Federal Signal Corporation

Greetings and welcome to Federal Signal Corporation First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host today, Mr. Ian Hudson, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Good morning, and welcome to Federal Signal's first quarter 2021 conference call. I'm Ian Hudson, the company's chief financial officer. Also with me on the call today is Jennifer Sherman, our president and chief executive officer. We will refer to some presentation slides today, as well as to the earnings news release, which we issued this morning. The slides can be followed online by going to our website, federalsignal.com, clicking on the investor call icon, and signing into the webcast. We have also posted the slide presentation and the earnings release under the investor tab on our website. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that some of our comments made today may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to the safe harbor language found in today's news release and in federal signal filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These documents are available on our website. Our presentation also contains some measures that are not in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. In our earnings release and filings, we reconcile these non-GAAP measures to GAAP measures. In addition, we will file our Form 10-Q for later today. I'm going to begin today by providing some detail on our first quarter results before turning the call over to Jennifer to provide her perspective on current market conditions, our progress against strategic initiatives, and our outlook for the remainder of the year. After our prepared comments, Jennifer and I will address your questions. Our consolidated first quarter financial results are provided in today's earnings release. In summary, we delivered another strong quarter with record orders and operating results exceeding our expectations, despite ongoing pandemic-related disruptions. We also had to navigate through the February ice storms in the south, which caused us to temporarily close our facilities in Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi. Fortunately, we did not experience any significant damage, but we did lose several days of production. Despite these challenges, the teams recovered well, with both groups delivering adjusted EBITDA margins at or above levels achieved in the first quarter of last year. That feat is even more impressive given the strength of the prior quarter, which included record production at our largest facility and minimal impact from the pandemic. Turning now to the numbers where consolidated net sales for the quarter were $279 million compared to $286 million last year. Consolidated operating income for the quarter was $27.8 million compared to $32.3 million last year. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $41.2 million compared to $43.9 million last year. That translates to a margin of 14.8% in Q1 this year, compared to 15.3% last year. Net income for the quarter was $22.2 million, compared to $23.4 million last year. That equates the gap EPS for the quarter of $0.36 per share, compared to $0.38 per share last year. On an adjusted basis, EPS for the quarter was $0.38 per share, compared to $0.39 per share last year. Order intake for the quarter was outstanding, with orders of $384 million representing our highest quarterly orders on record and an increase of $80 million, or 26%, compared to Q1 last year. Consolidated backlog at the end of the quarter also set a new company record at $410 million. That represents an increase of $9 million compared to Q1 last year, and an increase of $106 million or 35% from the end of 2020. In terms of our group results, ESG's net sales for the quarter were $228 million compared to $233 million last year. ESG's operating income for the quarter was $27.1 million compared to $29.4 million last year. ESG's adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $39.3 million compared to $40 million in the prior year. That translates to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.2% in line with last year. ESG reported orders of $324 million in Q1 this year, an improvement of $87 million, or 37%, compared to last year. SSG's net sales for the quarter were $51 million this year, compared to $53 million last year. Operating income for the quarter was $7.2 million compared to $7.4 million last year. SSG's adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was consistent with the prior year at around $8.2 million, while its adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter improved to 16.2% of 80 basis points from Q1 last year. SSG's orders for the quarter were $60 million compared to $66 million last year. Corporate operating expenses for the quarter was $6.5 million, up from $4.5 million last year. The increase was primarily due to an unfavorable year-over-year variance of $2.6 million associated with changes in mark-to-market adjustments of post-retirement reserves. These market-based adjustments benefited our earnings in Q1 last year by approximately $0.02 per share, but were unfavorable in Q1 this year. Turning now to the consolidated income statement, where the decrease in sales contributed to a $6 million reduction in gross profit. Consolidated gross margin for the quarter was 24.7% compared to 26.1% last year. As a percentage of sales, our selling, engineering, general, and administrative expenses for the quarter were down 20 basis points from Q1 last year, despite the unfavorable mark-to-mark variance I just mentioned. Other items affecting the quarterly results include a $700,000 increase in other income and a $400,000 decrease in interest expense. Tax expense for the quarter was down $2.2 million, largely due to lower pre-tax income levels and higher excess tax benefits from stock compensation activity. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 18.4% compared to 23.5% last year, The lower tax rate in Q1 this year was in line with our expectations after we had included an estimate of excess tax benefits. At this time, we continue to expect our full-year effective tax rate to be approximately 24%. On an overall gap basis, we therefore earned $0.36 per share in Q1 this year compared with $0.38 per share in Q1 last year. To facilitate earnings comparisons, we typically adjust our gap earnings per share for unusual items recorded in the current or prior year quarters. In the current year quarter, we made adjustments to GAAP earnings per share to exclude acquisition-related expenses, coronavirus-related expenses, and purchase counting expense effects. On this basis, our adjusted earnings for the quarter were $0.38 per share compared with $0.39 per share last year. Looking now at cash flow, where we generated $26 million of cash from operations during the quarter, an improvement of $21 million over Q1 last year. We ended the quarter with $168 million of net debt and availability under our credit facility of $270 million. Our current net debt leverage ratio remains low, even after funding the acquisition of OSW during the quarter for approximately $53 million. Our strong financial position allows us to continue to invest in organic growth initiatives and pursue strategic acquisitions like OSW. At the same time, we remain committed to pursuing strategic acquisitions and returning cash to stockholders through dividends and opportunistic share repurchases. On that note, we paid dividends of $5.5 million during the quarter, reflecting an increased dividend of $0.09 per share, and we recently announced a similar dividend for the second quarter. That concludes my comments, and I would now like to turn the call over to Jennifer.

Thank you, Ian. It's been over a year now since the pandemic began, and while there have been many challenges along the way, I remain in awe of how our teams have responded, modifying our work practices to keep employees safe, exercising flexibility in handling uncertain market conditions, and finding new ways to serve our customers. Our facilities continue to experience some ongoing COVID-related disruptions, but conditions are improving. Our company-wide efforts to raise awareness about vaccines, assist eligible employees in gaining access to vaccines, and encourage participation levels are paying off. And we are pleased to report that our domestic employee vaccination rates are ahead of the national average. In fact, in Illinois, where we have three of our largest facilities and the corporate office, over 60% of our employees are now fully vaccinated. With that, we've seen an uptick in our sales resources traveling, reinforcing our customer-centric value proposition, and contributing to greater order intake. As in the last two quarters, we again saw improved demand for our products, with our first quarter order intake setting a new record for the company, surpassing the previous high by over $50 million. Our first quarter orders reflect strength in most of our end markets, and growing confidence in a post-pandemic recovery, which seems to be further solidified by recent economic stimulus. That sentiment seems to be shared widely by our dealer partners and customers across most of our businesses. Demand for sewer cleaners remains strong, with first quarter orders up 30% year over year and almost double the amount recorded last quarter. Safe digging is also continuing to gain acceptance. Over the last couple of years, approximately 70% of our sewer cleaner orders have included an optional safe digging package, which allows a sewer cleaner to also be used for hydro or vacuum excavation purposes. We saw similar trends this quarter with customer appreciation for the safety and efficiency benefits of safe digging gaining momentum. At MRL, our road marking and line removal business, first quarter orders were the highest quarterly level since we acquired the business in 2019. And with its planned expansion now complete, we are well positioned to benefit from potential infrastructure investment. Our road marking services business, Highmark, also won an $8 million striping contract during the quarter. Since the fourth quarter of last year, we've also seen an uptick in our industrial end markets with improved orders for our guzzler and jet stream products heading into the spring cleaning season. In addition, our dump body and trailer businesses reported strong organic order growth of 28% across their end markets, achieving record backlogs. While our backlog is at a record high, there are a few factors that may limit us from realizing the full benefits from the operating leverage that we typically experience with backlogs at these levels. The first factor that many of you will be aware of is the impact of the global semiconductor shortage on Chiasi availability. We started to see some supply tightness late last year, and our teams were proactive in securing additional chassis and recommending to our customers and dealer partners that they do the same for those orders where they supply the chassis. As a reminder, that is about 50% of the time for ESG businesses, excluding TBEI, where the customer almost always supplies the chassis. We were recently notified by one of our chassis suppliers that they are temporarily suspending production of certain chassis for up to 90 days in light of the semiconductor shortage. The issue primarily impacts our sewer cleaners, safe digging trucks, and certain street sweeper models. The situation remains fluid, and the teams have been working hard to mitigate the impact of this short-term disruption. Based on the data we have received, we expect the situation will be resolved during the third quarter, with production expected to ramp back quickly thereafter. Because we do not rely on any one single chassis manufacturer, and with the proactive actions we took, we have been able to pivot quickly to minimize the financial impact. For example, at Elgin, our team was able to adjust production schedules so that we built a higher concentration of the three-wheel Pelican sweepers during the period of the expected impact. As a reminder, for that product line, we actually manufacture the chassis ourselves. At our Streeter facility, where we make sewer cleaners and safe digging trucks, we have had an ongoing effort to secure additional chassis from other manufacturers. However, because of lead times, On certain chassis, there's a period of approximately two weeks where we have a shortage at factor. With the goal of optimizing efficiency, the teams have worked diligently to manage the schedule so that this brief pause will occur over the July 4th holiday. With the additional chassis supply that we have secured, we are expecting a ramp-up in production thereafter. Like most companies, we are also experiencing rising commodity costs. As our teams have done in the past, we took proactive measures such as locking in pricing and securing availability of steel based on forecasted needs. Our teams are working diligently to mitigate the impacts of rising commodity costs by implementing price increases and surcharges where possible. As it relates to labor availability, Our ongoing commitment to environmental, social, and governance continues to benefit our company. Investment in our employees differentiates us and our ability to attract labor at the majority of our facilities. I now want to take a few minutes to provide an update on our strategic growth initiative. We remain bullish about safe digging prospects, and with noted industrial end market recoveries and infrastructure spend optimism throughout the channel, We are confident safe digging trends will continue to improve. Our TruVac safe digging product line portfolio includes a complete range of truck-mounted safe digging equipment with applications across a number of end markets. We were pleased to see that TruVac product demonstrations for the quarter were up 70% from last year. As I just mentioned, these education efforts are also having a positive impact on sewer cleaner demand with the inclusion of the optional safe digging package turning our sewer cleaners into a multipurpose vehicle. We also continue to make progress with our aftermarkets initiative with aftermarkets revenue for the quarter improving by 6% and representing a higher share of ESG's revenues for the quarter at around 27%. We continue to closely monitor rental fleet utilization and remain disciplined in making decisions about the size and composition of our fleet. As part of that process, we have seen healthy used equipment sales in recent months and an uptick in rentals. We are monitoring the current COVID situation in Canada with Ontario and many other provinces being subject to some of the most extreme stay-at-home measures since the start of the pandemic. While we have not experienced any significant financial impact to date, we may see some impact in our Canadian markets over the next few months, which is typically a seasonally strong period for equipment rentals and part sales. On the organic growth front, we have several new product launches in the pipeline, a few of which I'll touch on today. Within ESG, street sweeper electrification remains a key area of investment. We have previously talked about our first orders for our hybrid electric BroomBear Street Sweeper, which are currently expected to ship later this year. This hybrid model uses both battery energy and either CNG or diesel power for sweeping, with performance designed to meet or exceed current sweeper performance. The hybrid BroomBear is now being demonstrated by our dealer channel, primarily on the west coast and then moving to the southeast, and the feedback to date has been encouraging. In addition, development of a hybrid version of our most popular line of street sweepers, the Pelican, is underway. The plug-in hybrid electric Pelican sweeper is assembled and undergoing testing. The product demonstrations plan for the second half of this year. Within our dump body and trailer product portfolios, we are also realizing benefits from new product introductions. During the quarter, products launched over the last year equated to organic growth of about 4%. Within SSG, based on the nature of its product portfolio, our innovation pipeline typically includes a higher volume of new product introductions and enhancements that, while individually may not have a significant financial impact, collectively aggregate to meaningful organic growth. For example, we launched production of our MicroPulse line during the quarter. The MicroPulse is a low-profile, high-performance LED lighting product for both first responders and work truck vehicles. The line includes production of both new product models and those that were previously outsourced. Insourcing this line, which leverages automated laser technology, is estimated to improve the related margins and drive annual savings of over a million dollars. In addition, we are currently on track to launch a low-cost light bar in the second quarter. In addition to these organic growth initiatives, M&A will continue to contribute meaningfully to our future growth. During the quarter, we completed the acquisition of OSW, a leading manufacturer of dump bodies and a customer upfitter of truck equipment and trailers. The acquisition provides considerable opportunity for long-term value creation through the application of our 80-20 improvement principles, organic growth initiatives, and additional bolt-on acquisitions. Last week, we held an initial 80-20 improvement training session at OSW, which was well received by the teams. Integration is well underway, and while it is still early days, OSW was off to a solid start in the first quarter. Our M&A pipeline has been active, to say the least, and it's been exciting to be back on the road visiting potential targets. As Ian noted in his comments, our financial position and liquidity are strong, enabling us to pursue strategic acquisitions, and there are a number of M&A opportunities that our teams are currently reviewing. We have also continued to make significant investments in our existing plans to add capacity, to support our long-term growth, and to gain operational efficiencies through automation. As we continue to optimize our manufacturing footprint, we are evaluating our long-term strategy with respect to our Elgin and University Park production facilities in Illinois. Both properties are currently leased at above market rates with lease terms ending in 2023. We are currently looking at opportunities and alternative facilities in the surrounding areas as we proactively plan for a potential move. The American Rescue Plan COVID relief package includes approximately $1.9 trillion of economic stimulus with approximately $350 billion going to state, local, and territorial governments with the goal of keeping frontline workers employed, distributing the vaccine, increasing testing, reopening schools, and maintaining essential services. We are actively educating our dealer channel about the stimulus program and have distributed the latest estimate allocation of the $350 billion of state and local government support by jurisdiction to our dealer channel to share with its customer base. As a provider of equipment used for essential services like sewer cleaning and street sweeping, Federal Signal stands to benefit meaningly from additional aid that may be provided to state and local sources for these purposes. As was evident with our first quarter order intake, our dealer partners remain optimistic about market conditions in 2021, noting that both corporate and sales tech collections appear to have held up better than originally anticipated, which should add stability to their revenue sources. We expect that a long-term infrastructure bill will provide visibility for project planning and could see capital equipment demand increases in areas such as roads, bridges, broadband, clean energy, and public transportation buildup. We anticipate that this would provide benefits for the majority of our product offerings, including equipment sales and rentals of dump trucks and trailers, safe digging trucks, road marking equipment, sewer cleaners, and street sweepers. We have positioned Federal Signal in a manner in which we fully participate in the post-pandemic recovery by increasing capacity and within our facilities, reducing lead times to a level where we can better respond to customer needs, investing in new product development, and gaining market share. Turning now to our outlook for the rest of the year, orders thus far this year have exceeded our expectations, fueled by a combination of new product launches, ongoing execution against our strategic initiatives, and strong recovery in our end markets. With certain chassis manufacturers temporarily impacted by the global semiconductor shortage, we are currently encountering some short-term production challenges at our largest facility. Our teams are working diligently to navigate through this disruption, as they have in the past when faced with similar situations. After factoring in the impact expected over the next couple months, At this time, we are maintaining our adjusted EPS outlook for the year of $1.73 to $1.85. With our recently completed capacity expansion at several facilities, we are well positioned once the current chassis uncertainty eases. Demand for our products is at an all-time high with the recent federal stimulus and the possibility of infrastructure investment offering potential for further momentum, which we have not factored into our current outlook. At this time, I think we're ready for questions.