Nov 21, 2013
Executives
Thomas Iacarella - Chief Financial Officer, Principal Accounting Officer, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer Daniel A. Rykhus - Chief Executive Officer, President and Director
Analysts
Robert A. Kosowsky - Sidoti & Company, LLC Andrea James - Dougherty & Company LLC, Research Division John Rankin - Boranco Management, L.L.C.
Operator
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to the Raven Industries, Inc. Third Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call.
[Operator Instructions] And as a reminder, this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tom Iacarella, Chief Financial Officer at Raven.
Please go ahead.
Thomas Iacarella
Thank you, operator. Joining me on today's call is Dan Rykhus, Raven's President and Chief Executive Officer.
Before we begin, we'd like to remind participants that the information contained in this call is current only as of today, November 21, 2013. The company assumes no obligation to update any statements, including forward-looking statements.
Statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements and subject to the Safe Harbor disclaimer in today's press release. With that, I would now like to introduce Dan for a strategic look at Raven's third quarter.
Daniel A. Rykhus
Thanks, Tom, and welcome everyone to our fiscal 2014 third quarter conference call. I'll start off with an overview of our performance and then talk about each of the divisions in more detail.
And finally, speak to our expectations going forward. Tom will then provide you with a look at our financials, including a discussion of margins and the balance sheet.
And after that, we'll open it up for your questions. So let's begin with our performance.
Gains in Engineered Films and Applied Technology drove our third quarter sales to $104.9 million versus $97 million last year, a record for our third quarter. This was despite U.S.
government disruptions continuing to impact Aerostar. While we anticipate near-term fluctuations across our divisions, we're pleased with the strong quarter, as well as the fact that Raven is very well positioned for the long-term.
As a company, we serve relevant markets with innovative solutions to problems that matter. These are the problems of hunger, security, energy independence and natural resource preservation.
Consider this. The world's population is growing towards 9 billion people.
Consumption growth in developing nations is rising sharply. There's geopolitical instability around the globe.
Domestic energy needs in the U.S. continue to increase and there's a strong regulatory drive for natural resource protection.
These are the challenges Raven is helping address. The investments we've made and continue to make in technology, capacity and market expansions offer stability for the company and the potential for growth.
And by committing to continuous improvements in innovation, service and quality, we will expand our competitive advantage and gain more opportunities within these targeted areas. We're confident and optimistic about our long-term prospects for 3 primary reasons.
First, Raven is well positioned. We serve a diverse set of markets, we're financially sound and we remain true to our vision and values.
Next, our purpose of solving great challenges gives the company relevance, which I just spoke to. These challenges are important to the world, our country and our communities.
And lastly, we're making tangible forward progress as evidenced by the growth areas of the business. We'll continue to execute our strategy, generating profitable revenue from our existing core markets while driving growth in closely adjacent opportunities.
Tackling the monumental challenge of developing technology that helps the world grow more food, produce more energy, protect the environment and live safely while the company aggressively expands and pursues new adjacent opportunities requires important capital investments. And during the third quarter, we invested $14.1 million in research and development and capital expenditures to support our fiscal 2014 product and growth strategy.
Tom will talk more about R&D and SG&A later. As a company, we rely on our strong cash position to, among other things, fund dividend growth and deliver above-average returns on invested capital for our shareholders.
I'm pleased to report that our cash and investment balances at the end of the third quarter stood at $48.6 million. I would now like to talk about each of the 3 divisions, starting with Engineered Films.
Looking at the quarter, Engineered Films turned in a great sales performance. Sales rose to $40.2 million from $33.3 million a year ago.
Operating income grew to $5.2 million from $4.7 million in the year earlier quarter. Within this division, Barrier films for agriculture led the strong growth, specifically sales of fumigation and silage films.
The addition of new extrusion capacity earlier in the year was a key factor in our ability to meet demand for these high-tech films. We also saw gains within our other markets, including energy, industrial and construction.
Operating income, while up over the prior year, was constrained in the quarter due to substantially higher resin costs compared to a year ago, combined with competitive market conditions. We're in the process of implementing a new competitive pricing structure to reflect higher new -- higher raw material costs.
Further, our new reclaim production line, which is designed to capture and recycle excess polymer material from internal manufacturing processes is helping to provide cost savings. In growing our revenue pipeline and EFD, we're focused on 3 points.
In the near-term, we're capitalizing on the opportunities in our existing markets, including barrier films for agriculture, energy market expansion in Texas and also the Bakken formation and multilayer geomembrane solutions. Second, we continue to develop innovative, high-value, wide goods solutions for our markets and future opportunities in alternative energy.
And third, we will continue to bring online unique capability and capacity while also evaluating acquisitions that support our strategy and vision for EFD. On the product development front, a few weeks ago, we announced the full integration and qualification of our newest loan film line installed earlier this year, a 7-layer oriented barrier film system.
The new extrusion line is next-generation technology for manufacturing precise lightweight barrier films ranging from 0.8 mil up to 10 mil in thickness. The addition of this new 7-layer line expands the range of product capabilities beyond our existing barrier lines.
We're now able to produce thinner film profiles with several distinct features to realize increased throughput efficiency for consumer size rolls, which are packaged and sold straight off the line. Turning now to Aerostar.
We saw strength in Vista Research and lighter-than-air products. However, as we have talked before, this was offset by reduced demand from certain U.S.
government agency customers, including completion of our U.S. Army contract to manufacture T-11 parachutes and AeroStar's planned growth strategy, which emphasizes proprietary products over contract manufacturing.
Divisional operating income was $2.7 million versus $3.8 million in fiscal 2013. Again, this is primarily due to lower volume on contract manufacturing services.
Within this division, Vista Research continued to produce strong sales, rising approximately 45% driven by deliveries under existing contracts for our radar systems. As we previously disclosed, Vista Research was selected by Raytheon as the preferred radar solution for future U.S.
and export opportunities. We're often asked about Google's Project Loon.
We continue to support this initiative that uses Aerostar-designed and developed high-tech balloons to help provide Internet access to remote and underdeveloped areas. The program is still in its early stages and we're working with Google to establish and refine the initial platform and infrastructure.
For the rest of fiscal 2014, we anticipate modest project revenues with the possibility of significant revenue growth in the first half of fiscal 2015. This is, of course, subject to the success of Project Loon.
Growth of our proprietary product lines and declining contract manufacturing services reflect our strategic direction for Aerostar. We're focusing on expanding our proprietary technology opportunities, including advanced radar systems, high-altitude balloons and aerostats for international markets.
These 3 growth drivers have breakout potential and that has us excited for the future. Now, let me comment on Applied Technology.
For the third quarter, sales in the division were $43.8 million versus $39.5 million last year, a solid double-digit gain. Operating income set a record for Q3, up 23% from the prior-year period.
The increases were driven by demand from OEM customers, rising performance in Brazil and strong contributions from products developed and released in the last couple of years. Within Applied Technology, we do anticipate fluctuations going forward.
That's just the nature of the global and domestic ag market. However, aftermarket demand for our precision ag products rose in the third quarter and that's encouraging.
Additionally, OEM demand also stayed robust for certain products, including Raven's advanced guided steering systems and boom controls. On the product development front, Raven and Unverferth introduced UHarvest, a first-of-its-kind grain cart system that provides more accurate yield data and streamlines how data is shared between machines in the field.
UHarvest is the first grain cart system to integrate a moisture sensor on the cart itself. This gives operators more accurate yield data as crops are loaded from the combine.
In looking at our existing ATD business, we have the capacity to grow our more than 30 OEM relationships as these customers adopt a broader range of our technology on their machines. The products that we've introduced in the past 4 months and that I detailed on last quarter's call, including Viper 4, SmarTrax MD and our Multi-Hybrid OmniRow are Raven's strongest ever and will spur new growth in completely new business lines.
We're pleased with the progress we've made in the third quarter and now it's time to leverage those investments and new products to continue building sales. Let's now discuss our expectations for the fourth quarter.
We believe it will be difficult to match the growth we saw in the third quarter, but still have opportunities that could fuel some year-over-year earnings growth for the quarter. Applied Technology will be driven by sales of our new products and improving international market performance.
Engineered Films will continue to leverage the agricultural opportunity and move forward with new film capabilities serving our construction, geomembrane and industrial segments. While we anticipate Engineered Films sales will rise year-over-year, they'll likely moderate sequentially from third quarter levels.
Aerostar will continue to experience reduced demand from U.S. government customers, but we have opportunities to substantially offset this by increasing Vista Research and other proprietary product sales.
We continue to reassign resources within Aerostar to support this vision. As we go forward, we have a very solid balance sheet and have created strong technological positions and future prospects in our chosen markets.
This gives us confidence for the long-term despite potential uneven conditions. As we said last quarter, we do not believe that we'll report profit growth for the full fiscal year 2014.
We expect to achieve attractive returns on equity and we'll continue to deliver strong returns to our shareholders through dividends and long-term growth. We do expect to return to our long-term earnings growth goals of 10% to 12% next year as we execute on a current mix of very promising growth drivers and mixed macroeconomic conditions.
Now, I'll turn the call back over to Tom and after that, we'll be glad to take your questions.
Thomas Iacarella
Thanks, Dan. Hopefully, all of you had a chance to review this morning's release.
I will discuss our balance sheet changes and operating margins in more depth and then as Dan said, we'll take questions. First, the balance sheet.
We closed the fiscal third quarter with $48.6 million of cash, which is up $561,000 from last October. We have been able to maintain our cash position while investing in production and infrastructure capacity, as well as in research and development.
Operating cash flows were $37.2 million compared to $58 million last year. The reduction of $20.8 million reflected lower net income, a very favorable working capital influence in the first quarter of the prior year and unfavorable working capital flow in the current year.
While inventories rose $1.4 million from the previous October, inventory growth is moderated and we've seen turns at 5.3 stable compared to last year at this time. We believe that there's an opportunity to further improve our inventory position as required levels for contract manufacturing decline.
Accounts receivable were up $8.5 million from last October. That's about a 15% increase in receivables on an 8% sales gain, more than we would like.
In part, that reflects stronger sales growth for the month of October than in the prior months. Average DSO was up from 49 days last year to 51 on October 31, 2013.
Raven's current ratio was 4.79 versus 4.05 last year. Our balance sheet remains very strong.
Our overall working capital position increased by $14.5 million from last October. We believe we have the capacity to fund both the investments we're making in our operations, as well as dividend growth.
I'd now like to discuss our capital spending. We continue our commitment to invest in Raven's businesses.
Capital expenditures exceeded $29 million for each of the past 2 years and were $23.9 million for the 9 months of this fiscal year. Let me comment on the most significant projects.
We invest in the expansion of our Engineered Films, extrusion and conversion capacity for multilayer agricultural films, giving us the capacity we need to support this division's growth. Our reclaim production line, which is designed to capture and recycle excess polymer material from internal manufacturing processes, is a positive contributor to earnings.
We also began the last phase of conversion of our headquarter's building. Additionally, we have accelerated building our new manufacturing capacity from late -- next fiscal year to now to support Google's Project Loon.
This flexible production space is configured to support large-scale balloon manufacturing and is ready for use today. Turning to SG&A and R&D, we believe there are significant opportunities that Raven must be prepared for.
Therefore, over the past 3 years, we have invested in research and development capabilities, corporate finance, legal, compliance, information technology and human resource development. We recognized that these investments must be matched with higher revenues and as a result, we have reduced the rate of investment growth in these areas compared to prior periods.
SG&A cost rose 1% in the third quarter compared to 23% in the third quarter of last year. Spending for R&D was up 13% in the quarter compared to 40% 1 year earlier.
R&D in the third quarter supported new products in our Applied Technology and Engineered Films divisions along with support for Project Loon design. We continue to invest in the growth pipeline required for future success.
Now, I'd like to talk about third quarter operating margins by segment, starting with the Applied Technology division. Operating margins increased to 34.6% from 31.1% a year ago.
The higher sales helped leverage overhead cost in the current quarter, boosting gross profit rates. Additionally, operating expenses were relatively flat for the quarter as higher R&D spending was offset by lower bad debt write-offs.
For Engineered Films, we reported margins of 13% versus 14.2% last year. As noted in the release, we continue to be impacted by resin price fluctuations and a challenging marketplace.
Sequentially, operating margins increased slightly over second quarter results although down from the third quarter last year. Despite competitive pricing pressure, we were able to increase our average selling price by about 2%, both sequentially and from the third quarter last year by increasing sales of higher value films.
Compared with the third quarter last year, pounds extruded were more than 22 million, up about 28%. Regarding Aerostar, operating margins were 11.2% versus 14.5% a year ago.
Gross profit rates were relatively unchanged compared to last year's third quarter and sequentially, were much improved. Our expectation is that over the long-term, a higher proportion of proprietary product sales will lift gross profit margins.
During the quarter, Aerostar shuttered its Herant plant which made parachutes for the U.S. Army, but this had no material effect on the results.
Start-up and development costs related to new product initiatives accounted for the difference in operating margins. For Raven overall, third quarter sales were up 8% and profits were up 13% compared to last year.
Both the sales and net income figures were third quarter records. Net income for turnaround sales increased to 11.7% versus 11.2% last year.
We will continue to constrain new spending as we finish the year, making adjustments where needed and we are tying, spending to the execution of growth opportunities and initiatives. With that, I would like to turn the call back to the operator so we can take your questions.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Robert Kosowsky of Sidoti.
Robert A. Kosowsky - Sidoti & Company, LLC
I'm just wondering on the Applied Technology business, I'm just trying to get a handle on how to think about that into fiscal 2015 in light of Deere's commentary yesterday for declining market and in light of some of your new product launches and the aftermarket presence that you do have?
Daniel A. Rykhus
Sure. I can give you some high-level commentary on that.
So we look at what are all the factors that impact ATD's performance and certainly, the U.S. ag market, in terms of equipment produced is a part of that and that's going to be a headwind for us next year.
But we also believe there's a lot of positives, that we think can impact our performance next year. So number 1, our products are -- help farmers become more productive.
So we help farmers and producers lower their input costs and our items tend to be a much lower-ticket item in terms of cost of sales than large equipment. So we think there's some positives there.
We have many, many OEM relationships, over 30 of them. And we continue to introduce products that we think can increase the take rate within those OEMs despite more than likely less machines being produced for the U.S.
market. We do have a great crop and new products that I touched on.
It's the best that I've seen and I've been in this division for 22 years. And it's the best we've ever had.
And that gives us a lot of confidence in our ability to grow next year along with the products that we've introduced over the last couple of years, which tend to come in to maturity in their second and third year. And then finally, our international markets, we think are net positive for us next year.
We had a great -- We have had a great year in Brazil. A lot of the other international markets we serve haven't given as much growth this year and we expect to have some pickup from that.
So the net of it, I'm really looking for a 15% growth out of ATD next year despite a tough U.S. domestic market.
I still think we can get those -- that kind of growth.
Robert A. Kosowsky - Sidoti & Company, LLC
That's definitely helpful. And then just a little bit more detail.
How does your aftermarket versus OE presence fare in international markets?
Daniel A. Rykhus
You mean what's the breakdown?
Robert A. Kosowsky - Sidoti & Company, LLC
Yes.
Daniel A. Rykhus
In most international markets, we have a mix. It's not quite as strong.
More than likely, in terms of our OEM percent in our collective international markets. But we have, in South America, in Canada, we have strong OEM relationships there.
The rest of the markets that we serve internationally, such as former Soviet Union, South Africa, Australia tend to have more of a aftermarket percentage. Although, we do have some small OEMs in those other markets as well.
Robert A. Kosowsky - Sidoti & Company, LLC
Okay, that's helpful. And then on the Engineered Films side, I was wondering if you could maybe give a little more clarity as to what the new competitive pricing structure means?
Is that simply raising prices? And also if you can maybe break off how much of -- given the reclaim line that you have, how much can you use recycle to resin versus virgin and is that kind of something you can take up significantly more from where you are right now as that line gets going?
Daniel A. Rykhus
On the last, I'll let Tom handle the first part of your question and I'll respond to the second part. There are certain products where we can use that material and we're introducing that as we can now and we're using all the resin that we're producing and we're producing a lot more than we planned on for the year.
So I expect we'll be able to fully utilize the resin available from our reclaim operation. But it isn't a -- I'm not certain on the percentage levels but from a macro standpoint, we'll be able to use all that we can produce over next year.
Thomas Iacarella
Okay, and then just on the...
Daniel A. Rykhus
Want to comment on the pricing?
Thomas Iacarella
Can you say that again?
Robert A. Kosowsky - Sidoti & Company, LLC
Yes. You just mentioned new competitive pricing structure and I'm just wondering if that simply means raising prices or if it's a little bit more of a direct kind of indexed pricing?
Thomas Iacarella
It involves a couple of things that are going on. One is that we are continuing to try and move our overall customer and product base to more value-added film.
We think that gives us the opportunity to make more margins. And then we have had some price increases as a result of the higher resin costs that we're incurring.
And I guess I would say that there's a mixture of that. But I don't have a breakdown as to how that's going to play out.
Operator
Our next question in queue is from Andrea James of Dougherty & Company.
Andrea James - Dougherty & Company LLC, Research Division
Just first on Engineered Films, how are you feeling about your progress in diversifying films away from energy? And I was also wondering if you can give us an update on how energy did in the quarter?
Daniel A. Rykhus
I think we're making good progress growing our ag market, in particular, Andrea. And as far as the energy market growth in the quarter, we did see some pickup.
I believe we were up about 5% or 6% in the energy market for Q3. But our ag market continues to grow very rapidly and those tend to be higher value materials.
So that's been a real strength for us. Geomembrane, we continue to believe that will become a stronger part of our product mix or our market mix, but we haven't made the progress in that area during the third quarter.
Andrea James - Dougherty & Company LLC, Research Division
And then in the Aerostar segment, can you give us an update on where you are in the Aerostar, I guess, for commercial asset monitoring and border tracking? And are you figuring in some wins there when you gave your commentary on FY '15?
Daniel A. Rykhus
I can't really speak on the specifics due to competitiveness and probably some other reasons. But we are -- I can give you some general overview that we continue to pursue opportunities around the world and they're very specific and they're very much funded opportunities.
And we believe that we're making progress on those. And certainly, as we look out a year and look at what Aerostar is becoming, we're going to continue to grow our proprietary product lines.
And in the third quarter, we saw a 61% increase in our proprietary product lines. We saw a 31% decrease in our contract manufacturing services.
And that's going to continue -- that trend is going to continue. Maybe not exactly those percentages, but those trends will continue, and to us, that means continued sale of radar systems, tethered aerostats, stratospheric balloon applications, our marine navigation systems.
Andrea James - Dougherty & Company LLC, Research Division
Just one more. You mentioned the Unverferth in your opening commentary.
Thanks for that. Is this an entirely new distribution channel for you as well?
Daniel A. Rykhus
Yes. I guess for that product line, there'll be some new channel partners that would offer that and some of our existing channel partners.
But the neat thing for me is it's a new area within the precision ag arena that we're entering into. So in the past, we haven't had any products that we would put on grain carts and this is -- there's lots of grain carts used when you're producing the kind of bushels that we are in this country now and there's a great need to better understand the accuracy of yield throughout the field.
So when I talk about completely new streams of revenue from new lines of business, that's one of them and we're excited about it. The reception has been tremendous so far.
We have lots of orders for it and we expect it's going to be a good growth driver for us next year.
Operator
Our next question is from John Rankin of Boranco Management.
John Rankin - Boranco Management, L.L.C.
First question, concerning the new product you harvest at maturity of the product. Could you have any idea how much you would think that would enhance earnings?
Daniel A. Rykhus
I'm not sure I want to give that kind of clarity. I will say, you look at ATD as a $200 million division.
And I would say it has the potential to be a strong part of that revenue mix next year. It's one of many things, though, that are going to help drive our performance next year.
John Rankin - Boranco Management, L.L.C.
Okay. And my second question, I cut this out of the Wall Street Journal shortly after the last conference call in that Monsanto purchased a privately held company called Climate Corp.
for $930 million and then the year before, they purchased Precision Planning for $250 million. As I read the article, it seemed like these companies or companies like them would be a wonderful fit for Raven.
My question to you, if you're familiar with these 2 companies, were you looking at these or are you looking at companies like this to bolt on -- as a bolt-on acquisition for growth?
Daniel A. Rykhus
Oh, we weren't looking at Climate Corp. for just under a $1 billion.
That's -- we weren't considering them as an acquisition. We're constantly looking at technology companies that can add to our strategy, particularly within ATD and we have several right now that are under evaluation.
But we always have several under evaluation, so that's really not a change. And there's a lot more activity within the development of technology for farming.
I mean, it's just become an area that is attracting a lot of attention. So that's great.
That's great for the world to produce more food, it's great for companies like Raven because we can find partners that we can either acquire or work with. But not really looking for companies in the size of Climate Corp., in particular.
Operator
[Operator Instructions] We have a question from Robert Kosowsky of Sidoti.
Robert A. Kosowsky - Sidoti & Company, LLC
A couple more questions. First off, on the Vista growth.
Is this more -- with Raytheon. Is this more going into new equipment, is it more going into just retrofit of existing assets and kind of the breakdown versus U.S.
and allied countries?
Daniel A. Rykhus
Well, the Vista growth is not all Raytheon although it's a lot. But we also have a strong contract deliveries to U.S.
Navy. So there's a breakdown there.
Within the Raytheon, there's a lot of material that's going into new applications in allied countries. And I can't give you the percentages on that.
Robert A. Kosowsky - Sidoti & Company, LLC
Okay, but it's more going into like new equipment versus just retrofitting existing...
Daniel A. Rykhus
Correct.
Robert A. Kosowsky - Sidoti & Company, LLC
Stuff on the field.
Thomas Iacarella
Correct.
Robert A. Kosowsky - Sidoti & Company, LLC
Alright, and then also on Project Loon, what's the next milestone? Like what do you -- was there another test that's going to go on, now that the New Zealand test is done.
Kind of what's the next thing that's going on in that project as it goes towards, hopefully, reality?
Daniel A. Rykhus
We continue to work with Google on refining, as I said, in the press release and test -- have to be a little careful about the level of detail I provide here. But I will tell you that there's, every week, every month, there's ongoing development and testing and that to the extent -- the extent of the growth will be a function of the success of the overall program.
And that involves us meeting design hurdles and delivery hurdles as a technology supplier for Google.
Robert A. Kosowsky - Sidoti & Company, LLC
Okay.
Daniel A. Rykhus
And we're encouraged. I mean I want to leave it on a positive.
We're encouraged. We're not losing any enthusiasm over this.
And -- but it is a very, very large challenge for us but we keep making progress.
Operator
And with that, there are no further questions in queue. I like to turn it back to Dan Rykhus for any further comments.
Daniel A. Rykhus
Thank you, and thanks again for taking the time to join us on the call today. We're pleased to report a record third quarter.
Longer term, as a company, we're confident and optimistic about our prospects. We're well positioned, solving relevant challenges and transforming the company.
We look forward to executing our strategy and generating profitable revenue from our existing core markets, while generating growth in closely adjacent opportunities and we look forward to updating you on our full fiscal year in March of 2014.
Operator
Thank you. And once again, thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining today's conference.
You may now disconnect. Have a great day.