Itron Inc (ITRI) 2016 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Itron Inc. Q3 2016 earnings conference call.

Today's call is been recorded.

For opening remarks I'd like to turn the call over to Barbara Doyle. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Lynnette. Good afternoon and welcome to Itron's third-quarter 2016 earnings conference call. We issued a press release earlier today announcing our results. The press release includes replay information for today's call. We have also prepared presentation slides to accompany our remarks today. The presentation is available through the webcast and through our corporate website under the investor relations tab.

On the call today we have Philip Mezey, Itron's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mark Schmitz, Itron's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks we will open up the call to take questions using the process the operator will describe. Before I turn the call over to Philip, please let me remind you of our non-GAAP financial presentation and our Safe Harbor statement.

Our earnings release and financial presentation include non-GAAP financial information that we believe enhances the overall understanding of our current and future performance. Reconciliations of differences between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are available in our earnings release and on our investor relations website.

We will be making statements during this call that are forward-looking. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from the expectations we discussed today because of factors discussed in the earnings release and the comments made during this conference call and in the risk factors section of our form 10-K and other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. Now please turn to page 4 in the presentation, and I will turn the call over to our CEO, Phillip Mezey.

Thank you, Barbara, and welcome to everyone on the call. We are pleased with Itron's strong third-quarter results which demonstrate the continued successful execution of our growth and margin improvement plan. Some key metrics to highlight from the quarter include revenues of $507 million, which grew by 8% year over year and 9%, excluding foreign currency translation effects, non-GAAP earnings per share at $0.77, which increased from $0.44 in the third quarter of last year. And $670 million of bookings in the quarter at a 1.3 to 1 book to bill ratio.

Our strong third-quarter and year-to-date results have been driven by a solid uptick in sales of our advanced technology and a beneficial mix of higher-margin product, software and services. Our September year-to-date volume of advanced and smart meters increased more than 29% from last year, reflecting an acceleration we're seeing in smart grid infrastructure and smart city activity.

We are also increasingly realizing benefits from restructuring projects we began in late 2014, as well as from sales, development, manufacturing and supply chain enhancements being implemented by our global operations team. These initiatives have improved our agility and reduced our costs and expenses, resulting in greater efficiency and operating leverage on earnings.

Now let me turn to deal flow and backlog on slide 5. Total backlog at the end of Q3 increased to $1.5 billion with very good bookings in all three segments. Notable bookings in electricity included a large-scale Itron OpenWay Riva project with Avista for more than 400,000 meters. Avista selected Itron's OpenWay Riva platform to modernize its electric and gas network in Washington State and lay the foundation for smart city applications.

A program expansion of 500,000 OpenWay meters in South Carolina with Duke Energy. Duke, one of the largest power utilities in the United States, supplying electricity to by approximately 7.4 million customers, is utilizing Itron's OpenWay smart grid technology to modernize its electric grid, increase service reliability and improve customer experience.

And a recent award for more than 2 million G3 Linky smart meters to be installed over the next 18 months for Enedis, formerly ERDF in France, as part of its 35 million electric meter upgrade. We are pleased to be supplying a substantial volume for the second phase of the project with a disciplined approach in the bid process.

We also signed a 10-year Itron Total Outcomes cloud services agreement with Texas New Mexico Power. Under the agreement, Itron will provide and manage TNMP's OpenWay network software and services for 250,000 customers through our cloud platform. Itron's Outcome-as-a-Service model is designed to lower the costs of running and maintaining field-based IoT networks, making these solutions more accessible and simpler for utilities and cities of all sizes.

In gas we booked a significant new contract with National Grid for a multi-year deployment of 1.5 million communication modules and a number of new gas meters in Massachusetts. And a contract for 460,000 Itron Riva communication modules for Peoples Natural Gas in Pennsylvania to be installed over the next five years. Peoples Gas will use Riva to improve operational efficiency in customer support, initially through automated meter reading with the ability to expand the system to a multi-purpose network that connects meters, network devices and other distributed assets.

Our bookings also included the following notable water contracts; The City of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which will modernize its distribution system with Itron's smart water solution, using Itron Total Outcomes to host the communications network and Itron's analytics application. We also booked a contract with Al Masar Engineering Company in Egypt as a part of an agreement to jointly develop smart water solutions to address water losses in the country. Today we announced a project with Snowy Valleys Council in Southeast Australia. The council's deploying Itron's water meeting automation solution, including our cloud-based data collection and data management software as a service to help modernize its water distribution system.

We're confident about our healthy backlog and solid pipeline of global opportunities. With the acceleration of smart metering and increasing customer interest in multi-service electric gas and water networks that offer broad IoT applications, we're adding high-value projects to our backlog each quarter. Projects that meet rigorous margin objectives. Our backlog is beginning to reflect increase software and services content in our contracts.

We've added more than 75 new managed services customers in the last year. Our pipeline of Itron Total Outcomes service-based opportunities is growing. This profile of projects in our backlog supports our strategic plans for continued growth and margin expansion.

Now, let me turn the call over to Mark to discuss our financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Philip. The momentum we established in the first half of the year carried forward into quarter three with constant currency revenue growth of 9%. This reflects favorable North American volume and strength in the electricity and gas segment.

We also had sequential improvements in gross margin to 33.7% and improvement in non-GAAP EBITDA margins to 12.4%. As Philip mentioned, bookings also accelerated, with backlog now above $1.5 billion and all segments recording book-to-bill ratios above 1 to 1.

Let's turn to the year-over-year revenue bridge chart on page 6 of the presentation. Electricity and gas both delivered stand-out performances in quarter three, with electricity recording year-over-year constant currency revenue growth of 19% and gas growing revenue by 7%. Gas achieved record revenue in North America for the second quarter in a row.

Water experienced a modest decline in year-over-year revenue attributable to continued weakness in certain international markets and delays in expected contract awards. On a year-to-date basis, water revenue has grown 4% in constant currency.

Looking at the non-GAAP EPS bridge chart on page 7, virtually all of the $0.33 per share improvement year over year in non-GAAP EPS was due to strong revenue growth and the improvement in gross margin attributable to prior restructuring efforts rolling through the results and ongoing improvements in the discipline of the team. Non-GAAP operating expenses were up by $4 million year over year due principally to the finalization of a legal settlement and the tail end of extraordinary audit costs associated with the extended 2015 10-K filing, as well as ongoing remediation activities in software revenue accounting.

it's noteworthy that other income expense exhibits lower volatility this year, reflecting more effective currency exposure management and hedging activity. Consolidated GAAP results are given on chart 8, while non-GAAP results are shown on chart 9. Our GAAP net loss of $9.9 million for the quarter reflects $40.7 million of restructuring charges recorded in quarter three, as we move forward with the execution of our plans for further business and operational improvements.

We are now in the process of discussing these plans with the affected European Works councils unions and government authorities. The $40.7 million charge is predominantly composed of employee severance costs and the impairment charges. We expect the full cost of our restructuring program will be at the top end of the $55 million to $65 million estimate we provided earlier, and it will yield annual savings of approximately $40 million by the time the program is substantially completed at the end of 2018.

Non-GAAP EBITDA of $62.7 million, or 12.4% of sales, was the result of strong performance in North America in all segments, improved cast margins in EMEA and the favorable impact of our 2014 restructuring program, affecting principally the electricity segment. Free cash flow for the quarter was $20.1 million, a $30 million improvement over last year's quarter three. This was principally the result of improved profitability, although working capital management also factored into the favorable cash results.

We ended the quarter with $151 million of cash and $347 million of debt. On a year-to-date basis, free cash flow has been $51 million, a $64 million improvement over last year.

Charts 10 through 12 in the presentation display segment results. Electricity again generated gross margin above 30%, with its non-GAAP operating margin improving year over year by 750 basis points and approaching 12%. For the gas segment, non-GAAP operating margin also improved by over 700 basis points and exceeded 20% on gross margin of 38.9%, driven by record North American revenues and improved margin in EMEA.

Water segment results compare unfavorably to a year ago, due to a slight decline in revenue. Normally we expect steady modest growth in water segment, which is our most diversified segment in terms of global exposure. This year, however, water has seen some comparative weakness in its core EMEA business versus a strong prior year.

In addition, Latin American markets remain slow and there have been delays in the timing of contract deploying. None of this detracts from our confidence in the continued growth of this business, which has shown 4% growth in constant currency on a year-to-date basis.

All told, we're quite pleased with our results in quarter three and for the year to date. Operating results have been strong. Markets, principally in North America, have been robust. And we are now focused on laying a good foundation for further operational improvements through the restructuring program we reported in quarter three. We should emphasize, however, that one should not expect uninterrupted straight-line improvement in operating results on a sequential quarter-to-quarter basis.

Note that we have had a particularly rich mix of high-margin business in North America in the first three quarters of the year. The timing of revenues, as well as mix, have particularly favored quarter three. This observation, coupled with uncertainties associated with the execution of our restructuring program, leads us to expect that quarter four results will not be as robust as we have seen in quarter three. Nonetheless, we do expect our full-year results to be at or a little above the top end of our guidance range, and we look forward to continued operational improvements as we go forward.

With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Philip.

Thanks, Mark. Our results demonstrate solid execution of our operating plans and positive momentum and show that we are firmly on the path to achieve our mid teens EBITDA target. We are realizing benefits from operational improvements started in 2014, and we've begun new projects to drive additional efficiencies in 2018 and beyond. Operational rigor has become part of the DNA of our global team across every function in our Company.

Efficiencies will continue to yield operating benefit and business flexibility and provide leverage in our earnings generation capabilities. Importantly, our top line is going, driven by adoption of smart systems and increasing interest in unified multi-service network and our new advanced services and analytics offerings. The R&D investment we're making in core technologies like our OpenWay Riva IoT platform, that adds distributed intelligence, edge processing, dynamic applications and sensing technologies, fuels new organic growth opportunities.

We also have strong relationships with customers, as we help them drive operational savings and build foundations to deliver the value of smart grids and smart cities. We had more than 1,100 attendees at Itron Utility Week in Orlando in mid-October. We made several important announcements around our cloud-based Itron Total Outcomes, new applications in our growing partner ecosystem.

At IUW we announced that we're standardizing our services and software onto a single platform built on Microsoft Azure. Azure will be the backbone for Itron's managed services which utilizes an outcomes as a service model to lower cost and improve performance. We also plan to enable a range of software and services on Azure that will allow Itron's customers to take advantage of a world-class platform that benefits that benefits from billions of dollars in ongoing investment.

We are also partnering with SAP to run our meter data management on the SAP HANA platform. Using SAP HANA will help utilities more easily integrate their enterprise data as they roll out smart systems. The relationship also provides Itron another key channel for our software.

We also announced an award for a Riva crowd-sourced app contest sponsored by Itron Idea Labs. The team from Scient won for a mobile and web application for outage management that proactively predicts and communicates outages to customers. The challenge is a great example of our third-party developers ecosystem utilizing Riva to create new imaginative IoT solutions to empower smarter utilities and smarter cities.

Finally, we launched Itron Mobile. With this app, utilities can securely collect data on the device of their choice, including smartphones, tablets and laptops. This flexible and affordable data collection is another example of new applications being developed by Itron Idea Labs. Q3 was certainly an energizing quarter of at Itron.

I will wrap up the call by saying that we continue to focus intently on achieving our mid teens EBITDA target and we're already laying the foundation for the next step of Itron's growth and success because we see even more potential for our business. I couldn't feel more confident about our growth opportunities.

Operator, now let's open up the call to take some questions.

(Operator Instructions)

John Quealy.

Hey, good afternoon, folks. Nice job on the quarter. A couple things. First, I know the policy is you don't update guidance on this particular call, but the talk sequentially that Mark was talking about, obviously you had some really good mix towards smart, which drove the margins.

Can you bracket for us the relative contribution that smart gave you, whether it's gross margin or EBITDA margin. Certainly all of those metrics worked well sequentially, but if you could help us understand that a little bit better, that would be helpful.

John, it's a little difficult to bracket it precisely. There were three factors that came together in a really virtuous set of conditions here in quarter three. First of all, we had very nice volume and mix in high-margin environments, particularly North America. It's also true that in the gas segment, that margin, 38.9%, was extraordinary and was boosted by both North American mix and volume, and also better margins in EMEA.

I'd say also we that we are seeing this continuous improvement electricity that is in part volume mix-related. It's also related to the way the restructuring program, the prior restructuring program in 2014, has now gotten close to full fruition and is benefiting those results in the electricity segment. So it could be even better if water had not enjoyed some slowness from some of its core markets. But obviously we're very pleased.

Okay. Let me -- I'll try it this way. On the OpEx side, product development came in a little bit sequentially, G&A, is that some of the things you're talking about, Mark in terms of stepping down some of the stage-one optimization efforts coming to fruition?

No, not exactly. In OpEx, if you look sequentially, principally what you are seeing is the follow-up of some of these extraordinary non-recurring costs that we had in the first-half of the year. In fact, I think we itemized them last call and said that there was a total of $17 million of such costs in quarter one and quarter two that were principally related to a legal settlement. And the extended 10-K filing that is now -- it came to an end, those extraordinary costs came to an end in quarter three.

Okay, I will take the rest offline on that side. Philip, talk about book to bill, if you wouldn't mind, any major 10%ers is in there? Can you talk about competitiveness by business line? We've seen a lot of competitors change hands in last six, nine months. Has that changed the competitive dynamic at all, pricing, et cetera?

In terms of the notable bookings, I pointed them out in my comments. I would really point to the Linky G3 announcement, a very significant booking for us. Not at the expense of the others, but I noted on the call, we are seeing a healthy -- we talked last quarter that we had $300 million of visibility above even the formally booked $1.5 billion that we have in the backlog, two-thirds of that approximately booked.

We've replenished it. We've got another $300 million coming along, deals that are waiting for regulatory approval. So we're very pleased about selections that have been made and progress that we're making in the marketplace, specifically, on the electric side. The gas business, again, very healthy bookings there as well. And water, traditionally not -- the bookings are not as large, as you know, in that side, but we were above 1 to 1 even in a relatively tough quarter.

I'd say competitively we are pleased with our performance. 19% electricity growth year over year. I think that speaks pretty strongly to progress that we're making in that segment; record revenues on the gas side in North America.

In terms of the change in hands of competitors, we really have not seen that as a factor that's affected the sales pipeline or our competitiveness in the marketplace. We do not see the kind of bundling or advantage of large industrial portfolio players necessarily having more mass or offering in the competitive markets that we face.

Okay, thanks for that. My last one, I think you mentioned 75 managed services customers signed up in the recent past. Talk about what those are. Is that renewals or brand-new customers? I imagine Itron touched almost every utility in the world in some way, shape or form. Talk about how you categorize and create those and what that means in terms of revenues and potential margins.

Thanks again, folks.

Sure, thanks, John. We would refer to manage services generally as operating a system on our customer's behalf. Doing data collection, if not data management, and often preparing actual billing determinates to submit to their systems. We see this is as the stepping stone to actually providing higher-value data analytics on top of that system, once we are managing the data collection and data storage across electricity, gas and water.

As to where the 75 came from, to the question, Itron has provided traditional software solutions to thousands of utilities on a worldwide basis. And we are now increasingly seeing the request from our customers to manage those systems on their behalf in the cloud. And so we are on an on-ramp of shifting from traditional on-premise software installations to a cloud-based offering in which we have recurring revenues, a closer working relationship and importantly, a basis for building out further software and services revenue, delivering better outcomes and more value from the data that we are collecting.

Mr, Quealy, do you have anything further?

No, I'm fine, thanks.

(Operator Instructions)

David Katter, R.W. Baird.

Hi, guys, thanks for taking the question. I was wondering if you could talk about in what geography, especially internationally, you're seeing the most opportunity? And along the same lines, are you expecting the softness in water in Asia-Pacific and Latin America to persist?

In terms of opportunity outside of the United States, Western Europe has the largest deal flow, as most closely watched. We've talked about significant progress we've made there, of course, in France, both on the electricity and the gas side. In Italy, on the gas side. Netherlands, electricity and gas. And coming online, the UK potentially at significant volumes over the next several years.

By the way, in the past quarter also Germany has announced that it's approved $28 billion of potential expenditure in a great modernization effort. So Germany, which has been a bit of a laggard, is, we expect, going to open up and become a significant market. So Western Europe is the largest of those markets.

But we have significant opportunities in the Middle East, Asia-Pacific. And there does continue to be opportunity in Latin America. Latin America for us has been largely a water market. There are some smart electricity deals down there. Our largest focus outside is EMEA-based and specifically Western European-based.

To the question about softness in water persisting, we expect an overall correction there. As we commented, the water business is our most globally diversified and so we do see fluctuations from time to time. There are already improvements in the Brazilian economy that we hope will give us some positive lift over time.

China is showing some signs of coming back, so we expect that condition to lift. And that, coupled with contract award timing, expect the water business to return to its normal levels of growth and profitability.

Excellent. Thank you guys very much.

You're welcome.

(Operator Instructions)

Noah Kaye, Oppenheimer.

Yes, thank you and good afternoon. Starting with the gross margin improvement, 410 Bps overall year over year, second straight quarter of GM over 33%. You mentioned that the cadence would be irregular, but as you look at further mix improvements from the backlog and some of the cost actions, does 100 Bps of gross margin improvement a year seem reasonable from here out? Is that a reasonable target to shoot for? Is that potentially conservative? How are you thinking about it?

I think I'd answer this way. No, we can't give you guidance on what to assume going forward, 100 basis points or 150 basis points. I can tell you, though, that we're looking at a number of significant opportunities, both in gross margin and in the OpEx categories, that give us, I think, an opportunity-rich environment as we move forward.

And bear in mind that the restructuring activities we announced this quarter are really only part of it. There are a multitude of operational improvements that are underway right now that are aimed, I'm going to say principally at gross margin, but also at OpEx. I guess the only substantive thing I can tell you in terms of the numbers themselves, is that we do expect to see improvements in gross margin as we move forward.

I think maybe you can comment on the mix question in the backlog, as you noted, an ongoing shift towards smart and advanced. Does that set up as a tailwind as you look at the composition of the backlog?

We have commented that the backlog does represent a business that is generally accretive to the overall gross margin of the Company. So as this backlog does play out, it does tend to have that positive effect on driving gross margin.

Okay, great. And you mentioned the lower warranty cost as a contributor to gross margin. Can you help us understand roughly what that contribution was? Is it possible in terms of basis points? And are we at structurally lower accrual levels now versus before? This is following up on a question asked last quarter, but want to understand where we are now.

Sure. Specifically, what we were referring to is the special charge that we took last year and it amounted to $26 million.

Right. But on a normalized basis?

On a normalized basis -- if you are asking how does warranty shape up overall year-over-year basis, I'd say that we're not seeing any deterioration in warranty cost year over year. It is principally that $26 million. It's not recurring and we don't expect it to recur.

We put a lot of actions and new processes in place regarding suppliers and overall quality processes that are really focused on addressing and preventing and highlighting and preventing those kind of issues.

And, no, the way we've encapsulated that is predictability, profitability and growth are our top priorities. And the emphasis that the team has put on predictability focuses on things like warranty-related charges and things like that, and minimizing those in order to produce significantly more consistent set of results than we've seen in several past years.

Okay, great. And a longer-term question from me to close here. One of the panels at your Utility Week Conference a few weeks ago, very interesting, focused on multi-use communications networks for electric, water and gas. Some of the opportunities and challenges around that. Your a provider to all three of those segments.

So the question is how was your role, how do you see your role in moving some of those opportunities forward? How do you even think about the revenue benefits from that in terms of greater software or cross-selling? How do you think about that? It is a very interesting topic.

Yes, thanks, that's great. First of all, in focusing our technology investment in a open standards-based platform that easily enables, not only multi-commodity, but putting more and more devices onto network. So we are investing in technology architecture and standards that enable the question you're asking about, okay, but what does that mean to the business model. Frequently, electric utilities are often anchor tenants. They own overhead infrastructure and may be the first to actually place network which gives an opportunity for infill of gas and water in other sensors underneath the network.

But conversely we are seeing from our water customers, who are largely municipalities, a requirement that says if we're going to invest in a network, that we want to multi-purpose network. So it tends to come from both of those directions, although I'm not ruling out gas. We talked about a wonderful opportunity, Peoples Gas, in which we have a very forward-thinking customer there, as well.

The first benefit is driving more endpoints into the network, which is clearly the highest revenue source for us. But to your point, the software opportunities and intelligence gathered by collecting electricity, gas and water information, and the kinds of analytics that become possible and the managed services of potentially managing that network, will increase over time. And we feel there is a significant revenue growth opportunity on top of increased hardware sales in that software and services area.

Great. Thank you very much for taking my questions.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

At this time there are no additional callers in the queue. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Ms. Doyle for any additional comments or closing.

Okay, Lynnette, thank you. As you heard, very pleased about our third-quarter and year-to-date performance. But please don't read in that pleasure that any backing off in terms of how excited we are about the opportunities. I think we are a very balanced approach to top-line growth, as well as operational discipline and improvement in our operating metrics. So we are firmly focused on investing in forward technology and capability in order to drive the top line, as we are making really significant progress in driving our overall operating efficiency and bottom-line results.

Look forward to talking to you again on our full-year call. Thank you.

Thanks very much, Lynnette.

You're welcome. That does conclude today's teleconference. There will be an audio replay of today's conference available this afternoon. You can access the audio replay by dialing 1-888-203-1112 or 1-719-457-0820 with the pass code of 780255. Or you may go to the Company's website, www.itron.com.