L.B. Foster Company

And thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q3 2024 L.B. Foster earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will press star 1-1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, press star 1-1 again. Please be advised that today's session is being recorded. I would now like to turn it over to Lisa Durante. Go ahead, Lisa.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to L.B. Foster's third quarter of 2024 earnings call. My name is Lisa Durante, the company's investor relations manager. Our president and CEO, John Castle, and our chief financial officer, Bill Tommen, will be presenting our third quarter operating results, market outlook, and business developments this morning. We will start the call with John providing his commentary on the company's third quarter performance. Bill will then review the company's third quarter financial results. John will provide his perspective on market development and company outlook in his closing comments. We will then open up the session for questions. Today's slide presentation, along with our earnings release and financial disclosures, were posted on our website this morning and can be accessed on our investor relations page at lbfoster.com. Our comments this morning will follow the slides in the earnings presentation. Today's discussion includes corrections made to the company's previously recorded financial statements as disclosed in the form -K-A for 2023 and form -Q-A for the first and second quarters of 2024 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Some statements we are making are forward-looking and represent our current view of our markets and business today. These forward-looking statements reflect our opinions only as of the date of this presentation and we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revisions to these statements in light of new information, except as required by security laws. For more detailed risks, uncertainties, and assumptions relating to our forward-looking statements, please see the disclosures in our earnings release and presentation. We will also discuss non-GAP financial metrics and encourage you to carefully read our disclosures and reconciliation tables provided within today's earnings release and presentation as we consider these metrics. So with that, let me turn the call over to John.

Thanks, Lisa, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our third quarter earnings call. I'll start today's call by recognizing and welcoming Lisa Durante. Lisa was recently promoted to manager of financial reporting investor relations. I'm also pleased to announce that Stephanie Schmidt has been promoted to an expanded role in our financial reporting team. We're fortunate to have both Stephanie and Lisa leading our investor relations and financial reporting efforts and look forward to their continuing contributions. Congratulations, Lisa and Stephanie. Turning to the quarter, we're very pleased with the progress achieved during the third quarter as we reflect on our exceptional profitability cash generation results. These results clearly indicate our strategy to transform the profitability profile of our business is on track. The .8% gross margin report represents the highest level we've seen in over a decade and was up 490 basis points over last year. The margins achieved were on 137.5 million in sales, which were down 5.4%, highlighting the improved portfolio profitability and efficiency. That income in the quarter was 35.9 million and included a 30 million favorable tax valuation reserve adjustment, noting that our improving profitability trends allow us to release this provision. And adjusted EBITDA was 12.3 million, up .4% over last year despite the lower sales with the improved gross margins and lower SG&A expenses. As expected and in line with our normal seasonal working capital cycle, we also delivered a very strong quarter of cash generation, with cash from operations totaling 24.7 million. Cash was deployed primarily to reduce our net debt by 17.7 million to 65.4 million at the quarter end. As a result of our lower debt levels and improving profitability, our gross leverage ratio improved by 0.8 times, ending the quarter in an impressive 1.9 times. We also continued funding CAPEX initiatives within the rail technology and precast concrete platforms. At the same time, we expanded our stock purchase program, buying approximately 127,000 shares for 2.6 million during the quarter. With the third quarter results largely in line with our expectations, we made modest updates to our 2024 financial guidance. We lowered the sales expectations slightly, but maintained the midpoint of our adjusted EBITDA look, in line with the improved earnings efficiency of the portfolio. And with the strong results achieved in the third quarter, we slightly increased our look, with the second half pre-cash look, now expected to range between 30 and 35 million. In summary, we're very pleased with our third quarter results and look forward to riding our continuing momentum to a strong finish to 2024. I'll turn it over to Bill to cover the financial details for the quarter, and I'll come back in the end with some closing remarks on our markets and outlook.

Over to you, Bill. Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. I'll begin my comments covering the third quarter highlights on slide seven. As always, the schedules in the appendix provide more information on our results, including non-GAAP measures discussed on today's call. Also, we'll call out the impact of significant portfolio actions where meaningful. For the third quarter, the only inorganic impact is the Bridge Grid Deck product line exit that was announced last year. Net sales for the quarter were down 5.4%, driven primarily by domestic rail commercial weakness, with organic sales down 8.5%. Infrastructure organic sales were down approximately 2%. Despite the lower sales, gross profit grew to 32.8 million, up 5.3 million versus the prior year. Last year's gross profit included $3.9 million in adverse impacts from the Bridge Grid Deck exit, contributing to the -over-year improvement. The benefits of our strategic execution delivered a gross margin of .8% in Q3, the highest level achieved in over 10 years. Gross profit and margin improvement was realized in both rail and infrastructure, despite lower sales in both segments. I'll impact sales and margin drivers by segment further on the slides ahead. Selling general and administrative costs in Q3 were $24.3 million, down $0.1 million from the prior year. The current quarter included $0.4 million in costs associated with a resolved legal matter, and $0.8 million in costs associated with the previously announced enterprise restructuring program. These increases were offset by $0.8 million in lower employment costs, and $0.7 million in lower bad debt expense. As a reminder, last year's bad debt expense included a $0.9 million charge related to the bankruptcy of a UK customer. Net income for the quarter totaled $35.9 million, including $30 million due to a favorable tax valuation allowance adjustment. In 2022, we established a valuation allowance on our net deferred tax asset balance sheet position, including federal net operating loss and the federal net tax value that we were able to carry forwards available. Accounting rules required the reserve at that time due to the level of cumulative pretax income in 2020 through 2022, as well as the trend in profitability during that period. As a result of the improving trend in financial performance in 2023 and 2024, we were able to release the federal tax valuation allowance in the third quarter, resulting in the tax benefit this quarter. Note that as a result of releasing the valuation allowance, our effective tax rate will return to a more normal level of approximately 28%, starting with the fourth quarter. The accounting change has no impact on cash taxes, which will remain at nominal levels, given the approximately $100 million in federal NOLs available. The legal and enterprise restructuring costs previously mentioned were excluded from adjusted EBTA for the quarter, and these amounts were approximately 0.4 million and 0.9 million, respectively, in the third quarter. Adjusted EBTA for the quarter was 12.3 million, up .4% versus last year, due primarily to the gross profit improvement and lower SG&A. Cash generation for the quarter was strong, with $24.7 million in cash from operations, up $6.1 million over last year's third quarter. I'll cover the deployment of operating cash flow, along with some additional color on orders and backlog by segment later in the presentation. Slide eight reflects the organic and portfolio-driven impacts on sales and adjusted EBTA for the quarter versus last year. As mentioned in my opening, the only remaining inorganic impact of note is the bridge grid deck exit. You will see this strategic decision is delivering improved results, with 0.3 million of higher EBTA on $1.3 million in lower sales. In addition, this product line was working capital intensive while generating no financial returns. As a result of our decision to exit this product line, working capital is down $4.6 million from the first half of 2023, improving cash flow and financial flexibility. The legacy portfolio delivered 1.4 million higher adjusted EBTA, despite 8.5 million lower organic sales, driven primarily by the improved gross margin profile of our business portfolio. This improvement is highlighted on the trend charts on slide number nine. The sales trend on the left reflects organic growth we've delivered over the last 12 months. Despite softer second and third quarter commercial conditions primarily impacting the rail segment, the trailing 12 month organic growth rate was still 3%, with a greater sales mix coming from our growth platforms. And the improved gross margin profile achieved as a result of our strategic transformation is evident with the chart on the right. Simply said, our growth platforms are becoming a larger percentage of our overall business, and we believe there is more runway for growth ahead. On the next couple of slides, I'll unpack the key drivers of this improvement by segment. Starting with rail on slide number 10, third quarter revenues totaling 79.5 million were down .5% from last year. The entire decline was organic and driven primarily by weaker commercial conditions in the rail products business unit. Partially offsetting this decline were higher volumes in our rail growth platforms, global friction management, and total track monitoring. In addition, our UK business continues to show signs of recovery after a challenging period for their markets in 2023. Despite the lower sales, rail's margins of .2% were up 340 basis points year over year, driven by strength in our higher margin growth platforms as well as the ongoing recovery of the UK business. Highlining an improving trend, third quarter rail orders increased $2.9 million driven by strengthening rail products and global friction management demand. These increases were tempered by a significant decline in orders in the UK business as we narrow our focus in those markets. Rail backlog was down $5 million entirely due to the UK. Backlog for both the rail products and friction management businesses increased year over year. Turning to infrastructure solutions on slide 11, segment revenue decreased $0.5 million or .9% due to the softness in our protective coatings and bridge product lines within steel products. This was partially offset by growth in precast concrete which grew .5% year over year. Gross margins were up 720 basis points to 24.6%. Gross margins in the 2023 period included the impact from the bridge grid deck exit which reduced gross profit by $3.9 million last year. The remaining improvement was due primarily to improve precast margins which were up 360 basis points. Infrastructure orders were $43.3 million down 7.1 million from the prior year quarter due to softer demand across the steel products business unit primarily in protective coatings. Precast concrete orders were up $3.6 million or .2% year over year. Backlog totaling $120.3 million was down $29.2 million with $4.5 million due to the bridge product line exit. The balance of the decline was realized across the steel products business unit and precast concrete backlog increased $1.6 million versus last year. I'll next cover the key takeaways from our year to date results on slide 12. Organic sales increased .5% partially offset by a 3% decline from divestiture and exit activity. Organic sales growth was driven by the rail segment as a result of the strong growth achieved in the first quarter. While infrastructure sales are down $11.1 million, the majority of the decline is due to divestiture and product line exits. Precast concrete sales are up 1% year over year with an improved margin trend. Gross profit improved $6.1 million while gross profit margins of .2% improved 180 basis points. As a reminder, the 2023 gross profit was adversely impacted by the $3.9 million from the bridge grid deck exit while 2024 gross profit includes a $0.8 million gain on a property sale completed in the second quarter. The balance of the improvement is due to business portfolio changes in line with the company's strategic transformation coupled with overall favorable business mix. Selling general and administrative costs increased $1.6 million year over year. The increases due primarily to $1.2 million in legal costs associated with a resolved legal matter. In addition, current URSS GNA includes $1.1 million in other professional services expenses including $0.8 million associated with the announced restructuring as well as $0.8 million in employee related restructuring charges. These increased expenses were partially offset by lower employment costs and lower bad debt provisions. The $3.5 million net gain realized on the Magnolia JV property sale completed earlier this year as well as the legal costs and restructuring charges incurred were excluded from the 2024 year to date adjusted EBITDA which was $26.3 million up $0.7 million on a year to date basis with further growth expected in Q4. I'll now cover liquidity and leverage on slide 13. Net debt declined $17.7 million during the quarter to $65.4 million largely in line with our expectations. Our normal seasonal working capital cycle should result in net debt continuing to decline through the balance of the year. We increased our free cash flow outlook for the year and our updated guidance with second half free cash flow now expected to range between approximately 30 to $35 million. This outlook considers the funding of corporate initiatives including the enterprise restructuring previously announced and the expected settlement of two defined benefit pension plans, one each in the US and the UK. The total funding for the restructuring is expected to be approximately 1.4 million in 2024 with run rate savings totaling $4.5 million exiting 2024. The settlement of the two pension plans is expected to cost between $2 million and $2.5 million in funding and will eliminate the risk and burden of maintaining these two legacy programs. The outlook also includes the final payment of the Union Pacific legal settlement with $4 million due on December 1st. The completion of this funding requirement which has impacted free cash flow by $8 million a year over the last six years will provide a significant boost to our financial flexibility in 2025 and beyond. As a result of the lower levels of debt and improved profitability, our gross leverage ratio improves 0.8 times to 1.9 times at the end of Q3. This level is also favorable to 2.0 times last year and in line with our longer term leverage goals. We expect the leverage goal will continue to improve through the end of 2024. We also expanded our stock repurchase program using $2.6 million to purchase approximately 127,000 shares or .2% of shares outstanding. Since the program's inception in February of 2023, we've repurchased about 331,000 shares or approximately 3% of common stock outstanding, utilizing total proceeds of $6.6 million. The current repurchase authorization expires in February of 2025 with $8.4 million remaining available. In summary, we continue to believe that the key drivers of strong sustainable free cash flow are in place and should continue to improve through the balance of 2024 and moving into 2025. I'll next revisit our capital allocation priorities outlined on slide 14. We continue to focus on managing leverage levels while opportunistically investing in organic growth initiatives in rail technologies and precast concrete. Our announced restructuring program should further enable investment in growth platforms, given the expected cost savings over the coming quarters. We're comfortable with gross leverage around two times and the prospects for improving profitability and cash generation should provide enhanced opportunities for capital allocation while maintaining this leverage level over time. Capital spending is expected to run at approximately .5% to 2% of sales over the long term, with spending levels slightly elevated in 2024 due to investments in our growth platforms. We continue to consider small tuck-in acquisitions that extend our product portfolio within our growth platforms. While we don't foresee any imminent transactions, we continue to develop the opportunity pipeline with an eye towards inorganic profitable growth in 2025 and beyond. Finally, we plan to continue the prudent execution of our stock buyback program to return excess capital to shareholders while maintaining a balanced view of leverage and growth. My closing comments were referred to slides 15 and 16 covering orders, revenues, and backlog trends by business. The -to-bill ratio over the trailing 12 months was 0.94 to one, up slightly from last quarter, which reflects lower order rates in both segments coupled with strong order book execution and improved lead times. Rail order rates have begun to recover with the trailing 12 month -to-bill ratio at 0.99 to one, including a .3% increase in friction management orders in Q3. Lower orders across the steel products businesses drove the lower infrastructure -to-bill ratio. As mentioned earlier, precast concrete orders were up .2% in the third quarter. And lastly on slide 16, consolidated backlog was down $34 million from the record high level seen last year with both segments experiencing declines. The real segment backlog is down $5 million or .3% due to our UK business as we scale back initiatives in the UK market in line with our strategy. Infrastructure backlog is down $29.2 million or 19.6%, with the entire decline due to steel products. Precast concrete backlog improved $1.6 million or approximately 2%. The $30.8 million decline in steel products backlog is due to the lower demand levels across the business unit as well as $4.5 million from product line exits. Despite the lower backlog levels, we remain optimistic in the outlook for profitable growth with a focus on driving demand generation and our growth platforms of rail technologies and precast concrete. In summary, we had a strong third quarter result and we look forward to finishing 2024 with a similar performance. While our revised financial guidance implies slightly lower organic sales in the fourth quarter, the midpoint of our adjusted EVDA guidance would be a 50% increase over last year's fourth quarter. Coupled with continued progress on cash generation, debt reduction and improved economic returns, we are well positioned to wrap up the year with strong momentum. Thanks for the time this morning. I'll now hand it back over to John for his closing remarks. Thanks,

Bill. Please refer to slide 18 for an overview of key business market drivers underpinning our outlook. Bill mentioned that our trailing 12 month book to bill ratio improved slightly in the third quarter. The improvement was realized in the rail segment with improving demand in both rail products and total friction management. The recovery of market conditions for our UK business remains on track. Here in North America, we started to see some increased coding and project activity in the rail market, which should translate to sell growth for our rail products, revenue in future quarters. Coding activity for total track monitoring solutions also continues on the positive trend. And I'm pleased to say that we're beginning to be awarded business with new product technologies in this space. With the increased focus on rail safety, operating efficiency and reliability, we expect this trend to continue to 2025 and beyond. While demand levels in the rail segment are improving, infrastructure markets are somewhat choppy. Infrastructure book to bill ratio declined in recent quarter due to continuing weakness in steel products. But let me start by highlighting the positive developments in precast concrete. Business in this product group remains robust with demand in our CXT buildings bolstered by the funding from the Great American Outdoors Act, is continuing at record levels. In addition, we are in the process of commissioning a facility in central Florida to produce EnviroCast wall systems. This organic strategic action is to service the booming regional residential and light industrial commercial real estate markets in that area. Our licensed technology offers an attractive solution for builders who are faced with rising costs and construction delays due to lack of labor materials for traditional construction methods. We believe this factory built modular concrete wall system positioned in the weather challenged area of central Florida will lead to substantial precast growth for years to come. In contrast to precast concrete, business activity in steel products remains somewhat soft pretty much across the board, particularly for the bridge forms and gas pipeline coating systems. We are, however, seeing solid coating activity in these markets, indicating some level of pent up demand but project orders have not yet been released. We're also expecting that the creation of the election cycle here in the US will create some certainty for our customers allowing them to proceed with much needed work in the bridge and pipeline infrastructure. In summary, overall prospects for long-term sustainable growth should remain strong and lighter than the infrastructure investment super cycle we expect for years to come. Most importantly, demand levels in our growth platforms of rail technologies and precast concrete remain robust, which will translate into expanding profitable growth and returns. As you know, I like to revisit our investment thesis each quarter. The third quarter is an excellent example of why we believe LV Foster is an attractive investment as depicted on slide 19. So let me unpack this. First, we've taken the strategic steps necessary to transform our business portfolio and the results were clearly demonstrated with robust growth and profitability delivered in third quarter despite lower sales level. Second, the drivers for long-term organic growth are in place. While the third quarter total sales were down year over year due to the weakness of steel price and rail products, organic growth was realized in both platforms of rail technologies and precast concrete. The multiple year infrastructure investment super cycle we expect for years to come should translate into steady growth for our returns platforms and accelerate growth for rail technologies and precast concrete. Third, our capital light business model coupled with steady profitability improvements and the completion of our Union Pacific settlement payments should translate into increased free cash flow moving to 2025. Our third quarter results highlight the cash generating power of our business. Fourth, we have a disciplined capital allocation approach with multiple drivers that have been deployed in creating value for our shareholders. As evidence of that, we expanded our stock repurchase program in third quarter and will continue to deploy capital across our priorities. Of course, this is in a balanced, prudent and strategic way. So in summary, we believe our strategy is sound and our execution along these four pillars should deliver improving results through 2024 and beyond. On slide 20, I'd like to close today's call by thanking our team for their commitment to our strategy and congratulate them on a strong third quarter. If you recall, Bill and I have been highlighting that we expect to deliver strong profitability growth in cash generation in the second half of 2024. As you can see, we delivered on both in the third quarter and we are well positioned to finish 2024 in the same way. Thank you for your time and continuing interest in LB Foster. I'll turn it back to the operator for the Q&A session.

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw a question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we create our Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Chris Taki with Singular Research. Go ahead, Chris.

Hi, John and Bill, good morning. Hi, Chris. So just, I'm looking at the 2025 revenue goal targets. Can you help kind of shed some color on what, I guess what we're expected to see, I guess next year, that will really help boost that revenue number to get to the target?

Yeah, good question. Thanks, Chris. We're getting kind of line of sight, what's going on with the balance of the quarter and right now activity is strong. If you see what our guidance shows us landing between 530 and 540 for the balance of the year on sales and then uplifting with revenue targets for 580 to 620 next year. So I'm sure that's where your question's going and that's where it's happening. It's coming in our growth platforms and it's coming through sales. We feel very good about our margins. I think we're about .2% here to date with a strong quarter of 23.8%. So we feel very, very good at what's going on in our margins and our portfolio. So it's all about the organics. I mentioned what was happening right now in Florida, which is an extension of our recent acquisition that we made in Tennessee. So we feel very good what's going on and continue to grow our concrete business. We've built talk in great depth to what's happening with total track monitoring and our friction management business. Both those two are doing extremely, extremely well and we have great opportunities, all organic line of sight that we're gonna continue to build off these growth platforms through the balance of this year and more poorly into next year.

Okay, thanks. And then growth margins of .8% this quarter. That was good. Was this quarter more of an anomaly quarter or how should we be looking at growth margins next quarter and into 2025?

Well, you can see the number, if you look at 2025, it's between 22 and what, 23%. So obviously this is a higher run rate. So Chris, this is our strategy. Our strategy is to continue to transform the company technology innovation company and we're doing it. So it was a very good quarter and as Bill and I both mentioned, we haven't seen numbers like this since it's been 10 years but that's what we expect in this business. So we are going to continue to push the top line but it's really about bottom line return by managing our SG&A and continuing to get these margins as it relates to bringing innovation to the marketplace to sit in the rail and the precast markets.

Okay, great. Thanks for the answers. Thanks Chris.

Thank you Chris for your question. Our next question comes from John Blair with Ascend Wealth Advisors. Go ahead, John.

Thank you. It's bare. There's no L in there. No Ls in a couple of months. Anyways, good morning John and Bill. A couple of questions here for you. On your slide 18, you are showing commissioning a facility in central Florida and apologize if I missed a comment on this but how long do you believe it'll take to get that up and running and what kind of capex is required to build that facility?

We've been working on this for a while. It's a brownfield installation so that means we're partnering with a very large precaster, one of the largest precasters in central Florida. We felt that was the best way to come to the market, enter the market with the infrastructure over there is related to making the product. And then of course we bring in the commercial side and the technical side, the engineering side. So it's a wonderful partnership that we forged. It's been now three years we started a relationship with that company. So we feel very, very good about it. Grout has been broken. We are expecting to be making our first product by the end of the year, end of this year. So capital based upon the way we set it up, we were targeting between three and a half to $4 million in capital. So again, if you go back to investment pieces, we talked about being capital white. This is another great example where we really go in and we do it the right way. We spend enough money, but it's not a heavy capital call. It's about taking our products to the market, but doing it with channel partners that really know what they're doing. And more importantly, we're very excited about these opportunities in the central Florida market.

Okay, and then are your projections for 25 on far revenue build in a run rate for this kind of, for this particular facility in

that

market?

Yeah, so if you go back to what Chris Sakai's question was, cause we gotta increase the sales that's going year over year. So keep in mind our strategy has been about managing our portfolio. So we've been really taking that top line down over the last couple of years, right? From 2020 on. That's behind us now. So our portfolio is in place and now we're gonna continue to grow and much of that revenue is coming to all, in fact, all of us coming to organics. And this is a great example of

it. And so that three to four million of CapEx towards this project is basically behind you as well, right?

Yeah, of course we're spending a little bit. Yeah, okay. The major tranche of it is behind us,

yes. Yeah, so adding the last four million of the Union Pacific deal, get that behind you. That's a pretty nice swing.

Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. Yeah, that's

- Pretty significant. My other question, yeah, my other question for you, you mentioned about bolt-ons. Would targeted bolt-ons be focused on US operations as opposed to Europe or elsewhere?

Yes. Today about 95% of our sales is North American. We're not gonna stray away from that. We feel very bullish of what's going on. We do believe there's investment super cycle. We do believe there's a lot of pent up demand right now. And I think we're in a good place here in the US specifically to take advantage of that for three years to

come. Right, very good. Thanks very much for taking the questions and hope to see you soon. Take

care. Take care, John.