美國西屋制動公司 (WAB) 2013 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good morning and welcome to the Wabtec third quarter 2013 earnings release conference call.

(Operator Instructions)

Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Tim Wesley. Mr. Wesley, please go ahead.

Thanks, Keith Good morning everybody, and welcome to our third-quarter earnings call.

Let me introduce the other Wabtec people who are here with me. Our chairman and CEO Al Neupaver; Ray Betler, our president and COO, Alvaro Garcia-Tunon, our CFO; and Pat Dugan, our senior VP of finance and corporate controller.

As usual, we will make our prepared remarks and then take your questions. Please do refer to today's press release for the appropriate disclaimers as we will make forward-looking statements during the call.

Before I do turn it over to Al, I am going to give a brief commercial here for our -- Wabtec's annual investor conference coming up next month here at global headquarters at Wilmerding November 11 and 12, dinner with management on the 11, and then the meeting itself will be here on the 12. Series of management presentations, plant tour, and we hope that you can join us.

We have about 35 to 40 people already signed up, but there's always room for more. So if you do need more information about that, please give me a call or e-mail me. Al, go ahead.

Thanks a lot, Tim. Good morning.

We had an excellent operating performance in the third quarter with sales of $631 million and earnings per diluted share of $0.76. These results represent third-quarter records and the second highest quarterly total ever for Wabtec. Backlog has held steady at near-record levels of $1.7 billion.

Overall, our businesses are performing well in what is still a slowly recovering global economy. We have been successful thanks to our diversified business model, our strategic growth initiatives, and the power of the Wabtec performance system.

We remain optimistic about the long-term growth opportunities in our freight and transit rail markets. These markets are driven by trends, such as increasing global trade, urbanization, infrastructure investment, and increasing demand for more environmentally friendly technology. We have the products, the services, our customers need. We have the financial strength and the capacity to invest in growing our businesses around the world.

Today, we increased our 2013 EPS guidance slightly, Based on our year-to-date results and outlook, we now expect full-year EPS to be between $3 and $3.04 with the sales growth of about 8% for the year. The midpoint of that EPS guidance is about 17% higher than our 2012 results.

Transit is driving our top line growth for the year due to our strong backlog in both US and international, as well as acquisitions in this market area. Freight revenues should continue to improve into the fourth quarter.

Our guidance assumes the following, continued growth in the global economy, the US and European transit markets remains stable with the emerging countries driving growth, our transit revenues are growing based on our existing backlog of projects in the US and internationally. We assume that US freight traffic will remain stable with OEM locomotive and car builds down 10% to 15% for the year.

We assume no major changes in foreign exchange rates and a slightly lower tax rate for the year. As always, we will be disciplined when it comes to controlling costs, focused on cash generation to invest in growth opportunities, and ready to respond decisively to any changes in market conditions.

I'd like to ask Ray to discuss what we're seeing in our key markets. Ray?

Thanks, Al.

Stability is still the theme of our transit markets, both in the US and internationally. In the US, ridership is up about 1% in the second quarter and is flat year to date. In 2013, North American transit car deliveries will be about 900, bus deliveries will be about 4500, and both figures are the same as last year.

Transit funding in the US is also stable and remains about $10 billion, about where it was for the past several years. This stability in the North American market continues despite budget issues and uncertainties about the long-term transportation build. Outside the US, we are seeing stability in the developed markets and growth in the emerging markets. Ridership and funding in Europe, for example, remains stable. We continue to see good growth opportunities in countries such as China and South Africa.

Our growth in transit has been broad-based with a little more than half of it coming from outside our traditional US market. In NAFTA, freight traffic is up year-to-date. Total traffic is up about 1.6% compared to the first nine months of last year, and this was driven by 3.7% increases in intermodal with general commodities and merchandise traffic flat.

Growth in shipments of chemicals, oil and gas, aggregates, and motor vehicles has offset the decreases in coal and other commodities. Still, expect OEM rolling stock deliveries in 2013 to be lower than 2012 by about 10% to 15%.

About 1200 new locomotives were delivered last year, and we expect that to be around 1000 to 1100 this year. It looks like the industry will deliver around 50,000 or so new freight cars this year compared to if you 59,000 last year. In the third quarter, about 12,600 cars were delivered, which is about the same as Q3 2012. Third-quarter orders were good at about 12,800, which drove the backlog to almost 74,000, which is the highest since 2007. And for the second quarter in a row, tank cars represented less than 50% of new orders. So we have started to see other car types start to pick up, which is what we expected.

Globally, freight traffic is also mixed. China is still growing, but not as fast as predicted. And there is some ripple effect in the mining countries, especially countries like Australia, Brazil, and South Africa, where we have seen a little bit of weakness. Al?

Thanks, Ray. As a Corporation, we are going to continue to focus on growth and cash generation.

Our priorities for allocating free cash have not changed. We are fortunate to have the financial strength to invest in all of them.

We want to fund our internal growth programs first -- that's product develop and capital expenditures. We want to fund acquisitions. We had two acquisitions in the third quarter, and that makes three for the full year.

We also want to return money to our shareholders through the combination of dividends and stock buybacks. Today we announced our regular quarterly dividend of $0.04 per share, which our board has now increased three years in a row. We also had a 2-for-1 stock split in the form of a 100% stock dividend earlier this year. Also in the third quarter, we bought back 93,000 shares for about $5 million. We still have about $70 million of authorization remaining, and we to continue to use it.

With our strong cash generation and balance sheet, we have more than adequate flexibility and capacity to invest in our growth strategies. Those strategies, I'd like to remind you, are global and market expansion, aftermarket expansion, new products and technologies, and acquisitions.

Let's talk a little bit about the progress we made in each of those. From a global market expansion standpoint, our sales outside the US in the third quarter was over $300 million. That's 48% of total sales. That's versus about a third five years ago.

We continue to make good progress in our international markets. We were selected to provide brake system for locomotives that a Chinese company supplying to South Africa. We are also negotiating joint ventures with two companies that would provide us a presence in Russia, the largest freight rail market in the world.

We take a look at aftermarket expansion, overall our aftermarket sales were $358 million. That's growing 21% compared to the prior year.

Aftermarket represented 57% of our total sales in the quarter. Acquisitions have contributed to this growth, and we are also expanding organically in areas such as locomotives services in the US and component servicing in Australia.

New products, a very important aspect to our growth strategy. We continue to focus on it, representing about one third of our total sales. We won additional orders for our newly developed low-emission locomotives from GO Transit, a commuter agency that serves Toronto. This was for 10 units at a price of around $60 million. This is a follow-on order from a couple years ago.

This model features twin engines that meet tier 4 emission standards and will improve fuel efficiency compared to the customers' existing locomotives. They include many components and systems manufactured by other Wabtec units.

A little update on positive train control. Our sales in the quarter were about $60 million. Revenues should continue to increase into the fourth quarter for PTC products.

During the quarter, we announced a $9 million contract with North County in San Diego, where we will provide equipment and services for their installation of PTC. We are working with several other transit agencies in the US and expect to make future announcements.

As we all know, there's still talk about the delay -- the deadline. Nothing has changed so far. The latest report that we have had from the federal government, the Government Accountability Office, has suggested that any delay should be on a case-by-case basis rather than a blanket multi year extension. We remain focused on doing our part to help the industry meet its deadlines and requirements.

Our fourth strategy, acquisitions, as I stated earlier, we acquired two companies during the quarter, and we have an active pipeline of opportunities. We continue to be very selective and disciplined in our approach.

We acquired a company by the name of Longwood Industries. Longwood is a manufacturer of specialty rubber products with annual sales of about $70 million. This business complements an already existing rubber business that we've had for years. Longwood serves a variety of markets including oil and gas, transportation, and industrial industry. They offer growth opportunities, especially with its capability for being able to bond rubber to fabric and rubber to metal, as well as other specialty products they have developed.

The second acquisition in the quarter was Turbonetics. Turbonetics is a manufacturer of radial turbochargers with annual sales of about $15 million.

If you remember, earlier this year we acquired a company located in the UK, Napier, which makes turbochargers as well. They have a different technology. They use axel technology, which is ideal for larger turbochargers. This particular technology that Turbonetics has serves a variety of industrial markets, including aerospace and marine and provides technology for us to be able to penetrate into the rail market that uses turbochargers.

What I would like to do now is ask Alvaro to give us a little bit of a financial update.

Thanks Al. Good morning everyone.

We had a sold quarter in a challenging environment, so I am pleased to be able to review our financial results with you today.

Starting with sales. Sales for the third quarter were $631 million. This was 8% higher than last year.

Organic growth contributed about 2%, about 1.6% of the increase, and acquisitions contributed to the rest of the growth. Transit group sales increased due to revenues from our backlog of existing projects, as well as from one of our acquisitions.

The freight group sales, however, decreased about 4% compared to last year, mainly for two reasons. Lower OE volume and consequently lower sales of components from locomotive and freight cars from NAFTA as well as reduced natural gas drilling activity, which has resulted in lower demand for our industrial heat exchangers that are used for gensets in that market.

In terms of margins, as we've discussed, we are always striving to drive our operating margins higher, and we achieved that during the quarter. Operating expenses increased, but this was due mainly to acquisitions. They were still only 12.4% of sales, slightly lower than last year. Controlling costs, as you well know, is paramount for us, and we also try to take advantage of our operating leverage.

For the quarter, operating income was $110 million or 17.4% of sales compared to 16.5% of sales in the year-ago quarter. Margin performance was driven by several factors, including higher sales, and benefits from our Wabtec performance system.

As a result of some delivery delays, we recorded a pretax charge of $1.9 million in cost of sales from contract charges on our locomotive division this quarter. We wanted to point this out because it's a relatively large charge.

In terms of interest, interest expense for the quarter was $3.8 million versus $3.1 million last year; the increase is due to higher debt due to acquisitions. Other expense included a pretax $1 million loss from foreign currency translation. This is non-cash. It's strictly paper, and it arises from translating balance sheet items into US dollars. We sometimes hedge to minimize economic, i.e., real gains and losses arising from FX rather than paper, but sometimes can have these paper gains and losses.

In terms of taxes, the effective tax rate was lower than normal due to a benefit of about $2.2 million related to changes in deferred taxes in foreign jurisdictions. This item occurred because of legislation which was enacted in the UK during the quarter. This legislation reduced the tax rate from 23% to 21%. Essentially, we reduced our deferred tax liability to account for the change in the rate, which resulted in the gain. Our normal effective rate going forward, we still expect to be plus or minus 32%, especially in the fourth quarter. And then just to wrap it up, earnings per diluted share were $0.76 versus $0.65 in the year-ago quarter for a 17% increase.

In terms of cash flow, we have generated $85 million year-to-date, which puts us behind last year's pace. We are disappointed in that, and one of our key goals for the rest of the year is to improve on this performance.

Working capital increased slightly, in part due to acquisitions. At September 30, receivables were $570 million, inventories were $400 million, and payables were $288 million. Our working capital excluding cash was about 20.9% of sales at the end of the quarter versus about 18.4% at June 30 this year.

Part of the reason for the increase is receivables arising from our long-term contracts. In essence, our collections are lagging behind our cost. We believe we can do a better job of matching our cash inflows with our cost, and we will strive to do so in the future.

Also, as our business has become more global, as we expand our sourcing programs into other low-cost countries, this affects our working capital requirements. Even so, we continue to think there are plenty of opportunities to reduce working capital both with inventory and receivables, as well as the project cost that I mentioned earlier.

In terms of cash and debt, at September 30 we had $281 million in cash, mostly outside the US. The balance at June 30 was $215 million.

At September 30, we also had debt of $542 million compared to $397 million at June 30. The debt was increased due to acquisitions.

Also during the quarter, we completed a $250 million bond offering. The bonds, which have a coupon rate of 4 3/8% and mature in 2023 were rated investment grade by Moody's and S&P. We use the proceeds to reduce our revolver and for general corporate purposes.

Some of the plenary items we always review during the call, depreciation was $8.2 million in the quarter compared to $7.4 million last year. Amortization was $3.9 million in both quarters. We had CapEx of $9 million versus $8.2 million in the third quarter of 2012. For the first nine months of the year, CapEx was about $24 million to $25 million. For all of 2013, we'll probably end up somewhere in the mid-$30 millions for CapEx.

And shareholders equity, I think we typically get a question asking what our shareholders equity balance is, was $1.5127 billion. That is a preliminary number, but it think we can use it for the time being.

In terms of backlog, we maintain the backlog at a near-record high and 10% higher than a year ago. The multi year backlog, that is the total backlog, was about $1.7 billion, slightly higher than June 30, but it gets lost in rounding, to be honest. The transit backlog was $1.17 billion versus $1.18 billion in June 30, so we are very stable.

The freight was actually higher, $512 million versus $490 million in June 30. The rolling 12-month backlog, where we expect to execute in the next 12 months, which is really a subset of the multi year backlog, the total is about $1.1 billion, again slightly lower than June 30. Transit was $630 million versus $671 million in June, and freight was $433 million, an increase of a little bit over the $409 million in the second quarter.

And also I should emphasize that those figures don't include about $200 million of contract options that are not counted in the backlog. We don't comp the backlog until it's a legally binding obligation. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Al.

Okay, thanks a lot, Alvaro. Once again, the Company is performing well with good margin performance and a backlog at near record levels.

We are anticipating another record year. We raised our EPS guidance from $3 to $3.04 on revenue growth of about 8%. We remain extremely pleased with our strategic progress and the long-term growth opportunities we see as countries around the world continue to invest in freight, rail, and passenger transit infrastructure. We continue to benefit from our diverse business model and the Wabtec performance system, which provides the tools and the foundation we need to generate cash and reduce costs.

With our experienced management team and dedicated workforce, we are able to take advantage of our growth opportunities and respond to any changes in market conditions. With that, we'd be more than happy to answer your questions.

Thank you. We will now open the floor for the question-and-answer session.

(Operator Instructions)

Scott Group, Wolfe Research.

I wanted to just follow up on the backlog a little bit. So it's been leveling off, as you point out, the past few quarters.

What does that tell you about revenue growth over the next year or so, excluding acquisitions? Should revenue be flattening out? Is that the way to think about it, or is that not right?

Well, I think when you look at the backlog, I think there are two things that you have to understand. First of all is that we never get a lot of visibility in the freight markets, and we do have long-term visibility in the transit markets.

And as Ray said in his prepared remarks, we are seeing stability in the transit markets around the world. We're going in the market share area, but it is a stable situation.

We really expect the freight markets to continue to improve. If you compare the freight markets to where they were last year and you look at it quarter to quarter, we were short in the first quarter, to tougher comparisons. Now we're actually seeing more growth in the freight area. We expect to see that in the future. And that won't be reflected as much into the backlog. We just don't have the visibility that we have in the transit market.

So I wouldn't agree that it means the revenue has flattened off, but I think if you look year on year, 2012 to 2013, most of our growth has been from the acquisition area and not from internal growth. Now there was a slight change in that this quarter. We actually grew 75%, 77% through acquisitions, but we did see some internal growth, which is a good positive trend considering the fact that the third quarter -- the seasonality of the third quarter has always been somewhat lower than the second and fourth quarter.

I just want to point that out. So when you look at the backlog, I think there are a lot of factors that go into it, and hopefully that answers your question.

That's very helpful, Al. Just a follow-up on what you're talking about on the freight side picking up, now that the order book has been a little bit more balanced and it's not just tanks, would you expect the quarterly run rate of deliveries to start picking up?

Yes, it will. Because as you know, the tank car capacity is at its limit. They are able to make 7500, and that's the deliveries you are seeing every quarter from them. And as we get covered hoppers and orders in the other areas, I think that you'll find that they will be able to deplete that portion of the backlog a lot quicker. I think right now, if you look at tank cars, you've got about eight quarters at the current rate.

I was going to say I think we are booked in tank cars through 2015, but they do have capacity in the other areas, so you would expect that capacity to be filled as other orders start to come in. I think you're absolutely right.

Two more things. First on PTC, did you say you think it picks up in fourth quarter, and then as we think about 2014, are the customers of the rails giving any sense that they are going to slow their pace of investment with the potential for a delay? Or would you think we have another year of up revenue in PTC next year?

It's hard to call right now. I think that we -- as we said earlier, we expect it to continue to increase throughout the year. There's obviously a lot of work that's going on.

We really haven't really given any guidance yet on 2014 and what we see. Those are some things that we are working on now as we go through our budgeting process, and hopefully we can speak to that a little better when we give guidance for 2014. We do expect that they continue to pick up.

The good news in the PTC area is I think right now we have two of the railroads that are in the field testing, and we expect the other two major railroads to start that in the near future. And that in itself creates a demand, so that would be a positive.

I think if we look into 2014 -- it's just hard to call. I think there is a lot of moving parts. There is a lot of discussion around any delay or no delay, and the railroads have a lot of options that they have to consider when they are trying to allocate their capital spend.

Makes sense. Last thing. You mentioned South Africa a couple times.

Maybe give us some color on how big your business is in South Africa or what your share is like. I feel like I keep hearing about a big investment coming on the transit side in South Africa, and I just want to get a sense of what the potential upside could be there.

I'm going to ask Ray to talk about the large opportunity that exists there, but I want to point out, when you talk about a large investment in South Africa, there are two things that you have to take into consideration. Nothing happens overnight, and the investment is an investment over the next 20 years.

So there are large numbers going around, but it's not all going to be shipped or handle in a very short period of time. And to get an order through the process down there, it's bureaucracy at its worse.

I think the reason you keep hearing about South Africa is because of the process that Al just explained. It takes a long time for anything to come to fruition, but there is planning in place and funding in place to upgrade their overall transportation network.

And in particular on the locomotives side, there are -- there was an initial order that has already been let for 95 electric locomotives. We won the brake system contract for that. The Chinese are supplying the locomotives, we are supplying the brakes.

There will be a follow-on order of purported 599 electric locomotives. Obviously that's not been let yet. That's in the process of coming to market and will be bid on by international locomotive builders.

Additionally, South African government has communicated that they will go out for 465 diesel electric locomotives -- again international locomotive builders will bid on that, like GE, the Chinese, the Europeans. We will bid to those locomotive builders for various components and subsystems.

And on the transit side, there's already been announced a large order, thousands of transit vehicles. And the reason I don't want to be specific about the number is because it's going to be let in options.

So the initial order will probably be for around 600. They've talked about numbers from 3000, 6000, 8000 over a 20-year period, but that's going to take place over the long-term.

[Olsten] does have the initial order. We, along with our competitors, have bid to Olsten for subsystems on those vehicles. Olsten has not awarded the subsystems yet, so we can't talk about in any detail the specifics of that process.

Allison Poliniak, Wells Fargo.

Al, you had mentioned sort of a follow-on to the slowness in the Chinese economy impacting some international freight markets. Alvaro, your comments didn't seem to suggest that impacted Q3.

Was it not significant enough? How should we be thinking about that?

The international markets, I think to be honest, they come and go. Brazil has definitely slowed down a little bit on their export activity to China.

You're starting to see signs of it in Australia, but then again this morning there was a report -- and I forget exactly what it was, but the Chinese industrial output rose significantly. Which people are saying --no, don't discount China, China is going to be very steady, and it's going to be a consistent need for their products. We've seen -- I guess the best way to describe it is we've seen a little softening, and it has impacted our results a little bit, but it hasn't had a major dramatic impact.

I think a lot of projects that were in the works, and what we are seeing now -- they have not taken projects off the table, but they have delayed implementation a little bit on new projects. And I think that's the concern area that we just want to identify for you.

Perfect. And Alvaro, you talked quite a bit the past few quarters about improving working capital. And I know acquisitions certainly impacted that number this quarter. Is there any way -- maybe not the exact numbers, but from a core perspective, have we seen an improvement in that number or are we still stuck?

To be honest, I think we can get -- I haven't seen an improvement in that number. I've actually seen a degradation in that number, and that is one of the things that internally we are really focusing on.

I touched about it a little bit in the prepared remarks, but basically one of the things -- and just trying to be frank, is we could've done better in our long-term contracts. We could've matched our cash outlays to the anticipated receipts much better. And as a result, we've had a buildup in receivables associated with those contracts.

One of things are going to try and do is stress collection efforts to get those receivables more in line with where they should be and in the future make sure we match them up better. That's an area we can definitely improve on, and we're not happy with where we are right now.

I think we are doing a great job of blocking and tackling, but when it comes to the larger contracts, it's an area where we need better match of cash flow. There's no question about it, and we intend to get better in that area.

And last, is there any -- I know we're closer to the end of the Brazilian PTC project, any updates that you guys are willing to share in terms of that progress?

Yes. The progress down there has been excellent.

Right now we're in the phase where we are running the trains. They are utilizing the train control system. We are probably -- I think our implementation rate now is probably on about maybe 50%, 60% of the lines, Ray?

Yes.

And what we are doing we are helping, we are assisting the operations with our key people right now. And I think the project as we see it now will be fully complete within the next 12 to 15 months.

And to take on a project, a turnkey project put in an entire signaling system is something we've never done before. And to implement it the way that our team has, I can only compliment our management team that's worked on it. It's been a great project so far. We'd like to see the cash flow a little better with it, as we stated, but I think the project itself has been a success, and I think the customer would agree with that.

Rhem Wood, BB&T Capital Markets.

To stay on Brazil for a second, they did exercise the second half of the contract?

No, they have not. And there is a good indication -- I think that's a good example when we talk about the impact of China.

They, right now, are reviewing whether -- what's the timing of that second option, how can they get some of the benefits without fully implementing that option? Because I think Brazil, like Australia and other parts of the world, are saying -- what is going to be the demand? And it has a lot to do with the demand ties into the pricing of iron ore and the pricing of coal.

And that's a good example of one of those areas where it's going to happen. It's there, but they have not executed that yet.

That's good color, thanks. And then can you give a little color -- to go back to PTC, the Q3 breakdown between domestic, international, and freight and transit. It just sounds like given the recent moratorium of towers, the15% to 20% revenue growth rate for this year is still implied at least in the fourth quarter, but just a little bit more color on any delays you expect over the next couple quarters.

I think that if you take a look at what we've shipped in the PTC area right now, about 60% of that has been in the US freight markets, about maybe a little less than 20% in transit, and maybe a little more than 20% in international, which really is tied to Australia. And there's some projects over there, we have small ones and the MRS project.

As we said, we think that PTC sales will continue to grow into the fourth quarter, and we really haven't given any guidance beyond that. Our original goal, 10% to 15% growth in the year, still possible, but we'll see what happens in the fourth quarter.

Again, the railroad is just a big capital expense for them, and they have to make the right decision whether they delay putting some of those onboard computers on or not. I can tell you that all the projects and everything is moving ahead, forward. Some of the capital expenditure -- it's tough to call within a quarter of the next quarter right now.

Last one, any update in announcing a partner in Russia and what's going on there?

Like any negotiation, we wanted to indicate that we are targeting that market. It's a large freight market. We are working with partners. However, it takes time.

Every little sentence needs to be read, understood, and the contract needs to be understood. And this is a new market for us where we want to be very careful, we want to protect our intellectual property, yet we want to take advantage of the market. And so it's just going to take time.

We just wanted to let you know that we made a good conscious decision. It's one of our strategic initiatives that we want to grow in that market area.

And I just want to emphasize a couple things. One, it's a huge market. In terms of market size, you can almost say it's as big as the US in certain respects and a little bit smaller in others, but it's a big market. We just want enter it carefully and do it properly for the long term.

Art Hatfield, Raymond James.

I hate to keep on PTC, but just a quick question based on the comments that you've made so far today. It sounds to me like your contribution -- at least for the next year, if we think about 2014, and the Brazil is probably going to be consistent with what it was in 2013, what is the wild card, I guess, to getting growth next year? Is that the US freight market, or is it transit, or am I wrong in my thinking about Brazil for next year?

First of all, I don't believe it is a wild card at all. I think that the plan is an incremental plan. It's going to require -- and what we will see is all those areas. We will see transit continue to develop. We will see the US freight market continue to develop, and we will see other international projects, MRS will continue to develop, as well as others.

This is a long-term business, as we've told you, and we're pretty excited about the opportunity. I don't think there's wild cards or any mystery to it. We just haven't provided the 2014 guidance, and I don't think it's right to give it on this particular call.

I'm not asking for guidance, and I guess maybe wild card is not the best term. But I'm just saying where does -- what creates the volatility within the business, I guess?

We really don't anticipate a lot of volatility with it. We think the railroads are going to continue to develop.

We think that the transit authorities that we are working with will be moving their programs along. I think that it's a great positive story that will continue.

Are you seeing anything with the transit? The word on the transit authority has been a funding issues. Have you heard anything are seen anything from them in that regard?

They sure are doing a lot of work without funding, if that's the case. We've got a number of projects going on, and there's 20 plus agencies. I can't name more than a couple that isn't in very serious discussions and negotiations on contracts at this point.

That's helpful. I want to, if you could, Al, address the longer-term strategic or your acquisition strategy longer term? You've done a great job of layering on small acquisitions, but as you get bigger, do you think about changing the strategy at all and maybe thinking on a larger scale both within your markets or maybe getting larger within some of the ancillary tangential markets that you serve with regards to your acquisition strategy?

No. I think that we've been extremely happy with our acquisition strategy, and as we've always stated, we are going to continue to be opportunistic. I think the real beauty of Wabtec and its acquisition strategy is that we have the capability of doing a super large one, and we can continue doing small ones. I don't feel that there's a driving need that we've got to change the strategy.

Obviously, as you grow and you want to maintain double-digits growth, and acquisition makes up about half of our anticipated growth into the future from our strategic planning process. You may have to do more or you may have to look at bigger ones, but again, we are just going to be opportunistic. We will never feel that we have to do an acquisition, and we will continue to approach it that way.

What we are seeing in our pipeline is opportunities across the board. We also -- we want to stick pretty close to our core competencies. We are not about to go out and start another leg. We really like the rail business. We do not want to get our management distracted. They know how to deal in the rail businesses.

If there are businesses that are close to the core technologies and capabilities that we have, a good example is that Longwood has some other markets as do Napier and Turbonetics. All those are businesses and technologies that we understand and the markets we understand. If we continue to find those opportunities, we will continue to grow in those areas.

Last question on that, and my last question overall. Your balance sheet is extremely healthy, so you're not constrained financially to be very opportunistic if the right large acquisition comes along. Are you constrained from a people standpoint internally, or do you have the infrastructure in place to be opportunistic along the size scale?

I think that we've proven that we've been able to grow through acquisitions. I think that people asked -- what are some of the concerns you have? I think anyone that doesn't put at the top of their list as far as concerns is making sure that you have the management talent and the capabilities to absorb those things.

When we look at acquisitions, one of the key criteria is that they have good management and that management is capable to come along. If we don't feel that we have the management team to do it, we are not going to do it. That's part of that discipline that we talk about.

One thing that you have to realize is that when you do go bigger, and if you did that one opportunistic thing, it will distract your management. The bigger the businesses are, sometimes the tougher the cultural change is, and it may take longer. So you have to really gauge how strong your management team, how strong your company is to take these on. And you have to be opportunistic, but there are times when you may want one that you don't go after because management is not there to run it.

I'd like to add a couple of things, Art -- it's Alvaro. The first is that I think everybody knows, we operate the Company pretty thriftily. We don't have a lot of people sitting around looking for work to do. And when you operate like that, you don't necessarily have a lot of excess talent.

But, again, we haven't found that to be a constraint because we either have -- the acquisition has good internal management or we can go out and get it. And I think we've been very successful, one, in getting good management, and two, having a good leadership development process and succession strategy so we are not caught short.

And the second point is I think we found -- to be honest I think it makes common sense, the larger the acquisition, the better the management. What we found is with some of the smaller ones, one have an owner retiring. And he takes a lot of the knowledge with him, and how do you replace that? But a larger acquisition, typically the company is better run, it has all its financial statements, it bank financing, it has to provide reports, and it has much more capable management.

So in terms of acquisition size, I don't think we will be constrained at all from doing a larger one because typically they do have the best management. And if not, we know how to go out and get good management. So to be honest, I don't see that as a constraint at all.

Samuel Eisner, Goldman Sachs.

A couple questions on the guidance here. Obviously you raised the EPS guidance and you maintained the revenue guidance. Given the fact that you are now closed on Longwood as well as Turbonetics, I guess what is the implied organic guidance for the Company?

I could -- we gave you a -- I think that in the announcement for --obviously Turbonetics was done before, so that's been in the guidance. But the revenue related to Longwood, when you look at the fourth quarter, I think that we are talking about --

$15 million.

Yes, $15 million to $17 million. So it's not going to make up a large part of that, so the rest would become internal growth.

And in terms of EBIT earnings, Sam, basically what happens -- we discussed this in the past, but what happens is the accountants make you write up their backlog and their inventory on hand basically to net realizable value. What happens is your first quarter or two out of the box with any acquisition as you turn over the first layer inventory, as you work through the backlog -- basically they take all the profit out of it. We call it PPA or purchase price adjustment internally just for shorthand.

And after a couple quarters, typically two or three quarters, it works its way through and you resume normal profitability. But in terms of EBIT, I would expect any benefit to be minimal in the next couple of quarters from acquisitions because of that.

Appreciate that. And when I look at your backlog, in particular the freight backlog, it looks like orders is quarter for the freight business were up about almost 30% year on year, and that's following about four quarters in a row of down orders. I'm curious, is there anything in particular within freight that is causing orders to see pretty significant step up on a year-on-year basis? Or just help me understand that a little bit better.

I think that what you're seeing -- any increases in the first 12 months, over -- close to 90% of our freight backlog is shipped out in the first 12 month. So what you're seeing is an uptick in that marketplace. And it's reflected in the sales.

And is that primarily because of recent acquisitions or pure organic?

Both. Smaller amount of acquisition, I think --

I think it's mostly organic.

I don't have the exact number, but that would be my gut.

To emphasize what Al said is the freight backlog is about $433 million in the next 12 months out of a total of $512 million. So typically the freight visibility, and Al alluded to this as well, is about 12 to 18 months. After that, you don't have too many freight orders.

Understood. When I think about Europe, it sounds as though you are potentially prototyping with some of the larger European manufacturers over there. Are we getting any closer to that marquis order coming in from Europe where you guys are going to get in with one of the large transit authorities?

As we do with everything, margin improvement, how we run our business, everything is incremental, and it's just going to be an incremental thing. There is no one big breakthrough that's going to be a watershed event that says we have arrived. We will have arrived over time on an incremental basis, and that's how we approach that market and the rest of our business.

And lastly, just housekeeping. In terms of price versus cost, how are you guys thinking about that relationship going for?

Sam, could you repeat that? I'm sorry.

In terms of price versus cost, just curious what you guys are seeing on the pricing front. And given the fact that fuel prices have moved up slightly of late, how are you thinking about that entering 2014?

Generally, when we see commodities move, it doesn't create a tremendous opportunity for us. Although it's an indication we've got to be careful because we tend to put the commodities on a surcharge basis, so there's an automatic price increase related to our commodities.

I think it's a very important practice, and that discipline is so critical when things change rapidly. So in general, our pricing is still difficult. To say it's easy, I it would be misleading you, but we do have pricing opportunities, and we are seeing some cost up.

I think right after this meeting, we are going to be looking at our healthcare cost, and I've reviewed those numbers. I don't believe that this new Affordable Care is a negative -- I mean a positive. It's definitely a negative as far as costs, so those things we have to overcome.

One last point because -- basically to give credit to the [crack] team here, Pat produces the numbers, and Tim has them there ready there at hand. Acquisitions only added about $8 million to the freight backlog when compared to last month. So like I said, what you're seeing there is pretty much organic.

Liam Burke, Janney Capital Markets.

Alvaro, you mentioned that aftermarket sales were up 21%. You had a nice year-over-year step up in gross margins. How was the contribution of the product mix, including aftermarket, affecting gross margins this quarter?

It's a good question, but unfortunately it's a tough one to answer because -- overall contribution margins are 30%, and obviously relatively easy to calculate. What happens is in aftermarket is you have different segments, at which we always have different contribution margins. Typically when you're selling proprietary parts, you have a much higher contribution margin. We you are selling services and labor, the contribution margin tends to be a little bit lower, but again, all that s lumped into aftermarket. And we don't do a contribution margin calculation by segment.

But in general, the aftermarket contribution margins would be healthy. For OE contribution margins, they're very healthy. Transit depends on which element of transit you're talking about.

And then, Al, you mentioned a PTC contract to San Diego on the transit system and mentioned you had a few more that you could not announce. How is that piece of the PTC ramping up?

I think it's nicely moving along. It takes a long time when you are dealing with municipalities, and we are not the only one that's negotiating.

There may be a prime engineering firm that we are working with, so you've got two or three firms that need to agree to everything. It just takes time, but that doesn't prevent us from starting the work and the design and the engineering work with them, and it comes in phases. We just don't like announcing anything until we got a signed contract, and, as you know, contract management in a business like ours is just so important. So I think it is moving along pretty well.

There's going to be a lot of work that needs be done in the transit area, and I think a number of agencies -- MetroLink out in LA is moving along well, San Diego project now. And there's others, the Denver project, and that's a whole new line -- a railroad line, and that is moving along very well.

So I think the others hopefully stay tuned. We will give you the information as soon as we can.

Matt Brooklier, Longbow Research.

So I just wanted to follow-up, another PTC question for you, if you will, but trying to get a sense for -- we are in our third year of PTC work. I was just curious to hear if you have a sense for how much of PTC revenue currently is being generated by aftermarket activity?

I think very little aftermarket. There are some -- we would classify a lot of this in aftermarket because if you put something on an old train, and also installation, training cost, and things like that. But the install base aftermarket generation, we are still in the development phase of the technology, especially in our operability.

Now, you go to a system like MetroLink, they are talking about having an operating system in a short period of time or even our MRS project where we are the prime contractor. We already need to be talking about the aftermarket, and we should see revenues generated from that here in the near future. So it's starting, but it isn't a major factor up to this point.

But it does sound like at some point that potentially does start to turn on in 2014 and could start to contribute I guess overall EBIT and margins?

You are correct.

And the prior guidance that you had provided longer-term in terms of aftermarket as a percentage of total sales, I know this is just overall for the Company, but is 10% still a good number you use for PTC moving forward?

Yes. And I think 10% of an install basis is just a thumb rule. We think that when you get into software and electronics, it may be a little higher than that, but that is a good thumb rule.

And then on the MRS side with the PTC contract, when are you through the entirety of that particular contact? I think at some point in 2014, and when do we have some potential clarity as to whether or not -- I think it's an $80 million option could be potentially executed?

We will know more of that when we get into 2014 and look at the global economy and how things are going. But I would think the MRS project will probably be completed late 2014, early 2015.

And then you outlined a pretty sizable amount of potential activity within the South African rail market. I think it's over 1000 locomotives that will be built. Just trying to get a sense for potential contract awards, the timing of those?

I know there's -- you mentioned before there's a decent amount of bureaucracy as you move to be involved in those contracts, but just curious to hear as to the timing of potential contract awards on those locomotives, and also I think the transit vehicles that you mentioned?

Yes. The good news is they started. They did award the initial 95 or so locomotives.

They have announced that Olsten is going to be involved in the transit vehicles. Those are positive. We started working on this, Ray, 18 months, few years ago, so don't expect anything to happen overnight.

But I mean, you've been in negotiations it sounds like for almost two years at this point, so potentially we are getting a little bit closer towards the end of that process, and we could --

We are excited about the opportunity. We are definitely going to be very aggressive in trying to participate.

As far as the amount of revenue that would be generated in say the near term of 2014, we haven't quantified that, at least to the point where we would discuss that. Hopefully, when we do give the 2014 guidance, we can give you a little more color on that at that time.

Greg Halter, Great Lakes Review.

Question for you on amortization, bounces around a little bit, obviously the second quarter. I'm sure it is related to the M&A work and so forth, but what number is probably good to use going forward? I think we were using five but it seems like it should be closer to four.

Let see. Because in the current quarter it was pretty stable with last year and obviously, like you said before, it's impacted by acquisitions. Right now it's at four. I think going forward slightly bigger because we did make two acquisitions pretty recently. I would use about 4.5.

It's not a big number. The changes always get lost in the rounding, but I would make it somewhere around there.

And a much of your business now would you say is outside of rail? I think we've been saying it's like 15%.

Still about 15%.

And there's been no discussion of the ECP, and just wondering if you could comment on what's going on there?

Ray, you want to take that?

ECP is still very much a strategic focus for us. We are pursuing both national, domestic and international opportunities. For instance, we have a nice install base, market share in Australia.

There's opportunities that are coming up in Australia, just like the ones we talked about in South Africa for various products. BHP is out with a bid for ECP and other associated electronics equipment. So we are looking at opportunities for ECP and pursuing those. And I think we're pretty happy with our progress in that area, but we are trying to grow our market share worldwide, also.

And I know you don't disclose the segment margins until you file that Q or the K -- I guess Q in this case -- but directionally, can you comment whether or not they are up or down year over year?

Tim's shaking his head saying no. (laughter)

We would just rather wait until we issue the Q for the reasons we stated before. Until it's filed, nothing is final, so I think we would rather wait until they're final before we give any preliminary indication.

Thought I'd give you a chance.

(laughter) I know, it was a good try. I admire the effort. We appreciate that, Greg.

In Europe now, we talk about the fact that you are in there now and you can bid on stuff and what you can bid on increases continually as you get qualified in different areas. What is that number now?

So are you talking about $500 million that you can bid on? Obviously you don't get it all, but what can you bid on?

The market is five times the size of the US, but some of that market is aftermarket, so you need the install base. The other thing that you will find is that the markets are stable, so larger projects right now -- not seeing as many as you saw two or three years ago.

So hopefully as the global economy continues to improve, there's going to be a lot more projects. We haven't seen large ones. We've seen a lot of small ones, a few of which we've won, so we're making progress.

And is their funding obviously by individual country handled differently than we handle here in the US?

No. It's the same. Transit --

Federal funding. It's a mix between local and federal funding in some cases, like in Europe you have the European commission funding. But it's the same bureaucratic process in the transit fund.

One last one for you. I think Alvaro, you mentioned there was some delivery delays in your comments. Can you couch those?

We took a charge for -- and it was a large amount, so we just wanted to highlight it so people were aware of it. But with a couple of our locomotive contracts, there was a delay in the scheduled delivery, which caused some damages. So we went ahead and accrued those in the current quarter.

Would those be delivered and show up in revenues in the fourth quarter?

I'm not sure when they will be delivered, but we've taken care of the damages accrual, and it will show up in revenue when delivered. One of the key elements of the revenue is that on these large locomotive contracts, you are recognizing revenues with percentage of completion.

As you deliver, you're not going to get this huge bump up in revenue. You recognize the revenue pro rata as you do the work and as you go along.

Try to match the cost of the revenue.

There are no more questions at the present time, so I'd like to turn the call back over management for any closing remarks.

Just thank you, and I hope you all can make our investor conference here. What date is it, Tim?

November 11 and 12.

November 11, 12. We're going to have a great dinner, so you've got to show up the 11th.

Look forward to seeing everybody then.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.