Welbilt, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by and welcome to the Wellbuilt Inc. 2021 Q2 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Richard Sheffer. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to Wellbuilt's 2021 Second Quarter Earnings Call and Webcast. Joining me on the call today is Bill Johnson, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Marty Agard, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin our discussion, please refer to our Safe Harbor Statement on slide two of the presentation slides and in our earnings release, both of which can be found in the investor relations section of our website, www.wellbuilt.com. Any statements in this call regarding our business that are not historical facts our forward-looking statements, and our future results could differ materially from any express or implied projections or forward-looking statements made today. Our actual results may be affected by many important factors, including risks and uncertainties identified in our press release and in our SEC filings. We do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement whether as a result of new information, future events, or other circumstances. Today's presentation and discussion will include both GAAP and non-GAAP measures. Please refer to our earnings release for our non-GAAP reconciliations and other important information regarding the use of non-GAAP financial measures. Please note that we will only be providing prepared comments on today's call and will not be conducting a question and answer session. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Bill.

Thanks, Rich, and good morning. I will start by simply saying I'm excited about the pending OLLI group transaction, but beyond that, I won't address it today as we continue to run our businesses independently. Beginning on slide three of our presentation, our net sales increased 92% year over year in the second quarter, with organic net sales increasing 85.8%, as we have now lapped the most disruptive quarter during the pandemic. While it is exciting to be talking to you about growth, it is important to note that our sales are still behind the pre-pandemic levels of 2019. With sales growing year over year, we delivered an adjusted operating EBITDA margin of 18.6%, which is a 900 basis point increase from last year's second quarter. Adjusted diluted net earnings per share was 22 cents compared to a loss of 7 cents in last year's second quarter. Along with the increased margin in earnings per share, our second quarter free cash flow was 31.9 million, making us free cash flow positive year to date. On slide four, sales in the Americas increased 87.4% in the quarter in the prior year, with organic net sales increasing 85.3%. Volumes are recovering in the Americas, but aren't back to pre-pandemic levels yet when you compare 2021 to 2019. The Americas are also benefiting more from a strong pricing environment than either EMEA or APAC. Sales to QSRs increased year over year in the second quarter, driven primarily by an increase in non-repeating large chain rollout sales. We saw rollouts across our ovens, grills, and hot holding cabinets with multiple chain operators. In the general market, sales to dealers and buying groups increased in the quarter across most of our brands. Finally, kitchen care aftermarket sales increased again this quarter as more professional kitchens are open and equipment utilization is increasing, driving demand for service. Looking at EMEA on slide five, sales increased 134.1%, with organic net sales up 110.9%. In total dollars, EMEA surpassed 2019, but that was in a large part due to a significant foreign currency tailwind. Actual volume still has to improve more before the region is fully recovered. However, we were pleased to see EMEA take a step forward with reopening many more professional kitchens this quarter. Large chain sales increased in the region as these operators are beginning to invest as they execute their expansion plans. General market grew as local dine-out restrictions eased, allowing more restaurants to reopen, which spurred new equipment sales with these operators. The easing of these restrictions also helped drive kitchen care aftermarket sales growth during the quarter. On slide six, sales in APEX increased 64.6%, with organic net sales up 57.9%. Sales growth was led by China and Australia again this quarter, as those countries were fully recovered from the pandemic. More encouraging was that Southeast Asia returned to growth in the quarter, with only one country, Thailand, still down year over year. While improved, Southeast Asia remains weaker than the rest of the region, since continuing to dampen our overall growth in APAC. Moving to slide seven, progress we have made on our transformation program once again positively impacted our results this quarter. We delivered a little over $3 million of end-period savings in the second quarter, all from productivity improvements, which is a $13 million run rate. Absent material cost inflation, we would have delivered in-period savings of approximately $7.5 million and increased our run rate to approximately $30 million so we can still see the program's progress. Looking at various initiatives, our procurement team has implemented many new agreements with current and new suppliers and is continuing to work on implementing the remaining opportunities presented by RFQ responses, most of which are now going through the product qualification and testing processes. We continue to see savings from our procurement activities ramp up in the quarter, but when netted against commodity inflation, we ended up with a material cost headwind in the quarter. We are continuing to develop our own site-led value analysis, value engineering, or VAVE initiatives. The RFQ process didn't provide the right solution for our businesses. These VAVE initiatives have identified additional savings opportunities to supplement the RFQ process. Due to the ongoing supply chain disruption that we have been experiencing the last couple of quarters, we've had to rebalance some of our resources from these procurement initiatives to help search for new suppliers for critical components, and in some cases, help our suppliers find sources for components they need to manufacture their parts for us. The shift of resources combined with inflationary pressures are extending the timeline for us to achieve the original savings target, but we remain confident that we will complete our procurement activities and deliver these savings. Until we see these inflationary pressures begin to abate, we remain committed to offsetting these pressures. The savings we are now generating and through the price increases that we implemented earlier this year will implement over the remainder of 2021. We have continued to make progress at the seven North American manufacturing plants that are currently part of the transformation program and have seen productivity gains emerge at not only these sites, but in most of our sites globally. as we are deploying our lessons learned broadly to accelerate improvements. Some of these productivity gains have been substantial, despite dealing with lower volumes and inconsistent production shifts that work against us in some facilities. These productivity gains have led to leaner operations and a smaller workforce. While recent volume improvements have resulted in the rehiring of some production staff, we anticipate remaining below prior headcount levels as we continue to increase our productivity levels. We've taken delivery and installed some new fabrication equipment, and these investments will contribute more as they are fully integrated. We are working on two additional plant consolidations currently. One is in Shreveport, Louisiana, where we have two plants that support our Frymaster and Merco businesses. We're in the process of consolidating one of those plants into the other one, but have delayed the final closing into next year so we can meet our current high demand. We've also initiated the consolidation of a manufacturing plant in the EMEA region, and expect to complete this by the end of 2021. With our current supply chain challenges and rebalancing of resources, we now expect to complete all the planned execution actions that will drive the transformation savings in 2022. Incremental spending on the program has largely concluded, and we now expect the total transformation program expenses to be less than $75 million. Since we've already incurred $71 million of these costs, there should only be small additional costs over the balance of the program. With that, I'll turn the call over to Marty.

Thanks, Bill, and good morning, everyone. I'm going to start with slide eight in the discussion of our adjusted operating EBITDA margin results. The broad theme here is we are pleased to see our executional progress being able to widely cover the gradually fading pandemic-related volume headwinds and more recent commodity and logistics inflationary headwinds. At 18.6% EBITDA margin, we are 900 basis points ahead of Q2 last year and 290 basis points ahead sequentially of this year's first quarter. This progress is not just the procurement and productivity elements of our transformation program, so those that may contribute, but broadly our execution on pricing, warranty improvement, test DNA reductions, and more. But we recognize that we're not where we want to be yet and remain resolute and drive an additional margin improvement. So working from slide 8 specifically, volume would be measured at the gross profit level and is vetted against the impact of net pricing due of an increase of 1,200 basis points in the second quarter. This reflects the 86% increase in organic sales versus prior year. enhanced by positive net pricing as we had a partial quarter benefit from the general market mispricing increase that went into effect at the end of the first quarter, along with the kitchen care aftermarket and regional price increases that went into effect earlier in the first quarter. We implemented additional price increases later in the second quarter in a few brands and more already in the third quarter in additional brands that will provide increasing offsets to the inflationary pressures as we move through the second half of 2021. Material costs, including tariffs, were 150 basis point margin heavier in this quarter compared to the prior year. This is a reflection of the inflationary pressures from rising commodity purchase components and logistics costs reincurred in the quarter and some delayed impact from the earlier inflation that came off the balance sheet and through the P&L. These inflationary impacts more than offset the savings we delivered from our transformation programs with permanent activities. We expect these inflationary headwinds to be present and likely increasing through the next few quarters, but despite that, we believe that the positive impact from rising production volumes, our transformation program efforts, and our recent price increases will be effective in expanding our margins over the balance of 2021. Other manufacturing expenses may enable overhead and warranty for a 340 basis point positive contributor to margin this quarter. The productivity improvements we've made in our plants provided real operating leverage as production volumes improved broadly across our business this quarter. We've worked to minimize the headcount brought back into our plant and are holding on to the productivity gains that we have made. We're expanding the transformation program-related labor strategies across our plants in 2021, expect volume and supply chain headwinds to ease over time, still expect gains from recent and pending equipment upgrades, and we are executing the two facility consolidations well mentioned. The organization is focused on clear initiatives towards our margin goal, and we are encouraged by the organization's continued agency. SG&A on an adjusted basis was a 530 basis point headwind this quarter. Like our actions within the manufacturing footprint over a year ago, we also took aggressive action to contain SG&A spending as the pandemic's impact emerged in March of 2020. Many of those actions are continuing to contribute as STNA categories were flat or increased well below the growth rate we had in sales this quarter. The primary drivers of the higher STNA costs this quarter were compensation expense and commissions, reflecting both the higher incentives being earned this year and the non-recurrence of some of the measures taken in last year's second quarter in response to the impact from the pandemic. As a reminder, if you're reading the face of the income statement, SG&A includes the transformation program investment and transaction costs that are excluded from our adjusted operating EBITDA. You can track the specifics through the non-GAAP reconciliation schedules in our earnings release. Finally, the weaker dollar provided larger than normal benefit to our margin this quarter. Moving to slide nine, free cash flow was a positive $32 million source of cash in the quarter. As a reminder, our free cash flow is seasonal with the first quarter impacted by our paying customer rebates and annual incentive compensation, building and inventory, and just seasonally lower volumes. Our performance in this year's second quarter brings us to positive free cash flow generation year-to-date and marks the first time in several years that we have been year-to-date free cash flow positive in the first half. Working capital with a use of cash in the quarter with higher receivables at quarter end due to sales growth and an increase in inventory as we are securing incremental supply of critical components to minimize supply disruption. For the quarter, capital spending was $5.2 million, roughly flat with last year's Q2. We continue to expect CapEx in 2021 to be more similar to 2019's spending levels with investments planned for equipment upgrades, facility investments, new product innovation, and IT initiatives. Moving on to liquidity, which we define as cash and short-term investments plus availability on our revolver. We ended the second quarter with $392 million in total liquidity, an increase of approximately $39 million from Q1, and well ahead of where we were at the end of Q2 2019 and 2020. In summary, we are very pleased with our free cash flow and liquidity performance. Cash and cash equivalents plus restricted cash increased by $14 million during the quarter, while our overall debt balance decreased by $25 million, which combined to account for the $39 million increase in liquidity this quarter. We are well within the limits on our leverage ratio covenant that came back into effect at the end of QT. We needed to be less than 7.75 times levered at quarter end as measured by our credit agreement definitions. And you can see on the slide, we finished the quarter at 5.2 times. We expect this metric to continue improving quickly during the second half of 2021 as our EBITDA increases versus last year and we generate positive free cash flow. We expect to be in compliance with our covenants with sufficient headroom through 2021. Finally, I'll offer a few updated thoughts on 2021. First, we are reiterating the 2021 net sales and adjusted operating EBITDA forecast that we issued in a form 8K in early July. We continue to believe that 2021 will show double-digit full-year growth compared to 2020, but that we won't be back to 2019 or through pandemic levels in 2021. With regards to our EBITDA margin, we expect to deliver meaningful expansion from 2020 and believe our 2021 full-year margin will be in line with 2019. We expect continued inflationary pressures to be increasingly offset by the price increases we implemented in Q1 and the additional increases we implemented recently to ensure we come out ahead in the coming quarters in the balancing of pricing and inflation. We are confident the transformation program is on track to deliver our margin objectives in the quarters ahead when both our transformation actions are mature and the market has recovered. That concludes my comments. As Rich mentioned at the beginning of the call, we will not be conducting a question and answer session today. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Bill for his closing remarks. Thanks, Marty.

Before we end today's call, I want to reiterate my continued belief that Wellbuilt is a stronger company that is structurally leaner and more efficient than we were at the beginning of the pandemic or when we began our transformation program in May 2019. We will continue to focus on opportunities where we can use our innovation and digital leadership to help our customers succeed and grow. We will continue to leverage our culture of innovation and customer service to win the battle for brand preference. We will deliver improved margins and much improved free cash flow as we increasingly overcome the inflationary pressures that have limited our visible improvement this year. This concludes today's 2021 second quarter earnings call. Thanks again for joining us this morning, and have a great day.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating.