our filings with the SEC. In addition, some comparisons will refer to non-GAAP measures. Our earnings release and SEC filings contain additional information about these non-GAAP measures and why we use them. Consistent with prior quarters, we will speak primarily to adjusted operating profit and EBITDA, adjusted net income, and adjusted earnings per share as we feel these non-GAAP metrics provide a better understanding of our operating results. Please note that consistent with our Press Release and 8-K filing on April 26, we are excluding the results of a non-core product line, which Rexnord is exiting in our water management from the presentation of our operating results in order to enable investors to better understand and assess our core operating results. Today's call will provide an update on our overall performance for the fourth quarter of our fiscal year 2016 and our outlook for the 2017 fiscal year. We will cover some specifics on our two platforms, followed by selected highlights from our financial statements, our liquidity and our cash flow. Afterwards, we will open up the call for your questions. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Todd Adams, President and CEO of Rexnord.

Todd A. Adams

Management

Thanks, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Starting on Slide 4, our fourth quarter results were a bit mixed, we met our expectations for free cash flow despite core sales and profitability that we are essentially at the low end of our initial expectations. As the trajectory of a traditional seasonal pickup in our fourth quarter was a little weaker than we had anticipated, and symptomatic of our customer’s tighter spending within a week to a more macro environment. Nevertheless, our year-over-year core sales declined moderated in the quarter to 3% year-over-year, which is a function of 8% core growth in our water management platform and 9% core decline in our Process & Motion Control platform. Adverse currency translation was a headwind that reduced our reported top-line growth by approximately 2%. Our adjusted earnings per share was $0.37 in the fourth quarter consistent with our previous results and within our original guidance range, we should assume no earnings contributions from a non-core product line that we are well into the process of exiting. Our fiscal 2016 free cash flow of a $171 million was in-line with our expectations, finished the year at a 113% of our adjusted net income and provides the flexibility to add attractive bolt on acquisitions. If you didn’t see our separate release this morning, we recently acquired Cambridge International which is a globally leader in engineered metal conveying solutions predominantly for the food industry. We are excited about the combined value creation potential Cambridge and Rexnord together and have more to say about Cambridge in just a few moments. Looking at the performance of our two platforms, our core water management operations put up another solid quarter with high single-digit core growth and adjusted EBITDA margin of closer to 18%. For the full-year, water management core operations…

Mark W. Peterson

Management

Thanks Rob. Slide 8 of the presentation depicts our quarter’s results and reconciles with the adjusted results. Please recall we intend to exclude the financial impact of the RHF non-strategic product line exit from the calculations of our core growth and our adjusted earnings metrics in order to focus on our core operating results. The press release we issued last night, includes a summary of our total results in each quarter of fiscal years 2015 and 2016 and excludes the results of the RHF product line that we are exiting. Turning to Slide 9, I’ll just comment on a few key metrics from our consolidated results from the quarter. First, please note that we have excluded $7 million and $10 million of the RHF product line revenue from our analysis of the four quarters of fiscal years 2016 and 2015 respectively. The earnings adjustments for our RHF are detailed on Slide 8. Turning to our core operations, the year-over-year decline in our fourth quarter was 3% on this basis are overall detrimental margins was 25%. On the same basis, the drop through for consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the full-year of fiscal year 2016 was approximately 32% which is generally consists with our historical 30% targets. Next, as we look at the operating performance in our Process & Motion Control on Slide 10. You can see that year-over-year impact on platform margins from the combination of 10% revenue decline and or higher investment spending associated with our footprint actions. While margin improved sequentially as activity levels from our distribution channels remain stable and margins benefited from the seasonally higher contributions in our food and beverage end-markets. For the full-year, PMC’s adjusted EBITDA margin was 21.3%. As we look into fiscal 2017, we expect the year-over-year core declines in PMC revenue moderate…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Charlie Brady from SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.

Charlie Brady

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning, guys. On aerospace, it sounds as though, from your commentary in the quarter on the call here, that maybe it came in surprisingly a little bit softer than you were expecting and maybe the outlook is a little bit pared back. Can you just talk about what is driving that right now?

Todd A. Adams

Management

I think it's two distinct issues, in the quarter it was some internal efficiency things that we dropped the ball and so when you think about what that means, we left about $4 million on the table in the fourth quarter that we are going to make in up over the course of the coming year. So that issue is internal behind us and we are making good progress there. The adjacent issue is if you look at some of the production cuts for the 777 and the 747 that were made, it has the impact of knocking sort of $4 million to $6 million of revenue out of next year based on that production cuts. So two distinct issues, the one, the internal issue rectified and fine moving forward and we think we have got the guidance sort of bracketed with the production cut embedded into it. So that's the aerospace story.

Charlie Brady

Analyst

Okay and just quickly on Cambridge, just so I'm clear on the margin profile of that business, you said historical PMC segment margins that we are looking at on EBITDA basis kind of mid to high 20%?

Todd A. Adams

Management

Yes.

Todd A. Adams

Management

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our following question comes from Julian Mitchell, Credit Suisse.

Ronnie Weiss

Analyst

Hey, guys it's Ronnie Weiss on for Julian. I just wanted to touch on the pricing dynamics which guys saw in fiscal year 2016 and what you are going to see in 2017 and similarly on the raw [material] (Ph) cost, what you guys saw an impact for 2016 and what is kind of expected for 2017?

Mark W. Peterson

Management

Ronnie this is Mark. From a pricing standpoint we didn't see a lot of pricing pressure in 2016, and the distribution channel pricing was stable. Our end-user OEM pieces and PMC is less project base, so you are bidding up projects, we didn't see really any material different deviation pricing dynamics then what we have seen in the past. So I [indiscernible] PMC is stable. I think the same thing in our water platform too. We didn't push a lot of price in the year in 2016, but we didn't see a lot of pressure. As far as raw material goes, we saw some benefit in raw materials, but as you can appreciate we are not buying a lot of raw commodity, lot of what we are buying has a value add in it. So we saw some benefits but not a huge benefit. As we look into fiscal 2017 we are not planning on a lot of price, if we think about our sales growth we don't have even a full [indiscernible], so we are not expecting much of a change as far as price dynamic goes positive or negative. And on raw material we think obviously think there are some commodity uptick, when commodities came down we had some benefits, as far as you we don’t expect to have a big negative effect. so we really if you kind of summarize it, it’s still stable on both fronts going into 2017 from what we saw in 2016.

Todd A. Adams

Management

And Ronnie, you know this, but generally speaking we are talking about low volume high mix engineered specified products that go through a very set of complex channels including a big piece of aftermarket. So the pricing environment is generally for us never varies too much from year-to-year and as Mark pointed out commodities were maybe a little bit favorable this year, had come up a little bit, but I think pricing dynamics across the board are generally stable for us.

Ronnie Weiss

Analyst

Understood and then back on Cambridge, I think is there any kind of synergy targets that you guys are looking for, have you gone through that analysis that leads to kind of looking for on that front?

Todd A. Adams

Management

We didn't outline it, a couple of things to point out, in my comments, this is not a cost synergy deal, it's a fantastic business, it's got good end-market exposure and growth baked into it. on top of that we bring to the party close to 400 direct sellers whereas they had less than 10. So in terms of sale and ability to sort of bring the product to a broad more diverse customer base, both in North America and Europe it's a huge opportunity for us on a combined basis as well as they have got some very good customer relationships where we have the opportunity to go and sell some of our products to their existing customers. So we think the sales are opportunity over a few year period is frankly quite big, so we didn't give you a target other than to say it's a growth oriented deal, it's a great business, we are buying at a fair value or these are like growth synergies that we can get as a result. And frankly, it's been in our funnel for a couple of years, so we have got a chance to look at it, learn and understand it. And we feel really good about the acquisition.

Ronnie Weiss

Analyst

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Next question comes from Joe O'Dea from Vertical Research.

Joseph O'Dea

Analyst

Hi, good morning. On process expectation for the double-digit declines for this year, could you just talk about kind of where you are seeing the composition of that. And maybe kind of trend in mining and energy, whether or not some of the headwinds are broadening out at all, and as just as we continue to go through this, where kind of bigger pressure is that?

Mark W. Peterson

Management

Yes Joe this is Mark. I think as you saw on the slide, from an OEM manager standpoint mining and the energy end-markets remain tough. As we said in our fourth quarters, we highlighted we saw little modesties seasonal pickup, but when you look at where we have been in prior years, we think the mining, energy and some of the ripple effect out from energy continues into fiscal 2017. So we are really not looking and this is again end-user OEM perspective, from an MRO standpoint we have seen stabilization and expect that as we relatively as business going forward, when we look at end-user OEM based project work, capital work, it's depressed and we should be able to see a catalyst to change that in the near-term here. So we are just planning on that [indiscernible] plan recruiting over the next year. Joseph O’Dea: Okay got it and then on the I guess just quickly on the tax rate 27%, is there anything sort of structural underlying that, is that steps a little bit lower of is that more just kind of a next step?

Mark W. Peterson

Management

I would say that one thing Joe that's moved it down where we ended fiscal 2016 as we will be adopting the new accounting pronouncement that requires you to take basically - because when stock comes for exercise for the tax benefit. And that's what run through equity. So, with the new accounting guidance, if you put that up in your tax expense line of the benefit it's worth a few cents for us this year and its really what moves it from that 29% to 27%. So we will be down in that in our first quarter Joe. Joseph O’Dea: And then just one, I think you commented on moderating declines in the back half which you expect right now, I mean it's not like the comps swing all that dramatically in PMC as we move through the course of the year, so, your ability, confidence in seeing that moderation as we navigate through the year.

Todd A. Adams

Management

Well, we obviously feel pretty good about it or we wouldn't have guided that way. I think what you are going to see is, we are talking about at the company level, core growth of plus two and the minus two. The trajectory we start on is somewhere between flat and down too, so I think when you look through it and in total, we feel pretty good that the trajectory that we are on sort of matches the way we are guiding for the full-year. So I don't think we are benefitting on and we saw the big pick up, I think really we are talking about stability, controlling what we can control, when we think we know we can win, add some of the Cambridge in. And we feel like this year is not about lift up, I think this year is really about get the Scoper projects done, get the acquisition integrated and be ready for 2018. So that's sort of how I think we are sort of guiding the year, we hope we are wrong, we hope the pickup is a little bit bigger, but I think at the end of the day given what we see and frankly what we look out of the window, that's what it looks like right now. And so we are trying to guide, I think sort of like that. Joseph O’Dea: Great. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Next question comes from Samuel Eisner, Goldman Sachs.

Samuel Eisner

Analyst

Yes good morning everyone. So on Rodney Hunt, I was wondering if you can just talk a little bit about what has happened in that business, obviously you are choosing to get out of it given the restatement. This is the first time that you guys are being able to talk publically about it. So if you can just give a little background on kind of what the issues were with that business, why the decision ultimately close it just for better understanding?

Mark W. Peterson

Management

Well, I don’t that we are going to spend a lot of time on it Sam, because it's a decision that we made because it was a business that was non-core to us and clearly wasn't performing financially. If you look back, I don't think is tremendously helpful because for the most part it's market driven, it's highly commoditized business that we chose to simply exit. We can still access the product category into larger project opportunities, but done through an outsourced way. And that was ultimately what the decision was, meaning we don't need to stay vertically integrated or even partially integrated to provide this product to our customers as part of larger water infrastructure projects and rather than spend the time, money and effort to do that we decided to simply exit the product line entirely and source it as needed when projects call for it. So, that's I think the decision history in a nutshell.

Samuel Eisner

Analyst

And so on the Cambridge transaction here, given that you plan to close it within 30-days, can you talk a little bit about what is embedded in the first quarter guidance number and then I would love to try to break apart the $0.08 on the bridge that you guys talk about?

Mark W. Peterson

Management

Yes, it's really not that much, so a couple of million bucks. I think the reality is, we will get it close here in the June quarter where our core earnings will come back and it will be fully baked into our second quarter and the remainder of the year and we talk about overall growth. So I don't know that we are - there is much not in the first quarter at all.

Samuel Eisner

Analyst

Got it and for the $0.08 for the year, so, the $0.08 on your earnings walk here, so operations in Cambridge. Can you talk a bit about what the moving pieces are in there, obviously the cost savings that you referred to about $6 million to $7 million or roughly $0.04. So I was wondering if there is a way to kind of explore more so of what that $0.08 is encompassing?

Mark W. Peterson

Management

Within the operating funnel?

Samuel Eisner

Analyst

Just within the fiscal 2016 to 2017 adjusted EPS bridge on Slide 6, you talk about $0.08 worth of benefit and it seems as though Cambridge is already embedded in there for the year. So I just wanted to better understand what the moving pieces are of that $0.08.

Mark W. Peterson

Management

So you have you have used on the Scoper benefit that will be realizing this year than in next year and probably mid-single digit EPS benefit from the Cambridge acquisition with the balance being core operations.

Samuel Eisner

Analyst

That’s helpful, great. And then lastly just in terms of the 30-day notice here I mean everything. Is pretty much assigned associating with Cambridge is there anything that we need to worry about from a closing or DOJ standpoint that we need to be mindful of?

Todd A. Adams

Management

We don’t believe so Sam.

Samuel Eisner

Analyst

Great. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

And a following question comes from Mic Dobre from Baird.

Mircea Dobre

Analyst

Good morning, gentlemen. I don't know if I missed this in your comments, but can you give us a sense for how you are thinking about full year organic growth in PMC versus water management?

Todd A. Adams

Management

We didn’t comment on…

Mark W. Peterson

Management

Yes for the full-year we are planning on PMC organic growth t be down kind of low to mid single digits. And the water growth to be up more mid single digits. That’s the balance of that platform for the year Mic.

Mircea Dobre

Analyst

Sure. Sure. I appreciate that. And then I guess I'm scratching my head a little bit with regards to your guidance in the first quarter and trying to get to the full-year number. Because at least to me, it looks like we're talking about EBITDA margin overall for the Company being down maybe 100 basis points or something to that effect in the first quarter, and then really ramping up as the year progresses. What are some of the drivers, frankly, that are impacting the first quarter and how do we get to this ramp looking at the back half?

Mark W. Peterson

Management

Well Mic there is a couple of things are impacting the first quarter, it’s a heavy quarter for our expenses that we are incurring on the supply optimization and footprint repositioning program. So as the year progresses you start so [indiscernible] all expense in the first quarter and we serve things that benefitted as the year progresses that’s one big piece of it. We talked about some of the initials that we have regarding growth and some breakthroughs in both of our platforms. So we started to investments in our fourth quarter with full run rate in the first part of the year and we starts getting better over the back half. And then of course as you know we continuously obviously drive our improvement through RBS, through the balance of the year we drive some margin improvement over the course of the year. but [indiscernible] Scoper investments that we have in the first part as well as the growth that we have in the first part of the year and getting the benefit of that as you go through the back half of the year.

Todd A. Adams

Management

Yes Mic, I think kind of using the word ramp, I don’t know that its ramped as much it is some discrete items that Mark talked about and our normal seasonality. So if you parch that out, I think what you are going to see is a relatively down the middle year in terms of the growth assumptions that we have laid out which you can argue they are conservative or you can argue they are too aggressive. And generally think they are probably more on the conservative side and then the benefit of all the things that we are doing. So that’s how we think about the year, not so much in terms of a ramp, but pretty steady discrete items setting us up for what we think is a transition year to a much higher margins heading into fiscal 2018 as we completed the supply chain optimization projects.

Mircea Dobre

Analyst

I see that’s helpful and maybe one last one. Sort of looking at water management now that Rodney Hunt is out of there and business mix is maybe a little bit different. You used to talk about 20% EBITDA margins. How are you thinking about the margin potential going forward?

Mark W. Peterson

Management

Well, again I think where we are today it’s something that we felt like we could get to if we were to continue down the path of doing what we were doing with the Rodney Hunt business. By not doing it, we simply got there a little bit faster. We think about where we go from there, I think you can expect continued improvement in our overall margins based upon RBS and what we are doing there to continue to eliminate waste and improve our service levels and quality, everything. And then also there is probably a pretty good opportunity, you are going to see us get into new categories and as we get in, we have great brands, great channels, we have the ability to specify our products support through. So it will be higher than 20, I think we will see improvements in our fiscal 2017 and from what we can tell now based on the elements or the Scoper project that remaining in water you will see improvements again there.

Mircea Dobre

Analyst

Can you help us think about incremental margins though at this point?

Todd A. Adams

Management

I don’t think they are changed. I think historically here we have said 25% to 30% in water. I don’t think that is any different.

Mark W. Peterson

Management

30 to 35 in PMC.

Todd A. Adams

Management

And its 30 to 35 in PMC. Again I think we are retaining or maintaining the way we are thinking about incremental margin, we will get the benefit next year of the supply chain optimization and footprint rationalization benefits, but beyond that we can continue to generate the types of incremental margins that we just offer them.

Mircea Dobre

Analyst

Thank you.

Todd A. Adams

Management

You bet.

Operator

Operator

Following question comes from Karen Lau from Deutsche Bank.

Karen Lau

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. So I noticed in the fourth quarter for PMC incremental margins or decremental margins, despite the very high contribution/distribution business having stabilized, destocking being over it, the decremental actually got a little bit worse. How much of that is due to the redundancy cost and investments and the aerospace disruption, things like that? Could you parse it out for us?

Mark W. Peterson

Management

Yes, those were the two real pieces, when you cut through it, even though we saw some stabilization, we're talking about stabilization sequentially, so industrial distribution was still down for us year-over-year. so we still did in our fourth quarter have adverse mixed impact from distribution that was one piece of it, when you look at year-over-year. We did incur obviously cost related to our Scoper project in our fourth quarter that were not in last year. And as Todd pointed out, we left some shipments on the table and aerospace that will recapture in fiscal 2017, you can appreciate with that, we didn’t operate effectively. We weren’t as efficient as we should and that impacted our detrimental margin in the fourth quarter. Those were the three items Karen.

Karen Lau

Analyst

Okay. And then what kind of core decremental margins are you baking in for the first quarter, and then how much investments have you baked in into your guide? And are there any one-time charges associated with the transaction?

Mark W. Peterson

Management

I won't go in what the core detrimentals are in the first quarter by flat. We will talk about that obviously once the quarter unfolds, in 90-days. What I can tell you, as we said earlier, first of all, there are no - that as we know today no unusual items in the first quarter. We are going to have heavier Scoper expense in our first quarter in PMC. And we are going to obviously have the investment cost I talked about growth side into the first quarter. I think when you look at sequentially from Q4 to Q1 as the quarter unfolds, it won't be surprising detrimental margin sequential in PMC Q4 and Q1. And in Water you are going to see the first quarter margins pop back up in the 19.5 plus or minus type range in the first quarter and what we are looking for.

Karen Lau

Analyst

Okay. Got it. And then maybe on the transaction, so I noticed they have, aside from the food and beverage exposure, they also have some architectural and environmental business. How big is that piece?

Todd A. Adams

Management

It's relatively small Karen.

Karen Lau

Analyst

Okay. And then on the food and beverage side, so is the pricing dynamic similar to your flat top business? Your flat top business has always enjoyed good pricing and very stable margins, but these guys are more metal. Is the pricing dynamic similar?

Todd A. Adams

Management

Yes, it is. Yes it is.

Karen Lau

Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our following question comes from David Rose from Wedbush Securities.

David Rose

Analyst

Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. A couple quick ones. On page seven, if you can go back to the slide, which of the assumptions do you have the least amount of confidence in and what would make you revise these assumptions downward, if you had to? I get the sense that mining and energy is still unknown, but that's a small amount. So maybe if you can point out some of the bigger buckets that might be at risk.

Todd A. Adams

Management

It's a relatively noted question David because I don't know if you ask me where to take it down, I'm not going to give you an answer, I think we have got a reasonable view that this is a forecast that we have some weird confidence in, we are inevitably going to be wrong somewhere, the somewhere I'm not sure. But I think that what we try to do is again put together sort of a down to middle view of the world with maybe a little bit of bias towards trying to be conservative particularly in areas where we still are seeing declines. I mean there is no question, cross industries, they are not in good shape, commodity deflation continues and so I don't think we're going to be surprise to the upside there, so again I think we have got here is our best cut, when you look back on it, you can see where we were wrong last year, okay. I think we have tried to get a little bit smarter in the areas we got wrong last year. And we will see where we end up but I wouldn't try that tell you that we're going to walk away from this forecast 15 minutes after putting it together.

David Rose

Analyst

Okay. And I appreciate the sentiment around it. And I know you are trying to be conservative. Maybe on Cambridge, and I may have missed it, but what was the year-over-year growth in that business last year? And I didn't see the revenue number, I didn't hear it. Maybe I missed it, but just a sense.

Todd A. Adams

Management

We didn't tell you what - it hasn't closed yet but it's got about $80 million of revenue and it's got a growth profile that sort of looks like global food and beverage. So that's what we are acquiring, we will get a very small [stub] (Ph) in our June quarter and then you'll get to sort of see the difference between core FX and acquisition growth, I think for the first time that we talk about our second quarter.

David Rose

Analyst

Okay. And then lastly on Cambridge, it looked like you did a recap, is it 2012, and maybe can just provide some color around the incentive to sell and what was the motivating factor behind it?

Todd A. Adams

Management

It transacted in 2012 between private equity. We started cultivating it in sort of late 2013 early 2014. So it was a sale of the business. So the current owner has owned it for about four-years. We have been knocking at the door for three-years and getting to know the business and the management team. And ultimately they decided it was a fair valuation and a good time to transact and it was a good home and it’s good and it’s a permanent home for I think the associates in the brand and that’s why we are excited about having the opportunity to do so.

David Rose

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

And our following question comes from Jeff Hammond from KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Jeffrey Hammond

Analyst

Good morning, guys. So I just wanted to go through the supply chain optimization, just with the moving pieces and Rodney Hunt moving around. So just to be clear on this year, it's $4 million of incremental cost, $14 million total, but $4 million incremental? And then an incremental $6 million to $7 million of savings, so net $2 million to $3 million?

Mark W. Peterson

Management

That’s correct Jeff, yes.

Jeffrey Hammond

Analyst

Okay. So as we go into fiscal 2018, does that $14 million completely go away?

Mark W. Peterson

Management

It will. It doesn’t go away day one, but it will go away, yes [indiscernible] buying that down correct you are correct.

Jeffrey Hammond

Analyst

Okay. And then how much carryover final savings do we get into fiscal 2018?

Mark W. Peterson

Management

So if you go back, I’ll give you two answers. When high costs are $13 million that’s looking at it from the time we announced the price, that’s obviously intact. In spite of that because we have gotten out of Rodney Hunt [indiscernible] it’s been recognized. So when you look at the $25 million left [indiscernible] call it 20 on an EBITDA basis so that six to seven in fiscal 2017 then it goes to 20 to 21 in fiscal 2018.

Jeffrey Hammond

Analyst

Okay. So really the big opportunity from this comes in fiscal 2018 when all those costs go away and you get the largest bucket of savings.

Mark W. Peterson

Management

You are thinking about it exactly right Jeff.

Todd A. Adams

Management

That’s right Jeff.

Jeffrey Hammond

Analyst

Okay. Perfect. Okay. Can you just talk about, you said you're paying down $100 million of debt. Can you talk about the cost of the debt for paying for this Cambridge deal and how you're thinking about your blended interest rate for fiscal 2017?

Todd A. Adams

Management

Jeff, I’ll just highlight. I think where we sit we get a relative we have got high confidence in our ability to generate strong free cash flow this year and frankly when you look ahead the savings and the benefits underpin even better free cash flow number in fiscal 2018. We just made the investment and in Cambridge, we’re going to have a strong year this year and we felt like taking the opportunity to pay down a $100 million of gross that was just frankly prudent given the interest expense roughly 5%. Mark will give you maybe a little - few more investment points, but we have got outstanding free cash flow, we have got earnings stabilizing, we have got a bunch of self help underway, we just felt like it eventually there we are paying back some of the debt. And just though people that we have to payback $100 million and keep generating cash and continue to do right things with bolt-on acquisitions and paying down debt going forward.

Mark W. Peterson

Management

Right and obviously reduces our gross leverage Jeff as you know.

Jeffrey Hammond

Analyst

Okay. Great. And then just last question, I think you've got some decent market growth for the commercial construction markets. There's been some choppy data and concern about that market peaking, how are you thinking about the commercial construction cycle in North America, growth into the out years and based on what your customers are telling you?

Todd A. Adams

Management

We feel good obviously through 2017 and then we feel good about 2018. Again, I think that the amount of activity, the size of the backlogs and then just frankly the labor shortage is going to extend the cycle we see for these for a couple of more years. So I think this year we are not counting on it being a whole lot better than it was last year and based on the number of projects and what we see you know we feel that’s pretty achievable. Look we will keep monitoring the data like everybody else but we see solid backlogs, we see pretty stable good outlook heading really throughout this year and into the next year.

Jeffrey Hammond

Analyst

Okay. Thanks guys.

Todd A. Adams

Management

You bet.

Operator

Operator

A following question from Samuel Eisner from Goldman Sachs.

Samuel Eisner

Analyst

Yes, thanks very much. Just two follow-ups here. So on free cash flow, I see that you guys are guiding to a little bit over 100%. Just curious if you are willing to kind of plant a pike in the ground. Do you think that free cash flow will grow in fiscal 2017 on a year-over-year basis?

Mark W. Peterson

Management

Free cash flow in absolute dollars is going to be down year-over-year. Two reasons, one a lot of the cash restructuring, rolling into the Scoper project kits in fiscal 2017 so we will obviously expense but from cash you have got more coming through in fiscal 2017 and our cash taxes will be going up as well in fiscal 2017 as well used some of our foreign tax credits. [indiscernible] drive the absolute dollars down from where there were in fiscal 2016

Samuel Eisner

Analyst

That's super helpful. And I just want to make sure that we're not getting numbers mixed up here. The $80 million of Cambridge, that's an annual number or is that a nine-month number that you guys are citing?

Todd A. Adams

Management

It's 12-month number Sam, so we will have essentially nine months in our fiscal 2017.

Samuel Eisner

Analyst

Got it. And you said it has roughly similar EBITDA margins to that of the existing PMC business?

Todd A. Adams

Management

Yes 20 or 25 is a good difference.

Samuel Eisner

Analyst

Got it. Super helpful. Thanks so much.

Todd A. Adams

Management

You bet.

Mark W. Peterson

Management

Thanks Sam.

Operator

Operator

We have no further questions at this time.

Robert McCarthy

Management

Thank you everybody for joining us on the call today. We appreciate your interest in Rexnord and look forward to providing additional further updates, when we announce our first quarter fiscal year 2017 results in August. Have a great day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.