Manitex International, Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Manitoux International Second Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in listen mode only, and following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press asterisk zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Wednesday, August 7, 2024. I would now like to turn the conference over to Paul Bartoli, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Manatex International's second quarter 2024 results conference call. Leading the call today are CEO Michael Coffey and CFO Joseph Doolin. We issued a press release earlier today detailing our second quarter 2024 operational financial results. This release, together with the accompanying presentation materials, are publicly available in the investor relations section of our corporate website at www.manatexinternational.com. I would like to remind you that management's commentary and responses to questions on today's conference call may include forward-looking statements, which by their nature are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Although these forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, actual results could differ materially. For a discussion of some of the factors that could cause results to differ, please refer to the risk factor section of our latest filings with the SEC. Additionally, please note that you can find reconciliations of historical non-GAAP financial measures in the press release issued earlier today and in the appendix of this presentation. Today's call will begin with prepared remarks from CEO Michael Coffey, who will provide a review of our recent business performance including an update on the progress we have made on our new Elevating Excellence initiative, followed by a financial update from our CFO, Joseph Doolin. At the conclusion of these prepared remarks, we will open the line for your questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mike.

Thank you, Paul, and good morning to everyone joining us on the call today. During the second quarter, we continued to make important progress on our Elevating Excellence strategy, and as a result, we produced further margin expansion, generated strong adjusted EBITDA growth, and further reduced our net leverage. Our second quarter performance was highlighted by growth in the rental operations, gained momentum in our cost reduction initiatives, and ongoing process improvements. This resulted in nearly 20% year-over-year growth in adjusted EBITDA. Our second quarter adjusted EBITDA grew 137 basis points to 10.6% of revenues. This was our fourth consecutive quarter with an adjusted EBITDA margin of greater than 10%, generating adjusted EBITDA of roughly 33 million on a trailing 12-month basis. This level of performance, which has come despite some mixed and market trends, is a direct result of our successful execution of our strategy, Elevating Excellence. The business is performing at higher levels, and we have confidence that we can build on a track record of consistent performance. With that, please turn your attention to page three of our presentation, where we will begin with a discussion of our second quarter performance. Our second quarter lifting equipment revenue increased 2%, driven by growth from our North American operations. We made further progress in improving our manufacturing velocity, which also benefited the results. Order intake is slowed in the year, likely due to increased interest rates. Higher interest rates are slowing machine replacement cycles. They are also lowering the overall stocking levels maintained by our dealers. We are not seeing fundamental weakness in construction outlooks, however. To the contrary, public work spending is increasing, as are other key end market drivers affecting Manatex. Some customers have made requests to push out delivery schedules for the aforementioned reasons. We are accommodating these customers where possible with scheduling requests. While high interest rates are forcing dealers to delay replacing stock due to carrying costs, we remain confident in the long-term drivers in our key markets, so we believe this is likely a short-term issue. However, until we get some more clarity on macroeconomic outlooks, the timing of rate cuts, and the US election, We think customers will remain cautious in the near term. This is reflected in our orders during the quarter and our ending backlog levels. That said, we remain focused on our growth initiatives and are aggressively moving forward with our strategy to increase our market share, expand our dealer network, and drive product innovation. We continue to make good progress on our dealer expansion strategy, which is an important aspect in our goal to increase the distribution of our PM group products in North America. We are working with identified potential partners and remain on schedule. There is a significant interest in demand from our dealer community, and our portfolio of articulated lifting solutions in North America and we look forward to updating you on our progress later this year. We had a strong quarter in our rental segment, with revenues increasing 15% in the second quarter. The increase is owing to both geographic and fleet expansions. Demand trends in our North Texas markets remain robust, and we are benefiting from our increased investment in our rental fleet. Our location in Lubbock also continues to perform well, and we are very pleased with the progress at this newest location. Second quarter gross margins were up 220 basis points from the same period last year, driven by increased manufacturing throughput, lower material costs, and increased contributions from our rental segment. We continue to be encouraged by our progress on our supply and sourcing initiatives. Supply chain pressures have been a constant headwind for both Manatex and the industry. We are pleased to finally be seeing some benefits from the lower material costs flow through our results. As we discussed, last year we reorganized our global supply chain structure, and the new initiatives and our team's hard work producing positive results. In keeping with this, we added new suppliers designed to improve collaboration and lower our cost. We look forward to furthering these efficiencies and improving our supply chain going forward. These operational improvements enabled us to generate second quarter adjusted EBITDA of 8.1 million an increase of nearly 20% from the same period last year. We are very proud of this progress, and our trailing 12-month EBITDA is up roughly 25% from the prior 12-year period. Another important component of our strategy, Elevating Excellence, has been a focus on disciplined financial management and capital allocation. We reduced our net debt by over $2 million during the quarter, further driving down our net leverage ratio 2.5 times at the end of the quarter. Our progress on our capital discipline in recent quarters has been somewhat masked by industry-wide supply chain challenges, so we are happy to see the reduction of net debt in the quarter, and we expect to further reduce our working capital levels, positioning us for a strong year of cash flow conversion and allowing us to drive further reduction in net debt as the year progresses. Elevating excellence, our three-year strategy has delivered improved results and the business is performing at record levels. Despite interest rate headwinds, our core end markets are strong and customer relationships are improving. While the current macroeconomic trends remain uncertain, We are committed to executing on what is within our control. These controllables include improving our processes, cost of production improvements, and new dealer partnership channels in North America. It is this discipline focused on our strategic priorities that has enabled us to deliver strong adjusted EBITDA growth and margin expansion during 2024. despite the slowing in order trends we are experiencing in recent quarters. As a result of order trends, we are lowering our full year 2024 revenue guidance to a range of $290 million to $300 million. However, we continue to expect our 2024 adjusted EBITDA to be in a range of $30 million to $34 million, demonstrating our strong execution against operational priorities. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Joe.

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. I will provide some additional details on the quarter and give an update on our liquidity and balance sheet. Turning to slide nine, net revenue for the second quarter was $76.2 million. or an increase of 3.7% compared to the same period last year. The growth during the quarter was driven by further improvements in manufacturing velocity in our equipment business and strong growth in our rental operations. The lifting equipment segment revenue was $67.9 million during the second quarter, an increase of 2.4% versus the prior year period, with growth driven by the North American truck crane sales. Rental equipment segment revenue was $8.4 million in the second quarter, an increase of 15% from the prior year period. The growth was driven by continued favorable demand trends in our North Texas markets and our investment in fleet growth. As we discussed last quarter, based on favorable market trends in our key markets, we have made the decision to pull forward much of our expected capital spending on fleet expansion into the early part of 2024. And this was an important contributor to our growth during the quarter. As of June 30th, total backlog was $116 million, down from $154 million at the end of Q1. Our backlog ended the quarter with North America representing approximately 50% of the total, with international the remaining 50%. Gross profit was $17.2 million during the second quarter of 24, up from $14.9 million during the prior year period, for an increase of 15%. The increase in gross profit was driven by increased manufacturing throughput, lower material costs driven by supply chain initiatives, and increased contribution from the rental segment. As a result of these factors, gross profit margin increased 220 basis points to 22.5% in the quarter. SC&A expense for the quarter was $11.1 million, up modestly from $10.8 million in the same period last year. R&D expense was $0.9 million during the quarter, also up very modestly from the prior year period. We've been able to hold our operating expense levels basically flat in recent quarters, despite the revenue growth and investments that we are making in the business. And we expect this trend to continue moving forward, driving continued margin benefits. Operating income was 5.1 million during the quarter, up from 3.3 million for the same period last year. Second quarter operating margin was 6.7%, up over 200 basis points from last year. The year-over-year improvement in operating income and operating margin was driven by the improved gross margin performance and operating leverage. Adjusted EBITDA was $8.1 million for the second quarter, or 10.6% of sales, up from $6.8 million, or 9.3% of sales, from the same period last year, for an increase of 19%. Net income was 1.5 million or 7 cents per diluted share for the second quarter, compared to net income of $400,000 or 2 cents per share for the same period last year. Adjusted net income was 2.2 million or 11 cents per diluted share in the second quarter, up from adjusted net income of 1.7 million or 8 cents per share for the same period last year. Adjusted net income for the second quarter excludes $700,000 of stock compensation and other non-recurring expenses. Now turning to our balance sheet on slide 10. As of June 30th, net debt was $83.9 million, which is down over $2 million from the end of the first quarter, despite the pull forward of some capital spending as a result of our cash flow benefited from solid operating results. As a result, net leverage improved to 2.5 times at the end of the second quarter compared to 2.9 times at the end of the fourth quarter of 23. We continue to expect our working capital usage to further normalize in the coming quarters, which could result in a reduction in inventory levels, leading to improved free cash flow conversion and even further reduced leverage levels by the end of the year. As of June 30th, total cash and available liquidity was approximately $33 million. That completes our prepared remarks. Operator, we are now ready for the question and answer portion of our call.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the number one on your touchtone phone, and you will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press the star followed by the number two. If you use a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for the first question. Your first question comes from Ted Jackson from Northland Security.

Good morning, Ted.

Ted.

Sorry about that. Sorry about that. I was on mute, but I unmuted. So, again, good morning. Congrats on the quarter to the two of you. You can hear me now. Good morning. Yeah, we can hear you. Good morning. OK. All right. So I got I got a handful of questions for you. So let's start with the Lyft truck business. You know, I mean, you know, talking about weakness and bookings, you're going through the backlog. When you look into that business and, you know, the challenges that you're seeing, can you give some color with regards to it from a geographic standpoint? I mean, is it U.S.? Is there some European component in it? And then also from, like, a market vertical, if you would, you know, like, Some of, I call it your peers, have talked about some hesitancy within the utility section in the U.S., for example. That'd be my first question.

Sure, sure. Ted, good morning and appreciate the questions. You know, there's some areas of geographic concern or maybe lack of geographic concern. For example, the areas that are exposed to mining and minerals are, are completely unaffected. They're just moving forward with a lot of strength. And we had some early on hesitancy in some European markets as customers were waiting for some tax guidance, capital investment tax guidance that came out in our favor. And so these are anecdotal requests for the most part or anecdotal points of information. I'd say that most of the concern this year is in North America. And, you know, it's an election year. I think that is often a catch-all. But unequivocally, the overwhelming theme that we're hearing from our customers is concern with regard to infrastructure. And it's stalled or slowed normalized equipment replacement. You know, where used machines, let's say you have a crane operator, this is theoretical, but if you have a crane operator that has 10 to 12 assets in their fleet and seven or eight of them are ready to replace, they're holding on to those longer to see what happens with interest rates. And dealers are being more careful in replacing fleet during this process primarily because of carrying costs. And that seems to translate in just about any market where we have dealer inventory. As far as end markets in particular, I'm aware of some of those comments in the utility range. I think most of that centers around excessive bucket truck costs inventory, which we really are not participating in, we're not seeing any signals of hesitancy with utility construction for our products and or the pending demand due to public works projects. To the contrary, I think there's a lot of construction work to be done just on a hesitancy with regard to carrying costs and interest and things that are, I suppose, out of everyone's control.

Okay. Question number two, going over to the rental side of the house. You know, listening to, I mean, for instance, Caterpillar and also some of the other larger rental shops, you know, there's a general commentary with regards to, let's call it a a softening with regards to, um, rates and utilization. And, you know, it sounds like you're not seeing that, or is that any concern to you? And is it just because you happen to be in North Texas that that's the reason? Yeah. I mean, just maybe more color around, you know, why you're seeing strength where other people are actually starting to talk a little bit more about kind of weakness within that area.

Well, yes, yes. So, so our, um, No one is completely insulated to any of this. We have not experienced any downturn. To the contrary, the markets that we're in in North Texas are strong. They're smaller, but we are playing in a position of strength in markets that are growing and have a lot of activity. That favors us. Frankly, we bought a really capable an exceptional company in that space. Rayburn Reynolds has been fantastic. So, you know, we're keeping our finger to the pulse of what's happening with our customers. We've had a couple customers run into a few problems, and we've been able to avoid some of the associated downfalls with regard to that. But overall, these little markets are performing really, really well. And we couldn't be happier for the expansion that we had in Lubbock. I mean, we're just over a year in that new location. The team is performing well. The market is performing well. Joe mentioned before that we pulled forward some capital investments to get ahead of that curve. And that fleet is very well utilized. And it's showing in the numbers. So, you know, I'd There's always going to be problems in any economic downturns. These areas are just less impacted. They're more insulated from those types of downturns.

Third question, I have one more after this, is moving over to the U.S. market and the effort to bring your knuckle products from Italy here. It sounds like you're still on track to, you know, have an announcement with regards to some distribution partners there. In the past, you've signaled that it would be, you know, a couple, maybe as many as three. So my first question towards this is, is that still kind of stand that we could see, you know, a couple of distribution partners in that area? And then secondly, as a follow up into that, Given that these trucks are really coming out of Italy and being imported, at least for the time being, how are you going to handle the ability to support those distributors in terms of parts and service, namely within parts? I mean, are you going to need to bring some inventory level of spare parts from Italy into the U.S. and put that on your balance sheet to ensure you're providing the support level that you're Dealers will need, I mean, kind of all the color around that. I'm going to have one more afterwards.

Yeah. Yeah. I really like the questions. So, you know, we're speaking in a bit of cryptic terms and not naming names because we're in active discussions with new dealers and it's a competitive market. So we don't want to signal what we're doing to our competitors. We are in active discussions with five North American dealers, and some of them have placed preliminary orders to getting familiar with the products. We're pretty excited about the individuals that we're talking with. We're very excited about the markets that they're serving. And the way that we've gone about this for years and the way that we're going about it now is we're engaging with them. They're ordering a handful of products. They're testing the markets. We're doing price and customer feedback testing. And it'll crescendo with an announcement that will be a partnership announcement between these dealers and us. So our expectation, Ted, is that we're expecting to have two or three appointments this year, and that's why we're talking to five. We're actually talking to many more than that, but there are five that are on our list. high target list, if I can use that phrase. Regarding the support of the product, the question is really insightful. Our whole strategy in North America was to build an organization structure that essentially could act like a manufacturer support arm in North America. And that's been built. We put that structure in Georgetown. We have a team of product support product managers, engineering. Even though we're not manufacturing the crane in the U.S., we're supporting the crane from the U.S., and that's by design. And with that has come high-moving parts stock that needed to be put in place in North America, and that's also done. We actually brought critical parts to the U.S. to support the products that we're marketing in the United States. And we want to make certain that these products are really well supported, the customer is getting strong technicals, and if there is a part failure or damage, that we can get them back online and running quickly.

That's actually really encouraging news. Okay, my last one. Go ahead, Ted. Go ahead. No, no, no, no. Keep going.

I just wanted to say, yeah, the balance sheet, you're not going to see a change in the balance sheet because the parts, the fast-moving parts are small. They're sensors and valves and seal kits and things that can down a machine and really spoil a workday for a customer. So we've put those things in stock, and we're working closely with our dealers to make certain that they've got the right products or right parts support in play to support their markets. So it's part of elevating excellence. It's a change from what we've done in the past, and we feel like it's going to serve the market well and will give us a longer standing with market share.

Okay, and then my last question, and this is probably more for Joe because I don't want to leave him out of all the fun. But I didn't notice this with the first quarter, but I did notice it with this. In your reconciliation tables on the last page of your press release, when you reconcile to your adjusted EBITDA, the interest expense line item, on those tables differs from what's in the income statement. And it did that in this quarter, and it actually did it in the first quarter. And honestly, I didn't notice it in the first quarter. And so it's just a little nitpick as to, because in the historical data for last fiscal year, it was the same. So what's changed that makes that happen? Why is there a disconnect between the income statement and the reconciliation tables?

Interesting.

I was after getting in the weeds.

No, that's fine. It's interest income is the difference. So in the past, we had netted the interest income against the interest expense prior year. This year, we have it split out separate. But for purposes of the reconciliation table, we net them.

Okay. So I just, yeah, I look and it's like, why doesn't this foot? And then I went historically and I realized that something had changed and I'd missed it. So that is it for me. Thank you very much for the time. I'll talk to you guys later. Thank you, Tim.

Thanks, Doug.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I am now handing the conference over to Michael Coffey.

Thank you, operator. And I just want to take a moment to thank our investors for their work with us, their faith in what we're doing, and their interest in our business means a lot to us. And I'd also be remiss if I didn't recognize Michael. the employees and professionals at Manatex that are working so hard this year and last to deliver on these results. We have a fantastic team, and we're very excited about where we're going. If we don't connect with you in this quarter, we want to wish everyone well, and we look forward to connecting with you soon. And let me thank everyone for your interest in Manatex and your time on the call. This concludes our call today.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.