MYE
#Thank you.
Good morning.
Welcome to the Myers Industries' First Quarter 2018 Earnings Call.
Joining me today are Dave <UNK>, President and Chief Executive Officer; <UNK> <UNK>, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary; and Kevin Brackman, Chief Accounting Officer.
Earlier this morning, we issued a news release outlining the financial results for the first quarter of 2018.
If you've not received a copy of the release, you can access it on our website at www.myersindustries.com under the Investor Relations tab.
This call is also being webcast on our website and will be archived there along with the transcript of the call shortly after this event.
Before I turn the call over to management for remarks, I would like to remind you that we may make some forward-looking statements during the course of this call.
These comments are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Such statements are based on management's current expectations and involve risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements.
Further information concerning these risks, uncertainties and other factors is set forth in the company's periodic SEC filings and may be found in the company's 10-K filings.
I am now pleased to turn the call over to Dave <UNK>.
Thanks, <UNK>, and good morning, everyone.
Thank you for joining us.
We're going to start on Slide 3 with an overview of the first quarter of 2018.
It was a straightforward quarter for us.
We're pleased with our results.
We're seeing continuous improvement in the enterprise in many different areas.
Starting on the left of the slide, we generated free cash flow of $11.6 million or 7.6% of sales.
And we're on track to exceed our target of 7 ---+ of over 7% in 2018.
Overall, we saw a strong sales in the quarter, up almost 12% organically.
And that was led by a strong performance in our food and beverage markets with ---+ it's our third consecutive quarter of double-digit sales growth.
Our pricing action and benefits from the manufacturing footprint realignment that we conducted last year are driving year-over-year margin expansion and sequential margin expansion.
And we reduced debt in the quarter by $6.7 million, decreasing our leverage ratio to 2.3x.
And overall, we're on track with many of our strategic initiatives that we've outlined in the past.
We did see a few challenges in the quarter within our Distribution Segment.
We saw some top line challenges, particularly driven by the exit that we conducted about a year ago from a lower profitability line in our Patch Rubber business.
We still do, however, in our Myers Tire Supply business have some underperforming territories.
And so our focus there is on getting a better sales team in place and on onboarding those reps and training them properly.
A couple of the bright spots within that segment through the quarter.
The gross profit of the business did improve and expand year-over-year, and we did have a successful product promotion in March, and we are going to continue that type of continuous improvement throughout the year.
With that, I'm going to turn it over to <UNK> to go through our numbers.
Thanks, Dave, and good morning, everyone.
Today, I will review our first quarter 2018 financial performance as well as our balance sheet and cash flow.
So if we turn to Slide 4 of the presentation, I will walk you through an overview of our first quarter operating performance.
And as always, all the numbers in the presentation reflect continuing operations.
So starting from the top, net sales increased 11.7% to $152.6 million compared to $136.6 million of the first quarter of last year.
If we exclude the impact of foreign exchange, the increase in sales year-over-year was 11.4%.
The increase was primarily the result of higher sales of niche products to the agriculture end market within Material Handling, partially offset by declines in the Distribution Segment.
Gross profit increased $5.4 million year-over-year due to higher sales volume and price, partially offset by unfavorable mix and higher raw material costs.
The benefit from the pricing actions mitigated raw material inflation during the quarter.
And the gross profit margin also benefited from the footprint realignment and restructuring actions that we took in the Material Handling segment in 2017.
Adjusted EBITDA increased $1.2 million to $18 million compared to $16.8 million of the first quarter of last year.
The increase in gross profit was partially offset by higher SG&A costs, mostly due to increased variable incentive compensation.
As a result, the GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.25 compared to $0.11 in the first quarter of last year.
And adjusted diluted earnings per share were $0.24 compared to $0.14 in the first quarter of last year.
If we turn to Slide 5, I will give you an overview of the performance of each of the segments.
If we start from the top, Material Handling, sales increased by 18.6%.
The increase in sales was driven primarily by the double-digit growth in our food and beverage end market due to improved demand in agriculture.
Sales growth combined with pricing actions in our Ameri-Kart business, which serves the RV and marine markets, also contributed to the increase in sales year-over-year.
Our consumer end market was down double digits due to timing of orders that are expected to be delivered in the second quarter of this year versus the first quarter of last year.
Adjusted EBITDA in the segment increased $2.1 million to $23 million.
The increase was primarily the result of higher sales volume, partially offset by unfavorable mix.
Pricing actions partially offset the increased raw material costs during the quarter.
And additionally, the footprint realignment and the restructuring actions that we took in the segment last year are driving the operating flexibility and the margin expansions that we aimed for.
The cost savings from these actions are expected to be $8 million in 2018.
Moving to Distribution, net sales declined by 7.2%.
The decrease in net sales was partially the result of the deliberate exit of a low-margin product line in our Patch Rubber business.
Net sales in the Myers Tire Supply business was also down year-over-year, as sales continued to be impacted by the sales team turnover in open territories.
The sales volume decline was partially offset by higher pricing resulting from a new pricing structure that we put into place at the beginning of the third quarter of last year.
Adjusted EBITDA in the segment declined by $0.5 million compared to last year.
Positive price and favorable sales mix only partially offset the negative impact of the lower sales volumes.
Higher compensation costs driven by investment in headcount also contributed to the decline in EBITDA year-over-year in Distribution.
If we turn to Slide 6, I will give you an overview of the balance sheet and the cash flow performance.
So as Dave mentioned earlier, we generated strong free cash flow of $11.6 million for the quarter, which was only slightly below our free cash flow generation during the first quarter of last year.
As you may recall that free cash flow in the first quarter of 2017 included some large non-repeating past due collections of account receivables.
We reduced our debt by $6.7 million during the quarter, partially due to the higher EBITDA and also partially as a result of a sales leaseback transaction that we completed for our distribution center in Pomona, California.
And the net purchase price of the transaction was $2.3 million.
As a result, our net debt-to-adjusted EBITDA ratio decreased to 2.3 at the end of the quarter.
Working capital as a percent of sale in the first quarter was 6%, and working capital has been overall consistent in the last several quarters.
And finally, the capital expenditures in the quarter were $1.2 million compared to $0.5 million in the first quarter of 2017.
And with that, I'll turn the call back to Dave, who will review the '18 outlook.
Thanks, <UNK>.
And I just want to highlight something before we move on to our outlook in ---+ around the cash flow.
And I think the highlight of our cash flow has been the consistency over the past several quarters and that's what we aim for.
As I've said many times before, we believe that cash is the best measure of performance, and we're very pleased with the results of a very consistent cash flow performance over the past 1.5 years.
Switching to Slide 7.
We'll start with the ---+ going through the 2018 outlook.
And we're going to ---+ we're reaffirming the ---+ our sales outlook of low to mid-single-digit growth for the year.
And I'll break up the discussion into 3 buckets: at the top, our consumer and our food and beverage have been strong performers over the past several quarters.
We expect that in the second half we're going to have some challenges, mainly based off of some difficult onetime comps from 2017.
So consumer, we're expecting to remain flat.
Given the comp, there will be some growth in share gain in that market.
And then on the food and beverage side, we've already had, as we highlighted earlier, some solid growth in the first quarter.
But we do have a more difficult comp in the second half due to outperformance that we had in the fourth quarter.
Second bucket I'll talk about is the vehicle segment.
We're seeing continued strength there and ---+ particularly in the RV markets.
I'd tell you the auto manufacturing market is steady.
It's had a strong growth over the past few years and that's steadied out.
And then the last, third, I'll talk about here are the industrial and the auto aftermarket.
We're expecting industrial to be flat.
And auto aftermarket, we're expecting our performance to be up low single digits.
And I think we've underperformed in those markets in the past.
I think we're seeing steady demand in both of those 2 markets, so we're expecting an improvement in performance as we look forward in both of those.
With that, we'll open up to questions.
Sure, okay.
So let me break ---+ make sure I got your questions, Chris, because there were a number in there.
I'll talk a little bit about the promotion that we did, then we'll talk a little bit about the SG&A investments.
I think that's probably a better way to describe what <UNK> was talking about here and how that relates to the sales force turnover.
So let's start with the promotion.
As ---+ I think we've highlighted to you all before, when we do things strategically, we try to do them as cross-functionally as possible.
And so one of the initiatives that Chris put in together when he first arrived was to build a cross-functional team around certain areas.
And so this was a combination of effort from our marketing team, our product team, our sales team, and frankly, our operations team as well to deliver and to go out and really push the sales force to find new customers with a targeted promotion and do it in a cross-functional way so that there was a good coordination across all functions.
I think they did a great job at that, really actually outdelivered our expectations on it.
These types of things obviously do require some sort of either spiff or some sort of discount.
But I think if you look at our ---+ I look at gross margins to understand how we're doing from a pricing power standpoint, and we did well in the first quarter in that.
So I think overall, it was a success.
And it was a ---+ it's ---+ I'll call it the next set of actions we're taking.
Our Distribution has had several years of underinvestment.
We've been pushing a number of different investments last year, and I think we're on to the next set of investments.
We've seen some good results from the investments we made last year, not across the board, so now we're continuing to invest in new things to continue to improve the performance of that team.
Those investments also include some additional people.
We've had some turnover, additional turnover, and that's been a problem that we've had in the past as well.
And really, if you think about it, it's around the certain underperforming territories.
And when we brought in new folks, I think we haven't done as good of a job over the past year or 2 of getting those new sales people up to speed and that leaves some frustration with those folks in the field.
So our strong sales professionals have really performed well as we've given them new tools.
Some of our newer salespeople have not and that has led to some additional turnover that we experienced later last year.
And so those are additional headcount that we're adding.
It's really not a net add, but it's replacing folks that have left.
And so ---+ but there is a gap there and there is a learning curve there.
So we're altering our approach here in 2018 to how we're onboarding the sales force.
I met with about 20 sales reps about 3 weeks ago, one-on-one as ---+ not one-on-one, but them in a room with me and Chris to talk about what we're trying to accomplish here at Myers Tire.
And they spent a week training here in Akron.
And we think things like that, different approaches that we're taking this year will help us.
Yes, that's a fair question.
I mean, our goal is to certainly ---+ we know what we've been able to accomplish historically so we know what kind of profitability results we can get if we can grow this business.
And so that's the goal.
I mean, I think I talked about this last quarter on the conference call.
Certain businesses, you have a fixed cost problem.
We just ---+ we have the right base of people and investments in this business.
We have to grow the top line now.
We've done ---+ the organization has done a nice job of expanding the gross margins.
So when we grow, that will flow to the bottom line.
It should be a nice benefit for us, but we've got to get the trajectory of the top line going in the right direction.
As you know from talking to me, Chris, that's not always my focus with everyone that top line at all cost, and it's not a ---+ the case here either.
But this is a top line challenge that we have and we ---+ we're not willing to, at this point, just willy-nilly cut costs here.
We have some targeted investments in this fixed cost that we're really trying to help grow the top line.
And when that starts going up, we should see that flow to the bottom line.
Well, it's ---+ I think if you look at our outlook here on Slide 7, we're expecting to grow this business this year and that's our target.
That's our goal.
Well, I think it's ---+ so let me break it into 2 parts.
There is ---+ the first part is the environment you're playing in, the industrial environment.
And I'd say it's steady now.
It's ---+ I don't see any signs that it's going one way or the other.
We've had good increase in activity in that market.
I'm talking in general here macro, not Myers specific.
I think the U.S. manufacturing world has improved over the past 2 years and it's nice and steady right now.
And you're seeing that in a number of indicators, industrial production, capacity utilization, ISM-type metrics.
Within our business, we're in the phase of 80/20 where we're trying to figure out or we're figuring out where we are strong and where we're going to really emphasize our opportunities for growth.
80/20 is a growth tool, but when you start it, you're simplifying it first.
And so simplification often drives a little bit of consolidation.
And so we're in that phase right now.
The portions of our business ---+ and this is not just 1 or 2 P&Ls.
There's a number of different businesses that fit into this category.
Some of those are growth areas and some of them aren't for us.
And so we're going to, in some cases, ride whatever the industrial economy is doing.
In other cases, we want to take share.
And right now, we're ---+ what we have not done is take share because we're trying to isolate where exactly we think our strengths are in that ---+ in the niches that we want to play in within the industrial economy in general.
Sure.
Where we are in the process is, it's ---+ we've done a lot ---+ I think, the team has done a great job over the past 18 months building relationships, building deal activity.
So we're seeing deals.
I think pricing is still high, in general, across the market and that's ---+ that takes a little longer than a couple of quarters in some market ---+ some public market volatility to change.
So I think expectations are still high on the ---+ it is a seller's market still.
And that just means you have to find the right property to go after.
You can't be ---+ but that's always the case.
So it's really ---+ I don't treat it any differently per se, but it's just ---+ I think certain businesses sell at a higher multiple than they deserve, and we just exit those processes quicker because we don't see that.
Okay, so a couple different questions there.
I'll go backwards.
The first is no.
We can ---+ we have pricing ability everywhere.
Some of them ---+ I will say some of our contracts are indexed, so those are ---+ the mechanism is fixed, but that still allows for pricing.
I'd characterize it this way, it's improved.
We have a bit of a lag, and we have spent a lot of time over the past 3 or 4 months as inflation has been ---+ become more steady to improve upon our pricing processes.
I'd say, as we highlighted in the ---+ our previous call a month or so ago that we tend to be able to capture cost increases, but not capture margin.
And so we're working on that.
And you're seeing a little bit of that in the first quarter.
But still, we're overcoming cost inflation, but not completely with.
So you get a little bit of margin compression when that happens.
So that's how you should look at it.
And that takes a little time to get those additional processes in place.
You have starting backlog that you can always reprice, customers negotiate a timing for certain price increases, et cetera.
The last part of your question was about the environment.
I think that inflation is coming back.
It does ---+ there are probably some purchasing people and some of our customers that have never seen inflation, so they're not used to it.
But it's ---+ so there's a little bit of inertia there.
But inflation is coming back a little bit and it's normal.
I think this is normal stuff.
This isn't ---+ I think we're in a fairly abnormal environment for several years with deflation, so this doesn't surprise us.
We're improving on our processes.
We're dealing with it.
And I think our customers are understanding that and it's ---+ when you go in with facts and you explain the facts to your customer, there's ---+ and you have a good relationship with your customer, those outcomes usually end up pretty well.
And our business model of being ---+ of having strong customer intimacy in our niche markets drives that level of frankness with our customers.
And so I think we are in a good position there.
No.
We don't really forecast our profitability or earnings, <UNK>, so I.
.
I would say, <UNK>, just to give you a couple of color here.
Particularly, in Material Handling right now, the ---+ what you saw in the first quarter in terms of comparison in 1Q '18 versus 1Q '17, the cost of resin obviously was higher.
The cost of resin right now has stabilized, so the exit rate compared to where we were at the end of the year pretty much confirmed in the second ---+ in the first quarter actually was a little lower.
So I would say that with the pricing actions that we implemented and Dave talked about will allow us in ---+ for the continuation of the year to have some positive value gap.
Right.
So I think that our goal is to get to growth by the second half.
And that's what we're indicating here in our outlook.
And I'd say from a status standpoint, we ---+ I'll break it up similarly to how I broke up our 5 macro markets here.
There's ---+ there are really 3 groups of territories.
We have territories that are very strong, and those territories are performing very well now, and they're performing better than they were before the tools that we implemented.
And so that tells me that the tools work in the hands of a great sales team.
And I'm ---+ we're working on building a great sales team everywhere.
We don't have that yet.
I think we've brought in some ---+ I was very impressed with the group that I met with, as I highlighted earlier.
I think we are starting to recruit a higher level of talent.
We're bringing in strong people, and we're training them better.
That's been a big ---+ I think we missed that.
I'll be the first to tell you when I think we missed something, that's one I think we missed.
We didn't train our new people well enough.
So we're focusing on that this year.
There's a middle group that has done a good job of using the tools, and every organization has a middle group and that's fine.
What we're really focused on is how do we get the territories that have underperformed back up to a growth level because that's really what's pulling down the top line for the ---+ of the entire group.
So it really does break out that way.
The underperforming territories, as you would imagine given our results, are just underperforming by a lot more than our top-performing territories that are over-delivering.
So we've got to change that equation, and I think we're on the right path here with things like bringing in and training our people better, things like promotions that give a new salesperson a reason to walk in the door with a new customer that they maybe have not had in the past, things like that.
Yes, I'll frame it to you this way, again.
I ---+ that's an important metric to us.
We look at that.
And we look at gross margin and how that should improve over time.
Those are things that we really hold our team accountable to.
I'm not going to give you any specifics on it, but that's an area that to us is a very important metric in how we judge our performance when we're comparing period-over-period.
And so we aim to continue to improve that as we go forward.
That's our goal, again.
I mean, it's ---+ a lot of different moving parts in here with ---+ particularly with cost inflation that does compress that a little bit.
But I think when you do things like large cost takeouts like we did last year, we expect to see that come through in the incremental gross margin.
Right.
I think there are 2 dynamics at play that are what I'd call extraordinary.
One was that ---+ the storm activity, weather-related.
We hope frankly to not see that again.
That's an abnormal environment.
I think they're ---+ generally, you can say there's probably going to be a storm, but we really saw an outsized demand there from the storm activity last year, and we don't expect that to repeat.
And then on the ---+ I'd say on the food and beverage side, primarily in the ag, there was a ---+ I think, there was a bit of pent-up demand from a couple of years of a lower market as well as the M&A activity that was occurring at our customers.
They tend to shut off capital spending during those periods.
Large scale M&A, so these are extended time frames for combining.
And so throughout that period, they tend to not have the kind of resources that they would normally have.
So those 2 combinations drove, I think, the second half last year that had some onetimes in it that I don't think we'll see again.
Sure.
I think that RV is ---+ has a pretty strong correlation to the consumer's sentiment.
I will say again I think that industry as a whole has done a wonderful job of not only marketing but designing products that people want and are using, but they've been ---+ experienced historic growth.
And I think that any reasonable person would look at that and say that, that at some point it starts to taper off even if they continue to deliver the same volume that they're doing every year.
They're geared up for it.
All of our customers have done a really nice job of expanding and managing through a strong growth rate, which is hard to do.
It's almost as hard or harder sometimes than the other way.
But I think you've got to keep an eye on consumer's sentiment.
And I think this year, continues to ---+ we continue to see good demand.
But I think at some point, it just has to kind of taper off a little bit.
So ---+ and we're expecting that and we're preparing for that.
Sure.
I'd say there are 3 things that we've done.
And I'll be the first to admit, we're not an example to be held up as some new economy-type company.
We're a manufacturer and a distributor and many of our products are sold business-to-business and direct, and so there is a very human element to a lot of it, which is good.
We like that.
However, I will highlight a couple of things that I think are changes that we've made.
There are ---+ some of them are subtle, but they're important.
First of all, we sell through online quite a bit in some of our ---+ through some of our channels.
So particularly in the Industrial Distribution is an example.
That's an area where we are as robust in e-commerce through our customers, if you will, as any other product out there.
So ---+ that we ---+ and we do see a decent amount of demand that comes through channels like Amazon, but also our customers like Grainger.
So we do take advantage in that sense of the platform that our customers have.
The second piece I'll highlight is that the e-commerce is really an information flow more than anything.
It's a channel that's as transparent as you can get, and that's one of the innovations of it.
It's nice in that way.
It also can be difficult in that way.
But we get ---+ you get feedback from your customers with these online reviews, I mean people critique you.
And that's good.
We want to hear from people, and in some ways, we've been able to ---+ particularly in situations where we don't have that direct link to the customer because we sell through a ---+ either a retail ---+ a large retail channel or through an industrial distribution channel.
We don't necessarily know how our end users like or dislike our product.
And we've been paying more attention to that because it's important, and people are actually spending the time to give us that feedback, so you want to get it.
And then lastly, to your point, specifically on the Distribution side, we do have an e-commerce platform there.
It's not the most robust.
It's something that we're looking to improve.
It's a starting point for us.
And we want to learn ---+ before we really invest heavily in that, we want to learn exactly what our customers want from that type of platform.
And again, I kind of go back, to me, e-commerce is an information management type of play.
It's an ease of access to some extent, but it's also a how can we learn from what we're seeing because there is a lot of data that comes from these kind of things.
And we're not specifically geared up yet to deal with that, but it's ---+ we're aware of it and it's something that we're starting to pay attention to more.
Thank you.
We thank all of you for your interest in Myers Industries and your time and participation today.
As a reminder, a transcript of this call will be available on our website within approximately 24 hours.
A replay will be immediately available via webcast or call.
Details can be found on the Myers Industries' website under the Investor Relations tab.
Thanks.
Have a great day.
