Carlisle Companies Inc (CSL) 2016 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, my name is Megan and I will be your conference operator today.

At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Carlisle Companies Inc.

third quarter earnings call.

All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.

(Operator Instructions)

At this time I would like to turn the call over to Chris Koch, Presidency and CEO of Carlisle Companies.

You may begin your call.

Thank you, Megan.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Carlisle Companies third-quarter 2016 conference call.

On the phone with me this afternoon here are Steve Ford our Chief Financial Officer; Titus Ball our Chief Accounting Officer; and Julia Chandler, our Treasurer.

On this call, I'll be discussing our third-quarter performance and the 2016 outlook.

Steve will review our segment performance, balance sheet, and cash flow.

Before I discuss our results in more detail, I would ask that you review slide two of our presentation entitled forward-looking statements and the use of non-GAAP financial measures.

Reconciliations of US GAAP to non-GAAP measures are provided in our earnings release and the appendix to this presentation.

Those considering an investment in Carlisle should read these statements carefully along with reviewing the reports we filed with the SEC before making an investment decision.

These reports explain the risks associated with investing in our stock which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol of CSL.

Carlisle reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.74 in the quarter, a 12% increase over the third quarter of 2015 and record results for a third quarter.

Our strong performance in the quarter demonstrates the continued focus Carlisle Companies has on growing our key platforms and driving operational excellence in our businesses.

As announced, we recorded a significant noncash impairment charge at CBF in the quarter, due to continued declines in commodity markets and recent lowered expectations for a near-term recovery in the global off-highway equipment market.

Please turn to slide 3 of the presentation to begin our review of third-quarter results.

This slide contains results reported on a non-GAAP basis to exclude the impairment charge at CBF.

Net sales were up 1.8% in the quarter reflecting 1% organic sales growth and 1% contribution from the acquisitions of Micro-Coax in the interconnect technologies segment, and MS Powder in the fluid technologies segment.

Foreign currency had a minimal impact of negative 0.2%.

Organic growth in the third quarter reflected strength in our core markets of US commercial roofing, aerospace and food service.

Offsetting this was lower commercial roofing sales in Canada resulting from our continued price discipline at CCM and further declines in the off-highway equipment markets at CBF.

Adjusted EBIT grew 10% in the third quarter.

Adjusted EBIT margin increased 140 basis points to a new record of 18%, reflecting the success at all our divisions in driving operational excellence through COS, the pricing stability in CCM's markets and the continued favorable raw material environment.

The 18% EBIT margin achieved in the third quarter follows the 17.9% EBIT margin achieved in the second quarter of this year, continuing the gains we have made over the last few years in improving our profitability.

By segment, CCM sales were up 1.4%.

The US commercial roofing market remains strong with volume increases in the mid-single-digits.

This growth in the US market was partially offset by lower international sales, primarily in Canada.

Canadian sales have been impacted by our overall pricing strategy where, consistent with our price discipline in the US markets, we made the decision not to pursue low-margin business.

While this had a negative effect on sales in Canada it did significantly improve CCM's Canadian margin performance.

The relative selling price stability that we have seen in the US commercial roofing markets over the past several quarters continued in the third quarter.

The combination of pricing stability and a favorable raw material environment allowed CCM to once again achieve excellent earnings results.

CCM's EBIT margin of 22.8% in the third quarter, up 250 basis points, was equal to the record margin it set in the second quarter.

CIT continued to drive high single-digit growth in the third quarter with total growth of 7.9%.

Of the 7.9%, 4.5% was from the Micro-Coax acquisition and 3.4% was from organic growth in the base business.

Record demand for our in-flight entertainment connectivity solutions reflected the positive results we are achieving from investments in new product development.

CIT also generated double-digit sales growth in its medical business in the second quarter, as strength in recently launched products drove expanded market presence in this key platform.

As part of CIT's aerospace growth strategy, we followed our June 10 acquisition of Micro-Coax with the acquisition of Star Aviation on October 3. Star Aviation's well-established SatCom product line in combination with CIT's new SatCom adapter plate solution, positions CIT as a leading supplier to the aerospace market for aircraft line fit and retrofit of SatCom solutions.

The demand for SatCom solutions is expected to rise substantially over the next few years as airlines act quickly to increase in-flight satellite connectivity.

The market for satellite connectivity installation kits has an estimated annual value in excess of $250 million and is projected to grow 10% to 15% annually over the next five years.

CIT's share of that market is expected to increase through additional products and capabilities provided by the Star Aviation acquisition and continued sizable investments in new product development.

The combination resulting in a significant new source of revenue for Carlisle.

We expect both the Micro-Coax and Star Aviation acquisitions to yield further growth opportunities and synergies as integration and implementation of COS occur over the near future of these businesses.

CIT is equally focused on the investments it is making in the medical connectivity market.

CIT's construction of its new state-of-the-art 210,000 square foot production facility in Dongguan China is evidence of the confidence we have in the growth potential of the medical platform.

In Carlisle fluid technologies, sales were up 1.6%, reflecting the acquisition of MS Powder and organic sales growth of approximately 1% from the prior year.

We achieved solid growth in China and the United Kingdom in the quarter, partially offset by lower sales in Japan due to a large automotive system shipment that occurred in the third quarter of 2015.

CFT's EBIT of 13.8% in the quarter was in line with our expectations and reflects the additional investment CFT had been making to consolidate its footprint, expand manufacturing capabilities through vertical integration and add sales staff to support CFT's growth strategy.

At Carlisle FoodService, progress on its multi-year improvement strategy continued to yield year-over-year sales and earnings growth now for a fifth consecutive quarter.

CFS sales grew 1.4% in the quarter, and more significantly, its EBIT margin grew 190 basis points to 14.3%, a record for this segment.

At CBF, sales declined 11% in the quarter reflecting the continued weakness in global commodity markets and corresponding weakness in demand for off-highway mobile equipment.

As noted earlier, we took a non-cash pretax $141.5 million impairment charge in the quarter.

Since the downturn in CBF markets that began in 2012, the team has worked tirelessly to respond to the changes in market conditions.

The CBF team continues to focus on new sources of revenue, reducing costs and generating positive cash flow as it manages through this downturn, and at the same time, improving manufacturing efficiency and ensuring capacity when the recovery occurs.

As a result of Carlisle's overall strong operating performance, adjusted income from continuing operations grew 9% and adjusted earnings-per-share increased 12% in the quarter, to a third-quarter record of $1.74 per share.

We generated free cash flow of $143.8 million in the quarter.

We continue to use a disciplined approach in deploying our cash from operations in the third quarter, repaying $150 million in senior notes, returning $43.2 million in capital to shareholders and investing $31.4 million in capital expenditures.

As Steve will detail in his comments, even with these actions we have significant liquidity available to pursue further investments and acquisitions.

Slide 4 is a recap of our sales results.

Total sales growth was 1.8% for the quarter comprised of 1% organic growth and 1% acquisition growth.

Foreign exchange had a negative impact of 0.2% in the quarter.

Selling prices, primarily at CCM, had a negative 1.4% impact to sales, a lower impact than previous quarters this year.

Sales volume was up 2.4% driven by CCM and CIT and offset by CBF declines.

Turning to our margin bridge on slide 5, adjusted EBIT margin increased 140 basis points in the quarter to a record 18%.

The net impact of selling price and raw materials had a positive 120 basis point impact to our margin.

Volume was positive 20 basis points and COS was positive 100 basis points.

The impact of acquisitions made in 2016 was dilutive to our margin by 20 basis points, including additional costs associated with inventory purchase accounting at CIT for Micro-Coax.

The category labeled other includes plant startup costs, increased R&D and investments in sales staff.

Steve will now review our third-quarter segment performance, balance sheet and cash flow.

And after Steve's review I will discuss our outlook for 2016.

Steve?

Thank you, Chris.

Please turn to slide 6 of the presentation.

At CCM sales increased 1.4% in the quarter led by mid-single-digit growth in domestic commercial roofing sales and a 3% increase in sales into Europe.

This growth was partially offset by lower sales into Canada.

As Chris noted, most of the volume decline in Canada was from the decision not to pursue low-margin business as well as an overall soft new construction market.

Selling price at CCM was lower compared to the prior year, but remained stable on a sequential basis.

CCM's EBIT grew 14% in the quarter and its EBIT margin increased 250 basis points to 22.8% reflecting continued selling price stability, lower raw material costs, savings from the Carlisle operating system and higher sales volume.

Please turn to slide 7 to review CIT's results.

CIT's net sales increased 7.9% in the quarter reflecting contribution of 4.5% from the acquisition of Micro-Coax and a 3.4% organic growth.

Sales to the commercial aerospace market increased 8%.

Sales to the medical market grew 10% in the quarter.

Sales to the military defense market declined 12% reflecting the non-repeat of certain government projects.

Sales to the industrial market declined 7% on weakness in the construction market.

CIT's EBIT margin declined 110 basis points to 19.3% in the quarter.

The Micro-Coax acquisition had a dilutive impact to CIT's margin of 90 basis points, primarily due to $1.2 million of nonrecurring transaction costs including costs related to the fair valuation of inventory pursuant to purchase accounting.

Also included in CIT's EBIT in the quarter was $1.2 million in plant startup costs for its new state-of-the-art facility in Dongguan China, a 50 basis points negative impact to margin.

Offsetting the negative impact of these costs were positive contributions to CIT's margin from higher sales volume and savings generated by COS.

We anticipate additional plant startup costs of $1.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2016 with the new facility in Dongguan.

We also expect to incur nonrecurring costs from the Star Aviation acquisition in the fourth quarter of approximately $1 million related to the fair valuation of inventory, again, as part of purchase accounting.

We have introduced slide 8 to the presentation to provide photos and highlights of CIT's SatCom ARINC 791 solution.

As Chris detailed in his comments, this is the next platform in the in-flight connectivity market for CIT.

CIT, through its strong innovative and execution capabilities has developed this universal solution to capitalize on the significant growth in aerospace satellite connectivity.

The ARINC 791 solution is expected to add a significant new revenue stream to CIT.

Turning to slide 9, CFT sales grew 1.6% in the third quarter representing 1.3% growth from the acquisition of MS Powder and 0.8% organic sales growth, offset by the negative impact of foreign exchange.

CFT's EBIT margin declined 110 basis points from the prior-year, primarily reflecting the impact of the MS Powder acquisition, which had a 70 basis point dilutive impact to CFT's EBIT margin, as well as additional costs from the investment in sales staff to support CFT's global growth strategy.

These negative impacts were partially offset by higher selling price and savings from COS.

Turning to slide 10, CBF sales declined 11% in the quarter on continued weakness in its primary end markets.

Sales to the construction and mining markets each declined 13%.

Sales to the agricultural market declined 1%.

Excluding the impairment charge, CBF achieved positive EBIT from operations of $200,000, a decline of only $300,000 from the prior-year despite an $8 million net sales decline reflecting the significant actions CBF has taken to maintain profitability in these weak end markets.

CBF has maintained its positive cash flow generation during the quarter, achieving free cash flow conversion well above 100%.

Please turn to slide 11 to review FoodService's results for the quarter.

FoodService's sales increased 1.4% this quarter.

Sales to the janitorial sanitation market grew 8% on further penetration of large accounts.

Sales to the healthcare market grew 3% on higher equipment sales and new product rollouts.

Sales to the food service market were flat.

FoodService's EBIT margin grew 190 basis points to 14.3% on higher selling price and savings from COS.

As Chris noted, we are very pleased by the improving performance of this segment.

Please turn to slide 12 of the presentation as we review our balance sheet.

As of September 30, we had $355 million of cash on hand.

On October 3, we used $82 million of our cash to acquire Star Aviation.

We continue to have all $600 million of availability under our credit facility.

In the third quarter we repaid $150 million in senior notes with an interest rate of 6 1/8%.

We also returned $43.2 million to our shareholders comprised of $22.8 million in dividends and $20.4 million in share repurchases.

During the third quarter, Carlisle's board authorized a 17% increase in Carlisle's dividend, and an increase of 4.1 million shares for repurchase under our ongoing share repurchase program.

With this increase we currently have authorization to repurchase approximately 5 million shares under our program.

Our balance sheet remains strong.

At September 30, our net debt to capital ratio was 9%.

Our net debt to EBITDA ratio was 0.4 times.

And our EBITDA to interest ratio was 22.5 times.

Turning to slide 13, our free cash flow for the third quarter was $143.8 million compared to $189.2 million the prior year, with the decline attributable to higher capital expenditures as well as the timing of payments related to taxes.

Year-to-date we have generated free cash flow of $277.8 million compared to $304.2 million last year with the decline, again, attributable to capital expenditures and an increase in tax payments.

Turning to slide 14, our average working capital as a percentage of annualized sales for the third-quarter 2016 was 18.4%, slightly up from 18.2% the prior year.

And with those remarks, I will turn the call back over to Chris.

Thanks, Steve.

Please turn to slide 15 as we discuss our 2016 outlook.

Consistent with our view from previous quarters, we expect to achieve total sales growth in the mid-single digits for the full year, and excluding the impairment at CBF, generate significant earnings leverage on our sales growth.

By segment, at CCM the US market conditions remain favorable and anticipation of higher raw material costs associated with polyiso insulation production, we recently announced a 5% price increase effective January 2017.

This action demonstrates our commitment to maintaining price leadership in the market.

We expect CCM to achieve sales growth in the low single-digit range for 2016 and significant earnings leverage.

CIT is expected to achieve high single-digit growth for the full-year, including sales contribution from the Micro-Coax and Star Aviation acquisitions.

Demand for CIT products remains high in aerospace and medical markets and we are excited about the investments we're making in these markets.

The acquisition of Star Aviation strengthens our position in the in-flight entertainment and connectivity market by providing us with better access to the retrofit sector.

CFT remains on track with its key integration and global sales initiatives.

Progress is being made on vertical integration, footprint consolidation and we continue to actively search for bolt-on acquisitions.

Due to increasingly difficult global industrial conditions, we now expect total sales growth in 2016 to be in the low to mid single-digit range.

Carlisle FoodService is expected to complete 2016 with sales growth in the low single-digit range and very strong EBIT leverage.

At Carlisle Brake and Friction, given the recent changes and outlook, we expect CBF sales in 2016 will decline from 2015 in the low teens.

We are taking the necessary steps to reduce our cost structure, pursue new sources of revenue and position this segment for future success as markets recover.

Corporate expense is expected to be $61 million and D&A is expected to be $135 million.

For the full-year, we are planning for capital expenditures of approximately $110 million.

We are expecting free cash conversion to exceed 100%.

Interest expense is expected to be $30 million.

The tax rate for the fourth quarter and full-year is expected to be between 42% and 43%, due to the impairment charges taken.

The impairment is expected to have an additional 10 percentage point impact on our tax rate in the fourth quarter.

Once again, we are proud of our results this quarter and especially the record 18% EBIT margin as it represents the progress we've made in continuing to transform this business.

We will continue to drive operational excellence throughout Carlisle, make sound investments and pursue our long-term strategies in order to deliver increased value for the Carlisle shareholder.

This concludes our formal comments on the third-quarter results and 2016 outlook.

Megan, we are now ready for questions.

(Operator Instructions)

Joel Tiss.

Sorry, I wasn't ready for that.

When did the favorable raw materials turn the other way in CCM and can you give us a little bit of a sense of how much margin improvement came from just the raw material piece -- just to isolate it if you can?

Yes, so at CCM in the quarter, raw materials were favorable, about $18 million, and selling price was unfavorable, about $13 million, so it was a net positive of about $5 million.

I think based on our forecast for the fourth quarter, I think -- in the quarter, raws should, year-over-year, be relatively flat.

I don't see much of a pickup in the fourth quarter.

Okay.

And any insight into 2017?

Joel, I think 2017, right now, we're in the process of going through the planning exercise in that, but I think it's going to look pretty similar to what we're seeing right now.

And then can you just talk a little bit about -- just to finish out on that sector, that the 28% plus operating margin.

I know it's just one quarter, but you've been steadily marching higher and have characterized this business historically as more of a 15% to 17% operating margin business and been moving that number up.

Can you just give us a little sense, like if we are thinking forward the next two to five years or something like that, where should we be thinking that the normalized margin for the sector is?

I think obviously the gains that CCM has made over the last couple of years have been excellent and one of the things we've talked about was, first before we got into how much bigger could they be, was securing the gains.

And I think the stability -- sequential stability in pricing has been good.

We've captured the price of raw material savings there.

The team has got a lot of good initiatives there.

So my thought is going into 2017 that we want to continue to hold onto these gains and obviously continue to work on driving productivity and operational efficiency in the business, launching new products and these things, and hopefully improve on that.

All right.

Thank you.

Jim Giannakouros.

As far as -- just to ask another follow-up question on price costs.

We noticed recent increases in MDI, other inputs, how should we be thinking about those spikes and do they hit your P&L -- I assume, given your comments, not in 4Q but if they were to -- if these prices --these input prices increases were to hold how should we be thinking about your margin progression in the first half of next year?

In terms of timing, I think you're right.

It's more of a Q1 event and that's why we've announced the 5% price increase in polyiso.

Other competitors have had similar announcements so we are optimistic and hopeful that we are able to get that price increase and that we are able to offset the raw material increase and allow us to maintain these higher levels of margin performance.

Okay.

And just to understand, Canada is what percent of sales in CCM?

And can you give us -- can you size how much it was down and give us a sense for the level of improvement in EBIT margins specifically in Canada?

Yes, so Canada is close to 5% of total revenues.

In the quarter we were down between 25% and 30%.

Last year we had some very, very low margin business that resulted in margins being fairly nonexistent in Canada, and without those sales repeating, we were having nice margin performance.

So the increase on a margin percentage basis is significant.

Okay.

Thank you.

And one last one if I may, as far as CIT margins, if we take out the one-time impact that you highlighted, 3Q and you mapped some in 4Q, should we be thinking about 20%-plus margins in 2017 in that business or are there other offsets that would probably keep you sub 20% going forward?

I think our goal is to have CIT above 20% on that.

And so I think if you take the one-times out, we've got work to do and new product development, but as we see it now, again, 20%-plus is our goal.

Thank you.

Ivan Marcuse, KeyBanc Capital.

Hey, guys.

Thanks for taking my questions.

Sticking to CIT real quick, the acquisitions kind of a dilutive -- are the margins for those deals -- or for those acquisitions, similar to what you are reporting now or will it be dilutive, at least initially, until you ramp it up?

With purchase accounting, initially it will have a little bit of a dilutive effect, but we expect these margins to get very close to the base business quickly.

Certainly as we move in and throughout next year, towards the of the year we would expect margins to be close to the base levels.

Okay.

For the $250 million connect -- satellite market that you pointed to, I guess the question is how much of that market share do you have now and what's the opportunity?

Is it half of this or more?

Well, we look at that market and we think with the Star Aviation acquisition it puts us around that -- I'm going to say just broadly, 15% to 25% market share.

I think with the work we've done with the innovative universal adaptive play, the receptivity we've had from OEs, aerospace manufacturers and that, we definitely want to be higher than 25% of this.

We want to be -- have a leading position in this market.

So I'm not going to give you an exact number, but obviously there are other competitors.

But we'd like to increase over the current market share we have right now as a percentage.

Who are the big competitors in this industry?

Honeywell and Panasonic are the two biggest players.

Got you.

Really quick back to roofing.

If you break out the industry, what is the replacement market growing at this year?

The replacement market is probably in that low single-digit, Ivan.

Okay, great.

That will do it.

Thanks for taking my questions.

Kevin Hocevar, Northcoast Research.

On the commercial roofing, the US volume dropped mid-single-digits during the quarter, which was a bit of a slowdown if I remember correctly, I think the second quarter was up 8% in the US, and I know the third quarter had a very easy comp where volumes were flat in third quarter 2015.

So wondering if you could give us any type of update?

Did anything -- I thought we might see a higher growth rate heading into the quarter, so did anything impact that?

Was weather a factor at all or did it grow as you had expected?

Yes, don't think weather was a factor, but I think maybe similar to the third quarter last year, there were some labor issues that I think were a little bit of a headwind for us.

We also expected maybe a little bit higher growth than we experienced, but again, I think labor was a bit of a factor and I do think the margin performance here really is the story.

And we're just very pleased that the business is performing at these margin levels.

When you look at the price increase you called out, it looks like it's only in polyiso.

Is that because that's where you're mainly seeing the raw material inflation or do you expect to increase price in the other product lines too or -- I guess I was just curious why only polyiso insulation for a price increase at this point?

Sure.

Right now, Steve just said earlier, MDI prices, we see some increases coming there and so we want to make sure we get ahead of that.

I would say in the rest of the raw materials it's been fairly flat as Steve said earlier as well, when we look at that price to raws ratio in the fourth quarter, we'll start to flatten out, so right now we're seeing relative stability, but obviously if anything came up, we will get ahead of that.

Okay.

And then Steve, I guess in terms of cash deployment, you paid off the $150 million bond that you had in your sites, you know, you upped the share repurchase authorization.

So wondering if you can give us a cadence on, do you expect to be more aggressive with share repurchase now going forward, or I guess just curious your thoughts on cash deployment from here and I guess share repurchase in particular.

Again, we're still focused on growing the business through investment for organic growth and acquisitions and where we're hopeful that we're going to have larger acquisitions to announce, that remains our number one priority.

So assuming that we are successful on the acquisition front, I think you can expect us to continue to repurchasing shares pretty much at the same levels as you've seen in the last few quarters.

If things are not as actionable as we believe they will be on the acquisition front, then we will be more aggressive on share buyback, but right now we remain optimistic and hopeful that we can be successful on some significant acquisitions.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Tim Wojs with RW Baird.

Close enough, hey guys -- good morning -- good afternoon.

I guess my first question is just on fluid, could you -- is there a lot of -- I know you had a big equipment sale in the prior-year quarter -- is there a lot of difference in terms of the margin profile between equipment sales and some of the other products in that business?

Not really.

Okay, so there's not any mix issues on a year-over-year basis?

I don't think so when you compare the systems to standard on an overall basis.

Okay.

And as we think about kind of the long-term kind of margin opportunity within fluid, I mean, what's -- as you look out maybe two or three years, how can we think about margins in that business, fluid specifically?

Yes, Tim, I think we said it in the acquisition, we still feel very strongly about the actions we are going to take to drive margin improvement, as well as sales growth, but really margin improvement in that business, and the footprint consolidation has started.

We've dealt with a couple of facilities, we've moved the headquarters, we're working on a vertical integration right now, and we deployed significant amount of capital there to drive that.

So as we start to roll this out, our goal all along was to get this margin back to the low 20s, and then when you add the purchase accounting that remained, we'd be right in line with that 30% margin.

So that's the track and I think it will take a few years to get there so we would like to see a steady progression as we take these actions and really just continue to improve every quarter as we go through that improvement, and then in the three to five year range, get to that 20% mark.

Okay, so no real change there.

And then just on -- Steve, on the write-off, is there any DNA benefits that come with that, or is that all goodwill?

Yes, it is almost all goodwill.

Okay.

Great.

Well -- thanks a lot.

I appreciate it.

(Operator Instructions)

And your next question comes from the line of Charles Brady with SunTrust.

Afternoon, evening guys, just a quick one on the China plant startup costs.

You mentioned it's going to be into Q1.

Is that kind of the end of it, do we see sort of a marginal lift as we go starting in 2Q of 2017, or does this drag out a little bit?

Yet it will carry over into, certainly into the Q1 of next year.

It may also carry over into Q2 of next year, so we will have some continuing China startup expense.

I would sort of plan for really most of the first half of next year.

Okay, and aside from kind of the normal startup costs, are you baking in plant inefficiencies as you ramp up production of that, or is that kind of in addition to what you are already counting on?

We effectively have two facilities there now, so there are some redundancies and some inefficiencies that we are capturing in our number.

Okay.

Thanks.

Liam Burke, Wunderlich.

Thank you.

Good evening, Chris.

Good evening, Steve.

Chris, the food service business seems to have reversed the momentum of sort of flat-to-down growth and flat margins, you're seeing organic growth and margin improvement there.

What's been the difference?

We brought a new leadership team in just under four years ago.

They put together a great plan, it's centered around really factory consolidation, then working on the factories for improvement, and both that entailed our operational excellence program, COS, Carlisle Operating System, as well as investment, capital investment in the processes, investment in the sales force, getting focused, and really, they are looking now to drive leverage off of that more efficient production base.

So it's been study, the team has done a nice job, they've stuck to their strategies and have really driven the operational efficiency through the business.

Okay.

And on CIT, how has the new product pipeline, or new product introduction pipeline been going?

In CIT?

Yes.

Well, you can see by the continued ramp-up of the ARINC 791, I mean, we are really pleased with that.

That's bringing along some other opportunities that will hopefully unfold in 2017.

It brought along the Star Aviation acquisition.

Micro-Coax has some very interesting products that we are seeking to push development on at launch over the next couple of years.

And then, when we look in the regular business, CIT continues to seek to be a bigger player on the aircraft platform and our relationship with Boeing, our relationship with Airbus, and these other major airline manufacturers, we want them to look at us to be a solution provider.

I would note that with our Star Aviation acquisition we were able to acquire a nice engineering center in Everett, Washington, that works closely with Boeing up there.

We hope that will drive other new product ideas for this business.

Great.

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions)

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Hocevar with Northcoast Research.

Hey again, everybody.

Curious if the hurricane that moved up the coast a couple weeks ago, did that have any -- did that damage any roofs at all?

Do you expect that to create any demand or no?

Yes, Kevin, I don't know.

I think maybe on the margin a little bit, but I don't think it's really going to change our forecast certainly for the quarter.

Okay.

All right thank you.

And your next question comes from Neil Frohnapple with Longbow Research.

Good evening, guys, and congrats on a great quarter.

Thanks, Neil.

Pertaining to break in friction, will the significant actions you guys are taking to boost profitability allow you to get a segment back to mid single-digit EBIT margins, even at current revenue levels, or should we expect the segment to operate around breakeven for the foreseeable future, until volumes recover?

Well volume recovery would certainly help, but the actions we're taking, we're driving for that single-digit as a minimum, and return to profitability, and strengthen the cash flow and everything else, at the volume levels we kind of project right now.

All right, that's helpful, and then just a follow-up on CCM.

It seems like there's concern about a broader slowdown in US non-rise construction activity.

Just curious if you're starting to see softness creeping at all, or contractors' backlogs dwindle?

I guess just as a follow-up, any initial thoughts structurally on volume as we move into 2017?

Yes, moving into 2017, as we said, I think we're going to see more of the same.

We've mentioned it a couple times, we like what we've done in the margin profile, we see raw material stability, we see relative stability sequentially in pricing, those are good indicators.

On the growth side, the US markets are still strong.

We see fluctuations within each of the verticals that we serve and some differences there but that occurs in any year.

So I think what Steve mentioned on the labor, we are getting to the end of the season, we think there's good backlog and we think there might be some pressure on labor.

So, I think things are pretty much as we said, we're looking for stability and moving generally in the direction we've been headed so far this year.

Okay, thanks very much.

There are no further questions at this time.

Thanks Megan.

This concludes our third quarter 2016 earnings call.

I want to thank everyone for their participation and we look forward to reviewing our year-end 2016 performance with you at our next earnings call.

Thanks and good night.

This does conclude today's conference call.

You may now disconnect.