Zurn Elkay Water Solutions Corp (ZWS) 2007 Q4 法說會逐字稿

完整原文

使用警語:中文譯文來源為 Google 翻譯,僅供參考,實際內容請以英文原文為主

  • Operator

  • Good day everyone and welcome to today's Rexnord LLC conference call to report fourth quarter fiscal year 2007 results. Today's call is being recorded. With us today is Todd Adams, Controller and Treasurer of Rexnord. Please go ahead, sir.

  • Todd Adams - Controller, Treasurer

  • Good morning. Welcome to the Rexnord Investor conference call to discuss our fourth quarter and full year financial results for fiscal 2007. My name is Todd Adams, Controller and Treasurer of Rexnord and with me this morning are Bob Hitt, Chief Executive Officer and George Moore, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Rexnord LLC. During today's call, Bob will discuss the events of the quarter and also provide additional commentary about the industry. George will then discuss the financial results for both the quarter and full year and provide some high level financial assumptions for fiscal '08. After this discussion we will open up the call to your questions. Both Bob's and George's commentary will be based upon the quarter and year to date results contained in our earnings release in Form 10K, ignoring predecessor successor accounting presentation required under GAAP as a result of the Apollo acquisition.

  • A replay of this call will be available for a period of one week and the phone number for the replay can be found in the earnings release we filed on an 8-Kwith the SEC which is also posted on our website at www.Rexnord.com. Before we start, I'll refer everyone to our earnings release and Form 10-K filed last week regarding our view on forward-looking statements and risks. I'd also like to remind everyone that any forward looking statements made on this call, including future market conditions, future operating results or other plans represent management's best estimate as to what may occur in the future and are intended to fall within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

  • Even though the company believes the expectations reflected in such forward looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, they can give no assurance that its expectations will be attained. Finally, our business is subject to various risks and uncertainties so please refer to the risk factors outlined in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additionally, within this call we may use some non GAAP measures, such as adjusted EBITDA as an indication of underlying operating performance. The Rexnord definition of adjusted EBITDA starts with EBITDA as defined in the company's credit agreement and is defined as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization with additional provisions for add backs of certain restructuring expenses, other income and expense, LIFO income or expense, stock option expense, charges and gains associated with the Canal Street accident, and the impact of fair value accounting and the corresponding amortization of the step up of inventory required under purchase accounting.

  • Other companies in our industry may calculate EBITDA differently. EBITDA is not a measure of financial performance under generally accepted accounting principles and should not be considered as an alternative to cash flow from operating activities or as a measure of liquidity or an alternative to net income as indicators of operating performance or any other measures of performance derived in accordance with GAAP. As it does that they before returning cash charges including interest, expenses and taxes. Because EBITDA is calculated before recurring charges, including interest expenses and taxes, it is not adjusted for capital expenditures or other recurring cash requirements to the business. It should not be considered as a measure of discretionary cash available to invest in the growth of the business.

  • With that introduction, I'll turn the call over to Bob Hitt, Chief Executive Officer of Rexnord.

  • Bob Hitt - CEO

  • Thank you, Todd, and good morning and thank you for joining us on the call today. Last week we issued our press release outlining our fourth quarter and fiscal 2007 financial results, which I'm hopeful everyone had the opportunity to review. We certainly understand that given the amount of activity in fiscal 2007 that the results require some further explanation which we'll walk through this morning. Before I talk about the fourth quarter results, I'd like to give everyone a quick update on where we are regarding the Canal Street recovery. When we last updated everyone on February 22nd regarding our third quarter results, we communicated that we had been making good progress on the recovery efforts at Canal Street after the tragic accident on December 6th. I'm extremely pleased and proud to report that the recovery efforts to date have surpassed our initial expectations and that we're more confident than just two months ago that we'll be back to full production rates by the summer.

  • Let me give you a synopsis of the progress we made in the past two months. Our quoted lead times on the majority of products manufactured at Canal Street are back to pre-accident levels, several of what we had been quoting prior to the accident. We've continued to proactively communicate with customers regarding our progress with virtually no cancellation of orders. Reconstruction efforts are in full swing. We're re-siding, rebuilding walls and putting up the permanent improvements where we had to put temporary fixes in place to simply get back up and running. Productivity and throughput at the facility is quickly approaching pre-accident levels. In fact, in some cases exceeding in certain areas. Our coordination with the insurance carriers has been solid. We received another $15 million in insurance proceeds since we last updated everyone bringing the total since the accident to $37 million. All very positive news, but we still have a lot of work to do.

  • Our real objective is not just to get back to pre-accident levels, but to be better. With the continuing efforts of everyone, especially our employees, I'm looking forward to providing a more even positive update when we announce our first quarter results. Also I'm extremely pleased to welcome the Zurn Business employees to Rexnord. The transaction closed on February 7th so our fourth quarter results of operations includes Zurn for about eight weeks. Throughout the call, we'll try to give everyone a transparent view of the split of how much of the business power transmission and water management contributed to the quarterly results.

  • In the fourth quarter, consolidated sales grew 27% from last year's fourth quarter. Power transmission's sales grew 4.2% to $316.6 million despite the business interruption at Canal Street which adversely impacted sales by some $24 million to $28 million. Water management sales were $69.5 million in the eight weeks we've owned Zurn and the solid sales growth that Zurn had been experiencing continued in the quarter ending March.

  • Power transmission water growth in the quarter was 3.6% and 10.5% from fiscal '07. As we have been communicating and anticipating, our second half order growth was slower than the first half. As we exit Q4, our order backlog within power transmissions sits at $404.8 million, up $18 million in quarter four and $98 million or 32% compared to March of last year. Our fourth quarter consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased 30.1% to $80.8 million or 20.9% of sales. When you look at it by platform, water management generated $14 million of adjusted EBITDA for the eight weeks since we've owned Zurn which equates to about 20.3% of sales and in the fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA for the power transmission platform was $66.8 million or 21.1% of sales, an increase of $4.7 million or 7.6 % compared to the prior year fourth quarter. The $66.8 million of adjusted EBITDA includes the estimated business situation impact from the Canal Street accident of $10 to $12 million in the fourth quarter which was largely offset by $10 million of recoveries recorded to date under our business interruption policy included within the gain on Canal Street line on the income statement. George will further explain the accounting and reporting on the Canal Street actions when we go forward.

  • Additionally in the fourth quarter after incurring the additional debt to finance the Zurn acquisition of $669.3 million, we reduced that by $2.3 million bringing our debt reduction since the July 21st power acquisition and prior to acquiring Zurn to$59 million. Our leverage ration at the end of March was 6.2 times, the same as the end of December prior to acquiring Zurn and down from 6.8 times at the Apollo acquisition date driven by a combination of solid earnings growth and debt reduction.

  • Let me switch a little bit too economic environment and its impact on (inaudible). Consistent with what we've been communicating in the past couple quarters, the underlying positive trends in both our businesses continued in the fourth quarter. On the power transmission side, many of the core end markets remain solid; in particular energy, mining, aggregates and aerospace. With water management commercial construction continues to be solid and we're starting to see some benefits of the work the Zurn team has done over the past couple years that penetrate the municipal and civil markets both of which have solid growth opportunities. Also our exposure to revenue due to construction in water management is relatively small. As I'm sure everyone knows it's been slow and we're not expecting any significant rebound in the near to medium term. Overall, I would characterize our end markets as healthy and through the first couple months of fiscal '08 that trend has continued.

  • Now as far as some comments on the broader economic trends. As we all know, the data from the supply manufacturers has been choppy, dropping to 49.3 in January. February did back bounce back to 52.3 and March index was 50.9 and recently popped up to 54.7. Talking to some of our customer base as well, we've been seeing the impact of that where they see some improvements happening particularly in distribution. In March, U.S. industrial output dipped by 0.2% year over year and that was primarily driven by consumer goods with manufacturing output actually increasing 0.7 % year over year. If you look at capacity utilization in March at 81.4 % relatively flat to December which was 81.6%.

  • Additionally, from the power transmission industry perspective we follow as you know the PTDA members; sales were up 8.6% through February after the decline in the last four months of the calendar '06. And finally, if you look at the industrial distribution channel, it remains very healthy as the sales inventory ratio ended March at 10.2 times which is up from nine times in December and equal to last March.

  • Specifically as we look at Zurn on the water management side, the overall construction spending has been mixed with residential continuing to be weak and nonresidential showing reasonable growth in the mid to high single digits through March. Given that we're primarily focused on nonresidential, greater than 75 % of our sales are nonresidential. We're cautiously optimistic that we'll continue to see reasonable market growth throughout calendar 2007.

  • I want to show that we're now actively tracking, obviously, copper prices. With Zurn, we bought a significant amount of brass, which is a derivative of copper and as I'm sure many of you are aware, metal's pricing and copper in particular has been steadily increasing over the past year and significantly over the past several months. We've been actively addressing the rising costs with price increases on products, looking to our supplier base to limit purchases as well as continue to innovate and design our products to mitigate the amount of copper and brass in our products by using alternative materials. As you can see, the external economic data throughout our fourth quarter and first calendar quarter has been mentioned relatively volatile.

  • As we look at our business and begin fiscal year '08, we continue to see good growth opportunities in a number of key end markets such as the ones that we saw in the previous year of energy, mining, commercial construction, the water works and sewer water management, cement, aggregates and of course aerospace. With their power transmission, the channel continues to be healthy and overall inventories are at reasonable levels heading into fiscal year '08. As we look ahead, we're not planning for double digit growth with our business. In fact, we're planning for lower growth environment and doing things on the core side of the business is something we can't control.

  • Finally, we feel that our overall diversification exposure to many of the markets with longer visibility and good growth opportunities leaves us well positioned heading into fiscal year '08. I think everyone's aware we closed the Zurn acquisition on February 7, 2007 and we've been actively working with a small number of integration related items since the acquisition date. The primary integration work has been to wind down the former headquarters of [Jacuzzi] in West Palm Beach, Florida. The integration work remains on track and we expect to be at the spending run rates and have all the work previously performed at West Palm Beach, primarily corporate functions, transition from West Palm Beach by mid fiscal year '08.

  • As we mentioned in our press release, fiscal year '07 has been an eventful year for Rexnord. From a performance perspective '07 was a solid year. Our sales in power transmission were up 9.7 %. Adjusted EBITDA was up 13.5 % over fiscal '06, which includes the adverse impact from Canal Street. As most everyone is aware, we had a number of significant events to work through during fiscal '07 from the sales process to Apollo, to the Canal Street accident recovery and recently to the Zurn acquisition and subsequent integration work. Throughout all of these things, our employees have worked extremely hard to accomplish all the work required to pull things off and I thank all of them for that. This year truly lays the groundwork for the future and puts us in an excellent strategic position as we start fiscal year 2008.

  • Over the past year, we've established Rexnord as a growing diversified industrial company with leadership positions in two key platforms - generating strong margins and excellent cash flow. But we're even more excited about the future. Those of you that know the company understand that we don't spend a lot of time looking back or celebrating what we've won, we spend our time looking ahead and how we continue to be successful.

  • What that, our priorities in fiscal '08 remain the same; focus on the customer and continue to implement the Rexnord business system with an intense focus on quality delivering costs. If we do those right, we'll continue to grow to margin expansion and generate cash to reduce our debt. What that I'll turn it over to George to provide more in depth financial information regarding our fourth quarter performance. George?

  • George Moore - CFO

  • Thanks, Bob. As Bob mentioned earlier, our fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2007 reported results were impacted by the accident at Canal Street on December 6. We estimate that sales were adversely impacted by $24 million to $28 million in the fourth quarter with a corresponding decrease in operating income of $10 million to 12 million. Offsetting the operating income impact in the quarter is $10 million of recoveries reported under our business interruption insurance and included in the line item gained on Canal Street accident net captioned on the income statement. For the full year, we estimate sales were impacted by $39 million to $48 million and adjusted EBITDA by $6 million to $12 million net after giving effect to the $10 million of recoveries recorded under our business interruption insurance.

  • Now I would like to provide you a financial overview of the fourth quarter (technical difficulty) production activity. Let's start with sales. For the quarter, sales were $386.1 million or 27.1% higher than the fourth quarter of last year. $69.5 million or 22.9% of the total growth was attributable to having acquired the Zurn business included in the current quarter without being included in the prior year. As Bob mentioned in his earlier remarks, the remaining increase is a result of strength in our power transmission products and markets of energy, mining, aggregates and aerospace also by the unfavorable impact from the Canal Street accident. Additionally, favorable foreign currency translation added approximately 2% to the growth compared to the prior year quarter.

  • Gross profit in the quarter was $125.2 million or 32.4% of sales compared to 32.6% in the fourth quarter of a year ago. Gross profit margins in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007 were favorably impacted by the reporting of LIFO income. The reason for income in the quarter was the inflationary impact on inventories estimated in interim quarters was less than previously recorded. Offsetting the favorable LIFO impact in the quarter was the impact of the Canal Street accident and the resulting decreased leverage on fixed cost. Additionally, the non cash adjustments made to the fair value of our inventories as a result of the Zurn acquisition are included in the fourth quarter.

  • Our reported gross profit includes the impact on the Canal Street accident and our estimate of the corresponding adverse impact of $24 million to $28 million of lower sales and $10 million to $12 million in lost earnings which would have been primarily recorded as gross profit.

  • SG&A in the third quarter was $67.2 million, or 17.4% of sales compared to $51.2 million or 16.9% of sales in the fourth quarter of last year. The inclusion of the acquired Zurn business from the acquisition date added $11.4 million of SG&A expense compared to the prior year fourth quarter. Additional increase in SG&A dollars over the prior year fourth quarter, up $4.6 million was driven primarily by higher non cash stock option expense of $2.4 million or 60 basis points. In the fourth quarter, we reported a gain on Canal Street explosion net of $13.9 million. This net gain in the quarter is comprised of expenses associated with additional professional fees, cleanup and restoration expenses and downward revisions to previously recorded asset impairments totaling $11.1 million. Offsetting the $11.1 million of expenses is the allocation of $25 million of the $37 million of insurance proceeds received to date. The allocation is split between $15 million to our property and casualty insurance policy and $10 million to our business interruption policy.

  • Income from operations in the quarter was $61 million compared to $32.9 million in the fourth quarter of last year. This year includes the acquired Zurn business from February 8th forward, which was $10.3 million of income from operations. The prior year fourth quarter included $10.8 million of restructuring. Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter was $80.8 million or 20.9% of sales. Adjusted EBITDA for the water management business was $14 million in the quarter and the power transmission adjusted EBITDA was $66.8 million or 21.1% of sales in the quarter compared to $62.1 million, or 20.4% in the prior year fourth quarter. The net adjusted EBITDA impact from the Canal Street accident in the quarter is approximately $0 to $2 million.

  • The business interruption impact from lower sales in the quarter is approximately $10 million to $12 million and almost entirely offset by the $10 million allocated to recoveries to date under our business interruption policy. Included in the impact to arrive at adjusted EBITDA are stock option expense, the impact of purchase accounting fair value adjustments, required reserve adjustments under predecessor success or accounting and other income expense.

  • Interest expense in the quarter was $41.3 million, reflecting additional interest on increased indebtedness arising from the Apollo acquisition as well as the Zurn acquisition. An income tax expense of $11.4 million was reported in the quarter. The effective rate benefit for the entire 12 months ended March 31 was 12.4% compared to an expense of 41.6% last year. The benefit reported in the 12 months ended March 31 is lower than the statutory rate as a result of certain transactions and merger-related expenses being deemed non deductible for federal and state income tax purposes.

  • Looking at our balance sheet as of March 31, 2007, you'll see that it includes the balance sheet of the acquired Zurn business as well as the preliminary purchase price allocation associated with the transaction. In the fourth quarter, we continued to refine the purchase price allocation associated with the Apollo transaction. We anticipate that in the one year period after both the Apollo acquisition and the Zurn acquisition we will continue to refine the purchase price allocation and make the appropriate adjustments to the balance sheet in future quarters.

  • The net assets for the acquired Zurn business was $936 million as of February 7 and consisted of the following assets; cash of $55.9 million, accounts receivable of $61.3 million, inventories of $170.9 million, intangible assets of $454.1 million, good will of $342.5 million, and all other assets of $259.3 million, offset by the acquired liabilities of $454.8 million. From a trade working capital perspective at the end of the fourth quarter, receivables were $254.4 million, inventories were $384.3 million, accounts payable $154.4 million for a net of $484.3 million of trade working capital. As a percent of annualized sales, trade working capital in the power transmission segment was at 20.8% in the fourth quarter compared to 20.6% in the fourth quarter of last year.

  • Adjusted for the inventory step-up basis, trade working capital as a percent of annualized sales in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007 was 19.9%. We continue to see working capital as a significant cash opportunity particularly inventory within both power transmission and water management businesses. Our goal remains to drive down working capital as a percent of sales and we believe the majority of this opportunity will come from improving the velocity of our inventory terms.

  • Capital spending in the fourth quarter was $9.8 million or 2.5% of sales and for the fiscal year capital spending was $39.7 million or 3.2% of sales. Our total debt at the end of the quarter was approximately $2,047,000,000 after incurring $659.3 million to finance the Zurn transaction and reducing debt by $2.3 million in the fourth quarter. Our liquidity at the end of March remains strong, as we had cash balances of $56.1 million and had no borrowings outstanding under our $150 million revolving credit facility; however, $33.6 million of the facility is considered utilized from letters of credit leaving approximately $116 million of additional borrowing available under the revolver as of March 31.

  • As of the end of the fourth quarter, we had $787.5 million of term loan borrowing, $804.2 million of 9 ½ senior unsecured notes $150 million of 8 7/8 senior unsecured notes, $300 million of an 11.75 % senior subordinated and $5.2 million of other debt. Our leverage at the end of the quarter was 6.2 times debt to EBITDA down 6/10ths from 6.8 times as of July 21 acquisition date and consistent with December 30.

  • As we previously disclosed and discussed, we continue to expect to recover the majority of nonrecurring expenses associated with the Canal Street accident as well as the business interruption impact. As we experienced in the fourth quarter, the timing and amounts of recovery can be [lumpy], as evidenced by the $10 million recoveries under our business interruption insurance that we reported in the fourth quarter. As we incur additional charges and business interruption in future quarters, these amounts will be offset by recoveries in future periods; however, we do not expect this accident debt have any material impact on our overall financial position or liquidity.

  • As a result of the Zurn acquisition and the changes to both the capital structure as well the impact of fair value accounting, we thought it would be helpful to provide some degree of guidance around several key financial items and measures to assist in understanding the changes we anticipate in fiscal 2008 as compared to fiscal 2007. This high level assumption is a consolidated basis are as follows. CapEx in the 2.6% to 2.9% of sales, depreciation at approximately 3.5% of sales, amortization expense of approximately $45 million, cash interest of approximately $190 million, pension funding in the $8 million to $10 million range, cash to integrate or exit our West Palm Beach facility of $10 million to $12 million. Our tax rate for a book rate we expect a rate greater that 50% as certain tax benefits are fixed dollar benefits; however, the rate impacted as a result of lower pretax book income from additional interest expense and amortization of fair value adjustment. Cash tax we expect to be in the $12 million to $20 million range.

  • Finally, I'll bring your attention to one item that will affect the comparability of our first quarter adjusted EBITDA between fiscal 2008 and fiscal 2007 for the power transmission segment. After the Apollo acquisition in July, we modified the methodology around the timing of how and when we record rebate incentive programs with our customers. This modification has no impact on the comparability of full year numbers between fiscal 2008 and 2007; however, had we applied the same methodology throughout fiscal 2007 the $52 million of power transmission adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter of '07 would have been reduced by $2.3 million.

  • With that financial overview, I'll turn it back over to the operator and open it up for any questions.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. (Operator instructions). We'll take our first question from Tom [Karsznia] at Credit Suisse.

  • Tom Karsznia - Analyst

  • Good morning.

  • Bob Hitt - CEO

  • Good morning, Tom.

  • Tom Karsznia - Analyst

  • Could you guys talk about on this Zurn business, how that business did for the full quarter compared to last year?

  • Bob Hitt - CEO

  • We had that just for the eight weeks and we have not disclosed any. You can see from the eight weeks that we had what the adjusted EBITDA was. Clearly, the last eight weeks were slightly better than the first half of the quarter, but we have not disclosed that.

  • Tom Karsznia - Analyst

  • Right. That's why I was asking because you didn't disclose it. If you annualize it and maybe I gave them too much credit, if January was a weaker month, you end up with somewhere around $110 million or 9% year over year. But the margins look like they're down about 100 basis points. Can you talk about the margin decline and how much of that would be due to copper and brass?

  • Bob Hitt - CEO

  • There wasn't any margin down in Zurn would have been primarily due to the higher cost of raw materials and the price increases that we're seeing really coming online towards the quarter and as we had talked about copper prices being up, we're looking at the opportunity for price as we go forward.

  • Tom Karsznia - Analyst

  • When was the price increase actually implemented? When did you actually start collecting that and as you roll Zurn forward to the June quarter, will this be a net positive impact in margins on that or is it just following the price in copper which is back to $3.27 or so?

  • Bob Hitt - CEO

  • The price increases that Zurn does really varies by product line and its spread. If they've got contracts that are quoted out there they don't get that benefit until the next quote, so it varies. I'd say probably on average it takes four to six months to really see price increases roll through. Some areas can be quicker, but it's not a real quick fix.

  • Tom Karsznia - Analyst

  • So how much of that price increase is in your fourth quarter numbers, I guess?

  • Bob Hitt - CEO

  • From the most recent copper increase, really none. For copper, you really saw it jump up after the first of the year. We're looking at that for the rest of the year. They had some price increases that they already had planned and in place from last year where they were doing prior to the acquisition that are rolling through.

  • Tom Karsznia - Analyst

  • Okay. Then as far as the power transmission side, I guess first of all on Canal Street, how do you actually calculate the end of revenue impact on Canal Street, your $24 million to $28 million. Where does that number come from?

  • Bob Hitt - CEO

  • We had forecasts and budgets that we looked at for what we expected those operations to do and we had been running relatively close to that throughout the year, so based upon the backlog that we had forecasted we expected. We looked at what we were actually able to ship versus what we had planned on prior to the explosion.

  • Tom Karsznia - Analyst

  • Okay. Does that take into effect what he business actually looks like as far as from the demand side? I guess sort of background for that, if you add back the Canal Street revenue impact into your revenues for this quarter or adjust them for that, your power transmission business revenues would have been up almost 13%. It seems very strong. Is that the way you look at -- you would have been up 13% if you were able to ship on time out of Canal Street?

  • Bob Hitt - CEO

  • Yes, it is.

  • Tom Karsznia - Analyst

  • Okay. And Bob, can you give a little bit of color as to some of the power transmission business segments flattop bearings couplings as to what's going on in those segments?

  • Bob Hitt - CEO

  • By segment, I wouldn't go through it, but I would say overall as I mentioned what we saw was a slight dip in terms of what was going on through PTDA which is improving. I would say overall if you look across, what we're seeing here is a slowing growth rate. If you look at flattop, for example in Europe, we are making a lot of progress and headway with the OEMs -- as you know, all the OEMs over there are extremely concentrated. We have been making tremendous inroads there.

  • Strategically, we are really pleased with this business. If you look at the industrial side, we're making some progress and headway on expanding out besides (inaudible) as well. Particularly in Europe we're seeing really, really strong, very satisfactory demand there as well. But if you look across the rest of the businesses, I'd say overall they're actually about the same gear as we anticipated. We were running at a high, high growth rate. We anticipated that growth rates as slow (inaudible) from that perspective. The one that I would say continues to be that double digit we keep talking about clearly is aerospace. For several reasons. One is the industry itself, but also the fact that we continue (technical difficulty) we've been doing well on new programs in the Aero Industry.

  • Tom Karsznia - Analyst

  • Right. Okay. Thank you.

  • Bob Hitt - CEO

  • You're welcome.

  • Operator

  • We'll take our next question from Yilme Abebe with J.P. Morgan.

  • Yilme Abebe - Analyst

  • Thank you. A couple quick ones for me. The first one related to the Zurn business, can you give a sense for the pricing environment this year that are going out in a couple quarters. What I'm trying to get to is has the Zurn business historically been able to pass along raw material cost increases or price increases? I do appreciate some insight there.

  • Bob Hitt - CEO

  • If you look over the last 16 years of the business since they've been able to pass price through, I would say they're able to pass price through now. The interesting thing we view and see ourselves as price leadership. What was interesting as copper began to rise not specifically to go specific, but there were several of the competitors who elected not to pass the price increases of high escalation copper. They lagged it. That caused some issues even for us, but that has now changed. Whether they clearly see it, I don't know. Whether they viewed it temporarily to begin with or not, that would be conjecture on my part. Certainly, they are now following our leadership position.

  • Yilme Abebe - Analyst

  • Okay. That's helpful. My second question in the press release you do say that you have seen a decline in first product end market. How much of this is (inaudible) business and secondly is that mostly driven by residential market?

  • Bob Hitt - CEO

  • The first question I think you asked was how much percentage of our business was that? It is 4% to 5%, I believe, of our business total. A relatively small one. But clearly that is a down market. The second part of your question was residential on Zurn?

  • Yilme Abebe - Analyst

  • Is that forced product segment is that the decline primarily driven by the residential market or is it a different end market?

  • Bob Hitt - CEO

  • Clearly, it's driven by the residential market.

  • Yilme Abebe - Analyst

  • Okay. That's it for me. Thank you.

  • Operator

  • (Operator instruction). It appears we have no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back over to Bob Hitt, CEO of Rexnord.

  • Bob Hitt - CEO

  • I'd like to thank everyone listening for your attention on our call today. As you can see, there's quite a lot of activity during the quarter and we have turned in another solid performance and solid growth, margin expansion and cash flow generation and we look forward to reporting our first quarter results sometime in the summer. By then we'll have additional progress report on the recovery on Canal Street facility as well as the progress we're making on continued focus on customers and improving our overall quality delivering cost which is the center of the Rexnord business system. Again, thank you and we look forward to speaking to you again as we announce our first quarter of fiscal 2008 results.

  • Operator

  • Thank you. That does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect at this time.