Manitowoc Company, Inc. (The)

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Manitowoc Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I'd like to turn the call over to Ion Warner, Vice President Marketing and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Manitowoc Conference Call to review the company's Third Quarter 2020 financial performance as outlined in last evening's press release. Participating on the call today are Aaron Ravenscroft, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Dave Antonik, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Today's webcast includes a slide presentation, which can be found in the investor relations section of our website under events and presentations. We will reserve time for questions and answers after our prepared remarks. And I would like to request that you limit your questions to one and a follow-up and return to the queue to ensure everyone has an opportunity to ask their questions. Please turn to slide two. Please note that our safe harbor statement in the material provided for this call. During today's call, forward-looking statements, as defined in the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995, are made based on the company's current assessment of its markets and other factors that affect its businesses. However, actual results could differ materially from any implied or actual projections due to one or more of the factors, among others, described in the company's latest SEC filings. The Manitowoc company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether the result of new information, future events, or other circumstances. And with that, I will now turn the call over to you, Aaron.

Thank you, Ion, and good morning, everyone. During our last call, I outlined Manitowoc's three key priorities for managing through the COVID-19 pandemic, which are one, manage the health and safety of our employees, two, strengthen our balance sheet, and three, position the company for long-term growth. I'm proud to report that our team has done an extraordinary job delivering on all three of these priorities, and I thank all of them for a job well done. Orders for the quarter were 390 million, and frankly, much stronger than we had anticipated. This laid the groundwork for us to increase our factory production in certain facilities where we had an aggressive shutdown planned and allowed us to deliver on a strong quarter. We generated $21 million of free cash flow during the quarter and ended the quarter with $101 million of cash on hand. Our total liquidity of $397 million at the end of September positions us well for the cyclical nature of the crane business and to execute on our strategic growth initiatives. With that, I'll ask Dave to take us through the details of the financial results, and I'll close with some more color on the market outlook and our strategy. Dave? Thanks, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. Let's move to slide three. Our third quarter orders totaled $390 million, an increase of 10% compared to $353 million of orders last year. The year-over-year increase was driven by improved crawler crane demand in the America segment, partly offset by declines in other product lines due to the continued effect of COVID-19 on our end markets. In addition, we secured a couple of large mobile crane project orders in the MEAP segment, which contributed to the year-over-year increase. Favorable changes in foreign currency exchange rates positively impacted our year-over-year orders by approximately $6 million. The book to bill in the quarter was 1.1. Our third quarter ending backlog of $465 million was essentially flat over the prior year and up $35 million or 8% on a sequential basis. Improved backlog in the MEAP and URAP segments were fully offset by a decline in the Americas. On a currency neutral basis, backlog decreased 4% year over year. Net sales in the third quarter of $356 million decreased $92 million or 21% from a year ago. The decrease was primarily attributable to softness in the U.S. market for most mobile crane products during the first half of the year due to the impact from COVID-19, resulting in a lower shippable backlog entering the quarter. Net sales were favorably impacted by approximately 2% from changes in foreign currency exchange rates. Our aftermarket revenue in the quarter declined slightly over the prior year. Gross profit decreased $23 million year over year, mainly driven by the lower volume in the Americas. Gross profit percentage decreased 140 basis points to 18% from the same period in 2019, primarily due to the impact of lower production levels. Third quarter engineering, selling, and administrative expenses of $50 million decreased by approximately $5 million year over year. The decrease was primarily due to lower employee-related costs, including short-term incentive compensation costs, and reduced discretionary spending. As a result, third quarter adjusted EBITDA amounted to $25 million, or 7% of net sales. Our flow through on the year-over-year sales decline was approximately 19%, reflecting excellent performance in managing our costs in this uncertain environment. Restructuring costs in the quarter totaled $4 million and were mainly due to headcount reductions in the Americas. Our gap diluted earnings per share in the quarter was a loss of one cent per share versus income of 51 cents per share in the prior year. On an adjusted basis, diluted earnings per share was income of 10 cents compared to 54 cents in the comparable period. The primary driver of the lower adjusted diluted earnings per share was the impact of reduced year-over-year sales volume. In the third quarter, we generated $28 million of operating cash flows, which was primarily driven by a reduction in working capital of $19 million. On a currency-neutral basis, we reduced inventories by approximately $18 million during the quarter. We continue to closely manage our working capital needs to current demand levels and remain on track to achieve our planned $80 million inventory reduction on a currency-neutral basis. During the third quarter, total liquidity increased approximately 12% from a year ago. In the quarter, we repaid the $50 million draw on our ABL facility and ended the period with zero borrowings on our ABL facility. Our liquidity remains sufficient to meet our obligations for the foreseeable future. Additionally, we do not have any significant debt maturities until 2026, and as stated in previous calls, our 2019 debt agreement simplified in each covenant compliance, affording us greater flexibility to access our liquidity. Our net debt leverage ratio is 2.6, providing us with sufficient runway to deploy capital for growth initiatives. Due to the significant uncertainty regarding the impact that COVID-19 would have on our end market demand and supply chain, on March 27, 2020, we suspended guidance for 2020. Although the significant uncertainty continues to persist in the markets we serve, our line of sight to fourth quarter results have improved. Accordingly, our forecast for revenue is between $425 million and $450 million, and between $18 million and $23 million for adjusted EBITDA. With that, I will now turn the call back to Aaron. Thank you, Dave. Please move to slide four. The third quarter was a refreshing recovery from the steep decline that was experienced in the first half of the year, but we are not out of the woods yet. The COVID pandemic continues to create uncertainty, and industry confidence remains weak. In the Americas, we still face headwinds, including COVID, presidential election dynamics, challenging oil prices, and elevated dealer inventory. Demand for crawler cranes has been better, however, when speaking to our customers and dealers, the consensus is that we won't see a broad recovery until mid-2021 at the earliest. In Europe, we saw good orders during the third quarter, reflecting a bounce back after business grounded to a halt in the second quarter. Although looking forward, we are most concerned with this region. The recent spike in COVID cases is weighing heavily on the general sentiment, even more so than in the United States, as certain countries have implemented severe lockdowns. And if you recall, the tower crane business in this region was already cycling down before COVID hit. In MIAP, I would describe customer sentiment as mixed. China and South Korea have been relatively strong for us in 2020, and we've landed a couple of nice-sized projects in the Middle East. That said, we have to see structural improvements in the Middle East economies that would give us confidence that a sustainable recovery is imminent. Southeast Asia and India remain very slow. Lastly, while Australia has been strong throughout the summer, we have seen some signs of a slowdown as the geopolitical situation with China evolves. There is no question that we are operating in unprecedented times. While we continue to manage the business closely during these challenging market conditions, we are also proactively taking action to accelerate our growth when the market recovers. Our investment in new product development remains on track. and we are developing new strategies to get closer to our customers to grow the business. If you'd please turn to slide five, this will give you some insight as to how we are beginning to think differently about the business. This slide breaks down the different revenue streams that are derived from a tower crane. Historically, we've primarily focused on the sale of new cranes, which serves us well in markets where you have strong distributors and partners. However, there are certain geographic territories, such as Germany, where some of our partners don't have the balance sheet to take advantage of a rental fleet of large top-slowing tower cranes. In addition, large international construction companies rely on crane rentals to help manage their fleet, and they are beginning to shift their preferences to rent from OEMs as part of bundled deals. Beyond the obvious benefits of having a rental fleet to rent cranes, this business model helps facilitate greater service revenue and used equipment sales. Moreover, many customers prefer to rent a crane for two years to work down the acquisition price prior to the actual purchase. We see this approach as an opportunity to diversify our revenue streams and generate attractive returns in markets where we have opportunity to grow our share. We quietly trialed this initiative during 2020 with good success and intend to expand this initiative in 2021. We will continue to share more on this initiative as it matures, but we want to give you some insight on how we are changing our mindset around growth. In closing, improvement in our financial performance in the current down market is proof that we have created a sustainable standalone crane company. We have significantly transformed our cost structure with the implementation of the Manitowoc Way. Over the next five years, we will need to approach growth with the same rigor that we attacked safety, quality, and cost over the last five years. we will continue to utilize Manitowoc Way as our platform for driving our company culture. We believe there are plenty of opportunities for organic and inorganic growth in segments of the crane business that are less volatile and offer a better margin profile. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.