JBT Marel Corp (JBTM) 2019 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, and welcome to JBT Corporation's Second Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call.

My name is Natalie, and I'll be your conference operator today.

(Operator Instructions)

I will now turn your call over to JBT's VP of Investor Relations, Megan Rattigan, to begin today's conference.

Thank you, Natalie.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter 2019 conference call.

With me on the call are Chairman, President and CEO, Tom Giacomini; and our Executive Vice President and CFO, Brian Deck.

In today's call, we will use forward-looking statements that are subject to the safe harbor language in yesterday's press release and 8-K filing.

JBT's periodic SEC filings contain information regarding risk factors that may have an impact on our results.

These documents are available in the Investor Relations section of our website.

Also, our discussion today includes references to certain non-GAAP measures.

A reconciliation of these measures to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website.

Now I'd like to turn the call over to Tom.

Thanks, Megan, and good morning.

For the past several years, we have talked about JBT's value creation strategy.

We are investing in new products and services with an emphasis on expanding our recurring revenue base, capitalizing on key trends in the food industry and building our presence in Asia.

We've completed acquisitions that complement our product portfolio and position JBT to provide comprehensive customer solutions.

For the last few quarters, we've added a keen focus on operations, making JBT a more efficient company and a stronger competitor.

We've implemented the JBT operating system and are in the midst of a restructuring that not only improves productivity but brings more rigor and accountability to how we run our business.

JBT's strong second quarter performance is a reflection of our ability to capitalize on our value-creation strategy and capture operational efficiencies.

I'll turn the call over to Brian to provide more detail in the quarter and our improved expectations for the year.

Afterward, I'll talk about our most recent acquisition and our investment strategy focused on capturing growth.

Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone.

JBT's second quarter results outperformed expectations with a small revenue beat and better-than-expected margin expansion.

Revenue of $493 million in the second quarter of 2019 is about level with the year-ago period.

Organic growth was 4% while acquisitions contributed 5%.

This was offset by a 2% FX headwind and a 6% decline reflecting the absence of $32 million in ASC 606 transition revenue included in the year-ago period.

Adjusted for the 2 recent acquisitions, which were not in our original guidance, revenue exceeded by $8 million.

That was nearly all due to the strength of our aftermarket business.

On a reported basis, FoodTech revenue declined 5% in the second quarter of 2019.

Organic revenue was up 1% with a 5% increase from acquisitions.

Offsetting that growth was a 3% FX headwind and 8% decline reflecting the absence of ASC 606 revenue included in the year-ago period.

Keep in mind that FoodTech organic revenue was 7% in the first half of 2019 as some shipments originally expected in the second quarter had accelerated into the first.

FoodTech segment margins in the second quarter of 2019 were an outstanding 14.9% compared with 13.1% in the year ago period.

Adjusted EBITDA margins were 20.3%, up from 17%.

FoodTech enjoyed a highly favorable mix with a higher percentage of aftermarket business as well as an advantaged equipment mix.

Profitability also better -- reflected better-than-expected improvement associated with our restructuring, which includes capturing operational efficiencies as well as direct cost reductions.

AeroTech revenue was ahead 16% in the second quarter of 2019 with growth of 13% organically and 7% from acquisitions, partially offset by a 3% decline associated with lack of ASC 606 transition revenue.

AeroTech margins improved to 11.9% from 11.4% in the year-ago period.

Adjusted EBITDA margins for the segment were 13.2% versus 11.9% a year ago.

Order rates in the second quarter declined 12% from the year ago period and were essentially flat sequentially for both FoodTech and AeroTech.

Year-over-year comparisons for both businesses were against record orders in the year-ago period.

At FoodTech, general economic and trade uncertainty has continued to slow the decision-making process amongst some customers.

We expect some order rate improvement at FoodTech in the second half based on conversion of pipeline activity in North America and Asia.

Meanwhile, conditions at AeroTech remained solid as we continue to see investments in infrastructure and commercial and military aircraft support equipment.

Cash flow for the quarter was primarily impacted by lower advanced payments associated with orders in the period.

Year-to-date, our advance payments are short of plan by about $35 million.

We expect to get about half of that back through the remainder of 2019.

That leaves us with an expected full year free cash flow of about $100 million or a conversion rate of about 80% before any voluntary pension contributions.

Regarding the restructuring, we recorded an expense of $4.3 million in the second quarter.

For the period, we generated savings of more than $8 million versus an expected $5 million.

For full year 2019, we now plan to capture year-over-year savings of $26 million.

When combined with the savings achieved in 2018, that leaves us with planned incremental savings of $22 million in 2020 to achieve our total program savings target of $55 million.

In addition to the restructuring charge, adjusted EPS reflects an expense of $10.8 million associated with a significant second quarter M&A activity, including transaction fees and expenses, integration costs and inventory step-up.

On the tax line, we booked a discrete tax benefit associated with stock compensation of $2.2 million, essentially as expected.

With that, we reported diluted earnings per share from continuing operations of $1.06 compared with $1.04 in the second quarter of 2018.

On an adjusted basis, diluted earnings per share were $1.42 versus $1.27 a year ago.

JBT operating income was $47 million in the second quarter of 2019, including restructuring and M&A-related costs.

Adjusted EBITDA of $78 million was up 17% year-over-year.

Adjusted EBITDA margin was 15.8%, up 230 basis points from the year-ago period.

For full year 2019, we have increased our top line growth forecast to reflect the completion of the Proseal and Prime acquisitions.

We continue to expect organic growth of 4% to 5%.

The contribution from acquisition expands to approximately 7% versus the previous guidance of 2% to 3%.

The FX headwind is now expected to be higher at 2% for the year.

Reflecting the $127 million of ASC 606 transition revenue included in 2018 results, 2019 GAAP revenue is expected to be up about 3%.

We continue to expect full year segment operating profit margins of 12.5% to 13% for AeroTech and 13.5% to 14% for FoodTech while absorbing M&A-related costs.

As you saw in the earnings release, we started to communicate segment performance on the basis of adjusted EBITDA margins.

Internally, we looked to this metric as a way of tracking progress as it excludes short-term M&A-related expenses, therefore, capturing through operating trends.

At FoodTech, we expect full year adjusted EBITDA margins of 18.5% to 19.5%.

This is a pickup of more than 250 basis points above 2018.

At AeroTech, we anticipate adjusted EBITDA margins of 13% to 14%, up 150 basis points from 2018.

We continue to project a tax rate of about 25% for 2019, excluding discrete items.

Our forecast for interest expense is now $23 million to $24 million, reflecting the incremental acquisition-related debt.

We have adjusted the guidance range for the full year 2019 diluted earnings per share from continuing operations to $3.95 to $4.15, reflecting higher M&A items.

On an adjusted basis, we've raised our guidance.

The previous range of $4.35 to $4.55, we are now guiding to $4.70 to $4.90.

On an adjusted EBITDA basis, we are forecasting a full year range of $2 -- sorry, $290 million to $300 million compared to our previous guide of $260 million to $275 million.

The increase primarily reflects the contribution from acquisitions and better-than-expected second quarter results.

For the third quarter of 2019, we project revenue of $500 million to $510 million.

Our diluted earnings per share from continuing operations guidance is $0.90 to $0.95 or $1.05 to $1.10 on an adjusted basis.

With that, I'll turn the call back to Tom.

Thanks, Brian.

Last quarter, I spoke about the acquisition of Proseal, which enhances JBT's position in end-of-line packaging technologies with environmentally friendly tray sealing.

In June, we also completed the acquisition of Prime Equipment Group.

With the annual revenue of about $45 million, Prime expands our presence in primary poultry processing.

Prime's core technology provides labor-saving automation for poultry production.

Prime also offers a proprietary water reuse technology, which yields significant cost and environmental benefits in poultry production.

A key part of JBT's strategy has been to grow our recurring revenue through improvements and share of wallet on our install base through investment and aftermarket-focused resources.

As Brian mentioned, revenue outperformance in the second quarter was in good part due to our strength of the aftermarket business.

It also contributed to the outstanding margin performance.

This is a clear demonstration that our investment strategy is paying dividends.

Our internal investments and M&A activity have aligned JBT with key trends in the food industry such as growing demand for production automation and clean labels.

For automation, our new x-ray-guided waterjet portioning equipment provides automation that is traditionally done -- been done by hand.

Accuracy and yield are improved as the x-ray identifies bones and primals and calculates the optimal way to portion.

At the same time, this automation reduces the need for approximately 8 to 10 operators with each installation.

In addition, we are developing harvesting robotics that follow the waterjet portioner, automating the unloading of our machine and further reducing labor by another 6 people.

The reduced labor creates significant financial benefits for our customers while helping them with the challenge of staffing their facilities in tight labor market.

On the clean label front, the Avure and Stork acquisitions have significantly enhanced JBT's portfolio and ability to support our customers' clean label product offering.

This year, we've enjoyed a number of wins that expand the global reach of their high-pressure processing and aseptic technologies as consumers demand cleaner label products and our customers respond to this trend.

Overall, we continue to see positive long-term macroeconomic tailwinds in both our food and aero markets and are confident our strategic positioning of JBT will allow us to take advantage of these tailwinds.

We're enhancing our position further through M&A where our pipeline activity remains robust.

With that, we'll open the call to your questions.

Operator?

(Operator Instructions) And our first question comes from the line of George Godfrey of CL King.

Brian and Tom, just a question on the order activity being a little bit late this quarter versus a tough compare, and I did hear your comments about economic weakness.

My question is how long can they -- can your customer do you think push out the ordering on a quarter-by-quarter basis.

And is this something do you think they have to come in and ramp up?

And have you seen that as we move into the second half of this year?

George, I would tell you that, certainly, our customers has some flexibility on the timing of their investments, and it really takes 2 parts.

If it's for a new consumer product or a customer they're supplying, generally, there's a deadline which requires them to place the order in time to be ready to go to market.

If it's more of an investment to improve productivity or efficiency or to drive some results in their business, they have more latitude in the timing.

And sometimes, that may take that form of a rebuild or some aftermarket activity we pick up.

So it's really in 2 parts.

But I would tell you in the long term, we do believe the macroeconomic tailwinds we've talked about, increasing protein consumption, the push to clean labels, more value-added foods for our protein customers and convenience and ready meals on the liquid food side all create demand.

And we're really working hard to make sure JBT is positioned in front of those trends, and that we have the right product offering to meet our customers' needs.

So I'm quite confident that as we work our way through the year and in the following years, JBT is in great shape to take advantage of those trends in the marketplace.

And our next question comes from the line of Larry De Maria, William Blair.

I was hoping you could talk about, obviously, the orders have been a little bit soft, and you just discussed some of that, but maybe some of the puts and takes as we go on to 2020.

Given where the orders are weak now, can we still sort of think about your plan of the 4% to 6% organic with obviously, some variations still relevant?

And then maybe add up some of the accretion we're thinking about for next year.

And the restructuring, can you just give us some high level puts and takes as we think about and then start to get the framework for next year?

Larry, so when I think about 2020 and look at the framework we put force back in September, which was EBITDA in the range of $315 million.

What I would tell you is we're well on that pace prior to acquisitions, getting a little different way, lower on the revenues, higher on the margins.

We're not prepared to talk about 2020 growth rate at this point.

But I would tell you, organically, we're well on pace.

With the acquisitions, we're looking really well, above pace on the EBITDA.

And within the revenue, we're well within the range with the acquisitions.

So we're feeling very comfortable where our guidance is for the -- for 2020.

And on the longer term, Larry, I do remain convinced that the markets will grow at those rates, and we have a very effective strategy to take advantage of that growth.

And then just remind us -- can you remind us that just from a high level then the accretion -- incremental accretion for next year that's the -- from deals you've done, and also the incremental restructuring savings in 2020 that will go obviously on top of where you guys finish 2019 at?

Right.

So the incremental restructuring savings was currently estimated about $22 million.

And then in terms of the acquisition accretion, it's about another.

We have -- guiding to this year with 7 months of activity, somewhere in that $18 million of EBITDA on an adjusted basis minus interest expense, et cetera, is that $0.05 to $0.10.

And then next year, with another 5 months, it's going to be another $0.05 to $0.10.

Okay.

And then just -- we got a lot of question about this too.

Can you maybe just discuss the impact of some of these nonmeat alternatives out there?

And secondly, the ASF impact, how are those playing through?

So those are 2 things.

Sure, Larry.

On the nonmeat alternatives, I would tell you that from our equipment's perspective, the value-added side of that is very similar, it flows essentially across the, for example, the freezing and packaging technology that follows, Larry.

So we like to think of it as just finding and a good thing for our business because the equipment opportunities are similar.

The Asian Swine Flu, or the ASF, is a bit more nuanced than the -- in that you have to kind of think about the total global demand, and certainly, that's an impact to pork production in Asia and China and a couple of other countries in particular.

But in general, we see that as being a positive for JBT because that is creating additional export opportunities for pork producers particularly in the U.S. which is causing some pricing uplift on pork, which is then creating room for poultry prices to come up underneath that increase in pork pricing.

So for our customers, we believe, in general, that's a good thing.

And it's a trend that should be helpful as we look at the back half of this year and into early next year.

So just to clarify, are you guys actually taking orders and participating in some of these new nonmeat alternatives?

And then my last question is just around the slowness to close orders.

That doesn't seem that new.

You guys kind of talked about that for a while.

So has it really change materially in the quarter?

Or is it kind of more of the same, which is you kind of start-stop a little bit?

So a 2-part question.

On the first part, we are seeing the opportunity to quote on some more for the nonmeat alternatives.

And some of that early work, Larry, has been done on the existing equipment and infrastructure that's in the food industry.

And on the second part, you're right, it's not a new trend.

We've been talking about this, in particular, for the last quarter or 2. We don't see it changing materially.

Although we have seen some strengthening of our pipeline and some customer projects that we do see and have conviction around in both North America and Asia that we think are going to help us get some uplift into Q3 and Q4 on our orders.

And our next question comes from the line of Mig Dobre of Baird.

Brian, maybe a question for you, and I think I should know the answer to this, but I don't.

When I'm kind of looking at your reported orders and backlog in FoodTech, what exactly all goes through that?

I mean is there a portion of your revenue that just doesn't show up in inbound orders and backlog?

And I asked because if I'm looking at orders, they were basically flattish sequentially and backlog is not eroded all that much, but your revenue has picked up pretty materially, close to $50 million.

So obviously, I'm missing something here.

Can you help me with that?

Sure.

Everything does run through their -- through our orders.

On the aftermarket, it does come and go typically in the same quarter.

The piece that you're missing is the acquired EBITDA -- sorry, the acquired orders, the acquired backlog from Proseal and Prime.

That's the big chunk that you're missing.

Oh, okay.

I see that.

That makes some sense.

Then maybe my question is this, if I'm sort of looking on almost like a rolling 12-month basis, looking at the last fourth -- four quarters, orders have average something like $311 million, and we're looking at the back half of the year, at least on my model based on your guidance, we should be looking at revenues of about, call it, $360 million or more per quarter.

So how do we...

For FoodTech?

For FoodTech, yes.

This is all FoodTech.

How do we kind of bridge this gap?

Is it all acquisitions that essentially deliver that?

Or is it that you're inherently baking in some sequential acceleration on either your aftermarket or your original equipment business that you think you'll be able to convert on before year-end?

Right.

So in terms of the progression, the back half revenue for FoodTech is somewhere between 1.5% organic growth versus a year ago, so a little bit progression versus a year ago.

And Q3 will be relatively flat organically to Q4 than you have at that normal seasonal impact improvement in Q4.

And then with -- the acquisitions are going to add somewhere in the range of $70 million or so of revenue, $75 million just based on rolling in that extra 6 months of revenue.

I see.

Okay.

So it's primarily acquisitions essentially that gets there.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

That makes sense.

Then your margin again on FoodTech was much better than what I expected, and that's great.

I'm trying to maybe understand how you're thinking about the back half.

And I do understand your guidance, but obviously, but if I'm looking sequentially, we're not talking about margin quite as good as what you've had in the second quarter of '19.

And I guess the question is, is this a factor of conservatism.

Or essentially, is it all driven by mix?

And can you maybe separate mix or whatever kind of onetime quarter-specific items that help in the second quarter?

Right.

The order -- sorry, the margin activity in Q2 was pretty tremendous when you look at the aftermarket mix, the margins on the aftermarket and then some particularly strong margins on some of the equipment.

We don't expect that to be the trend.

We're going back to our normal trend.

For FoodTech, we see margins about 19.5 -- 19% in the back half.

That's actually an increase of about 50 basis points based on what we effectively previously guided to.

Basically, we've got the revenue coming down in the back half and effectively holding our EBITDA dollars, getting a little bit more benefit from our restructuring as well as just core operations slightly improving as well.

So really, the margins are actually improving in the back half versus what we previously said.

We're just not going to get -- we just don't really expect that tremendous aftermarket mix that we saw in Q2.

I see.

And the last question, if I may.

Is there a way that you can help us understand in the FoodTech what the year-over-year benefit from restructuring was in the quarter and what the year-over-year benefit would be in the back half of '19 versus '18?

And I'm done.

Right.

So we mentioned about $8 million in the quarter.

It's about a 70-30 mix, food to aero.

And as we progress, so that's -- and we have about $5 million in Q1, so it's about $13 million.

So now we expect incremental $13 million in the back half to get to the $26 million.

And this is all relative to 2018, keeping in mind, we did have some savings in the back half of 2018, so it's actually accumulative and expect it even bigger.

But the back half of $13 million, I would also still expect it to be about 70-30 split.

Mig, go ahead.

I'm sorry, but the $8 million, you're saying that, that's the year-over-year number, it's not a sequential number?

That's correct.

In the second quarter?

That's correct.

Mig, just kind of bringing it together for JBT for the year against our core prior year, I just would like to point out that for the full year, if you look at the guidance, it still translates to some great results of 10% top line growth, 30% adjusted EBITDA growth versus core and 250 basis points of margin expansion.

So from my perspective, if you're kind of pull the whole year together, it's a really strong result.

And when Tom says core, he means 2018, excluding the benefits of the ASC 606 $27 million of profits.

Right.

I get that.

It's just that there's so many moving pieces here that it's hard for me to keep it all straight, which is why I'm asking these questions so.

And our next question comes from the line of Walter Liptak of Seaport Global.

The margin in FoodTech was absolutely great, and I wanted to ask the similar question too about the mix, and maybe I'll try to ask it this way.

What is the -- what are the products, is this poultry or these beef products that are the positive mix?

Or is it the customers were doing more aftermarket in lieu of pushing out orders in the FoodTech business?

And then kind a bit of follow-on to that, so in the backlog, what does the mix look like on the FoodTech side?

Do you have similar aftermarket or mix of equipment that's higher margin?

Right.

So in the second quarter, the predominant benefit was on the aftermarket side, both, again, both in mix route.

We're about 42% recurring revenue in the quarter.

We're normally running at about 40%, right?

So you had a couple of 100 basis points there, and that obviously carries a higher margin, and the margin itself was nice on the aftermarket.

There was across both protein and liquid foods, so that was fairly similar.

As we go and look at the backlog into Q3 and Q4, keeping in mind that we don't have a ton of backlog in aftermarket.

It kind of comes and goes, as I mentioned earlier, in the period.

So we're looking at a reversion to the normal mix of aftermarket versus equipment, and that is reflected in the 19% back half margins that I mentioned.

It will progress from Q3 to Q4 on the margins, but for the full back half, FoodTech margins is about 19%, which when you look at kind of where we started the year when we were last year, that would be the expected normal progression.

Okay.

Great.

Thinking about the orders and your commentary about the uncertainty, I wonder if you could help us hone in on what that means exactly.

Is it U.S. customers that are -- should be the concern here?

Or is it international customers?

And what do you think has to happen to start to see the orders in flood?

Is it unmannered?

Just the comps getting easier?

Or is it lower interest rates or something happening to the macroenvironment for the orders to start picking up again?

Walter, what I would tell you is the activity we have with our customers which lead up to an order are projects.

We are really encouraged about the discussions we're having with our customers and the quality of the projects in our pipeline that we're working on.

And what we're very specifically seeing is a longer time between maybe some of the people that we're working with more at the local level or facility level and the approvals with the corporate, and we really attribute that to this trade and just general economic uncertainty around the economy.

And I would tell you that anything that starts to resolve either of those factors were, in particular on the trade front, I think would be most helpful.

Some certainty around Asia and some of these other trade agreements that haven't been resolved so that are customers, when they're completing their facilities, can have some confidence around their ability to produce and move that -- those foodstuffs around the world as they desire.

And we just continue to work those projects, have those ready so that as our customers gain that confidence, we'll be in a position to benefit from that translation.

And we're quite comfortable and confident of the quality of the projects, the customer engagement, the things that need to be happening at our end are happening, and we're positioning ourselves to take advantage as those issues work their self -- work themselves out.

Okay.

Got it.

Sounds great.

Were the trends in orders, were they the same in the U.S. versus international?

I would say, in general, if we talked about Asia, it continues to be slow.

Although given that the way our pipeline is developing, even in that slowness, we see some opportunity in the back half of the year.

Europe was pretty much as expected.

And we did see a few customers, specific projects in North America that I wouldn't describe so much just under the trade and economic uncertainty.

But we always deal with when is the plant going to be ready for equipment, et cetera.

We saw some movement there in North America this quarter that we don't see as being a trend setting that should help us in the back half of the year as those issues work themselves out with the customers.

(Operator Instructions) And there are no further questions at this time.

I'll turn the call back over to Mr. Tom Giacomini for closing remarks.

As you have heard, we are pleased with the benefits JBT is capturing from our value creation strategy and restructuring actions, we significantly improved our ability to win in the marketplace, and enable JBT to continue to deliver strong financial results.

Thank you, again, for joining us this morning.

This concludes today's conference call.

You may now disconnect.

Have a great day.